For the last ten weeks Luke, Isabel and many of their friends have been running a marathon in chunks at a time. Today, all of the children in the Las Vegas area that participated got to run the final stretch together at the Mandalay Bay. They got T-shirts and medals. We are so proud of them!
Since we have started school again we've been doing a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule (with the exception of Math every day.) Today Luke and Isabel finished their math worksheets before I was even up out of bed. Now they are playing at a friend's house and later my good friend will take them to their children's church Christmas choir practice. With only two at home now I guess that means I should either clean something or take a nap (Gee, I wonder which one I'll choose.) Joey has been doing some crazy online shopping lately. I guess being a computer programmer and being surrounded every day at work by other computer nerds (I mean geniuses, of course) he knew about all kinds of online black Friday (or was it black Monday for online) deals. One day we got seven packages and the next day when we got four more the mail lady told me she wants to be at our house for Christmas. Yesterday Joey even got his new bike in the mail. This is just an extra long story to say that Joey bought me an MP3 player online and has introduced me to the world of podcasts (I know I know, welcome to five years ago.) Hazel is such a slow eater so in the night when I am feeding her I listen to a podcast or two. We also love to download stories for the kids to listen to in the car. Our favorites are Doctor Floyd and Story Nory.
I was worried about starting school this week but knew that having my kids on a schedule would really help. It has. What also helps a lot is that Joey has been getting the kids up, ready, and working on their math in the morning to give me some extra time to sleep, feed Hazel or just to get myself together. Luke has been asking me about World War 1 lately and it made me realize that I sure don't know much about it. On the library's website I have requested a lot of children's books on the subject. I know that my grandmother has a memory of the celebration of the end of the war in 1918 so I wrote her a letter requesting a written account of it.
It is always more difficult to know and figure out what Isabel is interested in. Right now I am reading the book, Kirsten's Surprise: A Christmas Story (American Girls Collection.) Isabel seems to be enjoying it and so far I think it is a great way to teach history or just time periods.
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