What a party!

We went to Mitchell Monday night for my neice, Rylie's birthday party. She is now 6. How time flies! Casey & Heidi rented the party room at the Comfort Inn, where they have an indoor waterpark (well, a cool pool with a pirate ship and a big slide that goes outside the building, but is enclosed in a tube).

Maia claims she had fun, even though she fell down 3 times, walked right into the deep end of the water and was rescued by Grandpa Dave, and ran into a pole before the night was over.

Xander had a BLAST! He was a little nervous about going down that big huge slide at first, but they had innertubes to ride down on, so it was a smooth ride, and you never had to go under water. PLUS, they had double tubes you could ride, so most of the times he went down with either me or Casey. Once, he tried to go down with Grandma Marilyn because she was the funnest partner of the night (not only did she get the tube going really fast, but she whooped and hollered all the way down!), but they lost their grip on the tube while trying to get in at the top and it went down without them. So they each went down the slide without the tube. Fun too!

Heidi's sister Bonnie also came over from Sioux Falls. She stayed overnight- but we would have been happy to carpool with her! Heidi & Bonnie went down the slide together several times, screaming all the way because it got pitch black at one point during the ride.

I finally got our Christmas presents to Casey & Heidi's family, so Rylie got double presents. We were pretty excited about the t-shirt that we got for Casey. It's a plain navy blue shirt with white block letters that says:

South Dakota
The Few
The Proud
The Extremely Attractive

We thought it was a perfect gift for him. I don't know how he feels about it, but he looked at it for a while, then laughed and said it was awesome and that he was going to wear it to work the next day.

It was a pretty late night for us, we didn't get home until almost 10:00, but I was glad we could go.

Monday was a day off for me with no Maia. She was a preschool ("pretty school") all day, so I decided to use my time to paint the kids' bathroom downstairs. Of course, it's never the quick project you think it's going to be, and after a trip to Ace Hardware, and a trip to Menards I finally got started painting the tangerine orange room. The paint's pretty much done, but of course, I felt the need to change out the light fixture and the toilet topper cabinet and the towel racks, so the room's in complete disarray right now. I would love to say I finished it up today, but alas, I did not get much done, as I had lessons and running around to do most of the day.

Tonight, Xander had a play date at friend, Leo's house after school, and came home in a HORRIBLE mood. Leo's a really fun kid, and has tons of toys, but I think Xander was coming down with something, because he complained about everything, especially of being hungry and thirsty, but then wouldn't eat his food, and told me he had a stiff neck. (scares me)

He didn't have a fever, so I just gave him some Tylenol and sent him to bed. He went to sleep for the night at 7:00. Hope he's OK!

We got a note from the school today, letting us know that they're concerned because Xander has missed 8 days of school this year, and he might fall beind. As we all know, no child should be left behind. I guess the Sioux Falls public school district is instituting a new attendance policy starting next school year, that if a kid misses more than 10 days of school they have to take make-up sessions. And the letter strongly encouraged our family to consider taking vacations on scheduled school vacation days.

Look Indiana friends, we care about you enough to endure the wrath of the Sioux Falls School system!