Notes to readers

Today was our first day of Homeschool. It was great! The kids will be having writing assignments each day that I'll have them type up in a word processor, then paste it into their blogs. I wanted to do this because I figured if it was out on the WWW, then maybe they would try harder to write well and entertain. I think it worked. They spent a long time drafting their assignments and I didn't help them with that at all. I was proud of them. The only thing I helped them with is making a few minor grammatical changes. I didn't try to improve their writing or even fix all the grammar. But if you're a regular on this blog, you'll know my grammar is not great either. I'll hopefully be getting better as we learn more about that together. So I just want to say I would super super appreciate it if you would subscribe to Anna Celeste and Jonah's blogs and occasionally pop over there and comment on their posts. They will need the comments and criticism to keep them going strong.
Thanks!

Also-

In reading all your comments on my last post, I started to make a comment on it in response to yours. As I wrote it I decided to go ahead and post it here.

To all- I just want to say that I really didn't have any intention of using our Christmas post as suggestions to you for your own Christmas traditions! I realize our family is a bit strange and I bet you all do it better for your family than I could ever do. But I truly just wanted to write about our traditions for the sake of my kids reading this later and seeing how, when and why traditions we had done evolved.

Anna- Keep in mind my kids were surprised almost all the years before and were actually not any happier or excited than they were this year. In fact, I think last year I gave them all surprises and they seemed to not be nearly as excited about their gifts. Plus shopping together this time was pretty fun. But I'm taking mental note about you. *Anna likes surprises!* I sometimes just do for people what I would want thinking they'd like it and I'm really wrong. Everybody likes it different.

Erin- Three Christmas' ago (I think it was,) my kids discovered their carefully picked-out presents all beautifully wrapped, hidden and with tags on them stating "From Santa" before Christmas. They put two and two together and all came to realize that Santa was really Mom and Dad. They were pretty bummed, but not as much as I was for them sneaking around trying to get peaks at their presents! I was pretty upset that I didn't feel like trying to come up with a big lie story about why Santa had brought the gifts early and hid them etc...