Monday, September 29, 2008

A Very Busy Month

We have been a very busy tribe lately. Lowell has been busy helping some of our friends; one of them moved and a couple of them have needed his help mechanically. Some exciting news is that his friend who moved had a trampoline and didn't want to take it with him so, now we are the proud owners of a huge trampoline. The kids have gotten really good at doing cartwheels and sommersaults as well as some semi=dangerous flips. Lowell loves it when they roll around and get crazy hair from the static electricity. :) The kids absolutely love everything about it and our house has been overrun with kids lately! :) Steve and Stephanie have come down for dinner a couple of times and their girls all love to jump on the trampoline - even Ashley who is 20 months old! :) Our other friends, Matt and Shara have come over as well. I love being able to get together with their family because the adults get a long really well = Lowell even enjoys talking to Matt!! (Lowell's not much of a socialite. :)) And they have kids who are the same ages and the same sexes as ours. Nathan plays with Carson, Chloe with Jaycee and Jillian with Kyla! It's a wonderful combination. Shara and I are trying to get something together at her house later this week because the kids just love to be together. We're so blessed! :) I'm glad that I'm making connections with other families because winter is coming. When winter arrives, Lowell will be working 14 and 15 hour days. It will be very helpful for me and for the kids to have friends t0 visit so that we don't miss Daddy too much. I've been really appreciating Daddy lately. He's such a goof ball and so much more fun than I am. The kids just love playing with him and his antics are great for comic relief. His childish behavior is almost irrestible and while I sometimes find it incredible annoying (when I'm feeling superior and stuffy) most of the time its such a joy. I love hearing the kids laugh and I love that he is willing to get down and really play with them. I tend to get really caught up in the cleaning and teaching and rules. Lowell is my balance. I'm truly grateful for him! :)


In addition to lots of playing, we've also been working! Nathan just got Student of the Month on Friday! :) He was surprised and thrilled. At the beginning of the year I noticed that he was never raising his hand to answer any questions in class even though I knew he knew the answer. So I bribed him a little to get him to learn to raise his hand and how he can't stay in his seat! He jumps up with his hand as high as it can go and he gets disappointed when the teacher doesn't call on him. :) He loves the opportunity to show what he knows. Chloe has been tackling her "homework" with gusto. She is listening to the work I do with Nathan and learning a lot of letter sounds and even some of his sight words! Jillian still loves her school. Her favorite thing is that she knows the kids. She tells me "That's Leslie's mom", or "There goes Pablo". She loves that she's connected to a group. I am still working at the school 3 or 4 days a week. I really enjoy being so involved with what the kids are doing. I like knowing what they're learning and how they're learning it so that I can reinforce it with my own "lessons" at home. I try to make life a learning experience, but sometimes I'm just too pooped! :) I'll probably have to cut out one of the days at school when I start classes again at the end of October, but for now, I'm going to take advantage of my freedom. And I've started reading again. Until recently, I hadn't read a novel for pleasure in about a year. I've missed it! With Nathan learning to read, I also wanted to demonstrate to him how much fun it is to read. We're still packing... Slowly but surely. Lowell is working on getting our cars ready to make the trip to Arizona and I'm going through our whole house weeding things out and paring down wherever possible. We're trying to move as little stuff as possible and we're planning on furnishing our house with yard sale and garage sale finds. I love to go to garage sales and Lowell is being really sweet about it! :) He said that he promises to let me go yard sale-ing every weekend until we get the stuff we need. :) That might be too much, even for me! :) Of course, one concern with being busy is that we tend to leave God out of our lives. The busier we get, the easier it is to leave out prayer time or Bible time. I know I'm completely guiltly. This week our pastor has challenged us to read for 5 minutes every day from the book of James. Seems sad that I have to struggle to budget 5 minutes of my day to my Heavenly Father but its a step. And I'm getting better! :) I just need to make today better than yesterday and accept that God knew I was going to fail, He knows how imperfect I am and He's okay with it. In fact, He's glad that I need Him so desperately. I, on the other hand, am glad that He is so completely trustworthy and capable. We are so infinitely blessed! :) So, I'm going to go read James before I have to start on dinner. God Bless!

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