Cindy, Lauren, Casey and yours-truly…hitting the town of Issaquah.

# posted by Julie : 9:54 PM

We had Mason’s parent-teacher conference today. His teacher was so nice and came to our house because Cindy and I were having two-parent-working-schedule-woes. We were prepared for more mischievous examples, such as the “kissing bandit” escapades that we heard about last year. Much to our surprise, we received this report.

What a treat to have Mason in the class for another year! In our conference planning, the staff all commented on  how delightful Mason is, and what a leader he has become. In preparing this conference, I re-read last year’s report written by Debby, and it reminded me of how much of a mischievous side we saw of Mason last year. This year, he is one of the more responsible in the class, and we actually use him as a great example of how things should be done at circle and at play and work time.

Mason is a fabulous kid who plays wells with boys and girls. He is empathetic and sensitive with his friends. He is also sensitive about things that the children say to him, and takes all of their words to heart. When dealing with a conflict, Mason processes the situation first, using his words and talking directly to the other children involved. He will then share it with us. We usually commend him personally, then later at circle, we describe how that is the way to do things!

He takes direction well, and is typically a self starter. Sometimes he takes a little bit of direction, but he always works on his tasks through to completion. We often see that Mason takes a very long time to do his work, but it is not the difficulty of the project, but more that he is engaged with other things at the same time…this could be the other kids at the table, and a social conversation going on, or something as simple as changing the erasers on the different pencils to be something more of a better fit, in his eyes!

Mason is working on his letter writing and still needs a little help or dotted lines with some letters, but he is engaged and attentive at trying his best. Mason struggles with rhythm at times during music circle, but he is very earnest and sticks with it.

This boy is loved by the staff and the students, and plays often with Maddie and Emma. He engages with Toby and Conner, and upon Cayden’s re-entry to the class, we are happy to see that he has not reverted to the rough play of Cayden, Ryan and JJ. We are so happy to have Mason in our 5’s class, and are excited to watch his growth and development throughout the year.

# posted by Julie : 9:05 PM

We went to a pumpkin carving party this afternoon. The donut on a string contest was a favorite!

# posted by Julie : 6:03 PM

One day before we got home from Greece the new house arrived. I’m sorry to report that this means that I have very limited pictures to share, and had no opportunity to micro-manage my contractor. (As you see from Bob being on the roof, he did a good job of it.) I tried everything I could to speed the process up for the past ten months, then everything I could to delay it by one day. What could have been resulted in about 75 individual posts has to be summarized.

But, alas, this is the new house, right next to ours, that will soon be Bob and June’s new castle. It’ll be about another month until they can move in.

Later this week: sewer! So exciting!

# posted by Julie : 7:01 PM

Cindy and I decided to take our first vacation away from the kids. We went for eleven days to Greece! At 4:00AM before we left Cindy and I got up and wrote each kid a note a day. So, on one day Mason had a note from me and Kenzie had a note from Cindy. The next day it was reversed. We tried to reference all the fun things that they were likely do, and counted down the days to our return. This did help appease our guilt just a bit.

It was a wonderful vacation and the kids did great in our absence. They had many play dates and kept very busy between friends and relatives. They did Salmon Days and only slept at home six of the nights. So nice for us that so many people stepped in to help make it easier for us to be on the other side of the globe!

This first picture was taken on the rooftop of our hotel overlooking the Parthenon. We spent that first night shopping in the Plaka district in Athens, waiting for our ferry the next morning.

These second and third pictures were taken from the ferry, leaving Athens, on our way to Mikonos. It was a five hour ferry ride that started with heavy rain and ended with the beautiful blue sky matching the Aegean sea.

We stayed at a friend’s house. Here is the view from his back porch looking over Panormos Bay. It was just gorgeous.

We spent the rest of the time sunbathing and discovering beaches, taste-testing all the local gyros and crepes stands, and learning how to drive like a madman. At least part of every day was spent in the main town, Mikonos.

These probably capture it best, ahh…

We made one friend that we briefly considered bringing home for the kids:

We called home a few times. Each time we felt like we were interrupting good fun! By the last day we were definitely ready to come home and see them, and I think the feeling was mutual.

# posted by Julie : 9:27 PM

Our good buddy Luke turned four. They held still for long enough to snap a picture!

# posted by Julie : 8:53 PM