Allynn is getting old.

This month, Allynn will have her 11th birthday. I am shocked at how old she is. She is a great helper. She is so smart. Her teachers are so impressed with her. Right now she is addicted to the Twilight books. A book report was assigned to her class on a work of fiction. This was assigned in early September with the due date of October 15th (tomorrow). For two weeks she struggled with what book she was going to read. Then she saw the Twilight books on the shelf and asked if she could read that for her book report. I actually tried to discourage her and offered to help her find a smaller book so she could get the reading done quickly and finish the report and project early. NO, she decided that Twilight was the book she was going to read. So we sat down and looked at how many pages there were in the book and decided that if she read 100 pages per week, she would finish with over a week to work on her report and poster. She is amazing. Not only did she finish the book and her report, she is already in the middle of the third book of the series. I tell you this because she is such a great child! I cannot explain how much I love her and how important she is to this family. Today while I was looking through some old files on the computer, I came across this old email that I thought would be fun to reminisce about.

Tuesday, August, 27, 2002 (The first days of Allynn going to Kindergarten in California)

We have made it through the second day of school without incident.
The first day, I would like to do over!!

We got up at the time we needed and everything was going very smoothly until 730 when we should have been leaving but Austin was upset. I decided to nurse him for 5 min then we would leave. That still gave us 15 min to get to school. Then we got
to the Jr. High and I realized I had forgotten her paper that needs to be pined to her for the first 2 weeks. I contemplated whether or not to go back for it. My mistake was going back for it. Then I threw everyone in the car and took off. It takes longer to drive to school than to walk!! I could not find a place to park so I thought I was going to have to tell Allynn to get out and find her class when I saw our friend Erinn Hansen. She jumped in the car with Sydney and Austin and I was able to take Allynn to her class and take a few pictures. It took me a while to calm down after that. I was so upset that I had not been better prepared. I was frustrated and wanted to cry but Allynn was wondering what was wrong. I told her I was having trouble getting her to school, so she started yelling at me that she wanted to go to school. But, now all is well and she really likes it.

Today she said that her teacher was not nice to her, and left it at that. When we got home I asked her more about it and it turns out that her teacher would not let her be the leader of the line out to the pick up point. She got over it real fast. She said she would still go back tomorrow.

Oh, our wonderful Allynn.