Whoops! Six weeks with no pictures of the kids?! I'll try to update quickly.

Rene's birthday
Rene turned 7 in November. She had a small birthday party at home, with 3 of her friends from school (Paige, Olivia, and Stephanie), and her "boyfriend" Jimmy. We painted and decorated treasure boxes (and I discovered what a difference it makes to spray crafts with a glossy finish - wow!). Then we played party games - like freeze-dancing, 20 questions, make the person in the center laugh, etc. They beat the heck out of a pinata - each kid kept knocking it off the hanger, but the pinata itself wouldn't bust! I made her a 4 layer birthday cake.

Here's her gift list:
Jimmy - Ballerina treasure box and diary, bead people kit, lip gloss
Paige - Disney Princess camera
Olivia - sand art kit, rainbow ribbons for ribbon dancing, Clik-Its jewelry kit
Stephanie - Minnie Mouse PJs, Sleeping Beauty Christmas ornament
Cousin Toni - $10
Chuck and Rose McHugh - $5
Gramma and Grampa Polley - Scooby Doo and the Cyberchase DVD, Scooby Doo Goes to Hollywood DVD, $25 in savings account
Uncle Joe, Aunt Val and Olivia - bead kit with 15,000 beads, artist kit
Grandaddy Butler - $50, stickers
Nee Nee - sewing kit, color by number book
Uncle John - full-size cardboard playhouse made to color with markers, set of markers
Mom & Dad - Scooby Doo and the Cyberchase Playstation game, pink boa for dress-up

You can see here this is a girl who likes to dress up in style. She keeps saying she can't wait until she's sixteen years old!


In other news, I have started working very part-time, less than 10 hours a week. We decided it would be nice if I could work enough to cover the kids' tuition, but only if I could do it without needing childcare. So I emailed my old classmate from grad school and she said they'd love to have me come help out in the lab, setting my own hours and working as few hours as I want. Right now I've been working the 5 hours that Hank is in school each week, and then a few hours on a weekend morning. It's a research lab at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic doing research on obesity and eating disorders in adults and children - the next door down from where I used to work - although after being gone 7 years there are only a handful of people still there from before.

Other news: Rene's stopped doing gymnastics. Now that she is in school full-time it was just taking up too much of her time to have that big obligation twice a week. It's been much easier on her and on our family now that she's dropped it. It has also opened up her schedule to try other things - right now she's doing basketball clinic at school and ice skating at the ice rink in the park (a total of 2 hours of activities a week...vs FIVE with gymnastics).

Corrina and Hank are both continuing with their recreational gymnastics classes and they both love it. Here are some pictures of Hank at his open gym.

1. Approaching the bars
2. ever the gentleman, he's helping his classmate into the inflatable caterpillar
3. on the parallel bars



And here's Corrina. She hasn't had any big news, but she is her same sweet self, always ready to give a hug or help out around the house. Here she's using watercolors to paint Christmas cards (one down, 89 to go!)