VERY Thankful Thursday

1. We had a fabulous time at Knoebels last Saturday. The weather was great, all three kids had a blast, the prices of the tickets were very reasonable, and memories were made!

2. We have scheduled two vacations - one in the Poconos (near the Delaware River) in May and one in Orlando in July! YAY!

3. I was scheduled to have a phone interview with Penn State Abington on May 14, but I cancelled it because Paul was offered the job at Bucknell today! I am SOOOOO thankful that we don't have to move, and I get to stay home with the kids for another year. Maybe Paul's opinion regarding teaching will change over the course of the year, but he's also planning to expand his research in a biological direction to make it easier to get a job in industry in the future should he decide he doesn't want to pursue another job in higher education. I'm calling the Realtor and telling her we are not putting our house on the market for at least another year! We get a break from interviews and applications. YAHOO! This month is getting off to a much better start than April did!

4. Oliver has been waking up too early ever since his stay in the hospital (usually around 5:45am). On Tuesday he woke up at 6:05, which was a slight improvement, but I didn't go get him right away and he went back to sleep (which didn't happen the other times I had tried this) and slept until EIGHT o'clock!! He slept for 12 hours! I thought this would translate to a short nap that afternoon, but he still took a one hour nap. Let me say he was in a MUCH better mood on Tuesday than he was on Monday.
Sleep does a body good! He woke up at 6:45am yesterday and today (woohoo!). Since I've been waking up early every morning, I went to bed at 8:15pm on Monday night, which is not something I want to do on a regular basis.

5. I wasn't planning to sign Nadia up for the next session of gymnastics because it ends
sometime in June. I was planning on starting her back up in the fall for a variety of reasons (the cost of the lessons, how hot the gym gets in June, the fact we'll start swimming most days in June, etc.). She kept begging and begging and begging me to sign her up for the next session. One of her motivations was wanting to be in the gymnastics showcase on June 7. The last two years she was in a ballet/tap recital in June. I found a class on Tuesday nights, which I thought would work out better since
she has soccer practice on Monday nights and the musical rehearsals will start soon on Wednesday nights (same church where they go to AWANA). Plus the Tuesday night class starts at 6:30, which means Paul can help out. Oliver doesn't do very well at the library these days. He is LOUD. I discovered on Tuesday night that a lot of other parents don't sign their kids up for this session because the class was 1/3 of the size it was the last several months. I think she's going to get more one-on-one attention and
make even more progress! I am glad she begged me to keep taking the class. She is making progress with her backward tuck rolls, kickovers, handstands, headstands, cartwheels, push-ups, and also using all the different equipment (beams, bars, trampoline, etc.).

6. Yesterday I took the kids to the local library for preschool story time for the first time in a long time. I planned to take them two weeks ago for the egg hunt, but that didn't happen due to Oliver being in the
hospital. Yesterday we received a free book about animals that have stripes. I think we'll give the summer program a whirl starting in June. The librarian was impressed with Nadia's reading ability! She's reading at the third grade reading level now. It's so much fun to see her reading anything and everything. Ian is also making progress with reading. Paul's mom gave them new t-shirts on Saturday, and Ian pointed to the inside of his shirt and said to me "what does marvel com mean?" He doesn't understand the world of "dot com" yet. :) I was impressed he read that though!

7. Every day the kids make me smile. Ian noticed another book about Hudson Taylor that I got at a yard sale a few weeks ago. He said, "Mommy! Hudson Taylor didn't really die. There's another book!" I tried and failed at explaining that both books cover the same time period. It's not a sequel. Ha ha!

8. We are all healthy!! PTL!