Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I was greeted this morning by Kyle shortly after I woke up. He came up to me and whispered "Happy Thanksgiving" (we were upstairs and Jason and Justin were still sleeping). When I was his age, I wouldn't have remembered so quickly that it was a holiday, and I would've been in bed til at least noon.
I started out the Thanksgiving weekend by watching one of my favorite holiday movies last night: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It stars Steve Martin and the late John Candy. I believe it came out in 1987. If you haven't seen it, please do! It's one of the funniest damn movies you'll ever see, but it has a touching moment at the end, too.
Later today, we'll be going to my sister-in-law's house for dinner with Jason's family. Justin cannot wait for his turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy! He's skinny, but he LOVES his food! I'm the only one in our house that has anywhere to go tomorrow. I have to work, but at least I won't be tempted to go out shopping. We'll continue our weekend festivities on Saturday when we do our Christmas decorating. Justin and Kyle are really looking forward to putting the ornaments on the tree. It's so much fun to see all the ornaments they've made over the years. I'm thankful that we invested in a prelit tree a couple years ago. All we have to do is find all the plugs instead of me trying to evenly distribute the lights. That means we can move on to the fun parts more quickly!
Anyway, I have a lot to be thankful for, not just today, but everyday. I want to wish all my family and friends a happy Thanksgiving! To those I will not be with today, I will be thinking of you. That includes my family that will be celebrating in other places and those that aren't "here" with us anymore.

Henry being one of the boys

I think this is so cute.
Justin and Kyle dumped out their bin of miscellaneous Legos this morning. I guess when they haven't gotten a new set for a few weeks they have to satisfy their urge to build. Henry had gone outside and eaten his breakfast. Then he grabbed his rawhide bone and plopped himself down as close as possible to the boys. Our family room is a pretty decent size room. He could easily go somewhere else. He doesn't bother either of them or the Legos, he just concentrates on his chewing. The three of them play like crazy with each other throughout the day, but Hen knew that this wasn't the right time for that. He's pretty good about that stuff. He also won't settle down with a rawhide unless someone is sitting in the family room with him. He's a real family oriented dog. Every single night, when he knows I'm getting ready to go up to bed, he waits for me at the bottom of the stairs and won't start going up until I tell him to. Then we go up the stairs together and he lies down on his bed in our room next to my side of the bed. This is the tremendous loyalty of a dog. Especially a collie. (I couldn't stop myself from throwing that in. After all this is MY blog.)

We iz twinz

I hope everyone knows I don't use grammar like that. I couldn't resist titling this post that way with these pictures. Let me explain...
Just this evening I was looking at a website that I think is hilarious. It's www.icanhascheezburger.com. You've probably received e-mails with pictures from it. The ones I like are the LOL cats. That's where my Wilfred Brimley diabeetus cat is from (at the bottom of my blog). They crack me up! Anyway, when I saw Emma and Yoda lying next to each other like this, I thought of a caption that was cheezburger worthy.
I've found these two in some crazy positions over the years. They're now 12 years old and spend about 22 hours a day on mine and Jason's bed. In fact, Yoda has a bed on our bed. She spends a lot of time on that corner and I got tired of removing her hair from our comforter. Many nights I can't straighten my legs out because both of them are on that corner on my side of the bed. And that's just fine, since I know that when they're "gone" I'll wish they were there.

Addition to last post

I went to the parent-teacher conferences tonight for both Justin and Kyle. They both went really well. Their teachers love them! I knew there wouldn't be any problems. Justin's teacher talked to me about that Principal's Award that I mentioned in my post about their report cards. It turns out that he received that award because he, Justin, my son, had the best grades in his class!!! I think I might be the proudest mom on earth tonight!

Report cards

Justin and Kyle brought home their report cards for the first quarter last week. Now that all that Halloween stuff is over I have time to talk, I mean, brag about them.
I need to start by explaining that our school district, in my opinion, ruined report cards a few years ago. They began using a different grading system for K thru 3rd grades. Instead of the traditional letters that we're all used to, they started using E for Exceeds the grade level, M for Meets the grade level, B for Below the grade level, and W for Warning. Although Justin and Kyle would have E's and M's on their report cards, Jason and I found it hard to judge how well our kids were really doing in school. Would they have gotten straight A's or not? The traditional letters are the ones that mean something to us!
Now I can move on to the good news... Justin is in 4th grade this year. That means he now gets a REAL report card. I tend to worry a LOT, so I was concerned that we might find out that Justin isn't the smart student that we've thought he is! How awful would that be after all these years? Well, worry no more - Justin got STRAIGHT A's this quarter!!!!! Not only that but all A1's, meaning outstanding effort as well! We know that Justin is smart and a model student as we've been told by all of his teachers, but as a parent, it's so awesome to see straight A's on that paper! He also received a Principal's Award for his outstanding achievement in all subjects.
And Kyle did really well too! He had four E's and four M's on his report card. His reading level is a 20, but the benchmark for this quarter was a 4, at the end of the year they should have a 16. He's obviously way above average in reading (just like his brother). His teacher also wrote a really nice comment about him: "Kyle is an excellent, independent worker. He takes great pride in a job well done. Kyle gets along well with the other students in the class and is a good participant during class discussions." Kyle received an award as well. His was for outstanding achievement in reading.
Parent-teacher conferences are tomorrow night. I don't foresee any problems. Conferences continue on Tuesday, so the boys have a day off. I'll be rewarding them by going up to Woodfield Mall to have lunch and spend some time at the Lego store!

Congrats to my sons on a job well done!!!