California McMillans

Kira is doing really well in first grade.  She had such a hard time when I went to work in kindergarten and seems to have outgrown a lot of her fears and anxieties.  Some of it I am sure was loosing my parents and time seems to heal and make a lot of things better. She is really smart.  Just gets things.  Reminds me of Scott in a lot of ways.  Has perfectionist tendencies.  Scott used to be hard on himself.  She isn't hard on herself or the outcome but just scared to do new things or in the process if they aren't turning out how she wants, she gets real frustrated.  It has been fun to see her learn to read.  All of a sudden, her reading just took off and somehow she went from learning one word to reading at a pretty high level.  I read an article years ago about how they teach kids in Switzerland (I think) how to read when they are older and actually ready to read and they progress happily and much faster than in America.  It really impacted me and for the most part I have ad

Tyler met with Dr. Saba, his new cardiologist.  Dr. Cooper retired with Kaiser a little over a year ago, so this was our second appt with Dr. Saba.  Great guy, great Dr.  We are so blessed.  It was the first appt that I was able to drop him off for because I had Blake and Parker with me. He did great and the best news of all was that his heart is doing great!  We are so blessed.  There are so many kids that spend most of their lives in and out of hospitals and I Tyler has been blessed with a fairly normal childhood. He is getting to the age that he needs to start using judgement of how to manage his health. 4th grade is the first year that the class has a P.E. teacher and I suggested to his teacher and Tyler that he probably shouldn't run for warm up but instead save his energy for more fun activities such as tag, frisbee or whatever they are playing.  He came home one day and told me he had to sit out all of P.E. because he didn't run in the beginning so it was a good opport

Kira's into having her hair done.  She asked for [French braids] and I didn't know how to do them.  I told her I'd have to watch a youtube video.  Then, in church, Megan was doing French braids on Malie and I learned how to do them.  My first attempt was pretty ugly, but you gotta start somewhere.  This was my second attempt.  I'm still not that good at them and it takes a while, but I had to take a picture before Kira took them out.  Her hair's not quite long enough to do two braids and merge them into one, so I did three separate ones.   Tyler celebrated his birthday by having a sleepover.  More like a NO-SLEEP over.  I think the kids had a good time, though. The piñata was popular even though it was too heavy to support its own weight on the hook.  The kids ended up smashing it on the ground. Our new neighbors are great.  Our kids take turns jumping on each others' tramps.  They just climb over the fence like this.  Here the