Week of 11/15/2008

First of all I just need to say how nice is has been having no election ads, no election flyers posted on our doors, no annoying phone calls telling me how bad the other politician is...No matter who you voted for, I hope that you support Barack Obama not because he is a democrate but because he is our President and leader of our country. There are times when the person I had voted for didn't win but I did the right thing and supported the person who is our leader. We may not always agree with them but we can support them. Now if we can only tackle the amount of money spent on campaining: it had gotten way out of hand.

I have been reading a book called "Screamfree Parenting". Please note that I don't scream at my kids, I just had heard about this book from an article I saw and decided to check it out. In the article it didn't tell me that it was Christian based so I was very surprise (happily)to see the author talk about how Jesus is our parent and what he would do. The whole premis of the book is that parents spend too much time making their children the center of the universe when the author believes we need to focus on ourselves! We need to continue to grow up and calm down. Don't give in to anxiety or our emotional reactivity could make the situation worse. I have only just begun the book and look forward to finishing it soon.

The girls continue to be sweet as can be. I know that I am a bit biased but I cannot help it. Abbey has this uncanny knack for saying things that just bring me to tears. She will talk about my parents and I just cry. She has a very sensititve heart and I appreciate that from her. The other day I had the news on and she saw the coverage of the 35W Bridge and asked me what happened. She was genuinely concerned. I can't just give her simple answers: she wants more.
Ashley is thriving maturity wise as well as in her confidence. Yesterday was another great expierence outside of her "safe" zone of friends and she did great. She was a little scared at first playing at a playland, but soon she was doing it all by herself and coming up to me for "5's". The hearing aid has helped in so much.

The atmosphere at Shannon's job is very bad. People's moral is at an all time low. They have already said that there probably won't be any merit increases, profit sharing will be adjusted and they are talking manditory shut downs around the holiday and of course they are talking layoffs again. They just layed off 600 people a few months ago. It is never ending. We just are thankful that he has his job, we have a house over our heads and food. In today's economy it is so tough to have any of those things.

I have been teaching some more and I really do love it. I may possibly be teaching next week for two days but won't know until Monday. I am so happy to be in the classrooms with the kids. I just adore it.