Back Home Again In Indiana: March 2016

Monday, March 28, 2016

Easter

Birthday present from Grandma

An attempt to get a pic with the pretty church flowers

Happy Easter from 801!

While Mom's inside getting food ready.....

We spent Easter in Frankfort at Gigi & Poppy's with Julie & Brant this year. As is evidenced by the pictures, Joey continues his love for getting cleaned up for church and special occasions....

Monday, March 14, 2016

To celebrate Melanie's birthday (of course the celebration deserves its own post!), we booked a room at the Staybridge Suites in Carmel. I chose this hotel because it not only has a pool (and hot tub), but also has a movie room. Melanie invited her two cousins, and two friends from school, to stay the night. What I thought was a great deal for 20 hours of entertainment turned even better when we got our room for free because of a booking error. We ended up with a king-sized bed and a pull-out couch (instead of 2 queens plus the pull out). The girls had a great time, and there were a LOT of laughs and shenanigans. There were five trips to the pool -we closed it on Saturday night and opened it on Sunday morning! We watched Hotel Transylvania 2; after some equipment errors about an hour in at the screening room, we finished the movie in the room. I ended up with the king-sized bed to myself - although of course I didn't sleep much due to checking on my charges all night! It was a perfectly-chosen group of girls who got along great and had a lot of fun!

The boys joined for some swimming

Movie room. There were 7 chairs, but this is how they piled in

This may or may not have been at 11pm.

Dear everyone here, just so you know, you are the coolest people ever.
Your BFF, Melanie

All but one of them actually slept on this foldout bed

Breakfast Sunday morning

Joey - Tutoring

The first candy he earned at tutoring - week one!

Joey & Ms. Judy

Joey asked Ms. Judy to take & send this the week of 3/14/16

To kick off the second semester of kindergarten, we decided to have Joey meet with a tutor. I contacted Union's reading specialist, who put us in touch with Ms. Judy, who I emailed and spoke with on the phone. We agreed to a once a week, hourly session on Monday afternoons when Joey would typically be in "Bridge." At their first session, I received a text with a picture of Joey enjoying himself, and have received a couple since then, so I wanted to highlight them here. The one-on-one attention has really helped Joey blossom in his interest for reading and writing; the best investment I've made! He also spent a few weeks going to a special reading group with the reading specialist during class, and quickly "graduated" from that extra attention.

As a side story, when Ms. Judy sent her first report, I forwarded it to my mom to also assess that we were making progress, and my mom put the pieces together that Ms. Judy is a friend of hers who used to live and work in Frankfort. Small world indeed! (Ms. Judy and I both have different last names now, so we didn't put this together ourselves)

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Happy 8th Birthday!

Melanie Grace turned EIGHT! At eight, Mel loves baby dolls, her little brother, movies, playing outdoors, riding her bike, she finished the full season of Fuller House the day it was released, is in her school's choir, is taking swim lessons at Carmel High School, is in gymnastics, loves to FaceTime with her grandparents, and wears her heart on her sleeve. We can't wait to see what the next eight years hold!