Holiday Weekend

Brooke had her parent teacher conference last Wednesday. She did so awesome, her teacher gave her extra homework. Seriously, Brooke wanted more to do. Her teacher has her and a few other classmates competing to see who can write to 1,000 first. Brooke just started over the weekend, and is already almost to 200. As soon as we walk in the door from school everyday, she imediately asks if we can do homework. As long as she wants to do it, I'll take it. I know it will be short lived and in a few years, I will be fighting tooth and nail to get her to do it, let alone WANT to do it.
Brooke gets a lot of homework in my opinion. I am sure a lot of kids don't finish the work. But, it's been okay with me because I don't have to come up with extras for her. It usually keeps her pretty busy. She loves learning to read. She is on a 'C' reading level which is the highest level anyone is on in her class. I think there are 3 or 4 others who are on a 'C' as well. Probably the same ones who are competing to write to 1,000.
Brooke got the highest marks on every subject. The teacher had no suggestions on anything she really needs to work on. The class is taking a journey where they have to bring along cars. We are help her make her car out of a giant box. Thank goodness we have tons of empty moving boxes lying around! Derek is going to help her finish it this weekend. I will have to take some pictures of her with it.

On Saturday, we went to Derek's Mom's house to celebrate Carter's first birthday. Carter is Jesse's fiance's(Amanda)  littlest boy (out of 4 boys!). He is such a cute, happy little thing!

I didn't get very many good pictures. This was the best of them. But you can tell how happy he is digging in!
Amanda's sisters came and boy did they entertain DaKoda. They had fun playing ring around the rosies and doing jumping jacks. They were both really great with her.

After the party, Tiffany asked if she could spend the night at our house. They had all decided to sleep on the floor, but DaKoda bailed at the last minute. Brooke and Tiffany made it though. The next day (Sunday) we went to church. We are teaching the Sunbeams right now and we love it. DaKoda is in our class. There are actually 2 Sunbeam classes because there are so many. Somehow we lucked out and there are only 5 on our list, the other class has 8. And most of the other class are active! Thankfully, the other teacher came along with these kids from Nursery, so she knows them all really well and doesn't mind the big class. We haven't met one of the kids in our class yet. So it's been DaKoda and Brielle (who lives around the corner from us, since we are the only house on our block, I say they are our next door neighbors). The first week both boys Kelton and Daxdan were there, but since then only one or the other has come. So the last 2 weeks, we've only had 3 kids in our class! It's so laid back. DaKoda is the only one who acts up. Seriously. We had one boy fall asleep! We really are loving being the teachers in this class. It's been really fun so far.

After church, I was exhausted from cleaning up from Tiffany and mostly Brooke. DaKoda did a little, but she seemed a little clingy, and wasn't with the girls as much. They made such a mess! And neither one would help me clean. I was so upset, I told Derek no more sleepovers for a little while. Not unless they help clean up.

Yesterday (Monday), was a holiday, so again Brooke didn't have school. A 5 day weekend! I've been wanting to badly to take the girls to see Tangled. I asked Derek if he cared not seeing it with us, and he said it was fine, it wasn't his kind of movie. He doesn't mind watching kids movies, or even Disney ones, but he knew this was more of a girls movie. I surprised the girls and told them to go get ready to leave. They were already a little shocked seeing that it was basically DaKoda's naptime. (Well, 'quiet time' anyway. Who are we kidding, she really only falls asleep in there like every 2-3 days. But, I still need some quiet time! She usually just lays down and looks at books for about an hour or so.) We got in the car and headed off. We were only on the freeway for a mile when it came to a dead stop. What should have been a 15 minute drive, took us 45!! I had planned it so that we could be early, get our treats, find good seats, etc. But instead, we literally ran through the parking lot, through the mall, bought tickets right at the time the show should be starting, got frustrated when it seemed to take forever to buy popcorn, and ended up sitting in the front section. Which I totally dislike. But I decided to make the best of it. The girls didn't complain about it, but I think if we didn't have to crane our necks, DaKoda would have made it the entire movie without getting up. The first hour, yep, the entire first hour, both the girls sat there without moving. Really DaKoda made it up till the last 20 minutes. I had to keep telling her to whisper, but other than that, she really did fantatic! I told both of them thank you for behaving so wonderfully when Mommy was so stressed out about getting there on time. Tangled was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. The girls both said they loved it too. Definetly buying that one when it comes out on DVD. After the movie, we drove over to Sam's Club to buy some more chicken nuggets for the girls. DaKoda begged for bottled water. This girl could drink water and milk forever and be content. I love it! We go through so much milk it's unreal. I think there are families of 7-8 people who drink less milk than we do. Brooke is the only one who doesn't care all that much for it, but she still takes it at breakfast. We bought a few other things and then grabbed some chinese takeout for dinner. It was a really great day, and weekend.