Life

Normally my life is an open book. I don't usually have a problem sharing my deepest thoughts and feelings. But there comes a time in each life when you must keep your heart to yourself. That is where I currently find myself. I feel like I want to put it out here in print so that I can read it and understand myself better but then there is that fear that I will be misunderstood or that someone will take my words and use them against me. So I will keep my heart between me and the Lord (and Mike) and allow him to work in my life. Thankfully He knows what's going on. :)

We've been sick for the past 4 days now. Ethan started us on Friday. He had to go to the couch halfway through our school day. Abigail joined him a bit later. Mike came home from work early and he was sick. Alison joined the sick team on Sunday morning and I joined Sunday evening. Blake woke up today throwing up and then Alison joined the throw up party. AHHH. Alison & I still have fevers and body aches. I am not a weenie Mom and I don't call the pediatrician for everyone bump and bruise but I must confess that the swine flu talk has gotten me rather paranoid. I might give us another day or so and then I'll call. Hopefully tomorrow we are feeling better. We had to miss the homeschool co-op today which I hated to do.

Speaking of SCHOOL.... here is a quick rundown of each of the kids and what they are doing well at or struggling at:

Abigail- Age 9, 4th Grade: Doing well with her writing book and her cursive. She is SUPER at spelling. Even math is going well this year. (Last year multiplication was a tad bit stressful on occasion) She is struggling with FOCUS. I have to keep her attention quite often and she is always wanting to help others with understanding their directions. While I LOVE her heart for wanting to help out, she must let me be the teacher and do her work.

Ethan- age 7 1/2, 2nd Grade: LOVES math. Language/Letters & Sounds workbooks are painless. With him we end up fighting about his writing book. He has to really use his imagination and THINK on his own which he doesn't enjoy doing. He wants me to sit there and tell him what to write and tell him how to spell words. He doesn't like spelling things wrong and he doesn't want to guess and go. (On sloppy copies this is fine) I LOVE this writing book and recommend it to all homeschool fams. It takes your kid through the writing process. By the end of the book they will do a research paper and be able to "publish" their own report. I buy hard cover books with blank pages inside for them to copy their report into and then draw pictures.

Blake- age 5 3/4, 1st Grade: LOVES EVERYTHING. No fights at all. :) He just finished all 72 of his readers this past Friday. He's read all of our Dr. Seuss books, too. We are going to start checking out books from the library. If I had to pick one area where he struggles I'd have to say handwriting. His issue is that in the Abeka curriculum half of the books have 4 lines and half of the books have 7 lines- three of which are lightly dotted. That is too much for Blake so whenever he uses a 7-line book he gets confused and his letters aren't written exactly right on the lines. They still line up with each other correctly but they don't fall on the lines correctly. No big deal really. As long as he can write it correctly on the 4 line paper then I'm fine.

Alison- age almost 4: No school. She LOVES to sit at the table and work on her workbook. She is an expert at cutting and pasting. lol. Her struggle is that Momma often asks her to go out of the room because she doesn't always know how to sit and be quiet. :)

Chase- 6 months: He is happy but his struggle is that his naptime is changing and he seems to be needing Momma right when I want to start school.

Okay, this post is super long. If anyone made it to the end, thanks for reading. :)