Howdy

Well, life has been full and fun lately! Hayden's swim season is coming to an end. Last weekend was sub-districts. Hayden was really hoping to make it to districts in an individual event (50 free and 100 fly are his regulars), but he barely missed. He is swimming at districts with three relays. He'll be competing in the 200 medley relay (swimming butterfly), the 200 free relay and the 400 free relay. Districts is next Friday and Saturday. Then we'll have a short reprieve before track season starts.

I pulled Porter out of school and started homeschooling him. It has been very difficult. Way harder than I expected. The problem isn't JUST that he's being a stinker, much of the problem is that I'm so busy that it's not my top priority. And it needs to be. It's really hard to do a good job teaching when it's not top priority. So I'm getting myself a little more organized (mostly organizing my time better) and will hope it goes better next week. On the plus side, he's very motivated in science. He's working on some electronics. He's taking things apart...and then using some of the parts to build new things. He has built a little robot that actually worked, among other things. Unfortunately, you can't leave him unsupervised, for fear that he'll take apart something important...like the computer, the vacuum, the dryer...

Landon has become the top reader in his class. Do you remember a few years ago when I was so worried about his reading? I thought he would NEVER get it and he'd always be behind. Well, I shouldn't have been worried. He now not only gets it, but is so far ahead! He's always reading! They have to record their minutes that they read each day for his class, and turn in the calendar at the end of the month. This month, at the top of the calendar, it said, "Goal: 400 minutes." By the first week he had read 440 minutes. And the first week only had two days in it! He had over 4000 minutes for the month. He's had the most minutes every month this year. And in his violin, he has just completed Suzuki Book 1 and moved on to Book 2. That was another thing that he struggled with at the beginning...and I thought he would never get it...and he was moving really, really slowly....and I wanted to quit. And now he gets it! And he actually sounds good when he plays! So proud of that boy!

Regan started tap dancing class this month. She loves, loves, loves it! It was funny, on the way home from class last week, she said, "I HAVE to practice this week. I just HAVE to! Even if it does annoy my brothers!" In other words, they don't like it when she taps around the house. Imagine that. Her violin is still moving right along, although I've slacked some with her piano. Can you say overload?

Turner and Cooper are being little troupers at home. They're getting ignored by mom more as I'm struggling to teach Porter, but at the same time there are some perks. Port reads to them and plays with them. He also picks out good things for their lunches. I don't think they've had a plain old PBJ for lunch since he's been home! Porter appreciates good food and is trying to teach them to, as well!

So without going into any more gory details, we'll leave this post. Things are crazy, people are crazy, but crazy is good.