Catching Up

Well, I am finally catching back up with the blog after not posting anything for a couple of weeks. It has been a busy couple of weeks for all of us in the Ellis family, so we'll give you the quick run down on all that we've been doing.

Week of February 8-14
I was away for several days that week, travelling to Seattle for a conference. If you haven't been to Seattle, it is a wonderful city - I wish we had a little more time to explore while we were there. I travelled with a few other colleagues from work to attend a conference with representatives of children's hospitals from across North America (a group of 24 hospitals). We connect with these hospitals on a few different things that we do, so nice to finally meet some of the people and put faces to names.

Of course, as tends to happen, this was also a busier than usual week at home. It was Natasha's turn to be "apple of Mrs. Dufault's eye", the student of the week for her first grade class. She got to bring in a special show and tell, and share photos with the class. Her class also had special activities to celebrate the 100th day of school, and she had to make a collection for their class "100s museum". She collected 100 beads.

Both of the kids also had lots of fun with Class Valentine's parties. Xander got to share Valentines at school and daycare, so he had double the fun.

Week of February 15-21
This has been February vacation week for Massachusetts schools. For those of you not familiar with our school schedule, we have a week of vacation in February (the week of President's Day) and another week off in April (the week of Patriot's Day). Brian and I both had to work most of the week, so it wasn't a total break for the kids. We all were home on President's Day, so they enjoyed having a long weekend at least.

The extended day program at St. Bernadette's runs vacation week camp, so Natasha went to camp this week. She thought it was a good week... she could wear whatever she wanted, they did lots of arts and crafts, went to the computer lab every day, and on Friday had a special activity where they got to make their own stuffed animal.

Xander had a couple of mornings of services at the preschool - they offer him interim services during some of the school breaks. The rest of the time he went to his daycare at the YMCA and had fun playing with his friends there. It has finally been a little warmer, so the kids were able to play outside some this week which was a big hit!

We ended the vacation week with a quiet weekend at home. Since it was vacation there were fewer activities, so we all enjoyed having a little extra time to relax.