The big news in this week's pictures is our celebration of Ella's good behavior at school.  Her teacher has a behavior system in place where each child brings home a ticket every day - green (good), orange (warning), yellow (better shape up!), red (bad news!).  Thankfully, Ella has only brought home one orange ticket, and we later found out 22 of the 26 kids in her class got an orange ticket that day.  Not sure what happened, but it somehow made us feel better that it was a group thing.  Ella wrote an apology to her teacher and got a warning from us that if she brought home another one, there would be discipline!

 

Anyway, if the kids get 30 green tickets (which takes 6 weeks at best!), they get to pick a prize from the treasure chest.  Ella chose a pink, glittery bouncy ball.  Her teacher encouraged parents to use these tickets at home as well and give incentives and rewards.  We often take away and give back green tickets based on how she acts and obeys.  We decided that for every 15 green tickets, we would let her take her lunch to school.  This is pretty exciting for her - she has a Hello Kitty lunch box and LOVES to use it!  And for every 30 tickets, we get to go out to a restaurant (our choice, of course, depending on our coupons!).  Well, she hit 30 tickets for the first time last Thursday, so Saturday night, we decided our special dinner would be pizza at this very cool, indoor miniature golf and games place.  Ella and Lucy had both earned a free round of mini-golf there from the summer reading program at the library.  This seemed like a great time to use them!  We hadn't been golfing in a long time, so Ella didn't remember much and Lucy didn't remember anything.  The longer they played, Ella started to get the hang of it, but Lucy...it was really just her goal to put the ball in every hole, regardless of how it got there.  She wouldn't listen to advice on how to hold or swing the club, nor did she follow any silly rules about where to start or how you're really not supposed to pick up the ball and move it with your hand.  Oh, well, they both had a great time, and Jeff was really impressed with the pizza.  He couldn't stop talking about it!  It was definitely a fun, family night out and I look forward to another reward dinner after the next 6 weeks of school!