With HSB being so terribly slow and my life so terribly frantic, I haven't had a chance to update my blog recently. Well, I'm not that frantic but just plain busy with Christmas plans, school, work, and all the rest of life.
Ken had an interview for an underwriter position at his current place of employment yesterday. It wouldn't mean more money right away. In fact, we may end up making less for about 3-6 months because they work less hours. After that time frame, the pay goes up and it can be substantial. We are praying that if this is what the Lord wills for us, he will get the position.
Nathan and Katie are both doing fine. Nate has finished his Beta math book and I just ordered Gamma. He's been practicing his multiplication tables and is doing well for just starting. He is definitely math minded like his momma. We just finished school for the rest of the year and will restart the second week of January. That gives me a few weeks to prepare my lessons. We're kinda all over the place with Sonlight, so I'm going to try to get us all on one week again. Nathan also decided that he wants to be graded to help stay accountable. I purchased his report card for this next semester yesterday. I never thought a kid would be excited about a report card, but the concrete numbers help motivate him. He also began a spelling program online at www.spellingtime.com. He's really enjoying it and since spelling is not a difficult subject for him, I have no problem letting him go at it alone. His spelling test results are emailed to me and there's some games on the site that he gets to play after completing his assignments. Did I mention it's FREE? The owner of the site was very helpful too when I had a problem. We have found some other educational sites where he can play games and take quizzes. He loves it even when he's learning since he doesn't get much video game time. We don't have any of the video game systems except a gameboy which is only allowed about once a week.
Katie's been busy getting into trouble. She is a two year old terror on the loose. Her favorite activities are cleaning the carpet with Windex, drinking toilet water from her tea cups, and saying "but Mom..." to me after every request. She still has no interest in potty training. In fact, she's quite content with sitting in a dirty diaper for hours if I don't notice the smell right away. When she's not getting into everything and being a complete brat, she's lots of fun and quite adorable. She recognizes about half of her letters and is doing better with shapes and colors. We are using and enjoying the Brighter Vision materials that come to our house once a month. I also purchased Get ready, Get set, and Go for the Code for her to use. We won't start until the summer or later if necessary. Oh yeah, I finally ordered the Leapfrog Letter Factory and Leapfrog Math DVD. I've heard such good things about these DVD's. I was going to make it a Christmas present for Katie, but everywhere I went, they were sold out. Finally I ordered them online along with Schoolhouse Rock. Yeah, the one we all grew up on is out on DVD with the 46 original songs and lots of extras for less than 15 dollars. I was so excited listening to clips of songs with Nathan that we had to order it.
The Lord has blessed us recently with some extra money which has been put to good use. We were able to have gifts for the kiddos, pay down some bills, and I was able to buy some of next year's curriculum. I know that seems way too early to buy, but I have to do it slowly so since we had the money that is what we decided to do.
So everything here is going well. It's odd to have almost 60 degree weather the week of Christmas. We've had one bad snow so far this winter and the rest of the weather has been pretty mild. This week was quite rainy, so I was thankful that the temps were all above freezing so that we didn't have to deal with the snow and ice. Although I wouldn't mind a white Christmas, I really would prefer the weather being nice for my job.
I pray that everyone has a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!! | 