Where's the Post?

Between posting to facebook and my own blog, I forget what I've posted where but do know I've been neglecting everything lately. Here are the photos from Halloween. We had a fun night - a friend of Shara's and her family joined us trick-or-treating. Shara was so excited to go out the first thing she did was start running to Keira's house to see if she could join the party. On the way she tripped over some Sandy debris and cut up her hands. Well that didn't stop her and we were off to get candy. We made the monster eyeballs to hand out to the grown-ups who were left at home to give out the candy. It was appreciated and got a few laughs. Shara had a ton of fun and was crazy-happy-excited the whole time. We have to get her out more!

Laurie & Shara as Hermione and Harry

Alan as Ron

The "joint effort" jack-o-lantern

And so for the things that are happening now - there was a field trip today from church to the Maha Yoga Center. My independent child couldn't wait for me to leave her and seemed to have a nice time. She didn't say too much about it when asked, but it was fun for her. Later we had dinner and a movie - the Court Jester. Very cool - she's a Danny Kaye fan too! For dinner she didn't want tuna noodle casserole, which I haven't made in years but got out her cookbook and selected twice baked potatoes. I should have taken a picture, they were so cute. The potatoes were boats, with celery oars and olive people. She also liked the red kuri squash I baked with some brown sugar and apple cider, and the tuna noodle, because who doesn't like tuna noodle? I know, bubbe doesn't like it! The best thing about having tuna fish is Shara gets to give the juice to the cats.

Last week we had Shara's parent-teacher conference. He saved ours for the end of the night so he could end on a happy note. He had nothing but positive things to say about Shara and she's having no trouble with anything and even got the best grade in the class on their first real big test. It was on soil. They learned about it by reading and also doing some experiments in the science lab. She brought home the worksheets and other materials so she could study last weekend and had fun quizzing me and having me quiz her. She really likes school and even wants us to give her hard addition and subtraction problems for her to solve. So it wasn't that big of a surprise that she is doing so well, but it's always nice to have the teacher confirm our suspicions.

The other big event was dad/grandpa's memorial service. I was so proud. Shara had agreed to do a reading with me and we practiced a bit but it didn't really come together until we were at the pulpit during the ceremony. The whole thing only took about a minute to read but she did a wonderful job and took it seriously. After the ceremony she met several of the people I had worked with at Gershons and was able to put faces to the names in the stories I've told her. Earlier in the day we went to Lakeside Farms to get some lunch, apples and doughnuts (of course). The first and last time she was was there was back in 2005. Apparently she likes cider doughnuts just as much now as she did back then!

Cleaned off the pool table

In preparing for Thanksgiving, which is what it took to do this, we finally put away Shara's art projects from her summer at Arts for Youth. We still need to frame some, but for now, here are some of the photos I took.