Update on Preschool and Other Stuff

Hi all!

Just a quick note...Emily is really enjoying preschool. She showed some anxiety over Mommy leaving the second day, but her teacher is great at distracting her. Mommy would post some photos of Emily getting ready for school, but our camera broke just before Christmas!! (It's pretty expensive to fix, so we're exploring our options.) (Note: this is a dancing penguin on a stick, in honor of the "Happy Feet" movie...very innovative.)

Emily loves to bring her Dora backpack to school (a gift from Papa and Rea). She wheels it along behind her like a big girl (she sees the other kids doing the same). Since we don't have a decent camera, here she is with her smaller Dora backpack, so you get the idea.

Rear view. We keep extra diapers and a change of clothes in the backpack, and Miss Lucy (Emily's teacher...remember the song?) puts notes for Mommy and Daddy in the backpack, along with recommended reading.

So the first week of preschool, Emily came home singing a "Clean Up" song that goes, "Clean up, Clean up, dah dah dah dah..." Very catchy! And then she helped Mommy clean up her toys, yeay! She also came home and licked Mommy's arm...I guess the kids were learning about pets.






Here's Emily's first watercolor. Not done at school, mind you, but at home this morning after she discovered her paints. Thank gosh for water based paint! She came up to me and said, "blue paint", then opened my hand and painted my palm blue. That's how I found out four containers of paint were open somewhere in the house!





Emily and Daddy created this masterpiece together. "But it looks much like the previous one," you say. Ahhh, look closer.

Daddy and Emily based this artwork on the storybook "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh. Three mice escaping a cat leap into jars of paint, climb out, then leap into each other's puddles and make different colors. Emily especially liked the blue mouse dancing in the red puddle...to make purple! Other mixed colors included orange and green.

Hearing from The Wiggles

Guess what we got??!! We got a thank you card all the way from Australia--from the Wiggles! (This was in return for our Christmas card/letter/pictures.) Emily was so excited when I read the back of the Wiggles card. She knew it was meant for her. This is the front.
Back side of card.

In Memory of Robert William Zeltner

On a somber note, Uncle Bobby (Caroline's mother's brother) passed away on January 4, 2007. He was 84 years old. Emily never met her great uncle...she would have loved his sense of humor. Rest in peace, Uncle Bobby.

In Memory of Carolyn Elkins

We also say goodbye to our friend and neighbor, Carolyn Elkins. Carolyn was an avid gardener, world traveller, former teacher, and a real character. She grew up on a farm and had a pet rooster named "Biddie". Every day Biddie would hop on the same dead stump and wait for Carolyn's bus to drop her off. She was a neat lady, and we'll miss her.

That's all for now. Wish us luck with the camera!

Caroline