Thanks to everyone who has emailed or posted happy birthday wishes! I had a great day. I’m thankful we were all well enough to enjoy it!

We are finally getting back to normal (if there is such a thing) around here. We’ve been able to get outside and play again, and we made it to storytime at the library yesterday. We even did a little–very little–schoolwork this week. Hopefully that will get back into full swing next week!

The kids were in silly mode, but we did manage to get a picture with Grandmom last week!

Thanks to those who have sent well wishes. We are getting better, slowly but surely!

Please forgive my lack of blogging lately! We are being held captive by a virus that is making its way through pretty much everyone we know! The kids haven’t been out of the house since Sunday except to go to the doctor on Wednesday, which was Skylar’s third day with a fever. Our kids are rarely sick…that was Skylar’s first sick visit to the pediatrician in her life! She acts like she doesn’t know what is happening when she starts coughing. Jacob has it, too. His symptoms are not quite as bad as hers, but he has been feeling pretty rough. The doctor commented that he must be sick because he didn’t talk her ear off this time! I’m hoping that tomorrow they will be well enough to at least go out a little while for some fresh air, which I think would be good for them at this point. The problem is, my symptoms just started last night…so they will be feeling better when I am feeling worse! My husband started feeling it about a day ahead of me. It is definitely making the rounds. The virus seems to be less severe for adults, though, so hopefully we won’t be completely out of commission!

We did have a great visit with Grandmom last weekend, though it seems she picked up the same virus and took it home with her! I will post a picture soon.

After a summer of trips, library summer reading, and some other special fun activities, we have buckled down and gotten “back to school” here. Jacob has been asking to do school work for a while, and I finally got some plans made for the year, so we are ready to go!

We started off with about an hour each day of structured school work…that will probably increase a little soon as I add in some more things I have planned. We’re just getting warmed up! Of course, when I say structured, that doesn’t mean that the kids are sitting at a table doing paper work the whole time. It just means that I plan the activities to meet their learning objectives. We use puzzles, counting bears, toys, computer games, books, workbooks, etc. We are still using Hooked On Phonics for reading. Jacob read 4 stories in his Hooked on Phonics program this week!

I am trying to work with Skylar on some things that relate to the same subjects that Jacob is doing. For example, she worked with a letter puzzle while we did reading one day. Then we all used the counting bears, with Jacob working on counting above 20 and simple addition, and Skylar working on sorting by color and counting 1-5. She is doing well with sorting by color now! She also plays well by herself, which helps a lot. I can just let her go play while I help Jacob with his reading and writing letters. But she also likes to be included in what we are doing sometimes.

We are doing Bible and reading 4 days per week, and rotating other subjects. Preschool story time will start soon at the library, so we will go to that instead of school work one day. So, we are getting into a groove!