Christmas surprise

Well,
For a couple of years Alexandra has wanted a barbie play house. DO you have ANY idea how much those stupid things cost? About 60-100 bucks for the cheap plastic ones and 100-300 for a wooden one... so needless to say, she has not gotten one. So, yesterday I had a thought... how hard could it be to make one? I mean really? Turns out.... kinda hard! Its not the building that really is so much...it's the stuff that goes inside! Barbie doll furniture sells for an extortionist price! truly!

Where to begin? wood and tools... okay that much I know. SO, I called my step dad who likes both and after hours on line we have a plan.. turn an old 5 ft something by 3ft something dresser into a doll house by taking out all the stuff and replacing it with shelves, cutting in some windows and doors and a patio and walla, a house!
whew

this is phase one and our current phase we hope to be done with this week.
Step two is painting I'm going to go with something pink..its barbie that's why!

Step three floors and walls... today I went to Lowe's and bought some stick on laminate floor tiles.. these are barbies new hard wood floors! I also grabbed a couple carpet samples these are barbies new rugs..sweet!

Then there is the actual decorating of this thing..with six rooms its a chore.. if you know of any barbie furniture laying around, Ill accept donations =)
I'm super excited, I can't wait for Christmas

victory for the little people...

SO... last Friday Makenzie came home pretty upset over this teacher-who she says, "looks like shes nice but she's really just mean". The story went like this,
The kids who had just came in from recess were lined up in against the hall "I'm picturing a firing squad" while the teacher who was escorting them back to class took a potty break... some of the children in the hall were noisy and talking and upon this teachers return she announced they would be walking laps around the playground at Monday's recess instead of playing and if they talked again it would be Tuesday as well. No warning, no trying to find out who was at fault... hmmmm nope, this didn't go well for me, not at all. Why? Well, a couple of reasons. One, they are 8 and 9 year old kids and were coming in from recess, and why was the teacher choosing this time to stop for a potty break? This leaves my big complaint... the teacher was gone, there were two classrooms worth, so like 50 kids in the hall, how did she know who was causing the problems and who was following the rules? SOOOOO I went into "mom mode" and I did what I thought was fair... I sent out an email voicing my opinions and thoughts. I sent this email to the teacher who did this, Makenzies classroom teacher, the guidance councilor and the assistant principal. The emailed letter was as follows;


To whom it may concern;
My name is Dana Roig and I am the mother of Makenzie Roig who is in Ms Rufty's class. Today Makenzie came home and told me that today when her class and Ms Preston's class lined up in the hallway. There were children talking. Ms. Preston had left the kids in the hallway to go to the restroom and came back to the kids telling them they were going to be doing laps on Monday and possibly Tuesday if they talked again on Monday. She said they were not given a warning nor did the teacher try to find out who was causing the problem. I find this unacceptable. It is wrong to punish whole groups of people for the acts of a few. Further, making children walk laps around the play ground taking away their recess is not right. Parents should be informed if their children are going to be subjected to punishments of this kind. Is it not enough that children are threatened with silent lunch all the time? Now they have to worry about a teacher who seems to be taking her bad day or frustrations over the problems a few children are causing on whole classes of students who were not disobeying the rules? There has to be a better way of dealing with our children then threats and taking away the little bit of fresh air they get everyday at school. Perhaps one teacher escorting two classes in from recess is not enough supervision.
I do not want my child to participate in this lap walking punishment, I do not believe she was talking in the hallway, nor do I believe that Ms Preston saw her breaking the rules. Therefore, I do not think she should be punished if there was no rules broken.

Thank you for your time,
Dana Roig

Well, today I had not heard back from anyone and nearly forgot about the issue. Until dinner tonight. We asked Makenzie if she had to walk laps today. She kinda smiled and said "no.. When I was in the hallway, Mrs Preston told Mrs Rufty that "apparently we are not walking laps cause of the email" Ms Rufty I guess then told the class that they would instead be having a class meeting about how to do things better and that after school She and Mrs Preston, the counselor and Principal were going to meet to talk about things... I felt very good about deciding to write my email... Then a few min ago I checked my email and had this response that was also sent to the principal, councilor and other teacher involved...

Mrs. Roig,
Ms. Preston and I have discussed the situation from Friday and have both agreed to hold a "class meeting" to discuss the issue of talking in the hallway. We will brainstorm with the students alternative solutions and consequences. We appreciate your concern and we are addressing the issue of recess coverage. My class we will be escorted to recess and back to the mobile by an assistant.
Thank you,
Mrs. Rufty

I feel a little victorious in this. Sometimes standing up for the girls and rocking the boat just a little does make a difference.

Its been a while...

