Catch Up...

Today was catch up day.  We went into town yesterday for Prayer Meeting and I still hadn't conquered the laundry mountain.  Today was the day.  We scaled it, washed it, dried it, folded it and there it sits in the baskets.  The last step would be putting it away:).  School went along quite well.  I was spoiled to have a quiet day yesterday with only 3 of the children at home.  Garrison really enjoyed going to work with Daddy and came home quite content from a day well spent. 
  Elyssia has conquered a new skill in Math.  She can now count by 5's and 10's up to 100!  She's just about finished with her first Math book, which is 176 pages.  She was doing a second math book, along with this one, but we stopped about halfway through before Christmas, because she wasn't understanding some of it.  I was talking to my mother-in-law about it and she said that some of the work in there is for 3rd grade.  I was thinking that they didn't do a very good job of giving examples for them to understand.  If they're putting it out as a 1st grade workbook, I think they need to do some revisions.  Elyssia acts like she doesn't like the skip counting, but I think she's just trying to hide her feelings on this one.  She also learned to read a normal clock, not digital.  Just when it's on the hour.  We're working on the long hand.  It should be much easier, now that she can count by 5's:).
  Garrison is still progressing well.  We got the book that we were waiting for, so now we're going through the reading program with the extra stories.  He's not having trouble identifying letters or sounds, so we're working on writing the letters now.  Amazing how fast they can pick some of this up.
  Caleb continues to be mischievous and yet very sweet.  He wanted to help me with the laundry today, so he climbed onto the hamper to grab clothes from the washer and on another load, he put the clothes I handed him into the dryer.  The past couple weeks he's also been "reading" books to himself that he's memorized from previous reading.  It's amazing to hear a 2 year old saying long sentences with such big words.  His stories that he make up are starting to include some pretty impressive phrases:).  I'll have to post some more one of these days.
  Kiersten had a bit of an accident today.  I was taking laundry down and she was following me, as usual.  Then she must have tumbled a couple steps near the bottom.  She managed to get a fat upper lip and hurt the inside of her upper lip, which resulted in quite a bit of bleeding.  You'd think we'd be used to these things by now, but we're not and it's hard to see her go through it. She recovered quite quickly and has played for most of the day by herself or with the siblings.  Her jibberish is starting to make a little more sense to me these days, although I think it will be quite some time until she's understood by others, who aren't listening for familiar words:).
  Tomorrow, I'm off to take the van in.  Scott took it last week to have something checked and yesterday the engine light came on. Praying it's something easy to fix and not too expensive.  I'm thinking that the library sounds like a good place to spend a bit of free time.  It's been at least a month or so since my last visit.  It's really easy to order online now, so there's not too much need to go anymore. I still like to check their used children's books and pick up ones I think the kids will enjoy.  Praying the weather is nice and that the roads are a bit cleaner.  Scott had to shovel his car out when it got stuck on the way to work today.  His car drives lower than the van though, so I'll take my cell phone and pray for a good trip.
   I'd post some pics, but our camera isn't connecting to upload for some reason.  Hope we get it figured out soon.  On a good note, the speakers for the church have arrived.  The rest of the sound system should be in pretty soon.
  Well, I'd better be off for now.  We're watching the old Herbie movie and the kids are very excited about it:)  I hope it lives up to their expectations!