This has been a cold and blustery week. But I am not complaining: I love it. 🙂

On Monday, Ken and I attended an all-day photography training seminar. Lindsey was in class, but Kathryn spent the day with our friend Tina being a “mother’s helper,” something she’s been eager to do ever since I mentioned the idea. That means she entertained a preschooler and a toddler while their mom caught up on laundry and a few household chores. And she finally got to hold baby Garrett, which made her very happy. So I count Monday as a big ol’ life-skills day for Kathryn.

Kathryn also helped me in the kitchen, chopping potatoes (with close supervision!) for stew one night, and helping make oatmeal cookies another day. She’s also my grocery-shopping helper every week, and helps put away the groceries when we get home.

In Christian Kids Explore Biology, Kathryn began a unit on swimming creatures. This week’s focus was on mollusks. I learned some things myself this week: for instance, I never knew that an octopus is in the category of mollusks! And for nature study this week: um, yeah. Not so much. I’m a slacker.

We’re still working on Kathryn’s “Colonial Life” lapbook in our history studies, and reading a few historical fiction books on colonial America.

I think Kathryn might turn into a division problem soon. As far as I know, that’s never happened, but the focus in math lately has been all sorts of l-o-n-g division problems. She is very glad I don’t require her to do every problem in the lesson. That would be downright painful.

Kathryn’s Bible notebook pages make me happy; we’re mostly reading in Judges right now, so this week we read about Gideon. She’s still enjoying Character Traits for Kids, and I love that it gets her looking up passages in her Bible on her own. We’re also slowly starting back up with our evening family devotions. Our kooky schedule has messed us up with that, but we feel very strongly that it’s something we need to do.

This week, Kathryn worked on earning a new Girls in Action “Chef badge.” She took part in a cooking class, submitted a recipe to an upcoming GA’s dessert cookbook, and chose to participate in the cookbook cover contest. Not sure when we’ll find out who wins, but I think she did a great job!

In chess, the teacher introduced chess clocks. Kathryn enjoyed that, and I think the class was a little more fun since the teacher combined two classes into one since they were both so small. Even combined, there are only seven kids in the newly expanded class.

Tonight is the very last Friday-night color guard performance of the season, and I am delighted about that. Lindsey will still have two more performances, though: one in a local parade, and another at an event at Georgia Tech University. But things are winding down, which means more free evenings for us all — which is most definitely a good thing. It’s suppose to get down to freezing tonight, and it was just sleeting at our house a few minutes ago, so Lindsey’s planning on wearing lots of layers under that color guard uniform!

Jamie

Wife, mom, J-ma. Introvert who enjoys good books, sunshine, and authentic conversation. Often seen with a steaming mug of tea in hand – unless it’s lost yet again in the microwave. Read more »