10% discount

Discounts are good, right? Not when the one getting the discount is your employer. A 10% pay reduction was announced today at Howard's work. While we are happy that he still has a job, this echoes Agilent of years past. Next will come "workforce management" or what the rest of us call layoffs. Merry Christmas, huh?

Oddly enough while this is a bummer we are not down. How can we be when we have such great blessings? When Annie heard the news she volunteered to stop all her lessons. Anne won't be continuing clarinet lessons after this month, sorry Robyn. We are committed to eight weeks of gymnastics and that will be it. Emma doesn't understand yet but Annie does. She and I were doing some online shopping to get her some clothes that fit and are seasonally appropriate before we got the news. Afterwards she insisted she didn't need any of them. I love that kid. Of course I am still going to get them for her. Gotta get em while we can.

In other news, I love Katie. She lent me her copy of The Transporter with the previously mentioned Jason Statham. Sweet! I am so watching it this week.

On the school front: Annie took out the TJed book on her own today. She went through the list of classics in the back and started putting them on hold for herself at the library. I had no idea she was doing it until hours later when I found the book on the floor by the computer. Emma is starting to count by 2's. We have been cheering, "2,4,6,8 who do we appreciate?" all day. I think we are going to have to take more time with her current reading step so she can really absorb it. She is reading the words but I want to make sure she is getting the comprehension plus the grammar, alphabetical order and sentence structure down.

Laura just seemed to say Mom so I better go rescue her.