What we are up to

Well, I have found that now that we are people with a routine, life has become much less interesting to write about on a blog. I find myself thinking, what am I thinking...who wants to read about loose teeth and moving up to the next math book (some of the exciting things happening in our house recently)?

Oh, well...for those of you who are interested...(ready Mom and Jamie?)...

Joshua, Jonathan and Anna have joined a soccer class. I am really happy that they did; even though there might be other ways to learn to play soccer, I realized after we arrived at the first class that Joshua and Jonathan have never really had to pay attention to anybody before. Well, I mean in this certain type of setting. They pay attentiont to me (at times) but sometimes I have to grab their chin and force their eyes to actually look at me before they realize I am talking to them. I quickly realized that they didn't know that when the teacher was talking they were supposed to be standing quietly and respectfully listening. Anna did great, and even though she was the only girl in the class was really holding her own (maybe because she is a girl...she seems to automatically know how to pay attention to the teacher and could follow his directions very easily). After a week of practicing at home the next class went much better. I was proud at how they stood and listened to the teacher completely before they started to do what he told them to do.

Well, and as far as math books, Alissa did finish her 6th grade math book and is about months away from finishing her 7th grade math book. Kaleb went directly from 7th grade math to Algebra I but we are thinking that since Alissa has the time we might get PreAlgebra for her so the concepts are really understood (since once she enters the land of Algebra she gets a lot less help from Mom; not that she has needed any lately).

Andrew is growing taller! He is doing well in school as well and to be honest, reminds me a lot of myself in a lot of ways. One example is that when he breaks something (which seems to happen quite often) he just laughs and says, 'Don't worry mom' which makes me sooo upset! I wonder if I drove my mom crazy when I was a child.

Kaleb had his first Chechewa lesson (along with Joel). Joel amazes Kaleb with his memory. Joel says that Kaleb learns a language just like I do (which means that Joel and Kaleb will be driving each other crazy during this class before you know it) but the house is buzzing with the two of them trying to learn the most vocab the fastest.

The neighorhood is still not super safe, but we seem to be settling into what is normal here. Somebody climbed over the fence into the neighbor's yard the other day but their guard blew his whistle and he jumped back over. Joel was outside and actually saw this all happen (he quite often will help the guard patrol the yard for a few hours each night) and he ran into the street hoping to catch the guy. He said that he *thought* he was running fast, but the potential robber was waaay down the road into a cornfield before Joel even got a few steps outside our gate. The other guards standing outside watching all of this happen warned Joel to not come outside if it happens again because sometimes there will be 4 or 5 other robbers waiting to be let in the gate when their partner climbs over the wall and opens it.

The days are getting a little bit cooler. The other night it was actually cool enough for me to wear a jacket. I found our boarding passes from Atlanta in the pocket so I guess our trip to Africa was the last time I needed my jacket. And even then I actually didn't *need* it; I just wore it so I didn't have to pack it.

So, this is routine! Yeah! I love it!