Becca Dating & Driving :)

Becca had a great time at the Halloween dance.  She is enjoying her new friend group and I think that what she thought was going to be the worst curse of her life (moving) has turned into an incredible blessing.  And now that she has her driver's license, she can run errands for me and hang out without me having to drop her off.

At the Young Women in Excellence "Night of the Stars" she displayed her virtue project - completing the Book of Mormon.

Time Flies!

The greatest blessing for me this month is that she has been cooking the majority of our meals in exchange for me doing her kitchen cleanup chores.  Definitely a sweet deal for me.

Free Family Fun

 A few weeks ago we were invited by our friends to come play family games.  We had a blast playing chair soccer, poison, and some other fun group games.  Daniel was super disappointed that he had to miss it because he was at scout camp. Feeling so blessed to be surrounded by awesome neighbors!

Victory and Defeat

 Jacob took 2nd place in the varsity wrestling tournament.  I missed the first matches where he quickly pinned his opponents, and only made it for the grueling match of the championship round where he got a nosebleed from being thrown hard against the mat and faced defeat, but the amazing thing is that he always has such a positive outlook on life.  Afterwards he was optimistic despite the tough match.  Wrestling is definitely not for the faint of heart.
His attitude carries over into other areas in life too.  When he misses the bus, he thinks everything is just fine because he can just walk in the cold and get there in time.  He astounds me with his ability to bounce back when things are rough.  His grades in Math are less than stellar even though he has turned in all of his work and spends significant amounts of time studying and doing  homework.  But he just rolls with it and keeps on trying, going early, redoing things until he gets it right even if it he doesn't get the perfect grade.  I could seriously benefit from more of his don't quit attitude, because although my perfectionist tendencies paid off with scholarships and some nice piano pieces, too often I struggle seeing what is not good instead of having the hope that I can always get better and enjoying the good parts of life.

Let's Play

 

I enrolled Joshua in Let's Play Music this year and I totally love the curriculum, the bonding experience and musical play we enjoy together each week.  He doesn't love to practice at home(none of my kids got that gene from my :( ! ) but I love hearing him spontaneously sing the songs we've been learning.  I've been contemplating becoming a trained teacher for their company for several years because I love incorporating the element of play in music teaching and working with young children and their curriculum is so carefully sequenced and comprehensive while being fun at the same time.  Making decisions like this are not easy for me because I analyze so much and have to weigh in my time and energy constraints, financial costs and potential, my strengths and inadequacies, time management with the increasing demands of my large family, my need for creative outlets, etc.

After a lot of deliberating, weighing the pros and cons, discussion and prayer I made a difficult decision this week that I've been going back and forth on for a long time.  I decided to stick with teaching private piano lessons because it is a better fit for my current family situation even though that means letting go of an opportunity for now. 

 I am eating up the moments that I get to do learning activities with Josh during the day.  I'm not ready for this chapter of my life to be closing soon.  I love how he is fascinated with counting.  He skip counts the numbers on my Kitchenaide (2, 4,6,8) when we're making bread, and wants to take his time when reading stories so he can count objects on the page.  He loved fishing for numbers and finally made the connection between the digits and the teens when we "married" the matches (2 &12, 3 &13, 4 & 14, etc.) by putting pink paper clips on all teens and blue ones on all the single digits and then matched them up.

 Making playdough snakes

He is such a social little guy that I have to keep fetching him from the new neighbors house because he wants to go play with their older kids.  He's lucky to have several friends his own age close.

 He entertains himself often by playing creatively and makes me laugh.

Sometimes I get too caught up in teaching preschool concepts, that he doesn't get the spiritual focus that I gave my oldest kids when they were little and we listened to primary songs and read simplified scriptures more consistently because I wasn't running around to tons of activities.  So lately I've been trying to watch scripture videos together with him while we eat lunch.

 He was so excited for the first day of preschool because he got to have Rebecca as his teacher.

 Afterward he played 2 hours straight making playdough creations with his new preschool friend who lives nearby.