Thankful Thursday

1. Paul's parents arrived back home from Florida yesterday afternoon. They left on February 14 and stayed a bit longer than expected due to Paul's mom being hospitalized for a week down there.

2. Paul has a phone interview tomorrow with a community college in Maryland! Seven of the first nineteen applications resulted in at least a phone interview. I've submitted 29 applications for him thus far. Hopefully he'll also hear from some of the more recent applications. We are very ready to be off this emotional roller coaster. I would love to know if we're moving or not so I know whether or not to put the house on the market and start packing. Since I went through that in vain last year, I've decided to hold off until one of us has an actual job offer this time around.

3. We enjoyed the maple sugaring program at Montour Preserve on Saturday (field trip!).

4. Ian learned how to write all his uppercase letters a few days ago, and he also became totally independent with going to the bathroom last weekend! He needs to work on using an appropriate amount of toilet paper, but other than that he's got it all figured out.

5. Nadia is making great progress with reading. I took three videos of her yesterday (see below). One is of her reciting the Lord's Prayer (she's supposed to learn it for Sunday School), another is of her reciting three of her verses for Sparks, and one is of her reading part of a Junie B. Jones book on my Kindle. This hit the nail on the head in that it's long enough to feel like a good accomplishment to her but at her independent reading level. She needed very little help reading the first few chapters yesterday afternoon. I'm not really keen on the series though due to the excessive use of words like "dumb," "stupid," "hate," etc. I'll keep looking.

6. We enjoy checking out books from the library every week. For example, we've been enjoying So you want to be President, Matchbox Diary, and Who says women can't be doctors? The story of Elizabeth Blackwell this week (just three of the many I checked out on Monday).

7. Oliver and I really enjoyed the chicken corn soup I made on Tuesday. Unfortunately, Nadia and Ian didn't like it. Tough luck. I'll be making it again some day. Yummy! I also am enjoying the pecan pie I made last night.

8. My mouth feels SO much better than it did last week. One small part of my palate is still tender, and I still have putty covering three of my teeth, but other than that my mouth feels normal. Hopefully I'll get a good report on Monday that the gum grafts were a success.

9. Nadia and Ian are looking forward to attending a Dr. Seuss's birthday party at the library this evening! If you go by the number of books we own by a particular author, our favorite authors would seem to be Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, Sandra Boynton, Patricia Polacco, Jane Yolen, Laura Numeroff, Doreen Cronin, Jan & Stan Berenstain, Jonathan London, Margaret & H.A. Rey, Ezra Jack Keats, Leo Lionni, Mercer Mayer, Kevin Henkes, Peggy Parish, and Robert Munsch.

10. Nadia finished her Sparks book for the second time last night! She was given an extra credit book to work on for the next few weeks. She was the first Kindergartner to finish her book this year. Way to go, Nadia!