Last week started off with a little travel time. Hubs had a business trip so the kids and I tagged along just to get away for a couple days. We drove up on Monday and back on Tuesday, so it was a short trip, yet still enjoyable. It looks like he'll be making short monthly trips to the same location, so I'm hoping to work our way into those as well. :)
We had a nice room...
A nice pool...
(all to ourselves!)
And a nice park nearby...
So, that was Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was a full school day. Even though we had taken some material with us, we still had some catching up to do. Once we finished school, the cleaning began. Oh what fun! (insert sarcasm here)
We celebrated
Katie's 8th Birthday on Thursday last week. I can't believe she's eight! We had a party in the afternoon with her "besties" and they all brought their American Girl dolls.
I
loved watching them play. It just tickled my heart! It was a beautiful day, so they also jumped on the trampoline and painted little wooden birdhouses outside. All the girls loved doing that and it was just the right project for their attention span.
After the besties went home and Daddy came home from work, Katie got to open her gifts from us, which now requires a room makeover! She loves animals; always has. And she's really into zebra prints. So we got her some cute decorations for her room including a large picture, a clock, a picture frame, zebra-striped fuzzy blanket, an adorable butterfly (with zebra stripes, of course), and we gave her some money, which she appreciated because she's saving up for some American Girl stuff.
The ultimate gift had already been given by her grandparents: the new Hawaiian American Girl doll, Kanani.
The only toy she got from us was a sock monkey, and it was actually from Emily, along with some earrings. These kids have so much already and she really and truly could not think of even one thing she wanted, besides the AG doll. It made my shopping much easier! I had bought some of her gifts a few months back, so it was
really easy for me this year. When I catch a good sale on things, I often buy them to save for gift-giving.
So now we're down to Friday. Well, all I can say is, another one bites the dust! No school on Friday. Hubs worked half day and we were all preparing for the big family birthday party that took place Friday evening. Yes! Birthdays are a big event in our family. We should rename them "birthweeks" because that's about how long we celebrate them around here! I made and decorated her cake, as I always do (except for last year when I ended up in the hospital with kidney stones, so Emily decorated Katie's cake!). Emily helped with the cupcakes, which was a HUGE help to me! She did a great job, too. The party was enjoyable and Katie received lots of craft kits and clothes, a couple Barbies, a remote-controlled car for her Moxie Doll, a movie, and some money! (Now you understand why we opted out of buying her toys!)
I squeezed in a little shopping time by myself last Saturday and found some bargains at the Half Price Bookstore. And I took the advice of a friend and printed some high frequency word flashcards for Katie and turned them into ring cards. There are 20 words per set and 11 sets. I told Katie that for each set she can easily read, she will earn a quarter. I don't usually practice incentive-driven learning, but in this case, I think it will help us get past this reading block. And it's already made a huge difference!
I found this fantastic website,
The School Bell, that has high frequency word flashcards already made and organized into sets in order by frequency, so all I had to do was print them. I printed each set on a different color cardstock, to keep them organized better. The site also has printable games, and other printable worksheets. I found it very useful.
So this week was productive, school wise. It's been raining a LOT here which actually has been a bit of a blessing because the public school kids are on break this week and the rain has prevented them from knocking on our door every day. I don't mind kids coming over, but we did not take off this week (except for Friday) and had plenty to do.
The ring cards are making a HUGE difference! The thing I'm loving with Katie right now is that when I begin reading her the Bible lessons, she often interrupts me so that she can tell them to me! And she's been coming up with wonderful summaries for the stories, which she then writes and illustrates.
Emily decided to write a comic strip for her summary about Naaman this week and it turned out really cute! It's the first writing assignment she's
enjoyed doing in a long time. It thrilled me!
I'll end on something creatively thoughtful. The girls were watching out the window when the trash man came this week. He noticed them watching and made them a sculpture!...
Does anyone else have a fun trash man like this?
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