Here's to a Happy Thanksgiving to all my Pleo-Friends. Hope you get to enjoy time with your family and friends. Safe travels.

We're heading to KY/TN for a few days.

5thGrader won his school spelling bee in 5 rounds.

I only remember four of the words: saunter, cupboard, validity (which he misspelled but the other two boys also misspelled words so they all got to go again), survival, and then one other word that was the winning word but I don't remember what it was... yeah, slacker mom that I am, I didn't even take the camera (but then he wore his school's teal-t-shirt with (non-)matching red sweatpants...).

I was most impressed with his confidence on the stage, speaking clearly into the microphone, and his overall good-naturedness about the whole thing.

I'm not sure when the next level is, but it's probably pretty soon. They told him it will be for 5th - 8th graders. I don't think that phases him at all - he just goes and does his thing. I love that about him.

5thGrader is representing his class along with two other classmates in the school-wide spelling bee on Friday. I'm proud of him. 7thGrader exercised the "misspell a word on purpose in the first round" option when he was a 5th grader.

We have recently acquired a digital piano. I've been enjoying becoming reacquainted with piano playing - I took lessons for a few years as a child, and I have some of the same piano-books that I used then.

5thGrader wants to take lessons. He came home from school yesterday having found himself a piano teacher. So I called her up and we have his lessons set to start in two weeks.

I'd love to take lessons again myself as I never learned "keys" and wish I had learned sharps/flats-at-a-glance without having to count the lines on the bars to know which keys would sharp/flat. But we'll let 5thGrader take lessons for now.

Maybe when some of that wealth has been redistributed I'll be able to take lessons myself ;)

and