Thankful Thursday

1. It was a challenge to teach Ian how to write his manuscript letters when he was five. It has been such a pleasant surprise to find out that it was been a breeze to teach him to write in cursive (thus far anyhow). He's writing beautifully and of his own initiative writing in cursive at other points in the day such as when working on spelling.

2. One of the libraries within the library system we usually use recently acquired 24 more sets of Adventures in Odyssey cds (previously they only owned 8 sets). Nadia is thrilled! It's wonderful to be able to check out so many from the library rather than needing to keep buying so many for her own personal collection.

3. It's nice having Nadia and Ian in the same AWANA book for the first (and last) time ever. They are both in T and T. It means they are memorizing the same verses (Titus 3:4-5 this week). The picture at left was taken yesterday morning as last night was "Fashion Disaster" night at AWANA. Nadia configured both outfits. They changed their outfits several times over the course of the day. I'm thankful they don't usually wear this many articles of clothing in a single day! In the end Ian wore Nadia's pink pajama pants to AWANA, and Nadia wore some of his shirts and ties.

4. Our elliptical was repaired on September 12, and I don't believe we are going to be billed for it for which I am thankful. Also hoping and praying our basement stays dry so it doesn't get wet again! Now I need to start using it on a regular basis. I used it for the first time in many months yesterday.

5. Paul took the kids to Safety Day at Camp Susque on September 6, and I took the kids to the Not Back to School Pond Party on September 7. They enjoyed both events!

6. Paul took Nadia to the WGRC Skate Night on September 6, and Nadia won a cd!

7. The kids and I enjoyed seeing Mary Poppins on September 8.

8. The kids and I are participating in a BSF study for the first time ever. We are studying Joshua right now. I help them with their BSF homework on M/W/F. On September 10, I had too full of a schedule - homeschooled the kids, got my haircut (while the kids were with me), and then Paul came home early so I could go to faculty meeting on

campus. I came home to eat dinner, and then we went to Bible study. I was questioning the sanity of signing up for a Bible study. This past Monday we were home aside from a quick trip to the grocery store and I didn't feel so tired at the Bible study. I could have attended another faculty meeting OR a meeting at church related to singing in the choir. I skipped both of those so I could attend the Bible study and also so I wouldn't overload my schedule.

9. The kids enjoyed playing at Micah and Isaiah's house on September 12. Part of the time they were there I had my annual eye appointment. There was no change to the top part of my bifocals, but the bottom part will be strengthened when I order new frames next month.

10. Oliver had his first ever art class last Friday. The Christian school is going to give me $150 back of the $200 I paid for Ian's tuition for the year. We decided to keep Nadia in the 5th grade Christian school art class. Oliver and Ian are in the homeschool art class. All three of them had their first homeschool gym class for the 2018-19 school year last Friday. I'm very thankful our church offers these classes! The fact that they have art from 9:15-10:00 and gym from 10:00-11:30 means I can do some observations on Friday mornings. Last Friday I did one during that time frame. The boys play in the playland from 11:35-12:25 while Nadia is in her art class.

11. We were able to see many members of Paul's dad's side of the family on Saturday as we celebrated the life of Paul's grandmother.

12. The kids are back in the Soul Patrol choir at church, and my first choir rehearsal for the new school year was last night. I love the arrangement of "Amazing Grace" that we're going to sing for Easter this coming spring. I'm thankful that the kids were able to sing "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" at Great Gram's funeral on Saturday.

13. We received $169 back of the $458 we had spent in advance for the vacation in Williamsburg that we ended up canceling due to Hurricane Florence.

14. Paul and I received our new bedspread on Tuesday. It's the first one I've purchased for our bedroom in our 17 years of marriage. The one we had used for the last I am not sure exactly how many years had been a wedding gift. I was somewhat limited in my choices as we have light blue walls and navy blue carpet, but I found an inexpensive set on JCPenney's website that went with those colors. The set included 2 shams and 3 throw pillows. I also purchased a new bed skirt and new valences for the windows as the maroon bed skirt and maroon valences didn't go with the new bedspread.

15. Since before the semester began I had put on my syllabi that they wouldn't have class on September 18 due to our planned vacation. I had planned to use a personal day. I didn't think the students would like me changing the plans and telling them that now we were going to have class after all so I went and visited student teachers instead. Normally I am gone from 6:30am to at least 5:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but this Tuesday I left at 8:15am and got home at 3:30pm. It was less exhausting even though I still drove well over 100 miles that day (just for work - not counting the miles to Bible study).

16. Phil Vischer has a new show on Right Now Media called "The Mr. Phil Show" that the kids are enjoying. Any show that teaches them more about the Bible is appreciated by me!

17. I'm thankful we don't have many apples this year. It means I have to buy more apples, but it's a lot less work! Yesterday I made apple crisp, which typically I only make with apples from our trees, but the grocery store had apples on sale for 88 cents a pound so I bought a lot of apples and used some of them for apple crisp, which is something Nadia and I both really, really enjoy eating.