Weekend happenings

Many years ago I read a book called "Up the Down Staircase." It is about a fresh from school teacher who gets a job working in a troubled inner-city school. In the book she asks her students to write an essay on the following quote by Robert Browning: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp." That quote has always stuck with me, and it came to mind again this weekend.

We bought face paint for Halloween. We didn't come close to using it all, so we have quite a bit left. Rachel managed to reach it, even though I had put it up high. Rachel firmly believes that her reach should always push the limits, and turns out she can grasp things beyond what I thought.

Anyway, she wanted to paint her face like a tiger. Artwork is Jeff's specialty, so he painted her face. He did a good job too.
Gabi is my good eater. (Rachel is most certainly not my good eater.) Gabi pretty much eats, or at least tries anything I put in front of her. She is so not picky (at least not yet) that she is willing to help Scout finish his food. This morning Gabi found this empty cool whip tub (I keep in the bathroom and use it for bath time) and wanted to wear it on her head. She got it firmly in its place, then joined Scout for his morning meal. I captured the moment.

Another "First"

Rachel has had a lot of "firsts" lately. First day of primary, first day of school. Well, in that spirit, today was another first. Today was Rachel's first snow day. It wasn't a huge snow fall, but the snow did fall lightly pretty much all day. We had fun playing in it.

Rachel had fun throwing snowballs, and Harley (our visiting dog) was the primary target. She got me a couple of times too.

Gabi discovered the joy of eating snow

School

Last fall I called a local preschool to look into enrolling Rachel. At the time Rachel wasn't quite potty trained, and the school offered only one class for children that were not potty trained, and that class was full. So I decided to just wait a while longer.

Fast forward to Monday. I decided to call the preschool again to see if by any chance there were any openings. I didn't really expect there to be, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask, and anyway I could get a head start on the fall. Turns out, however, that there was in fact an opening as one little boy moved away.

Anyway, long story short, I enrolled Rachel in preschool. Today was her first day. She was very happy to go, but was not overly expressive of her excitement. Of course I had to take a few pictures to memorialize her first day of school.

She is saying "cha cha cha."

I dropped her off, and she was just fine.

When I went to pick her up she was very happy to see me. The teacher told me that she did great, that even though all of the other kids had been there since September, she fit right in and did not miss a beat.

Here is her art project from today. The teacher spelled her name wrong. Rachel also came home with a bunch of brightly colored pieces of pasta. Not sure what that's about.

Here is Gabi on Rachel's first day of school.

First Day of Primary

Today was Rachel's first day of primary. She is a sunbeam (the 3-year-old class). She wore her Christmas dress that she got from her great-grandma, and for shoes she wore sparkling pink shoes that she got from one of my piano students.

Gabi dressed to match. Her dress was a gift from her grandma, and she got the same sparking pink shoes from my student.
As we got ready for church this morning, the girls were so happy wearing their dresses and their sparkling shoes, they were as cooperative as I have ever seen as I took their pictures.