June 6

The kids are all out of school for summer! They had their last day on Wednesday. Danny and Rachel both got awards for getting all A's all year. And Danny got the Library award for having the most AR (Accelerated Reader) points in the whole second grade. They're points for reading books and taking tests on them. He got that award in first grade too. He had so many points this year because he read five Harry Potter books this year and those are really more of at least a 4th grade level book. We're so proud of both of them. They're also keeping up piano lessons for most of the summer. Danny likes it, but Rachel loves it. She sits down at the piano for at least an hour a day. She's doing really well.

Aaron and I went to LDS services this week to talk to Paula about his tantrums. He was excited to go. He recognizes that his tantrums are bad and he'd like help to get rid of them. We had a really great session talking about things he could do to fight the "Anger Germs" as he calls them. But, in practice it's so much harder to fight those tantrums than when we were talking to Paula about them. So he's still had plenty of tantrums this week, but it does seem to help talking about what Paula told him when he's in a tantrum. He's better able to calm down since we've talked about it more beforehand. Hopefully we'll continue to make progress.

We introduced the bucket system last week too. We're using dimes for good and pennies for bad. The kids seemed totally on board and it worked like a dream that first day. Until Danny got his first penny. He went ballistic. He's had tantrums every day--I hope it's just him adjusting to being out of school and the heat or something--but they get worse when I tell him he gets a penny. But I think in the end the system will be good. Either way, I'd need something or I think Danny's tantrums could get worse.

Bob and I are going on a trip to San Luis Obispo this week. My mom is going to watch the kids and we're staying for two nights. We're really excited. And we're starting out our celebration early by going to see Cats at Tuacahn before we go. I've always wanted to see Cats, so we thought this would be a great way to see it.