Thankful Tuesday

1. Paul's 7.5 year old desktop computer died on Friday. Thankfully he had many files backed up on an external hard drive so he's probably not going to invest any more time trying to revive his computer one last time to retrieve more files. I had a laptop on my wish list for Christmas instead of something for my camera because my 6 year old laptop computer has been acting up more and more. I am very grateful my parents gave me a laptop for Christmas. It arrived at our house today. My laptop hasn't totally died yet, but when it does I am sure we will be fine with sharing the laptop because once Paul is done with Bucknell (3 months from now) he won't be on the computer at home very often, and we do have an iPad and a smart phone which can be used for going online. I will use the laptop for blogging, editing photographs, and using Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I wouldn't have picked such a big laptop if it was just for me, but Paul likes a bigger screen so we got one with a 17 inch monitor. It doesn't have a touch screen, which seems to be standard these days, but we can do without that.

2. It snowed a little during the night last night and has continued to snow today. In December when it snowed the first time I had the kids do their schoolwork first thinking that they would play in the snow after lunch, but it melted before
we had lunch. Oops! I felt awful about that and promised the next time it snowed they could play in the snow FIRST. I was in Maryland the last time it snowed, so this morning I let them play in the snow first although in this instance it would have been fine to wait because the snow has definitely not melted but rather has gotten deeper as it hasn't stopped snowing yet, but I felt it was important to keep my promise. I love the flexibility of home schooling.

3. Nadia has come a LONG way with playing the piano over the last two weeks. The light bulb has finally clicked, and she is enjoying it a lot more. She is doing much better at reading the music. She finished one of her two books yesterday, and once she learns the last three songs in the other book, we will be headed to Bonanza for dinner to use the gift card my parents gave Paul for his birthday. They love that restaurant, so everyone is pulling for Nadia to achieve the goal. I took a video of the song that is currently her favorite. The next video I will be taking is of Nadia identifying 52 countries in Africa on a map.

4. Ian is working on level four reading to earn the privilege of seeing the movie "Return of the
Jedi." In a little over two weeks he did 23 lessons of the curriculum! If he keeps at this pace, he will be watching the movie in about four weeks. Yesterday's lesson was on "gn" words (a gnat and gnu were two of the main characters in the story).

5. Ian didn't do very well in his basketball game on Saturday (he looked totally clueless out there to be honest), but he did dribble the ball some and made one attempt at making a basket. Nadia showed a lot of improvement in her game and made three attempts at making a basket. We all attended Ian's game, but the boys and I stayed home during her game on Saturday so that Oliver could take a nap.

6. Ian now enjoys eating clementines and baby carrots with ranch dressing. YAY! He eats both of those much faster than a banana, which is such a relief. All five of us like baby carrots (I don't use dip) and clementines.

7. The kids enjoyed playing dodgeball in gym class on Friday, Oliver enjoyed playing in the playland, and I enjoyed talking to another homeschool mom.

8. Nadia has been tearing through chapter books that are about 200 pages long. She finished the Ramona series and now is reading the Henry Huggins series. I told her if she reads 150 books this year I will give her $10. She is on pace to achieve that goal. In the van we've been listening to Twenty One Balloons, and I have been

alternating at home between Larry Boy books and biographies of missionaries in Africa. First we read one on David Livingstone, and now we are reading one about Lillan Trasher, who established an orphanage in Egypt around the time of WWI. During her lifetime she cared for almost 10,000 widows and orphans in Egypt. I had never heard of her before, but we are all enjoying her biography.

9. Nadia and Ian are making good progress in their ice skating lessons. They are learning how to swizzle.

10. I prefer exegetical sermons (rather than topical) and it had been awhile since our pastor had done an exegetical series. I have been enjoying the series on 1&2 Thessalonians. At the start of each sermon a woman (who is a veterinarian) recites from memory the passage that sermon is focused on (sometimes more than one chapter). She has memorized quite a few books of the Bible in their entirety. She recites the passage with a lot of expression. I memorized those two books of the Bible when I was in 9th grade, but I couldn't recite them from memory now. I missed a few of the sermons due to being in Maryland, but I was able to watch them online, which was nice. This past Sunday was actually the first time I had sung with the choir on a Sunday morning in 2016, and I loved the anthem we sang. "In Pastures Green" was a very majestic piece. I also loved that we sang "How Great thou art" on Sunday as they sing more choruses than hymns, and I love that hymn.

11. I saved the best for last. After 21 days in the hospital, my mom is going HOME this evening. WOOHOO! Please pray for a smooth transition.