Tea 
I think it may be partly because I've been reading a book designed to help people to help their children to read. Last term I got a bit that mistlechick was being expected to learn that certain letter groups meant resulted in a certain sound.... fine for some (ie oo would be either the sound in book or broom)(depends where you're from whether there's any difference sometimes!) however, some combinations dh and I could think of 6 different ways they are pronounced in different words in just a minute, so it seems silly saying that these two letters are pronounced x and giving only one of the options.
The book talks about how children learn to read - I can't remember learning to read, so its really interesting. And I'm already making progress with ds when we're reading at home eg the word 'take' - if I say to ds that the 'a' letter that usually has the sound as in 'back' is changed because of the 'e' at the end he reads it immediately correctly - and doesn't try to add the 'e' sound on the end as he would do by sounding out the letters.
I must have another go at it and see whether it talks about the word 'we' - when I put a note in ds's reading book saying having problems differentiating between the 'e' sound in 'we' compared to the sound in, for instance, 'went' (which is the obvious sound for 'e' at the moment for ds) she put a note in saying that 'we' was just a word that had to be learned as a one-off.
Anyway (the whole point of this note) - that made me realise that, because I couldn't remember learning to read, it made it more difficult for me to appreciate the problems - the teachers in the school that Amber visited must find it equally if not more difficult to effectively 'apply' the training and materials that they've been supplied with...
Am going to stop on this now anyway.
But, Amber, your insights are really interesting, and I hope you don't mind us being interested and asking the odd question - please just ignore us if you do, or, better still, tell us to move onto another subject!!!
Raining here. Makes a change from snow, but rather depressing.
Mistlechick woke me up AGAIN last night. His sheet had come untucked I growled at him to cope with it and go back to bed. However, shortly after I was aware that he still had his light on and was not going back to sleep. Stomped into his room, tucked him in and switched his light off, making it very evident that I WAS NOT AMUSED at being woken up because he sheet had become untucked and that he should have just made-do Of course, its always me that gets a disturbed night's sleep - dh, even though he doesn't have a job at the mo, and gets up an hour later, doesn't ever sort things out