OK, put your seat belt on because this is a hodge podge of an update with no organized order whatsoever.
First, before I forget to document this, I was downstairs doing something yesterday and the boys were both playing upstairs. At one point they asked me if I knew where their two boy dolls were. These are boy dolls that my sister bought them when they were just 2 or 3 years old and they have played with them on and off over the years. Nick has played with them more but he really likes little kids. I think Ben finds little kids kind of annoying. Anyway, they finally found one of them and they were playing and I heard Nick say "Ben, I'm birthing a baby. Ben, I'm birthing a baby!" I was trying not to laugh out loud because I didn't want them to hear me. Then Ben came downstairs looking for some old newspapers because "If I am going to be the father, I have to read a newspaper", which was also pretty funny. I told the husband about it and we were both laughing so hard.
We are having beautiful fall weather here these days. It is really lovely and not getting too cold too fast. We are having temps in the low 50's at night and in the 70's or low 80's in the day. It is very pleasant.
I am working on my school planning for January, when the boys will be starting 3rd grade. Well, they will be starting 3rd grade for everything except math. Before I moved them on to 2nd grade math, I used a different curriculum and re-covered some of the 1st grade topics (mostly place value and memorizing addition/subtraction math facts) because I didn't think they were quite strong enough on a few things. I am so glad I did too because they are really moving along confidently now and it is wonderful to see. This year I am teaching from two different math curricula to hopefully avoid that from happening again. It is a balancing act to know when to cover what from which one but, so far, it seems to be working out OK.
Today I had a 30% off coupon so I went ahead and purchased our next year of Story of the World, which is our history curriculum. We have all really enjoyed this one a lot so there is never any question that we will do the next one. The last one is in 4th grade so I will have to figure out what we will do after that but, in the mean time, we are really enjoying SOTW.
I am planning to attempt to start Latin again in January and I am hopeful we will have better results this time. I had planned to start it last January but it ran our days too long and it required more writing than N was ready for at that time. Since then I have researched the various Latin programs further and have found a different one that I think will be better for us and that we will all enjoy more (I hope). Nick is doing much better with his writing too. His occupational therapy is really paying off. He is much more willing to write for himself now and very seldom asks me to write for him or has a meltdown about having to write. He has made huge strides and I am so thankful that we had the resources to be able to provide OT for him. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier or not but the occupational therapist said she suspected that he might have skipped crawling. He has come along so far that he can even tie his shoes now, which is amazing. He would not even try until recently and he is learning very quickly now.
The other day a neighbor boy was over here playing and he had ridden his "motorcycle" (battery operated) over here. Nick was outside on the driveway riding it while the neighbor was inside playing with Ben. A little later Nick came into the house and handed the dad his glasses. The dad says, "oh, the lens popped out again", which has been a common problem with this particular pair of glasses. Then the dad gets a closer look at the glasses and is wondering aloud what happened to them as he showed them to me. They are pretty much totally destroyed. The lens didn't pop out, the metal around the lens was broken in two pieces. The arms that go back to the ears are both bent so far they are almost torn lose. They really are pretty much destroyed. So I asked Nick what happened (he had been quiet while we were taking inventory of the damage) and he was still kind of quiet so I reassured him it was OK and he was not in trouble. He had taken his glasses off and laid them on the driveway (not sure why, maybe to protect them? or they bothered him when he was wearing the helmet?). He forgot they were there and ran over them with the motorcycle. I think it is actually pretty funny, not the $$ part but the typical little boy accident part. So I really must get him over there and get another pair because his old pair that he is wearing now (the ones we thought were lost just before we left on our trip to AZ back in Feb so we paid for a new prescription and pair of glasses and then he found the old pair a couple of weeks after we got home:) are not strong enough for him.
The boys are very much into football these days. That is all they want to play. "Daddy, will you come outside and play football" is heard around here quite often these days and he is very good about making time to play with them. Today they played at lunch time and they are outside playing again now and they have been playing every evening lately. They are loving it. When they play games on the Kindle Fire they play some kind of football game also and they love watching it on TV....and they also play it with the other boys in the neighborhood so it is all the rage right now.
Guess who turned 8??!! Ben is now an 8 year old and Nick will turn 8 in a little less than 5 weeks from now. Boy, they grow up so fast and they are both getting so tall. Last month Nick grew a half inch and Ben grew three quarters of an inch and Nick's foot is almost as big as mine already. The other day I was sitting in the living room and noticed Ben at the kitchen sink and I thought he was standing on a step stool. I was shocked when he walked away and had not been on a step stool at all. That boy is getting tall!
The boys are both loving their P.E. class but they are not so much loving their art class so we won't take that class the next semester and this one will end in November. They are still in swim lessons, which they have a love/hate relationship with at times (they mostly like it though, except when they wish they could stay home and play with neighbors).
I guess that is enough hodge podge for today. I need to take a look at Ben's birthday pics and see if any are post worthy. I'll check on that.
