Spooky House 2018

Here it is, our latest in the spooky gingerbread house collection!  We've been making these for a few years now, just because it's a fun idea.  And it's fun to make.  Madison takes one side and Daddy takes the other.  In the above photo, you can see Daddy's side, and below is Madison's:

After piano today, we sat at the kitchen table and made our sugar coated monstrosity as we watched "Scooby Doo 2" on the big screen.  It was actually a pretty fun evening.  These take a little time to put together, roughly the length of the movie in fact.  We weren't in a hurry, just enjoying the artistic efforts, and probably enjoying a little too much sugar along the way.  In any event, it's a great decoration we've made and will look nice in the kitchen the next few weeks.  

Tonight we did have piano, and we got caught in a pretty amazing storm.  It was standard as far as rough and sudden downpours go, with lots of wind and debris flying everywhere.  But the thing that made it unique was the fact that the sun was shining so brightly.  It was a super huge windy downpour, and yet the sun was shining so brilliantly, it made it even more difficult for drivers to see.  We saw two rainbows in the car today, one on the way to piano practice.  And as you can expect with the latter description above, we saw another stronger double rainbow.  It was right over the grocery store that we stopped at to get a few things, and the interesting thing is that the last time we saw a rainbow over this very same grocery store, we saw one of Madison's ballet friends, Sylvie.  Well, we saw a rainbow again over this same grocery store, and once again, we ran into Sylvie.  We've only run into Sylvie twice outside of ballet, and both times under a rainbow at a grocery store.  What does this mean?  I'll let you come up with something, because I have no idea.

Anyway, it was a good day today.  One nice moment came when we saw the failing test grade that Madison had last week.  We wrote about it here, and the idea was to study her mistakes and move on. Well, it appears as if the math teacher has made another mistake in grading, and the end result is that Madison did not fail the quiz.  The teacher took off more points than she should have, and as a result, the quiz wasn't so bad.  And, her total average in the class is about to go up a little (I think she'll now have a 91).  We've got some quizzes and tests this week, so we'll keep moving forward on studying.  With piano, it sounds as if there's a group concert coming up for the kids in their classes, so perhaps Madison will have another performance upcoming.  In the meantime, things seem fairly quiet there, and not so stressful on her end.  We're letting her breathe a little with piano, moving forward yes, but more than likely not moving forward at the faster pace that she's been accustomed to.  School was more important, and getting acclimated there, and I think we're doing pretty good now.  

So today was a day to do a lot of updates:  the car was taken in, and Daddy spent a good while washing it and cleaning the insides as well.  Madison may be sweet and smart, but she definitely needs help in the "cleaning up after herself" department.  If that back seat of the car could talk, it would tell tales of crumbs and papers and juice boxes and stains and... let's just say it took Daddy a little longer to clean Madison's area in the back!

But she's such a good girl, and we don't by any means proclaim her to be the most super talented and most special person to ever exist on the planet (although she's pretty close!).  It's just that her heart is in the right place and she's doing so much better with her grades than Mommy or Daddy ever did.  We're very proud of her: of her acts of love towards others, her studies in school, and of course, for her gingerbread house work too!

"Oh, man.  Another creepy crib!" - Shaggy