It has been a cranky few days in my household. All week I've encouraged Anna to work on a social studies project that was due Friday. Of course, she's known about it for a few weeks -- we've also known since the end of March. She did spend a little time each day finding some of the information she needed to do the poster. But little did she -- or I -- realize how much time it would actually take to complete the poster.

Anna pulled the first late night (of many, I'm sure) finishing the project. She was up until midnight, but I have to say she was quite a trooper. Normally, she's a whiny drama queen when she has to do something and she's tired or just doesn't want to do it. But it wasn't until midnight, when she was writing her teacher's name on the poster, that the tears appeared. With all the maps and other random pieces of information she had to find, it was her teacher's difficult-to-spell name that sent her over the edge. But the tears didn't last long and she was finally able to go to bed.

While I was not happy with the fact we were up until midnight -- which meant I was really up until 2 a.m. because I still needed some down time -- it was OK the next morning. When she was walking out the door to school, she stopped and said (unassisted or guilted into it), "Mommy, thank you for helping me on my poster." It was said very sincerely and without any sarcasm.

I'm very proud -- and very glad she chose Oregon for her project since we had all kinds of resources to pull from!