Halloween

Oh did the kids have a great time on Halloween today. Nora was Batman and Milo was Spiderman. After they got back, Milo found a little bag of Skittles in his candy bag that looked a lot like a bag of M&Ms. He saw the "S" on the bag and asked, "Are these called S&Ms?" No, my son, no they are not, but that'd be awesome if they were.

This afternoon a couple of grad students interviewed the kids about some math tasks. Nora went first and they started off by asking her to just count. She counted to 10, then to 20 when they asked her to keep going, then to 30 when they asked her again. Then finally she just said, "I can count higher than you think I can!" I realized that an important skill when interviewing 4-year olds would be to not laugh when they say funny stuff!

It has still been crazy busy. I am doing all of my duties and many of Mentor's as he spends his days and nights at the hospital with his son, who is very ill. Complaining about being busy and tired feels very trivial in comparison to that. Tomorrow morning, 21 of us are getting on a bus we chartered to go to the neighboring state for a conference. The bus has couches and stuff, and hopefully it'll be a fun time! One of my projects alone has 4 talks at this conference! Fortunately I personally only have to do one of them.

While I'm gone, Jake's parents are coming and then they're going to spend one night in a hotel in another part of the state that has an indoor water park. Jake seems pretty weary about the whole thing. Hopefully the kids will have a blast, though.