Well, were to begin? We have been pretty busy as of late. We Had the girls parties and they had a wonderful time. I think I posted pictures of their cakes, they were yummy and the girls loved them. We had a smaller turn out than we are used to so it was a bit odd. The girls got to celebrate their first birthdays with my mom so they thought that was pretty neat. Adams dad made it out for their parties, and they enjoyed getting to see him. It's been pretty hard on the girls since we moved. They have certain people in their lives this whole time who are suddenly not there. It's been pretty rough on them, so it was nice that Adams dad could make it out. We went to a museum, they took walks, went shopping, hung out and watched some movies, read stories and just overall enjoyed some time.Halloween was so different this year from years past! It's kinda hit or miss here. Living in the south has been a very interesting transition on us. First, it's a pretty Churchy area... mostly just a Sunday thing though! Ya know where they go on Sunday but the rest of the time, you wouldn't know! Anyhoo, most of the celebrations for Halloween are "Fall festivals" at Churches. We chose to go to a "farm" and have a hay ride and corn maze that was pretty laughable to us. The hay ride was a 4 min ride around the "corn maze" which by most standards was about the size of my kitchen...took us about 10 min to get through the thing. Do I sound agitated? It's probably cause it cost us 50 bucks to get through the thing and last years cost us half that and took us nearly 2 hours. So, I kinda felt cheated. The on Halloween, we woke up to looming clouds and rain threatening to mess up Halloween... okay well lets back up. ON the eve of Halloween, we carved pumpkins. It was a lot of fun. The girls each carved their own pumpkins this year. Put on the design and carved them.They loved it. It took them a couple of hours but we had a lot of fun watching them. My mom was over and carved her first pumpkin ever in her life. This is hard for some to understand, but we grew up Pentecostal, and you just don't celebrate Halloween, it's an evil holiday. So, this year she came over to celebrate her first Halloween with the girls and carved a pumpkin, she had a lot of fun and the girls laughed watching her try to do her pumpkin, she did a pretty good job and had fun, what else can you ask for? The next day we awoke to those scary clouds... Adam had to work.. I know your shocked too! So we spent the day just hanging out and waiting to see if it would rain. My step dad brought us over a canopy to set up in the front yard so we could sit under it and pass out candy and light our fire... I got the girls ready including spraying their hair black to go with their costumes. Jacqueline was Snow white, Alexandra was a witch and Makenzie was Snow whites evil queen! It was very cute. We bought them ponchos since it was supposed to start raining at 4 pm..and the city of Concord will only let you trick or treat until 8... ugh anyhoo, off they went with Adam and his dad on the walk around our little area. My mom and I sat out in front of the fire and passed out candy.then it kinda sprinkled... then with out much more notice the bottom just fell and the rain was so hard you could not see across the street. I made this comment. "I'm so glad we bought the ponchos for the girls, so they don't have to stop trick or treating" just in time for my mom to say, well here they come now....wet. Yep, Adam.....forgot their ponchos. They were pretty upset since now Halloween was over..they were drenched and their black hair was now a mess and their faces black from the dye... I waited a couple of min to see what the new plan was...and since no one else had one, I grabbed my keys, and the girls and off we went around to the rest of the houses... they made off with a lot of candy since most of the kids went home people were giving them whole hand fulls. We got back and hung out in front of the fire to dry off and get warm. All in all it was a pretty good Halloween.

mine

The girls are now doing girl scouts and their project for the week was this Samaritans box. Its an organization that takes filled shoe boxes and ships them around the world to children and teaches them about Christmas, our culture and God... so we had these boxes we had to fill for GS. So, we took the girls to the $1 store and gave them 10 bucks to fill their box. They thought it was pretty neat to do and had some cool ideas as to what to put inside. We love that the girls understand that Christmas is a privilege and not everyone gets the things they want.

We took the girls to have their Christmas pics done and while we will never go back to Sears.. cause of their prices, we did get some cute pics of them. I posted them on my Face book and myspace, if you would like to see more of them let me know. Every where we go it's Christmas already including some houses with trees up already! I soooo don't get this.. I love Christmas, but really... it's much to early for trees!

The girls are so busy counting down for Disneyworld, they haven't really asked about Christmas much. 53 days by the way... We added a stop or two on our vacation, one to see a friend Adam served in the Navy with and we are going to go to the Kennedy Space Center on our way, so we will be leaving New Years morning and be back on the 15th... so excited about our trip. The girls finally showed us some stuff they were wanting for Christmas, if you need ideas or want to know whats on the list.. I can share now =)

Jacquelines of course wants anything littlest pet shop but high on her list is the littlest pet shop comforter. Alexandra wants anything and I do mean anything Barbie! She is such a girlie girl. Makenzie has been pretty hard for us this year since she seems to be so much older than 8..or maybe I didn't realize how grown up 8 was... either way. She seemed to have out grown toys and was not into much of anything that was not Icarly, Jonas brothers or Hannah Montana and if it can't be listened to on her MP3 player, or played on her DS or PSP, she has not been interested. Then last night we were walking around walmart and she found a doll she wanted and said shes been wanting... it was great! Her name is Kaytlyn and she wants a dog to go with it and some extra clothes for her...shes like an American girl doll which she really wants but we can't afford. She said she really hopes Santa brings it to her, which is great so it means she still believes in Santa =)

Adams sister gets in tomorrow for a short visit with the girls and luckily the girls have Wed off for Veterans day so they can spend some time with her. The we have a little break before Thanksgiving.

It's been a very busy time for us and has made this year go by that much faster. We are all doing pretty well and just going right along in our little life. Hope everyone had a great October!