Happy New Year!

2019 is here! I've now lived almost 2 1/2 years of my life without my mom. In almost exactly one year Paul will be turning 50 years old, and he's only 2 years older than me. When I started dating him in 1997, we were both in our twenties. Before you know it, we'll be eligible for some "senior" discounts. Nadia thinks I'm crazy when I tell her the years are just flying by, but that's one of the differences between a child and an adult who has most likely already lived more than half of her life. After their cousins left yesterday (around 7:30am), the kids asked me what schoolwork we were doing. They were pleasantly surprised to learn we weren't "going back to school" until Wednesday. Their cousins don't go back to school until next Monday. Including weekends they get 16 days off! Susie will actually have an even longer break as she'll still be in Hawaii when school resumes. I used most of yesterday to clean - a huge pile of dishes, 4 loads of laundry (did another today), putting away all of the air mattresses, sofa bed, and Christmas decorations,

vacuuming (more than usual due to pine needles), cleaning up the basement (where the kids had been building forts with their cousins), etc.

Originally I had planned to spend most of today working on getting ready for the spring semester (revising syllabi and such), but thus far I've spent most of my time doing homeschooling planning as I realized my lesson plans only went through December 21. My classes begin at the university three weeks from today. Because the kids had stayed up later than usual playing with their cousins, they went to bed at their usual bedtimes last night even though it was New Years Eve. I bought pizza and Hawaiian punch for dinner and let them have the night off from eating a fruit or a vegetable with their meal. They thought that was the BEST! I love it that they are generally easy to please. This morning the kids and I had cinnamon rolls for breakfast as a special way to start the New Year. We don't generally do anything special for New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. The traditional meal to eat around here on January 1st is pork and sauerkraut, which is not something we enjoy eating. Paul's way of

celebrating the holidays is to work more hours than usual. I'm not joking. It's because the trade show in Baltimore always takes place the week after New Year's Day. He worked shorter hours than usual on Christmas Eve and stayed home on Christmas Day, but otherwise he's been going to work seven days a week (including the past two Sundays). He's been going in to work earlier than usual (sometimes before 4am) and getting home sometime between 7-8pm each night. This was part of the reason I offered to host Christmas for my side of the family. If our family gathered in MD or VA, we would have gone without Paul. If we want to see Paul at all, we can't travel during the Christmas vacation.

All throughout the year I find myself at least mentally setting goals for myself and the kids, but each January I usually take the time to write some of those down. Some of them are not new goals. I know we won't achieve all of them, but hopefully we'll make progress with many of them!

House
1. New deck (should be installed in May - we already signed a contract and paid a deposit)
2. Finish repairing the floor in the master bathroom so we can resume using that shower
3. Pay off the retirement loan used to pay off the mortgage (trying to do so by June)
4. Replace broken window pane
5. Stain some of the windowsills
6. Replace the window well covers and paint the basement walls with Drylok (hoping doing those two things might keep our basement dryer in 2019 than it was in 2018)
7. Organize tool shelves
8. Repaint the basement steps

Oliver
1. Learn to ride a bike without training wheels
2. Improve his table manners (not talking with his mouth full, using utensils instead of his fingers)
3. Eat breakfast in a more timely manner
4. Continue to make progress in reading, spelling, and handwriting
5. Improve his skills in math - reading an analog clock, using coins, place value to the hundreds place, adding, and subtracting
6. Recite the names of the books of the Old Testament (he learned the NT last year)
7. Learn how to swim well enough that he could go off the diving board into the deep end
8. Learn how to ice skate
9. Learn how to tie his shoes
10. Not make messes when he uses the bathroom
11. Improve his listening comprehension (also includes being quiet when I'm reading chapter books)
12. Start piano lessons in the fall
13. Spend 3 nights at Camp Susque (will be his first experience with an overnight camp)
14. Improve his pronunciation of words (those with a "th" sound and also not dropping the first syllable of other words). Some examples would include animal (he says "aminal"), remember (he says "member"), something instead of "someping," three instead of "free," remote instead of "mote", etc.

Paul gave me an onyx ring for Christmas to match my Mom's bracelet that I received after she passed away.

Ian
1. Improve his skills with solving word problems
2. Eat dinner in a more timely manner and stay seated when eating
3. Learn how to find a verse in the Bible more quickly
4. Relearn how to tie his shoes
5. Learn how to use a knife to cut his food
6. Prompt (first time) obedience
7. Less complaining and arguing
8. Begin cleaning the guinea pig cage once a week
9. Type at least 20 wpm by the end of the year

I thought I'd take a pic of the basement as this past year I finished hanging curtains all around and repainted the floor.

Nadia
1. More careful about the tone of her voice
2. Learn how to cook and bake a wider variety of foods
3. Participate in a science fair for the first time
4. Begin mopping the kitchen floor once a week
5. Less complaining and demonstrate more flexibility (including being able to gracefully defer to the wishes of others at times)
6. Demonstrate perseverance with a good attitude
7. Type at least 30 wpm by the end of the year

Ruth
1. Lose weight  (drink more water, eat fewer calories, and exercise more)
2. Try new recipes on a regular basis and put more time and effort into teaching Nadia how to cook
3. Play board games with the kids at least once a week
4. Read more picture books to the kids (not related to what we're studying in science and history)
5. Do more sword drills with Nadia and Ian
6. Assist all three kids in preparing their wax museum presentations due in February
7. Continue to develop the habit of reading poetry to the kids more regularly
8. Help the kids get in the habit of tithing
9. Spend a lot more time teaching the kids grammar and writing skills