The Zimmer Zoo

I *could* write about this with respect to my own kids, but I so don’t want to get into that right now…so that’s a whole other post 😉

Anyway, this stems from an observation at church today. When I was growing up, you didn’t leave church in the middle of the service. And if you had to, you waited for a break between things (like when the prayer ENDS!)

I’ve noticed that this doesn’t seem to happen anymore. People pop up and down whenever – during the sermon, readings, and even prayers! What’s up with that? Are people really A.) that oblivious to what’s going on around them, and B.) in that much of a hurry that they can’t sit through an entire service (or just can’t wait for a hymn or something??)

Do people just come and go from the theater now too..?

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Logan and Maggie snuck off into the kitchen to make secret Valentines Day creations 🙂

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A playdate today gave me the chance to apologize to a mom and her daughter for not sending an invite them to go to Maggie’s birthday party. I was mortified when I realized that this girl – a good friend of Maggie’s – was left off MY list (not Maggie’s list – MINE).

Seeing the girls play together, and seeing that my blunder didn’t cost a friendship (either the girls’ or mine and the mom’s!), and having the chance to really say that I was sorry – face-to-face – totally Made My Monday.

(Did I take a picture?? Of course not. *sigh* )

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I watch for the commercials. But I found that I’ve been so conditioned to ignore commercials (or fast forward through them – yeah DVR!) that I forgot to pay attention when they cam on!!

I wasn’t wowed by many this year…were you?

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Today is Mike’s 30-somethingth birthday.

We celebrated by going to the kids’ swim lessons, out to lunch at Chipotles, hitting the pet store, and then I made Mike’s favorite dinner: Spaghetti – his mom’s recipe.

Happy Birthday Honey!!

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All 3 kids got their progress reports this past week. There were no HUGE surprises, but definitely a couple of eye openers. I’m looking forward to the Kindergarten parent conferences.

Logan’s made me laugh…he got a “working on Skill plus” (W+) in Participates willingly with classroom clean up. Good to see that’s the same as at home 😉 He got a W in Using crayons and Tracing, and W+ in using scissors. Everything else is a Good Progress (G).

Burke Meets Standards (M) in most everything, with a few Demonstrates Understanding and is applying with increasing frequencies (P) peppered through. He still has Emerging (E) in his social skills though. Clearly some things we need to reinforce more at home, and I’m glad we have an idea of what those things are now.

Maggie. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. I think we’ve come to realize that school might always be a bit of a struggle for her. It’s still early in her academic life though, so perhaps not. We’ll obviously give her all of the support she needs. I think the root of it all is the P in Puts forth best effort. We see this at home as well…and we’re working on getting her to try her hardest. She probably has about the same number of Ps and Ms as Burke, but in different areas (Duh – they’re different kids 🙂 ) Her social skills are just fine. She’s got Es in a few areas, but the alarming one is the Not Emerging (NE) in Recognizes numbers 1 – 20. She can *count* to 100…she just doesn’t recognize many of the written teens. We’ve created some flash cards and we’re working on it. She has an NE in Estimates as well, but that one doesn’t worry me as much…I mean – I’m still terrible as estimating things 😉

I have no doubt that the brains are in there…and we know from her speech sessions that she has a different way of learning things. We just need to figure out how to best support her and get her learning in her own way.

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The dog trainer (or should I say, people trainer who happens to love dogs?) came for an evaluation session with Higgins today.

The first thing to go? The chain. Higgins is now sporting a nice, black nylon collar/choker. And he’ll be wearing his leash around the house for a while so we can make immediate corrections when necessary.

This trainer (who I found online) turns out to be a cop in our town! And he trains police dogs as well. He seems to be perfect for the job and should get us…I mean Higgins…on track in no time. 🙂

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Last night we had a storm that brought about 12 inches of snow.

After a storm last week that brought somewhere around 6 inches of snow.

After a storm 2 weeks ago that brought 26 inches of snow.

That’s over 44 inches of snow!! That’s taller than my kids. We have no place to put it all. The snowbanks are taller than Mike. (Have you ever tried to heft snow up to the top of a snowbank that is taller than you? Not a pretty sight.) Enough already!!

All this snow also means that today is the kids’ 4th snow day (and one holiday) in 3 weeks. 5 days at home. GAH! The snow also means that my nanny can’t get here…when my nanny isn’t here, I don’t get a lot of work done.

When you work from home full-time, there ARE no snow days! So frustrating.

</rant>

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We celebrated the kids’ kid birthday party (36 kids – plus a few siblings) at Jump On In today.

This *fantastic* place that has two rooms full of inflatable jump/slide/obstacle things. And they were so incredibly accommodating to the whole “I have twins in two different classes so there will be tons of kids, but I don’t want to pay an arm an a leg for two parties” thing. 🙂

There were no serious injuries and no one got sick…I’d say that means it was a higly successful party!! (And THAT Makes My Monday.)

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