Steve & Chantelle Family,
The last few months have been busy as usual. We have been filling our days with kids, school, and keeping the resident dirt monster in the house at bay. BH is doing very well with home school this year. I got a comprehensive workbook for him. The week before school BH and I sat down and put together work packets of about 4 worksheets. As I had just gotten a new stapler he was very excited about he wanted to staple them. So we made a deal. If he stapled them he was agreeing to complete the work. This has been a wonderful tool to call on when he gets 1/2 a worksheet from finished and wants to quit. BH is also improving in his behavior overall. Although we are entering our hard time of year with him he is trying very hard not to "go off the deep end" with anticipation for the upcoming holidays and events. (Every year we have major problems from the time they set the Halloween stuff out at the stores until they put the Christmas things away.)
EH is in public school for Kindergarten and loving it. She is a perfect little angel at school. I was worried that she would get bored with the work as we did kindergarten with her at home last year. I only put her in to get her more acclimated to sitting and listening to learn. Instead of getting bored when she is done with her work she helps other kids. I think she is so excited to be in school that she hasn't noticed that she isn't learning anything new. That's ok with me.
JH is going through the following directions stage. You know the stage where they don't know if the should do what you tell them to. It is very disheartening for me as I had so enjoyed having one child who just wanted to follow directions. I'm sure this will work its self out. I just have to try and be patient in the mean time. She has so many cute qualities it is pretty easy to be patient. She has been making up cute little songs about everything. It is so sweet to hear her sing.
As for the whole family we had to take a shortened family vacation this summer. Steve had the whole week off but I had agreed to watch the daughter of BH's first teacher here the last week before school started. So instead of a week vacation we just went camping at Chippokes planation for 3 days. It is the longest operating farm in the country. We got to collect seashells and swim in the James River. We have some pictures posted of it on our blog. http://sorryumissedit.blogspot.com/
Steven has been busy as a bee with work. Then when he gets home the kids want 110% of his time so we have been staying up late just to get some time together. It has become almost a sacred time. The few hours you get to have and talk without kids saying "I want...(insert anything from the necessary to the ridiculous.)
Steve and BH refinished an old radio flyer wagon and painted it all up with a lightening bolt. They had a lot of fun at that. Steve also had the opportunity to go to the hospital and give a baby a blessing a few weeks back. There were twins born here and placed for adoption. The adopting family is an LDS family from Utah (Steve actually happened to have worked with the wife in SLC at the call center.) One of the twins was able to go home with his family but the other was sick still and couldn't leave. So Steve was called to give him a blessing. That was about a month or so ago. This Tuesday we got a call from the relief society president who the lady had stayed with saying the baby was dying and could he please assist in giving a name and a blessing before the baby died. So he went to the hospital to bless him. The relief society president's husband was the other one there. The r.s. president's family had gotten quite close with the mother as she stayed with them for 2 weeks when she came to pick the healthier baby up. The relief society president held the baby after they took all the cords off of him until he went home to his heavenly father. This was quite an experience for everyone involved. We were grateful to be a part of it, and were touched by his short little life.
As for me I'm just plugging away. I've been enjoying reading some political/economic blogs and commenting on them. It helps me feel like I have a link to the outside world. The one I like the most is by the guy that sent out the plan about the economy bail out. We are hoping to take a trip out west this next spring so we can see all of you.
