BUSY MOLLIE

Dear Dad and Marie,

We are all quite well here.

Mollie is having another bang up year in school. She
is being tested for the "gifted and talented" program.
Of course we already know with certainty that she is
gifted and talented without the tests (no parent bias
on our part, of course), but she's going through the
testing anyway. Last year she "qualified" for gifted
in art and creativity (imagine that!), so she goes to
a special art class. I volunteer in that class and we
do extra and innovative art projects with the kids.
She goes to a special, advanced math class where they
work with advanced math concepts and play math games.
Sometimes they get to share these things with their
regular classroom. On top of those two classes she is
also taking a special reading class that I actually
designed. We are reading a wonderful book called
"Chasing Vermeer" which is sort of a kids version of
"The DaVinci Code" where some kids find one of
Vermeer's paintings. We have been studying the work
of Vermeer as we work through the book and it's great
fun! The Dayton Art Institute has an exhibit
currently of paintings from the Rijksmuseum - mostly
Rembrandt and his students. I took Mollie and a
friend to that exhibit on Friday because they had a
day off school and it was great! We'll go back
several times. Mollie is also playing soccer and
taking horseback riding lessons and is having a great
life!!!

I'm doing well working on my Master's degree, but it's
keeping me super busy. I'm doing an accelerated
version of an already accelerated program! I'm taking
a number of classes as Independent Studies on top of
the regular course load, so I'm cooking along and only
have 3 more in-class courses to take after this
quarter. Then I just have to pass the licensure test
and do my student teaching. I have some work yet to
go, but I'm getting there rapidly.

Saul is busy, busy with his work because they are
going through a national accredation process. It's
laborious and not so much fun and it just takes a lot
of documentation, so it keeps his smart brain working
all the time on top of a full time teaching load and
administration load as chair of Special Education.

We are still actively looking for a house we want to
buy or build, but, as of yet, things haven't clicked.
We'll see what happens!!

Love to you both, Dione