Spring is here!

Spring has arrived in Taneytown, which leads to lots of time playing outside and not much time for updating our humble little blog. My earlier prediction proved out correctly today - two days before the end of the month, we received notice that Caroline is accepted to our first choice school for kindergarten, and they would like to do additional testing because they think she is ready for first grade reading and math! I honestly believe that educationally she would have been quite ready for kindergarten this year, but did not pursue it because I think she would have been emotionally unprepared. On top of which, I recently spoke to a friend who tried to have her child skipped through kindergarten last year, and the test required involves telling time based on a picture of the location of the sun! Heck, I'm 34 years old and could barely manage it (other than high noon - I'm quite sure I could figure that out!), why would they expect that of a kindergartener?!?!

What - you DON'T wear shamrock sunglasses with your nightgown?

Modeling her curlers one night.

Parent Photo Day at school, where we can go in and take pics of the kids in action. This picture shows why we get reports about not concentrating on her work! (while it looks like they were having fun, Caroline said that Madeline was telling her about her dog that died and how she might just get a hamster instead. hahahaha)

Spencer, our future son-in-law. When we have lunch with Spencer and his mother, he tells Caroline to get under the table so he can give her a kiss, and he bought her a light-up rose from a performance of Beauty and the Beast with his own money! Ah, young love....

Another busy month blows by...

Where has the time gone? We went from talking about Caroline's new earrings to it being almost time for her to be able to change them. It's been a month occupied by random snow, plowed-in cars (five days! I was going to lose my MIND!), little kid birthday parties, Disney on Ice, a visit to the circus and Kindergarten applications. The latter certainly required a huge amount of stress; up until this point any decisions we made that went bad could be rectified pretty easily. But the idea of deciding schooling personally freaked me out, just in the idea that if it went badly it could color her views of school forever and make my otherwise brilliant kid hate something she should excell at. Paranoid much? Hahaha But she did very well at the "kindergarten testing" at one school, and the testing at our first-choice school happens later this week, so hopefully we could have the whole planning issue all wrapped up by the end of the month.

As the end of the school year approaches, I think we've decided that she won't be doing summer camp this year like she has the past two summers. The YMCA recently changed their camp structure so that the one Caroline would attend (based on age) would be an all day program, thus considerably more expensive. And with the idea of her starting full-day school in the fall, a "last hurrah" summer of fun and relaxation and spending lots of time at the pool sounded like the perfect thing. Remind me of that decision when I'm ready to run away from home in mid-July or something....

Caroline in her Valentine's Day outfit

Since we were snowed in, we decided to make cookies.

Snow in early March - the tree is finally starting to outpace Caroline, growth-wise!

I didn't realize the porch light was out until I viewed this picture on the computer....