My fabulous student

We had our first parent/teacher conference today at the new school. We're overwhelmingly impressed with the school-- I keep thinking, and even said once, "No, we were at a really good school. Really. I don't know why there weren't any tests." But are they overwhelmingly impressed with Sam?

Of course!

Sam, who is making straight As (brag brag brag), also made the academic and citizenship honor rolls. He was so proud and wants to frame the certificates. Sure, why not? The only thing she mentioned was that he tends to rush through work sometimes and has some issues talking to neighbors because, as she said, he's "highly social. You know that, right?" Those issues are so shocking! The couple of times he's had trouble for talking at school I always think, "at least he's making friends!" You can see what we value here...

Anyway, we're really proud of him!

Go Sam!

Ice Cream Dancing

All it takes is an ice cream (or frozen yogurt) store and some tunes, and my kids are up dancing. Sam always used to dance at Custard's Last Stand in Lee's Summit when he was but a wee child. Last night, Kate was dancing to Christmas music instead of eating her yogurt. I guess exercise is better than calories, right?

The Lion King

We took the kids to see the musical The Lion King tonight at Mandalay Bay. It's ending a 3 year run there this month, and we got a great deal on the seats (yea, locals!). We saw it at the Music Hall in KC about 3 years ago, but Kate was too small to go. When I asked him afterwards, Sam admitted he remembers going, but had forgotten most of the show.

Naturally, Kate wanted to dress up and wore her Christmas dress. Sam complained about having to dress up and settled for jeans and a collared shirt. Where have I gone wrong??! (on a side note, today for church he chose dress pants and a sweater vest, so I guess it's all dependent on the day.)

We made a night of it with dinner and the late show. The kids were captivated and really enjoyed it. I was worried Kate would be scared in parts, but during one such scene at the end (good guys prevail!), I looked over and she was giving a big thumbs up.

Snow!

Yes, that's right. Today in the hills of Las Vegas we woke up to snow! We had this crazy windy storm overnight, but I didn't hear rain this morning. Storms not being the torrents of rain we're accustomed to in the Midwest, that's typical. But when I pulled apart the blinds, snow! Very fine, crazy, swirling snow. It lasted about 30 minutes off and on, and covered our backyard, the cars out front, and the mountains behind us. It was beautiful, but minimally intrusive. The kids were singing "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!" all morning. We were late getting Kate to school because of the school traffic, but what a joyful morning.