Trunk or Treat

Last Tuesday the kids went trunk or treating at the church. It was freezing cold outside, but Tanya, Victor and Ana made rounds until everyone left. Thus they came home with very full buckets of candy and in the 20 minutes they had to eat some before bed Ana and Tanya downed a couple pounds of candy! Tanya was bent close to the table and unwrapping it and putting it in her mouth as fast as she could. I don't think they had ever seen that much candy at one time.

They also had to do their own face paint... I think Ana's picture tells that story.

Snowman

With last Tuesdays snow the kids went out to build a snowman, they began with the traditional looking snowman and ended up with mr. skull head. They were hoping that it looked like a body was buried in the snow. No carrots for these kids.

help prevent H1N1

I'm posting this because I don't want to do a mass email that ends up a hoax or something, but I thought this sounded like practical advice.

Good Advice about H1N1

Dr. Vinay Goyal is an MBBS,DRM,DNB (Intensivist and Thyroid specialist) having clinical experience of over 20 years. He has worked in institutions like Hinduja Hospital , Bombay Hospital , Saifee Hospital , Tata Memorial etc.. Presently, he is heading our Nuclear Medicine Department and Thyroid clinic at Riddhivinayak Cardiac and Critical Centre,Malad (W). The following message given by him, I feel makes a lot of sense and is important for all to know.

The only portals of entry are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature, it's almost impossible to avoid coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is. While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications) .

2.. "Hands-off-the- face" approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless you want to eat, bathe or slap).

3. *Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don't trust salt). *H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/ nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling
with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don't underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.

4. Similar to 3 above, *clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water. *Not everybody may be good at Jala Neti or Sutra Neti (very good Yoga asanas to clean nasal cavities), but *blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral
population. *

5. *Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C (Amla and other citrus fruits).. *If you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.

6. *Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can. *Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.

I suggest you pass this on to your entire e-list. You never
know who might pay attention to it - and STAY ALIVE because of it.

Last Week

Last week Morgan wrote a play about a Chinese princess and put on the performance in the basement. Ana and Ethan put together a break dance routine for the opening act. Both were very well done and super creative.

Yeah for Ana. She was nice to her reading teacher all week so I didn't have to stay for reading class on Friday! She got a cookie in her lunch for that!



Ms. Lee's second grade class raised the most money the other week for the Shropshire Foundation so they got to have a rock band party on Friday! The band played some rock songs and did a great job, very loud I could hear it clear down to the 2nd grade class rooms. Then they let the kids play on all of the instruments. I think all of the kids LOVED that.




A couple weeks ago Tanya said she'd like to play volley ball with the YW on Saturday. She was excited until Saturday came and it took us 30 minutes to get her out the door. But once they started playing she liked it and was excited to go this Saturday. Yeah something she likes to do! Too bad there is only one more week of games.

cross country

Grant and his running buddy. Tanya really wanted to run so we signed her up for cross country at the Jr. High School, she went once and said she didn't like it. So we thought if Grant did it she might want to continue trying (she is always asking us if she can just go run). Well, Grant ended up running on the cross country team and we couldn't get Tanya to stay and try again.

His first two mile he ran in 18 min and 56 seconds. In the past eight weeks his time has come down to 14 min and 53 seconds. I think that is really awesome! I've been so impressed. They won their meet last Thursday, Grant came in 9th out of 19 kids, and 6th on his team. Last week he was 5th on the team, they only take the top 5 fastest runners times. Very exciting and he says he enjoys it. I think he is hoping that it will be good training for basket ball tryouts. Growing this summer also helped, he's a lot lighter on his feet this year.

So it looks like they'll have a few more meets since they won Thursday. Great Job!!

Little Red Ant

All the 5th grade classes were split up today to pick and perform one of the Indian stories they have been learning this term. Morgan and Victor were both in Little Red Ant. They did a great job. Morgan was the Little red ant and Victor was fire and an arrow. They did a great job. The kids recorded their performances and will cut and paste the scenes to make them into short movies. They all did an awesome job! Victor even got some of his lines down without reading from the script, Morgan had all of hers memorized except for the last one. They had to do a couple takes to get that one down. Good job guys!

Mom giving directions to the star and she not agreeing with my idea..


After they filmed them, each group performed them on the stage at the park. Funny to see them run through it from start to finish in one place.







Opps, it's called The Strongest One, not the Little Red Ant. It is about a little red ant who goes out to find out who/what is the strongest thing in the world. She learns everyone has strengths.

Halloween chain

Ethan made a chain last week to count down the days until Halloween. Since then Ana and Ethan have been making black and purple chains to hang around the house. They are upstairs and downstairs and on every bedroom door. This one is the longest (it connects through both pictures). My kind of Halloween decor, I'm not too big on all the scary stuff!