Thankful Tuesday

1. Nadia enjoyed attending a six hour youth conference at our church on Leap Day.

2. We survived the rabbits' first trip to the vet on March 2. The vet said they are healthy. The plan is to neuter them on May 5. I do not plan to take them for an exam every year as it cost $120 for two rabbits and didn't seem helpful in any way. They continue to do well with peeing in their litter boxes almost all the time, but they only poop in their litter boxes about half of the time. It seems like they are learning not to chew our windowsills, furniture, etc., but we still don't let them romp around the house without supervision. Sometime this summer we plan to move them to an outdoor hutch.

3. Nadia, Ian, and I attended Compassion's Roadshow concert on March 6 in Wilkes Barre. My favorite that night was Matt Maher. We stayed for 2.5 hours of the concert which meant we heard five of the seven groups. We left at the beginning of the sixth band because #1 none of us care for his music and #2 it was already going to be 11pm

by the time we got home. I would have enjoyed hearing Bethel Music (the seventh band), but I was very thankful that Peabod (the one we didn't want to hear) hadn't been scheduled earlier in the concert than they were. We passed out brochures for Compassion and were thrilled that we were able to help seven people sign up to sponsor a child!!!

4. Nadia enjoyed seeing Meadowbrook's production of Annie on Saturday afternoon with me. She wanted to attend because several of her friends were in it. I usually love taking her to see musicals, but my heart wasn't in it this time because last year I had tickets to take her to see Little Women at Meadowbrook, but instead of taking her I was in Philadelphia cleaning out my brother's apartment with Wendy. Annie is a musical I'm very familiar with because I directed a performance of it at the Christian school where I was the principal because the music teacher left part way through the year and also because Nadia was in a performance of Annie, Jr. in 2015.

5. Every year on a Sunday in March it is free to attend a variety of museums and historic sites in Pennsylvania in honor of Charter Day. I prefer to stay at home on Sunday afternoon, but since Paul usually works six days a week, Sunday is the optimal day for him. On Charter Day in 2018 we visited a couple of sites near Philadelphia. This year we went to the PA Military Museum near PSU. The last time I was there was when I was dating Paul while he was an undergrad at PSU (i.e. more than 20 years ago). Paul really, really likes this military museum. Some of their special events are geared toward children and include hands-on activities. They did offer free guided tours yesterday because of Charter Day, but they didn't have hands-on activities. The upside was that the Kids' Days aren't free, and we all got in for free yesterday. The museum contains many items from WWI that are very rare such as a German fire thrower. To be honest, guns, tanks, and such are not interesting to me, but my husband feels quite the opposite. For many years he wanted to own a real tank (I'm not

joking!). I don't think the kids thought much of the inside of the museum. The tour guide had the advantage that he is a veteran, but Paul could have given us just as thorough of a tour. The kids favorite part of the day was climbing on the tanks outside the museum. The weather was absolutely gorgeous that day. The museum is about 70 minutes from our house. I knew we needed to go there at least once since Paul loves it so much, but I doubt we'll return. I had planned to take the kids on a Saturday last fall but didn't go when I found out Paul wasn't going to join us. It's harder to find WWI and WWII field trips compared to Revolutionary and Civil War field trips since those wars weren't (thankfully) fought here on our soil. The USS Pennsylvania battleship which was used in WWII was scuttled in 1948. The museum has two of the ships guns are on display outside the museum (kids can't climb on those as they are too high up!).

6. Yesterday the temperatures got up into the low 70's, and it was a sunny day! I walked to the

playground while the boys rode their scooters there. It was so nice to be out in the fresh air and sunshine!

7. Although it was unpleasant to lose an hour of sleep last Saturday night, the kids are getting up a little later now that it's not getting light as early in the morning. To add insult to injury, the bunnies decided to THUMP loudly during the middle of the night on that night, which meant I lost even more sleep. Thankfully this hasn't happened very often over the past month that we've had the rabbits.

8. We spent about 2.5 hours at Micah and Isaiah's house today for a playdate. Even though it was a rainy day, the kids were able to run around and play outside some while they were there.

9. Over the years we've gradually added subjects to our school day. For example, in January 2019 we started putting time into grammar (parts of speech and punctuation). Over the years I have attempted to include Spanish into our day through Rosetta Stone and Duolingo. I decided it was better if we did it together, and so the plan had been to learn sign language together starting this past fall. We did it sporadically, but I decided to go back to Spanish in 2020. I'm not completely thrilled with the curriculum I recently purchased, but Nadia, Ian, and I are learning some Spanish each week. I had studied Spanish for two years, German for two years, and ASL for one year when I was in high school. Naturally I have forgotten a lot of the Spanish I had learned since that was more than 30 years ago, so I am learning (or re-learning) along with the kids. I'm determined to put even more time and effort into Spanish during the 2020-21 school year. I'm trying to use more Spanish throughout the day. I was pleased last Thursday when we were in the playland at church, and I overheard Ian say to another child "no come hamburguesa".

10. We've continued to receive Junior Ranger badges in the mail. Today we received three via FedEx from a national park in Alaska! Nadia has earned 36 badges thus far.

11. I feel like I've come up with a good plan to ensure we eat a wide variety of meals at dinner. I made a list of recipes in several different categories and then every few months we cycle through those lists. Most weeks we have soup (includes stew and chili) once, salad as a main dish once, pasta once, a "sandwich" once (could be Stromboli, quesadilla, meatball sub, sloppy joe, pulled pork, calzone, etc.), breakfast for dinner once, use a gift card at a restaurant or buy takeout pizza one night, and the other night is my miscellaneous category, which is where I put the main dishes that are not pizza, pasta, salad, soup, or sandwich such as meatloaf, pork chops, shepherd's pie, chicken cordon bleu, etc.

12. Nadia has been enjoying putting her hair in curlers when she takes a shower in the evening. I think her hair looks nice with some curls in it.