Birthday

Happy Birthday to this big guy! George turned 7 on Friday. It's hard to believe that he's this old already. However, it's fun to see him growing and learning and turning into a wonderful boy! We are so proud of him. Love you George!


As many of you are aware, George had a great love for the sea and all of it's creatures, especially those of the weird varieties. When we lived in CA and used to visit the aquarium we spent vast amounts of time in the jelly fish room. He has checked out just about every book in 3 states having to do with creatures of the deep and can recite numerous facts about monsters such as giant squid, angler fish, gulper eels, viper fish, etc. So, for his birthday we decorated our house with streamers (seaweed) and balloons (fish) to make an underwater world. I also made an angler fish cake. He was very pleased when he came home from school to our handy-work.

Sisters

PJ Princesses

Every time I see my cute girls together I want to sing that song from White Christmas,

Sisters...Sisters...
There were never such devoted sisters

Venting

I just need to vent a little bit and I don't have any friends or family here that I feel comfortable venting to. So, all you who happen to read this blog today get to hear it instead. Lucky you!

It's about the elementary school here. I don't think I've met with more rude people or ridiculous policies in all of my life! I won't even go into the whole registration process right now, I just need to talk about the latest...We want to volunteer in George's class one hour a week. Yesterday I was informed by his teacher that in order to do that we need to fill out a "Volunteer Application Form" in the front office. So yesterday I haul all of the kids over to the office and pick up a form-which is 3 pages long and requires 3 character references that I've known for over 2 years and that are NOT family, and a possible background check. Huh? I was then informed that if I want to go on any field trips I have to be fingerprinted. What?! She then told me to make sure that my references can be reached during school hours because they only call during school hours and if they can't reach all of them I don't get approved. I've applied for jobs that don't require as much. I'm not even going to be left alone with any kids. Seriously.

Then today when I dropped George off at school he forgot his library book. So I found a place to park and hauled all of the other kids out of the car and into the school to take it to him. As I'm walking down the hall this "hall monitor" (in a very rude voice) says, "If you are going to walk down this hall you need a visitors pass." I said, "Oh, I didn't think I needed one before school had started." She said (again rudely), "Yes, you do." Maybe we've just always lived in small enough towns until now that the people at school always knew who my kid was and who I was. In our old schools parents walked their kids to their classrooms all the time. It was only when school was actually in session that you needed to check in at the office.

So, my question is. Are these things normal? Am I getting bent out of shape over normal policies here? I would love some feedback. Although, I have to say that I probably wouldn't be as annoyed if these people were nice once in awhile.

3 Months

It's hard to believe that it's already been three months. Amelia is growing so big and cute! She is laughing and talking and playing with her toys and her brothers and sister. She really is a joy. We love her so much!!