Howdy Night, Frozen Yogurt, and Cars

We were concerned on Tuesday, because a couple of the other fourth graders on our block had received their cards from the school indicating who their teachers were but Natalie did not. Every year Patrick writes a letter to the principal asking that Natalie not be put in the same class as one of the boys on our cul-de-sac who is a troublemaker. Because she knows him, we think she'll be distracted by him in class and we don't want that, of course. We never received any sort of reply from the principal, who is new this year.

Patrick also mentioned in the letter that if possible, we would love to have the same teacher that Alex had in fourth grade. We were just coming back into the public system from private school and we were worried about whether or not he would be challenged in school. One of the reasons why we moved schools was that he was definitely not challenged at the other school. Mrs. F. was a god-send! Even with a full class, she knew after about a week that he needed to be challenged, so she gave him different work that did that without giving him extra work. We didn't want to be one of "those" parents plus the school has so many good teachers, so we didn't try to request Mrs. F.

Mrs. F is a "friend" of ours on Facebook, so I sent her a message on Tuesday night asking if Natalie was in her class. I got her reply back on Wednesday morning. I was very disappointed when she said that Natalie wasn't in her class, but I was alarmed when she said that Natalie was in Mrs. C's class and that there was one boy who was a troublemaker in that class. She couldn't name names, of course, but I told Patrick right away and he couldn't rest until he found out more information.

To make an already long story shorter, that boy is not in Natalie's class, and she met her new teacher last night at Howdy Night, better known as Meet the Teacher Night. We're still disappointed that we didn't get Mrs. F, but even Mrs. F gave glowing reviews about Mrs. C. We're looking forward to the new school year with Mrs. C.

After all of that school business, Natalie requested that we try out one of the new local frozen yogurt places. We had gone to one place in Houston when we were visiting in June, and she was excited when she heard that we now had our own frozen yogurt shops. These shops are "new" in that you pick out your own flavor from the many choices, dispense it yourself, pick out toppings, and pay for it all by weight. This particular new shop is called Orange Leaf and they have a few locations here and elsewhere.

Natalie served herself quite a bit of chocolate yogurt. They only have huge cups at these places and it's easy to get too much. I'm sure that helps their bottom line, but not mothers who let their children serve themselves. At least Natalie didn't ask for any toppings with her 8 ounces of chocolate frozen yogurt. Eric had the mango flavor, also without toppings. I had the strawberry and cheesecake mixed together with fresh strawberries on top. Yum!

I almost forgot--Eric was intrigued by the funky shaped spoon at Orange Leaf. He commented to me about the spoon and then before I realized it, he kept the spoon instead of throwing it away and he asked if he could take it home. I thought, "Why not?" I still laughed at how he would even notice a small detail like the shape of the spoon.

In other news, after breakfast at IHOP this morning, Eric reminded Patrick and me that we had said he could have the Cars toys today. Doesn't he look excited? He got a little worried because just after he asked us about the toy, Patrick had to look everywhere to find where he had stashed it. We were all giving him a hard time about it, actually, especially since I was the one to find it. :)

Sometimes I think I need to break up these posts instead of cramming all of these topics into one post, but sometimes a lot of stuff happens all at once! I'll save the post about Natalie getting her braces for tomorrow.