1. Thanksgiving in Charlotte where I got to be Pickles the Clown in the Charlotte Thanksgiving Day Parade with my mother-in-law Tilly the Clown. It was so fun! Didn't Jan do a great job with the make-up, making me into a cheery clown instead of scary?
2. Christmas in Indiana. My nephew Erik and my niece Cori and her family were there from the West Coast. We haven't all been together in years! The kids loved playing with their young cousins Gunner, Kaiden, Aria and new baby Zadia. We took an impromptu trip up I-69 and met nieces Audrey, Bridget, Ashleigh and Courtney and my sister-in-law Kenna for lunch. It was so awesome to see so many loved ones!
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| My sissies and mommy |
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| Erik, Zadia and Ry |
3. Rylie is learning violin at school and loves it. She is still taking gymnastics classes, but we are going to take a break from that at the end of March. She ended the 3rd 9 weeks improving 3 grades, with 3 As and 1 B. She worked so hard and met regularly with her school counselor to discuss learning strategies and calming exercises for test-taking (while her momma prayed lots and cried lots). We are so proud of her! I need to post a separate blog one day about what I learned about myself, my daughter and God's loving kindness to his children through this experience. In other tween events, she got braces yesterday. Her little mouth is too small for all these new adult teeth coming in and it has caused major shifting of teeth, with some not being able to drop down. If you have any creative ideas on what to feed her now, I am all ears! Here are before and after pics of the cutest 10-year old in braces:
4. Madelyn starts ice skating classes this week. This is something she's been wanting to do for a while and is using some of her birthday money to pay for it. She made the Scholar Roll at school with all As. I am her class's room mom and have enjoyed getting to know the students, organizing class parties, attending field trips and recently completed a big project of cataloging and labeling all the books in her classroom for their new Accelerated Reader program. Here's a picture from her birthday celebration where we went ice skating with our family and some of Mad's friends. Without all the friends of our old neighborhood to keep them busy, the girls have gotten a lot closer and spend hours playing American Girl dolls and perfecting Rainbow Loom bracelets. We're still working on them incorporating poor Kai into their play.
5. Kai is making lots of friends in preschool (John and Matthew are favorites). He can write all the letters of the alphabet, knows their sounds and is getting interested in reading. They recently completed a 2-week study of Community Helpers in which parents presented interests and skills that help our community. Eric presented his "nature box" full of turtle shells, deer antlers and other items to encourage a love of nature. Through a bit of trial and error, we discovered that our normally amiable afternoon play of board games, cards, outside play when terribly wrong when mommy and son tried to play "army men" together. He didn't appreciate my tactic of ramming the tank straight into enemy lines and bulldozing everything in my path. He prefers a more strategic approach and gets bossy so we have decided to leave that activity as a daddy/son thing. He has a new found love for John Mayer and Michael Jackson so I've listened to Billy Jean and Man In The Mirror (his 2 faves) more times than I can count in the last month! Great musical taste!
6. We have had such a long, cold Winter (I know it's nothing compared to people who actually experience Winter); since Christmas Break, the kids have missed at least one day of school almost every week. We have made crafts, played lots of games, watched too much TV, made forts and snowmen, drank our weight in hot chocolate, and I am all caught up everything on my to-do list (no exaggeration!). We are ready for Spring! In other updates, I am starting to think and pray about what type of part-time job I'd like when all kids are in school this Fall (I really don't even want to think about my last baby being in Kindergarten). Ideally, I'd like to work during the time they are in school only. Our lease is up in July and, with Rylie heading to middle school in the fall, we are exploring areas of town and suburbs with better middle school options than where we are now. Lots of changes on the horizon.
Sending you lots of love!
