Best and Brightest

Last Monday, Fred got pulled over by one of Broomfield's finest. The reason? Expired license plates. We had no idea our plates had expired. Yes, we could have, should have noticed that the tags expired... but we didn't. We are so accustomed to Michigan's rule that plates expire on the owner's birthday, that we didn't even realize that in Colorado, plates expire a year after the vehicle is first registered. We registered our cars in July 2009 -- so our plates expired in July 2010. Oops. The cop let Fred off the hook with a warning, and told him to go renew the plates ASAP.

Two days later - Wednesday - I left work to find a little surprise on my car:Yep, a ticket. For expired plates, to be exact. What are the chances?! Of course Fred thinks it's hilarious that he got off the hook while I got a ticket. We learned a lesson to the tune of $75.00 and we have since renewed our plates. I don't think we'll forget to renew next July!

Fortunately, Elisabeth and Allison have made up for our lack of brain cells. We're proud to report that they are some of the best and brightest students in Colorado!

Elisabeth was selected to be Student of the Month!She is doing great in school, scored high on all of her assessments, and is in the "advanced" reading group at school.

Elisabeth brings home Cougar Care Coupons on a regular basis. Her school mascot is the cougar; teachers award Cougar Care Coupons to students for demonstrating the school CARE values of Communicating Honestly, Accepting Responsibility, Respecting Each Other, and Everyone Feels Safe.

She has also been working hard to train for her school's annual Pumpkin Run. We'll be there to cheer her on and watch her cross the finish line next week.

Speaking of cheering - Elisabeth is signed up for a cheerleading clinic and will be cheering at a high school football game with her friend Erica! Of course we'll post pictures and updates later!

Allison continues to work hard at writing her letters and numbers. She doesn't settle for anything less than the best and keeps trying until she gets her letters just the way she wants them. She will write her letters over and over on the sidewalk with chalk until they are just right. Here's a sample how of she wrote her name yesterday. (I can't get this picture to rotate!)
Notice now she ran out of room for the n at the end of her name, and then wrote a few more n's because she wasn't happy with her first try.

Allison was very excited to share something during Share and Tell at preschool. Of all the things she could have shared with her class, she chose to share the oh-so-important news that "My mommy has bird poop on her car." See? Only the best and brightest student would have thought of that one!

Allison is also getting better and stronger on her bike. At the beginning of the summer she was great at pedaling, but wasn't always very good about using her brakes to stop (which made for several scary moments). Elisabeth taught her how to pedal backwards to stop, and ever since then Allison has enjoyed zooming around at full speed and then (intentionally) screeching to a halt. Every day she begs to ride her bike. Yesterday, she wanted to ride her bike at 8:30pm (past her bedtime!). Her plea was, "Please??? Just for ONE minute?" Fred removed one of her training wheels so we can test the waters and see if she might be ready to learn to ride without training wheels. We'll keep you posted on her journey to two wheels!