Weekly Wrap Up ~ Weeks 3 & 4

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It’s been a busy two weeks in our neck of the woods. From birthdays to promotions and everything in between its been good.

McKenzie turned 6 on Aug. 28th. Wow, my baby girl is 6. That time went by so fast! She is still a peanut compared to her peers but she is a fireball and can hold her own  

Since she was turning an even number, she was able to have a friend party. She choose to go to Chuck E Cheese, with 12 of her friends. I ended up booking the party at 930AM, which turns out to be the best time if you want to beat the crowds. We literally had the place to ourselves until about 1045ish.

After all was said and done she had amassed 3049 tickets, Oh, my! When we went to the redemption counter she was like “I want a tootsie roll”. Tootsie rolls are 10 points. After I guided her focus to the big prizes, things went smooth at the redemption counter and she picked some neat prizes that have not ended up broken and in the trash yet.

She was so happy and had a fun time with all of her friends that came to celebrate with us. Chuck E Cheese was great too spending time with McKenzie. Micah on the other hand wanted nothing to do with him, lol. Totally understandable…

After leaving the party I had sensory overload, big time! My head hurt so bad and it felt like I had ingested a whole 5 lb bag of sugar. Since I had errands to run to find the girls white shorts and to get Madison to her softball practice I drank a lot of water. Which in hindsight was not the best idea for this public restroom phobic girl.

Last Sunday my husbands command had a family photo session. The children were all to wear white shorts and the black command kids shirt or white onesie. Do you know how hard it is to find white shorts that are of decent length, Sheesh! I finally ended up going to the Goodwill and finding modest shorts for all the girls.

The picture was a great time. It was my first time meeting the CO/XO wives in person and many of my husbands co-workers too. One of the highlights of the day is when I went to get dressed and discovered that I thought I had a black dress to wear. I had a dress but upon looking at the tag it was a size 6…momentary panic set in because I didn’t know if it would fit and we were leaving in 20 minutes.

After rifling through my closet and doing a bunch of negative self talk I finally just sat down and said a prayer. I had two options, try on the black size 6 or wear the size 8 black one with flowers. Lets just say I jumped for joy when I actually tried on the solid black dress…it fit! I have been exercising and eating correctly and the hard work paid off that day. I am so glad, because I would have been the only one in flowers.

This week on Tuesday afternoon I got one of the best calls from my husband. He was busy running errands preparing for his upcoming trip and he called and said that he was on the promotion list! Praise God! All of the hard work and sacrifice of being away is paying off. Good job babe, so proud of you!

Wedesday Mikayla started her PT routine. It’s rough guys. The clinic is 45 – 60 minutes away with traffic and Wednesday alone I was cut off by two drivers. I now know why my husband leaves so early for work to beat the crazy drivers who feel like they own the road. The appointments are 45 minutes long and we are already seeing improvement in her ankle/foot and flexibility. The therapist works with a lot of the gymnasts who come in so it’s a win-win situation.

Want to hear a funny story? One morning last week we dropped Mikayla off at the gym and as we were leaving a blue van just like our old one pulled in. Right away, I exclaimed to the girls, “that’s our van”! I don’t know what it was but immediately I knew it was ours. When we came back to pick her up in the afternoon, it was there again. The new owner came out and talked with me about something else and complimented my new van. I told him we had just sold a van like the new one he bought. I am glad the new owner will enjoy the van just as much as we did. Funny how things work out.

On the school front, things have been progressing well over the last few weeks. McKenzie is having trouble with spelling her words on paper now that they have gotten more challenging. She can say them orally, but when she goes to write them she mixes the letters up or writes a completely different word than I said. I may drop the testing part for her and just focus on oral spelling for now. Her reading is progressing along great. She enjoys reading and especially enjoys doing her math lessons and the Explode the Code workbook. This weekend I am hoping to make a schedule similar to the one that Carissa made over at 1+1+1=1. McKenzie is always asking what she has to do and I think the visual will work will for her.

Montana is doing well in her lessons. She excels at her spelling and enjoys doing her Bible readings along with history. Saxon Math 3 does not seem to be a challenge for her yet, but she is still in the review phase. She enjoyed having her friend over on Thursday morning to play while I taught science. We still have not added science or Latin in for her, but I plan to next week for sure!

Mikayla will finally be starting morning training on Tuesday {hooray}. I look forward to the routine and having a set school time. It was tricky these last few weeks getting in her school time with summer schedule in full swing, but I think we managed well. She started General Science on Thursday. I teach her and 3 other girls at our house. I think that this will be one of her most challenging subjects this year because of the workload, but I hope to make it fun for them all so we learn a lot too. We are also adding in a study on mental toughness as part of her logic study. I am hoping this will help train her brain and break the cycle of “I can’t” on the beam.

Madison has been plugging away at school. She is a good student and gets her work done. However, I don’t think she is actually spending enough time in each subject to fully master the material. So, starting next week I am going to set the timer for her and she needs to spend the prescribed amount of time on each subject. It’s one thing to complete your lessons, but if you are not showing the results of completing those lessons on the test, in my opinion you are just wasting your time.

I take full responsibility, I may have been giving her too much leeway, but I am glad I caught it now instead of weeks from now. Madison is a smart girl, I want to help her succeed now early on in her high school career so that when she too leaves for college she will be prepared. So we are making some changes…

Micah is just plain cute every.single.day! He is a joy and keeping him busy while doing lessons is a challenge some days, but he is well worth it! I love that he will “color” and “draw” in his notebook for short periods of time and he loves to look at books and read. His vocabulary is increasing each day and he is saying more and more words and less signing.

Marie is doing well at Liberty! She has had her first two tests and scored in the high 90’s on both Math and Evangelism exams. She was upset with herself because she wanted to get 100%. That’s my girl, the overachiever This weekend is the first football game and she is going to go with a group of friends from her dorm. She doesn’t really like football, but I am glad she is going!

How has your week been? Have you started school yet? I am linking up this post, stop on by and see what other homeschoolers have done this week.