Random updates

We had a very rainy day yesterday. Rachel announced that it would not be a good day for t-ball. She also told me that the rain would help our grass grow. Thinking I'd expand on this, I told her that the rain would also help the trees and plants grow. "NO!" Rachel said indignantly. "The rain is not for the plants. WATERING CANS are for plants." I think she's spent too much time with Grandma Karen the Former Botanist. She also told me that she wants to plant a flower garden with all of her favourite flowers in it. I told her that we'd have to wait for next spring and that I was sure Grandma Karen would love to be involved with choosing and planting flowers.

Lately Rachel has been obsessed with workbooks and connect-the-dots books. She is actually quite good at connecting the dots without much help from us! Her letter and number tracing is getting better although it's still quite comical to watch.

We're supposed to be getting a letter from the pre-school sometime in the next week or so, so that's very exciting. Rachel is looking forward to school and I'd be lying if I said that Ben and I weren't excited too!

Ben found out today that he may not have to make a second trip down to Kansas City this year to finish off his degree. It might be possible to do his final recital at Western and send a DVD recording to UMKC for them to grade. We had originally planned to have him go down in December or very early January but yesterday Ben confirmed with someone at UMKC that it would be a bad idea to do that given the number of snow days they tend to have. Could you imagine how frustrating that would be if Ben flew down and his recital was cancelled? He has also been told that if he needs to re-take a section of the exams, he should be able to have someone at Western proctor it since the next session dates at UMKC nicely encircle my due date. So things are moving along there and if all goes well Ben will have his doctorate as of next spring!

Another new elephant has joined the herd. While in Toronto over the long weekend, Rachel's Bubbie Faye gave her an adorable pink elephant that has been named Strawberry. I'm pleased to report that Strawberry gets along well with the rest of the gang.