Disney!!!

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 Flying on Dumbo

 A Corythasaurus in Dino Land USA

 We found Pluto and Goofy

 A hawk

 Evan had a hard time on the trip with sleep. He would fall asleep in the afternoons and miss some exciting stuff...like arriving for his birthday dinner at T-Rex Cafe

 Very cool animatronics in the T-Rex Cafe

 Katie and family had dinner with us for Evan's b-day...you can see the presents in their boxes

 Downtown Disney

 Got to see Winnie the Pooh too

By working my SimplyFun business, I was able to earn us 4 FREE tickets (everything but food and souvenirs) to Disney World! Our trip was Sept. 21-26 which was perfect timing for Evan's 3rd birthday! We went to three of the four parks...Animal Kingdom, of course, being the favorite. We also went to the T-Rex Cafe for Evan's birthday dinner/party. They had a Build-A-Dino store so the boys got to choose dinos and stuff them! We were tired when we got home and that means we did it right! Evan keeps asking when it will be his birthday again so we can see Mickey! I think we may have created a monster!

Homeschooling

Connor has been in preschool at one of the better Montessori preschools for the last 5 or 6 weeks. I've had my concerns with it all along because it seems that there are no kids his age or older and part of the reason that we put him there was that the class was open for 3-6 yr olds. Turns out there are 17 kids in the class and 10 of them are 3! The rest are 4 but Connor really seems to be one of the oldest.

Each time I go to pick him up, the teacher talks to me about how he's not doing his work or asking her too many questions. So I asked for a list of choices that he had during work time so I could help him make a choice before school. She gave me the list and I immediately knew why he wasn't doing it...it's too easy and he's just not interested in it. They're still working on letter puzzles and one-to-one correspondence and the only thing that they've told me that they've brought in for him to do is a US state puzzle..which he spends at least an hour a day at home doing. I talked with the director about his choices and she said that actually anything for him isn't even in the room so he has no chance of getting something interesting to do. They "ordered" stuff for him and were working on thinking of things for him to do. It's the only 1/2 day room they have so moving him to another room wasn't an option. It just wasn't working....esp for how much we were paying a month....so we gave our notice and this Wed is his last day.

We decided to officially start home schooling. I started a year and half ago, but with all of my health issues I just couldn't find the energy to continue. This week Connor has spent trying to memorize the states in alphabetical order. We have to sing the song a few thousand times a day, but he's getting good at it. We've gotten some apps on the iPad that he really enjoys and that work on K-1 skills. We're working our way through the Magic Tree House series. We've gotten some Usborne books and are looking at some more to help with Science experiments. And I've joined some online secular homeschooling communities to get some ideas. We were supposed to meet up with some of the people yesterday, but it was raining.

I feel so much better about this idea. He complains so much about not liking school and I really don't want him to learn at such an early age that school is boring and something to hate. I can let his interests direct us this year and see where we go and then next year we'll reevaluate and see what our options are for Kindergarten. Meanwhile, Evan is getting really good at all these skills too!

We've really been working on getting Connor to write. He really fights it so we've had to really push it. Today he went to the table and drew a picture all by himself...which is a really big deal! Here's the picture:

He said it was picture of an Argentinosaurus...and that the number 6 is next to it to tell us that it's 6 months old. We lost it and laughed, but luckily he didn't pay any attention to us!

Today marks the 1 yr anniversary of Nathan's loss. We remember, we mourn and we look towards the future.

Friends

 For our adoption file, we need to have pictures of us with our friends. So we spent last weekend going around to our friends houses and taking pictures with them. We even took different shirts and changed clothes! Here we're with the Wassmuth's.

 The dog wanted in on the action too!

 Alyssa stopped by to help out!

 Ziegler's...hope this one works since Dave's head is cut off

 Amy and Jake

 And the Shaftel's got in on the action too

Evan wasn't happy about all the driving around and was not happy by the time we got to the Shaftel's at 5pm!

Thanks friends! Today is our 4th, and final, meeting with the social worker for the Home Study portion of the paperwork. We've got to get everything certified by the Secretary's of State (3 of them since we weren't born in TX) and then send them off to the US and Chinese Consulate's and then translated and put together by the agency and then off to China! Doesn't sound like too much, but since we have to send it to different government agencies...you never know how long that will take! We're hoping to have it to China by Thanksgiving.