so...Ale has managed to lose 2 cases of colored pencils since January 8th...when she lost the first one (Staed.ler ones!), I bought her the shortest, cheaper ones I could find...((you should have seen her face!)) ...I told her she couldn't have "nice ones" until she learned to take care of her things...I also warned her that these would be counted EVERY day...she just called me and said that her new pencils (bought last week!) had been "thrown into the garbage"...she said "the cleaning people at school threw them away"...she also said she spoke to the teacher about it...now, it is obvious to me that if the people from cleaning threw them away, they must have been on the floor or something...anyway, this weekend I'm making Ale take out money from HER piggy bank to buy new colored-pencils for school...she just HAS to learn to take better care of her things!