August 22, 2005 – School hasn’t even begun yet, and she‘s already had her first test.

Natalie had her first test at school today, a Pre-K screening test to see where she is at and if she is ready for school. While I’m a perfectionist, and Ruben is very competitive, we had somewhat high expectations for her to do better on this test than what she did. Now don’t get me wrong, according to the teacher, she did quite well on the test, and we are proud of her for that. She is exactly where she should be at for her age, and is considered ready for kindergarten. But somehow we had hoped for a higher score than 75 out of 95, but that is just the over-achiever in us talking. With my numerous medical problems this year, I didn’t get to prepare her for school as much as I would have liked to, but all that is in the past now and is spilt milk. All we can do now is try harder to help her and make sure she excels this year – which will be hard when we already know she will be missing some school in October and December when we go back to Vegas for my reconstruction surgeries, but there’s nothing we can do about that except make sure she is doing her schoolwork while we are gone and keep on top of the learning, so it’s not just a “vacation” for her. Regardless of the test, Natalie was excited to be at the school, and was happy to find kids size toilets that didn’t flush automatically (she has a fear of those toilets that flush by themselves despite me telling her that they will not suck her down!) After the screening, we went out to dinner and I took this picture of my two greatest loves with my Palm.