Storms

Dairy Craving of the Day: Paula Dean's crockpot mac & cheese (why, oh why do I tease myself with the Food Network???)


This is what we woke up to Wednesday morning:


Tuesday night's storms ripped the gate off of our fence. The branch barely missed the cars and the house, and Ken was able to reattach the hinges on the gate before leaving for work the next morning. Good thing, because I was wondering how the heck I was going to keep the dog in the yard with the gate wide open. He's welcome in the house during a storm overnight, but I am NOT staying inside with a golden retriever and two sick kids all day. No sir, not me.

The storm at home is the stupid cold making its way through the house. Poor Harper can't sleep with her congestion, and there isn't a damn thing we can do to help her. She had trouble
eating this morning, and she's constantly choking on either her snot or her drool (I did mention she's teething too, right?).

And then there was Ella. Hurricane Ella is starting Kindergarten next year (yikes, make that in five months!), and Wednesday was registration day. I decided to take her with me so she could see the school . . . . BIG mistake. The paperwork took longer than I anticipated, and I of all people should have known better since I used to type and assemble these packets for the school I worked at. So she was a little restless, BUT her biggest offense was hollering at the other kids and saying she was NOT going to school with those babies and if she had to then she was definitely not playing with them. Definitely. Then she didn't understand why she couldn't check out their library books. And she kept sliding off her chair like a lunatic when the testing lady was assigning us a testing time for August. Then she was playing with the wires under the table while I signed her up for the French Immersion program online, as if she'd never seen a computer or wires before in her life. Crazy kid, I tell you.

But the super special awesome news is that she is registered for French Immersion next year. They have one teacher for 90 minutes for English and Reading, and the rest of the day is taught by their regular teach . . . completely in French. Yep, math, science, social studies, etc. all in French. There are several advantages to this for us. First, Ella won't be bored with a review of letters and numbers and stuff she already knows. That would just be a waste of time and an invitation for her to get in trouble. Second, I think it's an important part of her heritage and it's important for me to do my part to keep that alive. Third, it's just awesome to learn a second (or third or fourth) language, especially at a young age. And she'll be fluent in it, not just learning random nouns and conjugating a few verbs. Since she's little, I've taught her a few songs, numbers, and body parts in French and my grandmother would ask her what she knew from time to time, but I wanted to do more for her. I'm kind of excited to learn along with her, since I've forgotten a lot of what I once knew.

The downside is, well, my baby will be off to kindergarten next year. And we will NOT be talking about this again. Ever.