Well, I'm recovering from a great birthday--thank you all so much for cards, texts, emails, etc. My sweetie threw such a nice birthday party for me with the girls. They made dinner, cake, & decorated with balloons and streamers. It was all wonderful (except maybe for the fire extinguisher prop that he threw into the photo. Thanks, babe, I'll remember that).

Olivia had some behavior problems at school recently. She's been yelling and screaming, not staying in time out, and generally being Olivia's dark side :) We discussed some options with the teacher and now both the girls have chore sheets that they can work on for reward. Included in both of their charts is essentially a token for "not getting in trouble". Of course, we don't word it quite that way, but that's basically what it boils down to. Jocelyn is motivated by money. Anka has an iPod touch that Jocelyn thinks she will be able to earn money for rather quickly. I told her it would take years for her to save up, but she's motivated for now anyway!

Olivia's new thing is that she is "sick". Olivia likes to be at home and so almost every night this week, she has pleaded "sick" to stay home. I'm not where she heard about this strategy, but she's doing her best to see it through. At first, of course, we were worried and were ruling out all sorts of things. As her comments are shortly followed by "I want to stay at home", we know that there is a bit more to the story.