There are a couple more quotes added to the quotes section since the site was last updated. Sorry, no new photos other than the girls' portraits taken at school. Gillie finished swimming lessons but continues with her piano lessons every week. For Gillie's birthday in November, she had a party at the Pettit National Ice Center with a few of her friends. Though a few were tenative on the ice, the die-hards stuck around with Gillie and stayed at the rink for four hours! Carly's switched from the double-blade ice skates to the single-blade skates and has started to embrace the skating as well. This prompted a return trip to the Ice Center for the family in December.
The girls are enjoying playing on the computer and watching the PBS show Zoboomafoo. Meanwhile, Gillie continues to plow through chapter books and Carly has suddenly started reading pre-primer books to Scott and Kathy. She's starting to move from pattern recognition and word memorization to actually sounding out words or figuring them out based upon the context in which they are used.
Meanwhile, Scott and Kathy have discovered some customizable Internet-based radio stations such as Last.fm and the even more reliable Pandora. They both recommend the current podcasts by Ricky Gervais. Happy holidays everyone!
Gillie and Carly went on their longest car trip yet as we went to Minneapolis for Scott's cousin David's wedding. The digital camera is really making things easier in terms of getting updated photos onto the website. The photos from the "wedding weekend" in Minneapolis have been added to the photos section of the site and start with photo #15. There are a few photos from Camp Snoopy, which is the 30-ride amusement park in the middle of the Mall of America. Aside from the occassional merry-go-round, it was the girls' first visit to any type of amusement park.
Gillie is excelling at first grade so far. Her reading and writing have really taken off and she's become a regular bookworm. Over the summer, she knocked off a couple of entire series such as the Junie B. Jones books. She's now reading about one Boxcar Children book every two days. She's also taking piano lessons and has been practicing every day for 20 minutes. She has swimming lessons once a week, although Carly didn't care to continue the lessons from the summer.
Carly's found pleasure in hunting around with Google Earth. It is a nifty program you can download and zoom in and out on satellite photos of the earth. She likes picking spots near bodies of water and trying to find boats. One thing Carly came to realize over the "wedding weekend" was that she really likes taking photos. Seeing as how with our digital camera she can't really waste any film (just batteries, and those are rechargable), we let her take some photos of people at the wedding dinner. Her penchant for the camera continued the day after as she began taking photos of various things and people at breakfast. You can tell her photos as they are often taken with an upward slant given her current height. She took a lot in the car on the way home and it was pretty funny when we finally downloaded them to see what she had snapped. Most of them were photos taken out the car window as she tried to take snapshots of the horses, cows, sheep, and bison that we saw on the way home. The last photo in the photos section is currently #28 and it's a picture that Carly snuck of Gillie as she was pulling out her lip for examination.
Kathy and Scott had an exciting recent couple of weeks as they saw U2 on yet another tour. The other exciting thing for them is that they recently upgraded to digital cable and DVR and will be nearly guaranteed to no longer miss a show.
Both girls finished up their respective Kindergarten classes and have started at summer camp/daycare this week. The transition seems go more smoothly each year. The training wheels came off of Gillie's bike at the start of June and within two nights she was riding on her own without help! Both girls have joined the summer reading club at the library. Gillie's able to read books on her own now and she seems quite well prepared for either first grade or MAC 1, if she gets in. MAC, or Mixed-Age Class, is a popular concept in the local school system and one that we think would allow Gillie the chance to keep up her accelerated thirst for knowledge which is why we signed her up for it.
Carly, meanwhile, has a birthday coming up soon and will be turning 5! While she's not reading on her own, she takes books with her to bed each night and sometimes finds a corner to "read" in, too. She's tallying books she has read to her as part of the summer reading program. Both Gillie and Carly sat all the way through one of our favorite movies of all time, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. No, not the remake, but the 1971 version. A year or two ago when we tried to let them watch it, they freaked out halfway through when Violet turned into a giant blueberry. Meanwhile, we got to see Revenge of the Sith (without the girls, of course) and really enjoyed it. Anyway, that's all for now. Our 35mm camera is on its last legs so we are in the market for a digital camera now. We'll post more photos when we get the new camera.
Gillie recently stubbed one of her toes really badly. After a few days, she lost the toenail and she placed it under her pillow. The tooth (and toenail) fairy surprised her with a golden dollar coin.
Currently, the girls are ga-ga over Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat soundtrack. They listen to it every day and sing the songs constantly. We're considering piano lessons for them later this year. Meanwhile, Gillie is continuing with ballet lessons every week. Lastly, Gillie, Carly, and Scott completed a 3-week ceramics course as part of UWM's College for Kids program. They made useful pieces such as objects for the garden and a spoon holder for Kathy.
Lastly, we were saddened by the death of Kathy's Dad, Peter van Melle, in February. He lived 90 years and enjoyed watching his 6 children and 8 grandchildren grow. We will miss him dearly.