January 31st

The month of January has just flown by. Here we are, just about an hour until February starts. Where does the time go???

I think that we are making great strides these days with MinMin. About a week ago, as she was leaving to go shopping with Richard, she came over to tell me good-by, and gave me a hug. That was a first. She has always been willing to give hugs to Richard, and also to Lancy and Amanda, but not me. Today she got frustrated with her math, and went to her room crying. I left her for a few minutes, then went in to tell her it was time to get back to work. I took her hand and pulled her up, and gave her a hug. She gave me a hug back, and off she went to work again. I can really see a great change in her in being part of the family, playing with Taylor and LiAnne, wanting to help, to be involved. It is so great to see a child who went over 12 years without a family, learning to be part of a family. Makes all of the work, patience, annoying habits and the like well worth the effort.

School Days

This year is my 18th year of home schooling! Wow, that is pretty amazing. It is sure worth the effort when you sit down with a little boy learning to read, and he quickly reads through the blends and three letter words. Taylor was so proud of himself this morning that he read through the list with no help! Last year he attended the local Christian pre-school to help him learn Spanish. The teacher tried to get him to write letters, but he had great difficulty trying to draw circles. His coloring was pretty much just scribbles on the page----inside what lines? I think that he just hadn't had any practice in holding a pencil or using crayons before he came home. Now, a year later, he is learning to write, and this boy has the neatest writing! He can write most letters very nicely--even the first day that he learns them.

MinMin is making great strides in math and English. We have been working on a lot of the math basics--making sure that she really knows them before moving on to new things. She works very hard most days.....Her English is coming along nicely, as well. She is talking more and more and getting her point across. There are still times that she doesn't understand something we tell her, but for the most part she is understanding.

LiAnne likes to do school for about 10 mintues in the morning....then she asks if she can have a break yet. That is fine with me....I know that she is picking up quite a few things just hearing what the other kids are learning.

LiAnne--My Ballerina

There are not too many extra curricular type activities here in our little town, so when one of the ladies at church said that she was going to start ballet classes I knew that that was something LiAnne would enjoy. She went to her first class yesterday.....and loved it.

Now It's Time For Silly Songs With......Lancy

We are really going to miss having Lancy at home. The kids will miss her silly songs. Barbara Manatee, Oh Where is my Hairbrush, My Cheeseburger, and a dozen more. Many who know her as the serious Bible school student would be surprised at how silly she can be with her brother and sisters. She is always good for a game (she is playing Bingo with the kids right now), or a good movie (Nemo earlier today). Amanda, the champion Hide and Seek player, left last Thursday, and now Lancy will be leaving on Wednesday.

Here are some picture highlights of Life With Lancy.

Happy Birthday, Taylor!!

Tomorrow is Taylor's 6th birthday! Wow! He is growing up. Since Amanda leaves tomorrow morning, we are celebrating his birthday today. He has been so excited that it is HIS birthday......not MinMin's, not LiAnne's, but HIS. He wanted pancakes for breakfast, and didn't really care about the rest of the day, as long as he had cake. Lancy made him a piñata, so we filled it up with the candy that we have collected from other piñatas from the holidays, and will break that open once LiAnne wakes up from her nap.

So much for our wonderful, sunny weather. Actually, it continues to be sunny, but this morning was only 37. That is quite a change from the upper 50's we've had in the mornings. It is 56 now, so though we can't say we are freezing, it certainly isn't the upper 70's we had all month. No complaints though, we have been enjoying having the fire going today.

It was a bit of a hard day with homeschool today. MinMin has days when she does her math papers with no complaints, and gets done quickly. Then she has days like today when she cannot figure out what 10-9 is.....literally. It is soooo hard to be patient when she is in this mode. She finally got through with math, so I had her working on the names of body parts---arm, leg, fingers, waist, etc. She told me that she knew them all (she has been working on them for a few weeks) so I gave her a blank page with the body outline and told her to fill it in with the parts she had been learning. She got about 1/2 of them, and had a number spelled wrong. I had her write out the ones she missed, then had to ask her to do it over neatly, as it is hard to write neatly when you are mad. Well......you get the idea. She didn't want to do it, I insisted, and erased the messy ones to be done again, and again, and again. She went into her silent, staring off and ignoring me mode, which she does when she has had enough of me. So.......she finally finished school about 4:00 this afternoon, when we usually finish about noon. Now, you may be thinking that I am too hard on her, and should give her a break.....but she has had a couple of months of breaks, and she has to take school seriously if she is ever going to move ahead.

It has been really great having my two big girls home for the holidays. Amanda leaves tomorrow morning to head back to college in Missouri. Lancy leaves Friday morning. I will really miss having them home....