Can't believe my last entry was Halloween and that was a whole month ago, and here we are starting to drag out the Christmas decorations. November flew by with most weeks having at least a day off school or an asynchronous day. There was the election buzz, date night Veteran's Day, lacrosse tournaments, Thanksgiving. I didn't take a ton of pictures but overall, it was a smooth month with the usual play dates, grinning and bearing through online school, work, and a few activities.
Saturday afternoon girls' time...skating with the Bakers. Julia has made loads of progress and started an extra Saturday practice for being in the Nutcracker on Ice. It will be a mostly virtual performance, but she will be one of only two soldiers, so it will be an opportunity for her to shine. She is so shy about people watching her do things (aside from performances at the Bakers') and will never try being in a play at school or anything like that, so I'm super excited for her to try this! Allie is slowly getting the hang of skating too. She is such a cautious kid and was priding herself on never falling on the ice...which can be attributed partly to her sense of balance, but mostly to her moving at the rate of an inch a minute. When we take her to the public skating session, she spends about 20 minutes making one circle around the ice while holding on to the wall. I'm just happy she doesn't scream like she did when we tried to get her to swim.
Girls in their Mimi-made dresses. Julia always makes a style her own. :) This was our one outdoor church service this fall.
I don't know how I got this phantom finger picture. I was booking it to zumba one day when Gray rode up beside me, on his way to find his buddy Will, and insisted we race. Later found this on my phone.
This is what I call Gray living his best life in online school. Sarcasm aside, it's been an organizational challenge for him to get everything done, on time, directions followed, all pages complete, and that elusive "submit" button pushed. I have worked really hard with him and I think he's made progress, but still a ways to go. I've also been working a lot with him on his writing, which has been a source of angst (well, more like anguish) over the years. He has great thoughts, but needs some pushing to get them on the paper/screen. With online school, there's no getting your paper back with red edits so you know what you missed, which makes it easier for him to say "oh well" and just turn in the same quality work the next time. He's starting to get it, though. They are currently studying Romeo and Juliet, and after seeing that he was attempting to answer the questions without having read the text, we have started reading it and discussing out loud. Hoping that helps! I've also spent a lot of time with Julia and fractions and- Thank you, LORD!- she is getting it and starting to see some success in math. She has been so proud to find that she has been able to do some of her homework successfully on her own and have some good test scores too. It is painstaking work and so nice to have progress!
Too much time on our hands = a bit of silly.
Allie was so proud of her little turkey! I'm happy she is still getting to do some hands-on fun stuff during online kindergarten. She got to see her teacher twice in the last month while picking up materials for crafts. In spite of the challenges, she is definitely learning. She is writing full sentences now (the queen of phonetic spelling!) and reading a good bit too.
Perhaps the most interesting part of our month was the lacrosse tournament weekend. Bright and early Saturday morning, Matt and Gray headed out for Gray's games about 1 1/2 hours away. They ended at lunch time and stopped by Cracker Barrel on the way home. Meanwhile about the same time, I was dropping the girls off with the Bakers and heading to the tournament with Joshua for his afternoon/evening games. On the way there, I got a call from Matt saying his wheel had fallen off his truck in the Cracker Barrel parking lot. Yikes. Thank you LORD he was not on the interstate. I don't know all the inner workings of the truck, but some kind of big bolt must have been wearing away and then maybe with the addition of the extra big wheels and tires that he added a few weeks ago, it finally snapped and the wheel just- THUNK- fell right off. So I dropped Joshua at the game, picked up Gray and Matt from being towed to the mechanic, and we caught two of Joshua's games before heading home to get the girls. We definitely had some reflection on things to be thankful for, such as the various friends who took care of the girls, recommended a reliable mechanic, brought Joshua home. Above is Gray during Joshua's game, riveted to his cat warrior book. (Please let him finish this never-ending series soon!) He's such a unique guy who is "all in" on whatever it is he's enjoying at the moment.
Day 2 of the tournament; I took both boys and we had to leave at 5:30am to get there! I really enjoy watching them, though, and this tournament was really good about making sure the crowd was wearing masks and keeping apart, so it was fun to have a day outside somewhere different. Above is Joshua on the left at his last game in which the coach told the boys to all switch positions. Joshua played defense with a long stick and had the best time. The team almost won and it was so fun to see their smiles and excitement out there, considering all the losses they have had. One thing's for sure, my boys have learned how to get knocked down and get up and try again through sports. :) After the games, I took the boys by Cracker Barrel to get some white elephant gifts and then to Subway to get food. On the way home, I marveled at how easy it was to spend the day with them and how, when they were baby and toddler and I would travel back and forth between Durham and Fort Mill while Matt was deployed, I thought it would never be easy to go on a car trip. I remember someone was always screaming and I spent half the drive launching food and toys into the back seat to try to keep them quiet. I feel, just a little bit, like we have arrived.
Again, too much time on our hands. This was an effort to capture Raven "holding" the leash that Allie put around Gray the Pug's neck.
We had a couple day phase of fort building...with every cushion and blanket we own. Good times.
Thanksgiving was great. We gathered at Matt's parents for some really delicious food (I can't believe I used to not like Thanksgiving because the food was so unappealing to my picky tastes), conversation, and games.
Nanny was sweet to play with the girls, who were too young for the game the rest of us played for hours...
And here we are approaching December and trying to get all ready for Christmas! It has been great to have a couple days off from kindergarten. Most of the teachers and our director were so hoping we could have a plan for going back to school in person in January. It can be so tough trying to effectively teach little ones how to read and write through the screen and so often we are thinking how simple it would be if we were working right beside them. But our board voted no on any plan for January, which was discouraging. It's been nice to have this break to regroup a little and mentally prepare for more of the same. My own kids are supposedly going back starting mid-January, so we shall see what new challenges and blessings await after Christmas. For now, Christmas spirit, here we come! Three weeks of school before break, plus (hopefully) some holiday fun with friends and family along the way. As always, so much to be thankful for, including a new job for Matt on the horizon and (this week) my older sister and her husband getting to visit the child they have waited so long to adopt in Haiti. Blessings abounding around here! Happy Holidays!
