Week in Review - with a Surprise!

Once upon a time, Stace and I loved to surprise each other with big experience-type gifts. I blindfolded him to take him to see U2; he one-upped me by planning a trip to Barcelona. (These things were much easier to accomplish pre-children!)

This past Mother's Day, Stace reinstituted the surprise fun, with my blindfolded trip to a picnic brunch in one of our favorite outdoor settings.

This week, I got him back pretty good.

He had no clue, but I got tickets for us to see Robert Plant at the Greek Theatre, and arranged the babysitting and even for Grandpa to take over for his assistant coaching duties at Violet's t-ball practice.

Tuesday evening, while we were all at practice, I told him it was time to go; we had an event we were leaving for. In the car on the way south, he managed to guess our destination, since he had heard Plant was coming to town. Darn!

Still, it was a great surprise, and a well-earned early birthday gift for my hard-working, handsome husband.

The show was brilliant, too. We love seeing Robert live, and this marked the fourth time we've seen him at the Greek, a lovely amphitheater tucked into the canyon and trees of Griffith Park.

 Thankfully, Stace got to sleep in a little bit Wednesday after our late date night. Violet had her kindergarten assessment Wednesday morning, and Stace had already arranged to go to work late so we could both take her.

Violet was very excited about her assessment, which helps the teaching staff place the children into classes. She did very, very well, getting every number right, every capital letter right and 25 of the 26 lower-case letters, plus every letter sound correct.

When Violet did so well, the teacher asked if she could read. We answered that she can read a bit, and the teacher wrote out the word "FAN," which Violet read without even sounding it out. She then named off a few of the sight words up on the wall of the kinder classroom.

Turn your volume up to its highest and you can (just barely) hear Violet naming off the letters.
























On Thursday, after nearly a week of no preschool, we had Violet's preschool friend Elena over for a playdate. The girls had a very nice time playing different games and creating art projects.