On Teeth and Reading

This is a big week for Maddie. She finished her "100 Easy Lessons" and she is FINALLY getting some front teeth (after nearly a year of being toothless on top!). I am so proud of her for pushing on when reading was a challenge and brought many tears. She and I had a special lunch together at Dairy Queen yesterday to celebrate. Then this morning Pete and I gave Maddie her first Bible and case. She was all smiles as she told Kate that now she can do devotions on her own (usually Kate shares that time with Maddie by reading her Bible to her.

Saturday

It's a great day to clean the house, get some errands done, catch up on everything you didn't get done all week, right?

Wrong. My house will have to wait. That seems to be a theme lately. Oh well, I'm busy making purple poop and pink hair and green dolphins and blue spiders. And, yes, I know it's not a "school day" but I couldn't help but get out the animal encyclopedia and explain the difference between a spider and an insect. And there's nothing like hot chocolate outside on a cool and windy spring day and introducing Teshome to his first marshmallow.

This and That and pictures

Last weekend we celebrated Maddie's 3rd birthday by letting her build a bear and then having lunch at McDonald's (her choice)- and not just burgers, shared fries, and waters, but HAPPY MEALS. I just about cracked up when we were parking and Kate said, with astonishment, "are we eating INSIDE?" I then realized that I have lived in this town for three years and I'm not sure I had ever seen the inside of our McDonald's!

Oh my stars!



On Monday we had a few families from church over for a Labor Day cookout. The children all had a blast making rivers in the sand box and swimming and playing on the swing set. Isabella especially enjoyed her crunchy dessert- sand! Why, I wonder, do small children not learn after the first bite that sand is not a yummy snack?!

This boy always has his face in a book. I'm very thankful that he LOVES to read, but once in awhile the fountain of animal facts is almost more than I can handle. For science this year Peter is studying one animal per week for 20 weeks. He is absolutely devouring this animal encyclopedia. I am amazed at his ability to retain the information! HE is actually homeschooling ME. Here he is "cleaning up his school area" so that he could play for awhile before lunch. I guess he couldn't put the book away without reading about tarantulas first!

Maddie's idea

The other day as I looked for an outfit for baby, Maddie pointed out a blue and green striped one. I told her it was for a boy and our baby is a girl. Very sweetly and innocently- in her best manipulative voice- she asked, "can we name it a boy?" If it were only that easy!