J roller-bladed home after we dropped W off at school. We found another weird tree so picked some leaves off of it to identify. Also, the gingko trees dropped all their "puke-balls" onto the ground and the Asian people in my neighborhood collect them. I have no idea why they would want a bag full of little yellow balls that smell something like puke and dog poo, but there must be some good reason. I stepped on one last week and my car stunk for 2 days.

At home, we found a cool site with optical illusions and looked at about 30 of them. Then J did more of her workbook. It's a 4th-5th-grade summer "bridge" workbook. She loves it. I like it because every page or 1/2 page has activities on a different subject (instead of 1 subject per section). Today's work was on math fact families, U.S. products and what part of the country they come from, finding info (local, federal, and state) in a telephone book, and word prefixes. Many times she'll do the brief activity and will want continue with more of the same or research it further on the computer or in other books. I think that's so cool.

She skated outside again and after we picked up W, we went to the playground. It was FREEZING and hardly any kids were there. My kids are never cold, though, so we stayed for 1/2 hour. We picked up K, I dropped W off at MIL's, dropped the girls off at dance, and I went to Curves. Yeehaww!

I found out today that J made it into the tap production she auditioned for last week! She will be the youngest in the class by 3 years. She's so excited. The owner, X, told me that J has improved tremendously from last year. And that she is so focused now and is really outstanding. X also said that she will be more strict this year and that not all the kids will do all the dances with their group. She told me I have nothing to worry about with J. J will be one of the "core" dancers in her group. I'm also getting good feedback about her solo and about W in his 2 dance classes. (he's the youngest in his class and I was concerned about his behavior and messing around). They have started working on J's costume, too. I can't wait until it all comes together.

In the evening, J spent about an hour making a website for a kid in her dance class. He told her what he wanted and she was more than happy to oblige - since she knows how to make nice sites. K is doing a research project for Science on Iguanas, due Friday, and seems to be on the right track with all her schoolwork this week. We had a talk about what's expected of her and she promised to focus more on her grades.