Riley and Avery

By bountiful, I mean two. One ripe and one semi-ripe. We have a few green ones left on the plant but we are supposed to get frost tonight, so I though it best to get the two that were passably ripe. Both girls picked one, ate one, and spit one out. They've never been tomato girls. There was one red raspberry on one of our berry bushes that Riley ate and liked. We aren't really supposed to get berries this year, maybe next, so one berry is not a disappointment. Next year, however, we will be getting tomato starters. There is just no time in Colorado to grow tomatoes from seed.

So, Riley had her appointment with the testing psychologist today. She was a nice lady, but not quite like the play therapist. Riley sat and drew while we talked. The psychologist said that Riley was really precocious in her drawings. She decided that Riley does need to be tested, so now we just have to wait for her assistant to call us back and schedule the appointment. Her assistant does the testing. It will be a standard pre-schooler IQ test. I wish there were an alternative, but there just isn't. She said that the test takes 2 to 3 hours, so they break it up into two or three sessions. Testing a four-year-old for giftedness just seems silly to me, but if that's the path I have to take to determine where she needs to be next year, then so be it. I'm starting to question whether Montessori is the right path for Riley. Don't get me wrong, no one is a bigger fan of Montessori than I am, I'm just not sure it's the right fit for Riley.

So, I'm looking into graduate school at UCCS for elementary education. It looks doable. I have enough VA benefits remaining to carry me through the program. They offer summer courses in education, so I can speed it up by taking summer classes. Incidentally, I found my teaching portfolio in a box upstairs and looked through it. I guess I do miss teaching. Just not the 7th graders. I can do without them. But I think this is the right decision. But it's making suffering through Business Organizations and Civil Litigation nearly impossible. Hopefully, this will all be decided soon. I think I'll make a trip up to the campus this week, preferably while Riley is in school to get things jump-started.

The girls and I are going to a performance at the philharmonic on Sunday. It supposed to be a family presentation, entitled "Classic Fairy Tales." We'll see. I have to go to a cultural event for my humanities class, so it was bound to happen. I swear, if either of the girls want to take ballet classes after this, I'll submit the bill to my humanities teacher.

There's a pumpkin festival on Saturday that we are going to try to squeeze in this weekend. There is a cooperative nursery school here and the children have been busy all year growing pumpkins from the seeds of last year's pumpkins in their garden and the day before they were to harvest them, they all got stolen. The community came together to donate pumpkins, but they were stolen again, along with the irrigation system for watering them. So now truck-loads of pumpkins are rolling into the school. Whole Foods is replacing the irrigation system for them, donating more pumpkins, and posting a security guard at the school every night until Halloween. Now, I'm no big fan of Whole Foods. In fact, I rather resent their shinning organic palace available only to the upper echelons of society, their aggressive corporate business practices that push smaller businesses out of business in a manner akin to that of Walmart. But what they are doing for this school is awesome. Now local businesses are donating baked goods for a bake sale to raise money for the school and teach the kids about community. So it looks like we have a free activity to go to. Sweet.

I'm going to run because dinner needs attention...