Birthday Celebration #2

Yesterday we had Ian's 9th birthday party. Actually it was my dad's 75th birthday yesterday not Ian's actual birthday, but Mondays are the best day for Aunt Millie (due to the schedule at her bakery), and Ian's actual birthday is tomorrow, which is the night the kids will be caroling with their AWANA club. I left for work around 7am and got home about 1pm. In between that time I visited two student teachers in two different school districts and gave a final exam on campus. I also received the WONDERFUL news that my five student teachers are all going to be close to our home next semester! Last spring four of my fifteen student teachers were in Milton (15 minutes from our house). This semester none of my ten student teachers are close to my house (shortest drive was about 45 minutes and five of them were at least an hour away from home). Well next semester I will only have five student teachers - some of them are in OUR district that we live in (meaning 10 minutes or less from our house) and some are in another neighboring district (at the most 15 minutes from our home). This is a huge relief to me as I have spent many hours driving this semester.

Paul's parents arrived prior to dinner so they could play with the kids some. Paul's brother and sister-in-law came around 5:30. Since I am under the weather plus had a lot of schoolwork, Paul did most of the work in preparing dinner - rigatoni with meatballs, garlic bread, and green beans. Aunt Millie made a Minecraft birthday cake (half vanilla, half chocolate). Ian opened four gifts - two from Paul's parents (a lego set and a dragon robot kit), one from Grandpa (a dragon figure), and one from Aunt Millie and Uncle Al (a catapult launcher robot kit). Tomorrow will be the third and final birthday celebration for our soon to be nine-year-old! That means I had better find time to wrap some presents today

This past weekend we found out what the basketball schedule will be like as far as practices. The good news is that all of their practices are on Thursdays. The boys will both have practice from 5-6pm. They are thrilled because Tab and her husband, Dan, will be coaching Oliver's team as their five-year-old, Isaiah, is on that team. Ian is very excited because Isaiah's older brother (Micah) will be on Ian's team! Nadia's practices will be on Thursday nights from 7-8pm. I'm thinking we'll come home after the boys' practice and then Paul can take Nadia to her practice, and the boys can stay home with me. The only downside to this practice schedule is it means that the kids can't be in the ice skating classes as those are also on Thursdays from 5:15-6:00. We had taken ice skating lessons for a few years, but Oliver hasn't ever had any because we had this same schedule conflict last year. So I am going to look into possibly doing private ice skating lessons. We shall see. This week and next week the kids will have gymnastics on Tuesday and basketball on Thursday, but then we will be taking a break from gymnastics for a few months. Hopefully Oliver will be as motivated with basketball this year as he has been with gymnastics lately!