A Week, Briefly (4/19/21)

 The biggest event of the week was this:

That's Nature Angel's foot in a boot.  Fractured a bone in her foot when she missed the bottom stair step on her way to dinner on Tuesday night.

Then our babies were sick with mild colds that caused for lots and lots of snot and cuddles.

A sweet church friend stopped by with a flower and a DVD case of Jane Austen movies to loan to Nature Angel while she had to rest.  We all curled up on the couches together and watched a few of them--Nature Angel with her foot propped up and many of us with babies of various ages sleeping/sneezing/fussing in our laps.

We have a new 17 month-old--Li'l K--who comes to our house to play for half days, 4 days a week.  He is extraordinarily bright and extraordinarily sweet-natured.  He is pure joy to have around.  

And we had a spring snow storm!

This was at 7 am.  The snow continued to fall in enormous wet flakes until 9 am. 

Then it melted magically away.

 

Though we did have a true frost the next night.

The only damage we can see in our own garden was the loss of about half of our strawberry blossoms.  We certainly prayed for the farmers in our area that their crops would be spared.   I think our prayers have been answered in the affirmative, as I'm hearing cautiously good news so far.

Through it all, we managed to get our regular school done.

For some reason, our library requests aren't coming through quickly at all, and we've reached a gap in our geography/nature read alouds.  I grabbed a few favorites from our own bookshelves to revisit.  It was fun to watch the kids listen wide-eyed and joyfully to books that used to be regular bedtime reads.  The Little Engine that Could inspired much laughter as Brother quoted it when faced with too much dinner one night.  Can You Hear the Trees Talking? is a longer science book that we are reading one or two sections at a time and will take a few weeks to finish.

Beowulf's new med is working after an initially rough adjustment.  I called his pediatrician and his psychiatrist because I was worried about some of his droopiness and headache complaints.  We have a psych appointment later this week, and we are keeping Beowulf off his med this weekend as a test to see if these are normal side effects.  After several more days passed, I became sure they are and that they are receding, but I want to be able to report honestly to his psychiatrist that I followed through on directions. :)

He finished two books this week.  The first one was book 3 of 5 in Arithmetic Grade 2.  The second was The Beginner's Bible!

He began Book 4 in arithmetic, and we've pulled out his Language Arts again.  I'm focusing on the cursive penmanship and using the reader and reading the included poetry.  The grammar sections have gotten kind of weird with a heavy focus on putting out-of-order sentences in order.  I don't really see the sense in that, and while he's been coping with med side effects, I've been sticking to reading, writing, and arithmetic as the essentials.

We're greatly enjoying The Secret School as our bedtime read-aloud.  The kids have become emotionally invested in Ida and Tom's success, and the current threat to that success has them all on edge.

Brother met all of the criteria for moving into level 3 of 7 for fading out of ABA therapy . . . and then he had a set-back this weekend.  We'll see how that set-back affects his progress when I have a chance to report to his BCBS in the week ahead.

Mister Man finished his Language Arts 3 workbook!

I have yet to inform him that this means I want him to double up on his literature studies. :)

We were able to serve this weekend by helping to clean our church building.

And we had lots of fun when cousins from Utah came to visit for a few hours on a big mid-western tour of church history sites and baseball games/stadiums/museums.

Last, but not least, our family pictures came through.   

How come our family doesn't ever look very large to me when we're all together in a picture like this?