Teacher Talk and Yummy Dinner

I had a nice chat with Matthew's teacher today. She wanted to make sure she could accommodate our needs with Matthew's reading choices at school (see November 28 posting). She really enjoys reading the Junie B. books to the kids, but understands my hesistations with the content. She's more than willing to make sure Matthew chooses other books during his free reading time or when he checks books out from the library. She also reassured me that when she reads the books to the kids in class and bad behavior is seen in the story, she stops and talks about that with the kids. That doesn't completely erase my issues with the books, but I'm glad she cares enough to address that one problem. With Matthew being in a public school, I can't expect that our values will always be represented, but I'm very grateful that we have a teacher this year that cares enought to try to make sure Matthew's book choices are appropriate for him.

On a completely different note....

We had an absolutely fabulous dinner tonight! I started working on it at 1pm (there was lots of chopping involved), and JH took care of the kids as soon as he got home from school so I could cook. We had some Rachael Ray meatloaf patties with green beans (well, she did peas in the recipe, I did fresh-not-out-of-a-can beans). With some fennel I had leftover from Thanksgiving I made Cooking Light's Pasta Risotto with Fennel, which was very good. I even forgot to put in the Romano cheese, and it was still great! For dessert, Jonathan and Matthew had some leftover portions of Aunt Jennifer's pumpkin pudding recipe, too. Everyone was raving over and over about how yummy the whole meal was-- even Colson ate quite a bit himself, which is a miracle these days! I was so amazed, I even took a picture!