Wow, this week went faster than last week. Todd was gone all week but he is on his way home now.

As you can see I have posted some pics. I didn't have any new pics from this week so I posted some pics from the girls birthdays. The one at the very top with the blog heading was taken on the NH coast on Emily's birthday. She wanted to spend her special day there with a picnic lunch and open her presents there as well. It was a beautiful day. The next picture is Emily with her birthday cake. Then Callie on her birthday with her birthday cookie cake she took to school to share with her class. The last pic is the girls on Callie's birthday dressed in their special outfits they picked out with Mama Ann, Papa Bob and Auntie Allison. They wore them out to dinner to celebrate Callie's birthday. Ignore the dates on the pics as they are wrong.

So this week the girls were busy doing some projects for Destination Imagination. It is a school activity run by the gateway program open to all children interested. You can Google Destination Imagination if you want to know more about it. It starts out with three "tryouts" mainly for the kids to "try it out" to see if they really want to do it. Emily tried when she was in second grade and after the second try out she decided she did not want to do it. She didn't even consider doing it in third grade. So this year when the papers came home about it Callie right away said she wanted to do it and Emily said no. But after I read out loud the information sheet they both responded with a loud, "Yes, I want to do it Mom." This past week they had to pick one thing out of five things to do. Callie picked "trash heap" which she had to create a toy or game out of trash and/or things lying around the house. She ended up making a puzzle out of a cereal box. It was very nice! Emily picked "straw tower". She had to build a tower out of straws that could hold up one volume of an encyclopedia off the ground 6 inches. She built three towers but none of them could hold the book. She worked on it for three nights until I said she had to quit because it was after 8pm. The impressive thing was that she never gave up, never got frustrated and never cried! That is big for Emily. She took her towers to school and the gateway teacher was very impressed and told her it can't be done. Emily was the only one who even tried the straw tower. They only have one more try out to go after Thanksgiving. I have signed up to be a coach and will be going to a workshop about it. The thing about D. I. is that everything they do is their own. Adults can't help AT ALL!! It was very hard for me to just walk away when they were working on their projects this week. Between skiing and D. I. the girls will be busy over the Winter. It will make the Winter go by fast.

Well that is all I know for now. Have a great week and Happy Thanksgiving!