The P's in My Life

Preschool:

Halloween Preschool was at my house last Thursday. We pretty much just had a party. :) We read a bunch of Halloween stories. Then we played musical chairs and Halloween Bingo. Then we had a snack, candy corns, colored goldfish, and water with gummy-worm ice cubes. For our last activity we made spider webs out of paper plates and yarn, and colored spiders to go inside. 

 Ivan's spider web.

Adelia's spider web

Piano Lessons:

We've had our piano for awhile now, so I figured the next step was to sign the kids up for lessons. There is the sweetest lady in my ward who teaches, but she had a baby a few months ago, so I was giving her a little space before I contacted her about piano lessons. The other day she posted on the ward Facebook page that she had openings in some of her classes so I jumped on it, and signed Ivan and Lincoln up. Ivan will be doing a preschool class, and Linc will be doing a class one level up from that. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. 

Aaron was a little concerned about how we were going to fit the cost of piano lessons into the budget. So I did some fast talking and we came up with a compromise that leads me to my next P.

Potty Training:

In order to pay for piano lessons, I told Aaron that I would stop buying diapers for Adelia. We buy her one giant size box of diapers a month, and not doing so anymore will give me the money I need to cover piano lessons. So I guess I'm finally getting serious about potty training the child. Because soon she won't have any diapers left. *Sigh* I hate, hate, hate, HATE potty training. We've been halfheartedly, on-again-off-again training her for the last six months or so. But now it's time to get down to some serious business. Which basically means, training myself to set a timer to take her potty every hour and a half or so. I think that's what I hate the worst, is trying to remember to take them, and then the knock-down drag-out, kicking, screaming, fit they throw EVERY time you tell them it's time to go potty. And poor Del, you know all that "make it fun", read stories, sing songs, play games, eat snacks, etc. that you do when your first child is potty training? Well, she ain't gettin' none of that. I do not have the time/energy/patience/mental capacity for it the third time around. Sorry kid. She's doing pretty good though. She went all day yesterday without any accidents. And all this week with only one accident per day. Oh I hate potty training! 

Progress:

One of my most favorite curricula that we are using this year is All About Spelling. I am in love with learning the rules of spelling. I feel gypped that I was never taught these rules in school. We've been doing level 1, and Lincoln is just clipping along. Which I had planned on him doing, level 1 is fairly easy, and way below his reading level, but I wanted to do it anyway, just to make sure we had all the rules down, and to build a good foundation for the harder things that will come in level 2 & 3. We got level 2 in the mail yesterday, and I'm really excited to get started on it. 

I'm also really happy with how Lincoln's handwriting is coming along. We aren't doing anything that specifically targets handwriting for him right now, but he does a lot of other writing, and I try to remind him to use good penmanship, and I think he's doing well. There are still a few letters that he gets backwards, and he still had trouble with lowercase b and d, but overall I'm really pleased. 

Our grass is also making some progress. Hopefully the recent cold spell doesn't kill it off.

Programming:

The other night, I was telling Aaron how I think that computer programming is going to be a really important skill to have, because technology and computers are everywhere. I told him that I was going to be useless in teaching this skill to our children, so it was going to be completely up to him to do so. In my mind I was thinking several years down the road from now...but Aaron had other ideas. The last few mornings he has been teaching Lincoln some very basic programming skills using a program called Scratch. Right now he's helping Lincoln work through the tutorials, and once he gets the hang of that, then Aaron's plan is to make up challenges for Lincoln to complete each day. Aaron says there is enough stuff to learn using Scratch to keep Linc busy until he's about 10. :) So that's fun. And what's even better is that Lincoln is enjoying it. He is forever asking Aaron when he can get back on the computer and do more Scratch. 

Pretty:

It's snowed a little bit around here, but it's only sticking in the mountains. I like this picture with the snowy mountains behind the fall leaves and the barns and the harvested corn field. I took this picture while standing in my very own driveway. It doesn't get much better than that. 

My children were very excited about the snow. They ran right out onto the patio and tried to catch the flakes in their mouths. Adelia didn't even bother with shoes. Silly girl. 

Party:

On Sunday we got to go over to Aaron's parent's house to celebrate Aaron's Dad's birthday. It was a fun party!

Priceless:

Our neighbor took this picture of Aaron in Sunday School and said he was going to post it on the ward Facebook page. :) He didn't, but I thought the picture was hilarious anyways. I guess daylight savings really got to Aaron this year. Ha!  

Play:

I love when my kids play together (happily). I went up to put Ollie down for a nap the other morning, and I came back down to see them sitting on the floor crowded around the latest Highlights magazine, listening to Lincoln read it out loud. These are the kind of moments that make home schooling 100% worth it to me. They wouldn't have as many opportunities to do this if Lincoln were at school all day long. 

I love this wild 'n crazy child. Her latest fashion statement is the monster beanie with flip-flops.

I wasn't feeling well the other day, so when Aaron got home from work he took all the kids to the park to let them run off some energy. I guess even Ollie got in on the action.