While it wasn’t the tooth we were watching, this sweet boy lost his first tooth! About a week ago, he showed me that his 2nd loose tooth (that we’d been watching for awhile) was “really loose”…
About two days later, it was grossly loose…
Over the weekend, it was flopping around when he talked…
On Tuesday when I picked him up from school, it looked like he was missing a tooth! No, it was just laying FLAT in his mouth.
A sweet friend brought us chili for dinner, so I gave him some extra chips. I turned around to wash up some dishes, and I hear the most calm voice, “Hey mommy…” I turned back around to see him holding something in his hand…
Wow! SO crazy! I still haven’t gotten used to that gaping hole in his smile!
Our Thanksgiving week started with a Thankful Feast at Benjamin’s preschool. We were each asked to pay a small fee per family, and bring a side dish or dessert. Four of the classes gathered on Monday morning for an early lunch – an entire Thanksgiving spread – Turkey, ham, stuffing, cranberries in various forms, potatoes, bread, corn, pasta salad, and desserts like crazy…
The boys and I found Benjamin’s place setting and got ready…
Below is a turkey he made in class -
Benjamin’s class got to choose whether they wanted to be Pilgrims or Indians, and Benjamin choose a Pilgrim (although, he originally told me he was going to be a PENGUIN…Getting ready for the Christmas play? haha)
Here’s my big Pilgrim!
And if you click below, you can watch their performance 
On Thursday, we gathered with some friends from church (OK, about 30 people total), and had a delicious Thanksgiving spread. I’m not a huge fan of the traditional Thanksgiving meal – I like Turkey…on a sub sandwich But, our hosts, did something to this turkey…it was amazing…I had seconds…I’ve never had seconds of turkey We do up Thanksgiving potluck style, and our hosts provide the turkey and ham, along with mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and drinks…we brought from-scratch sweet potato casserole, some mac & cheese, there were homemade rolls, some pineapple cheese casserole thing that was AWEsome, I’m sure I’m forgetting more delicious food…and pies and delicious desserts galore…
Then, we ended the evening with a bonfire (but left a little early).
We are definitely ready for the end of this Seminary time, and for whatever may be next, but, I will definitely miss out on that sweet time of fellowship every Thanksgiving!
Three days later, we’re still chowing on that Sweet potato casserole and Mac & cheese…yum yum!!!!
Totally late update on Caedmon’s eye appt., but the ophthalmologist deemed his eyes totally fine. He does want him re-checked in a couple years (and B & K checked ASAP) since poor eyesight runs down both sides of family, but we can breathe a little easier now! 
October flew by in a blink, and here I am this morning, changing the calendar over to November… wasn’t it JUST November, like..3 weeks ago?! Sheesh.
Last night, we went Trick or Treating with our Small Group friends, and had some yummy food and great hang out time.
Here we are – James Bond, Rosie the Riveter, a Giraffe, Elephant, and a Pirate! Such fun. We spent the evening with The Pioneer Woman, the Marlboro Man, a couple of Redskins, 2 Pigs in a Blanket, a Teacher, a Hokie, and a Robber.
And thus begins the fun season of food, friends, family, and preparing for Christmas (and the countdown to get to summer and back to warmer temps!!)
We received Keaton’s first progress report last week. His school grades on a scale of 1-4 (apparently, kids in Kindergarten never receive a “4″). So, in Art, PE and Music, he received all 3′s.
For his class, I was expecting the same thing (I guess? haha) but it was simply a “note” from his teacher that he was performing at or above the Common Core Standards (or something more official sounding). This is dandy, but I wanted to know more! I had a few teacher friends promise me I’d learn more at our conference.
Our conference was scheduled for Tuesday morning. To say I was nervous was an understatement. All the work that was coming home was great, but I was just worried I was missing something.
I haven’t figured out how to share the great news we received from Keaton’s teacher without it sounding like I’m bragging or something, but I also want it “recorded” here for my memory.
We started the meeting with literacy, and Keaton is doing really great with reading, recognizing letters, their sounds, parts of a sentence and books, and doing basic early sentences. His reading is more advanced than most of the kids in the class, so the Aide is going to be working with him, and a couple other students, on more advanced reading, and helping them to better understand sentence structure/writing concepts. She could tell that Keaton was very bored with the work provided, and apologized, that it just took them a bit to gather where 22 kids stood with everything. She is also going to be making sure that his literacy homework is a bit more challenging as well.
Math. She shared a couple of assignments that he earned a 3* on (Guess that is as close to a 4 they can give? haha) But, long story short, he inherited his daddy’s math brain, and they’ll start working with him on more advanced math work as well, since he’s already bored with what they’re giving him during math time. I told her how we accidentally grabbed a subtraction workbook for him when he was tracked out, and she said that was fine to “accidentally” do that again, since during his time with the Aide, he’ll be working towards understanding subtraction, since he has addition “down”, along with patterns, graphing, greater than/less than, etc…
She asked if I had any concerns, and my only thing (after all this) was how he was doing socially, since that was the main reason his preschool teachers suggested we enroll him in the transitional kindergarten class as opposed to kindergarten this year. She laughed and said that he is very social – has no problem talking to anyone in the class, hangs out with everyone (but does have his little “group” he sticks to – she said these children would also be the ones being pulled aside for reading/math, and were great kids, ones she would want her kids to be hanging out with), is very outgoing, loves to be the center of attention (but not in a disruptive way), etc… She said socially he is great.
Deep sigh of relief!
We’re definitely proud of him, and we love how much he loves school and learning!
This morning I had a few errands to do and I was simply dragging. So after dropping off Keaton, and before dropping off Benjamin, we did a quick drive-thru at McDonald’s (all sizes of soft drinks are $1.00). I grabbed a Dr. Pepper and we headed onto B’s preschool. Coming to the school from this direction requires us to do a U-Turn. I made a comment about making the “u-turn” and Benjamin quickly shouted, “What? MY Turn?” It took me a second, but he was just sitting there grinning ear-to-ear about his funny
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A few weeks ago, Keaton needed $9 CASH for a class t-shirt. We NEVER have cash on hand. So, in true winning-mom-fashion, the morning the t-shirt money was due, I was scrambling. After some thinking, I had a plan (my plan needed to involve NOT getting all the boys out of the car at any point…did I mention I’m lazy too?)
So, we left for school about 30 minutes early. Our first stop was at the bank to take out money, but you can only do denominations of $20, so $20 it was.
I needed $9…
So, we went by McDonald’s for a $1 drink (remember, ALL soft drinks, no matter the size, ONLY $1)
This allowed me to get the appropriate change back to get the $9 for Keaton’s t-shirt …such a sacrifice
Well, this morning when we pulled into McD’s, there was quite the line for the drive thru. I made a comment about so many being in line.
Benjamin said, “Well, maybe they just need t-shirt money…”
Ha!
Maybe they do
