Melissa goes to Boot Camp

How fantastic is this? Melissa's teacher has arranged for Marines to volunteer in the classroom weekly. It is such a great program. The kids get to have a "hero" in the class who comes to school to play at recess, read with them, and help with assignments in the class. One of the Marines has been deployed to Iraq (with Flat Stanley) and the kids get to e-mail Matthew and also they get to video conference with him. How great is this?

Anyway, this past week has been Red Ribbon week at school and Mrs. Budde managed to get about 15 Marines to come in and do boot camp with the entire school. It was such a blast to watch the kids take direction from these guys! They did exercises and then broke off into groups to discuss good character; how to be respectful, trustworthy, responsible, etc. Here's a couple pictures and a great video of Melissa at boot camp!

Citizenship Award

Melissa's elementary school is really good about recognizing kids for doing great things. Every couple of months they have assemblies to hand out awards for specific character traits that they see in the kids. Melissa got an award for good citizenship because of her great attitude in class and for being such a forgiving friend to some of the kids in class. YAY!

The school also has a "running club" that allows the kids to run laps during recess twice a week. They get a pop-cicle stick for every lap that they run and then they are tallied up. At the assemblies they also recognize the kids who have run based on 5 mile increments. Melissa was given an award for running 10 miles already this year. Not too bad for 10 minutes of running twice a week for 6 weeks.

Miramar Airshow

Holy COW!! We went to the airshow this weekend, in part to celebrate Greg's birthday, and we were mighty impressed! Unbelievable. Without a doubt the best airshow we have ever been to. Check out Greg's Pics on the right hand side. He took some great video. I still can't believe what the F22 Raptor can do. It is an airplane not a helicoptor after all.

Chef Melissa

Melissa's reading has improved greatly! So much so that we purchased her a cookbook. And boy is she cooking! She has made both garlic and cinnamon bagel chips, purple cows (yummy) and Sunday morning she got up and made us some crepes. Yes. That's right crepes. Strawberry to be exact. They sure were good. Somebody needs to come for a visit so she can show off her new found talent!

How DID those kids get so smart?

That is the question.
Austin's guitar teacher came out of his lesson a few weeks ago and says, "Wow. His math skills are phenomenal. In fifteen years of teaching I've never had anyone pick up on the math/theory aspect as quick as he has. Before I can even finish my explanation, he has the answer and is moving along to the next part. You've got one smart kid." Well, duh....
Thursday, I was talking to one of Melissa's teachers and she asks, "So did Melissa inherit her smarts?" They had been working on reading schema and apparently Melissa is the only student in her 8 years of teaching that managed to get text to world concepts within a story. She was floored! Again... well, duh.....

School Started

Well, we made it. School started. Whine.... Austin is now in Middle School. Doesn't seem possible. Honestly. He's only 10. Whine.... And then there's Melissa in 2nd grade this year. Yikes! Doesn't seem like that long ago that Austin was in Miss Milliken's class in 2nd grade. I know it wasn't that long ago. Cause I'm not getting any older!
Anyway, we'll just have to see how this big bad world of Middle School goes.

Sea World Trip

Greg was off to Vegas this morning and the kids and I were wanting something to do; so we dropped him off and headed over to Sea World. (You just have to love the season tickets) Austin hadn't seen any of the evening shows so we knew it would be a looooong day. We arrived at 8:30 a.m. and planned to stay until the fireworks show at 9:55. Glutton for punishment I know, but with school starting in a few short days we might as well make the most of our summer.

Needless to say we had a great time. We rode all the water rides in the morning so we'd be dry when the sun went down. I certainly didn't want to have to head out to the car to change clothes or buy anything new. We managed to catch every show they had. I don't believe there was one we missed.

The highlight of the day for Melissa anyway was meeting Clyde. We were walking by the stadium prior to the Clyde and Semore Show and Austin was asked if he wanted to be part of the show. Of course he does, but you know how little sisters can be... she piped up with, "but I want to too." So the gal says, "You can do rock, paper scissors for it." Guess who won the best 3 out of 5?