Tuesday, September 28, 2010

long time, no write

Sorry for falling off the blogosphere. We've been busy, but I haven't felt much like blogging. Still, I know grandparents and aunts and on occasion random strangers like to see photos and read updates. Sooo...here we go.

In early September, Nelson's parents blessed us with a trip to visit his grandparents in California. Sarah and Natalie got to see their grandparents, great-grandparents, and aunt and uncle all in one fell swoop! It was a wonderful visit, and we loved every minute. I need to get pictures of that posted, but they're still hiding out in the camera.

We've started school, and Sarah is doing a fabulous job. She reads extremely well and (just as important to me) loves it! She devours print right now--picture books, magazines, comics, and so on. She loves to draw as well, so I bought a book called Drawing with Children that she is excited to begin. She even seems to like doing math, which is a bit weird to me (I never enjoyed math). I'm really pleased.

Tuesday mornings we go to a local homeschool co-op at a nearby church. Sarah is in the kindergarten class, and she loves it. She looks forward to it all week, which I think is great. On Wednesdays, I have my Bible study at Celebration Church. This is another highlight for Sarah, who loves the children's class she gets to attend while I'm with the adults. (Natalie goes to both co-op and Celebration Church. She does well, but she's not really enthused about either yet.) ;)

Since I'm not sure these pictures ever really got posted to Facebook where anyone could actually view them, I'll mention that back in July Sarah did swimming lessons. A local college girl taught them at her family's house, in their private pool. Sarah and Natalie both loved the water! Sarah is still very much a beginner, but she showed a lot of improvement. Natalie absolutely could not wait for the end of the lesson each day, when "free swim" started, and she could get in the water too! I got so tickled at how excited she got each day as I put her swimsuit on her--she knew what that meant!

One of the other moms took some pictures for me, so I'll attach a few of them here, and then try again to get them to show up properly on Facebook! Ridiculously out-of-date photos are better than none at all, right?


All the swimmers practicing their kicks....




Yeah, it's a picture of me. Don't get used to it. Just focus on Natalie, okay?




I LOVE this picture of Sarah swimming underwater!




Miss Abi giving instruction...




Sarah never did get brave enough to jump off the diving board. But on the last day, she DID agree to jump into the deep end if Miss Abi would catch her. I was so proud--this was HUGE progress!