Wednesday Night Date Night.

Not that we've been able to go on too many dates for the past six or so years...but tonight our date night was spent "picnicking" in the basement during our two tornado warnings.
Yikes. Seriously scary stuff. We kept the kids subdued with some fruit snacks and workbooks while Jim and were trying to listen to the AM radio and make sense of what we were hearing. The radio was so static-y from the lightening it was hard to make heads or tails of things for a while. We saw the reports of tornadic activity in Springfield about five o'clock, so we knew we may have to take some cover, but didn't think much of it. We had the television on (not our normal practice, we were keeping our eyes on the weather) when eating dinner and all of the sudden, it was so dark outside it was almost like it was the middle of the night. We knew it was time to head downstairs. We didn't sustain any damage, thank goodness. A funnel cloud was spotted downtown, though. There are still tornado warnings north and south of us. We have the kids in their jammies and are just hanging. Sam and Caroline are seriously starting to grate eachother's nerves. We just might get some tornadic activity inside, too. =-) They just showed another cell re-firing over Springfield, so it looks like we need to be preparing for round three. We just saw that the National Guard was activated.
Wow. Just wow. This is craziness.
But don't worry. Channel 7 just announced that they will, in no way, interrupt broadcast of the Stanley Cup Finals. Good to know that we still have priorities. Gotta love New England Yankees. Oy vey.
Lots doing here lately. School is winding down. Caroline is getting very, very excited to go to kindergarten next year. We've been in touch with the school principal (yes, already) so they have an idea of the "challenges" that they may have on their hands with her/us. Caroline did have some reading testing and she, with reading, is at a fourth grade instructional level. Math is certainly not at that level - but she does okay there, too. We are currently doing "homework" assignments on our own, but it would be great to get a little more direction from people with education backgrounds. We're trying to keep our learning experiences literature based, that seems to work well with her because she is so strong with reading. Science has been really, really fun - science is everywhere and everything - so it's easy to find things to do with that. Our real challenge has been math. Bleh. Always my nemesis.
Sam is officially potty trained, so it looks like he will go to pre-school next year. He is so excited, "I get to go to school and play with the trains. I will play with Rusty. I will play with Bill and Ben." I'm thinking it's going to be at least a few weeks at school before the novelty of the train table at OLA wears off. But all the teachers have been warned and know what to expect. They have witnessed some serious freak-outs when I have tried to extricate him from the table at different times. Sammy is showing some of the same traits that Caroline did at the same age - like sitting down and, without prompting, writing his name (we knew we gave him a short name for a reason! Nathanael is going to be in for it when he has to learn his name). Sam, right now, is "reading" books out loud that he has memorized (and is so proud of himself). It's cute to listen to. I love it.
Sam, not to perseverate on the whole potty thing, learned how to pee in the Lake this weekend. He is such a concrete thinker, it was a real stretch for him not to pee in the potty. But now that he's over that, I think the proverbial cat is out of the bag. This kid will drop trou anywhere now. I caught him trying to pee in the front yard yesterday (gotta love it when your son is buck naked standing on the front steps, facing the road and trying to pee for distance onto the front walk). Today I intercepted him before he peed in the bathtub (luckily his brother was not in it yet).
Nothing but class in this establishment, I say. The neighbors must love us. =-)
Nate is Nate. He's so funny with his cackling laugh and his "kisses" that are more licks than anything else. And although he started out sporting a mullet, his hair is slowly transitioning into "hockey hair". Maybe he's a Bruins fan already? Who knows...

I apologize for the rambling. I feel I need to do something "productive" as I'm sitting here trying to track the weather.