I was doing so well...

keeping my blog updated that is, then it all went to crap lol. Things have been pretty busy here lately. My mom came out to visit for 3 weeks, which was great since we hadn't seen her since November 2006. Of course it went by way too fast as always. Dave came home from school December 8th, just in time for Hannah and Elijah's Birthday. We went out to dinner on the 10th for their actual birthday, then had a party on the 11th with their classmates. I felt bad that we hadn't lived here long enough for them to make any good friends yet. It was kind of ironic actually, usually Hannah has a ton of friends at her parties and Elijah has one or two, but that's the nature of his disability. This year Hannah only had 1 friend come and Elijah had 6. Let's see, what else has been going on...we had parent-teacher conferences right before school let out. Caitlynn and Hannah's teachers were very surprised when we told them that the Dodea school the kids transfered from was at least a full year behind this school. The girls are doing very well and catching up nicely. Caitlynn is in this special seminar class that's made up of students who scored in the 99th percentile on the achievement test. Hannah's in regular class but her teacher thinks that when she's tested she'll qualify for the cluster class, the next step down from the seminar class Caitlynn is in. It's kind of funny cause before now none of Hannah's teachers have been able to see past her silliness and desire to be the class clown, so it's nice for someone to finally see how smart Hannah really is. Unfortunately Elijah's conference wasn't nearly as pleasant. I get the feeling the teacher has no idea what to do with him. She talks about modifying things for him, like the amount of homework and then sends home 2-3 hours of work for him to do each day. I won't make any of my kids do that much homework at this age. In Junior High and High School I expect it, but not in elementary school, they need time to be kids and to decompress. And him, more than other kids, he can't handle that much work, that's what's made his anxiety (hand flapping, eye twitching) worse then ever before.

Anyway on to happier topics, while my mom was visiting she kept the kids for a week so Dave and I could spend a week in Vegas alone, is was so nice. We went and saw the Phantom of the Opera, Stomp, and The Beatles Cirque de Soleil. It was so nice getting to sleep in and just being to hand out just the two of us. We stayed in the New York New York hotel which was pretty cool, it was set up to look like NY, with a mini Statue of Liberty and other landmarks. It snowed about 5 inches one day while we were there, so it was almost like being home.

My mom had to go home on the 22nd of December, which was hard for the kids. We celebrated Christmas very low key this year. Usually we have friends over and do a big meal, but we haven't really been here long enough yet to meet anyone, so we did a small family celebration this year. On the 28th we left for Disneyland which was a blast. Now that we've been to Disneyland the only Disney park we haven't been to yet is EuroDisney. We really liked Disneyland a lot, but weren't too impressed with California Adventures, though I really liked California Screaming and Soaring over California. A lot of Disneyland was familiar to us because Tokyo Disney was patterned after it. We were in agreement that everyone's favorite rides were Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain, the standards at all Disney parks. We were hoping Elijah would like Tower of Terror better here because it didn't have the Tiki that freaked him out in Hong Kong, but he still hated it. He would only ride roller coasters with me which drove the girls crazy because they hardly got to ride anything with me. All of us except Elijah rode California Screaming and the girls said they liked it but never wanted to ride it again lol, it was their first coaster with a 360 loop. Elijah couldn't have ridden even if he wanted to because he was about an inch short of the 48" height requirement. Every time we would go into the parks he'd start freaking out that we'd make him go on one of the rides he was afraid of, no matter how many times we told him he didn't have to ride anything he didn't want to, he just couldn't get over the anxiety. He still really loves a lot of the kiddie rides that the girls aren't impressed with anymore. Yesterday afternoon we watched the High School Musical 3 street show and the girls loved it. Caitlynn was chosen to get up and dance with them, which she loved, of course I didn't have my camera. Earlier in the week we went to the Jedi Training show and Hannah was chosen to be one of the Padawans. All in all it was a great week, and I'll post some pictures when I get around to downloading them from my camera. I almost forgot, the kids actually made it to midnight on New Year Eve, which was a first for them. It was funny the girls were excited to see the fireworks at midnight, but it was so foggy that you couldn't see them, at least we'd been able to to watch them earlier that evening also.

Dave has to check into his new duty station on Monday, it's been so nice having him home for the last month. The kids don't go back to school until January 20th, not sure what we're going to do with all that time yet besides going to Balboa Park at least one day. We'll probably spend a day or two exploring the city, something we just haven't had a chance to do yet. Of course we'll be reading and working on math etc., Elijah was very upset when I told him that.