Rainy day update

It’s a dreary, rainy day, and I finally have a few minutes to blog . . . I’ve been working on the following post off and on for the past week or so. :)

Our lives have been busy lately, and I haven’t had time yet to get back to my cleaning challenges! Hopefully soon. We’ve actually been home a lot (which I love!) but my days have been filled with trying to keep up with basic housework, laundry, and baking. I’ve also been working on trying to set up some basic fall routines for the kiddos, including chores and some preschool stuff for Sam. That’s kind of a hit-and-miss right now. He LOVES doing “school” but we don’t do it every day. I have some preschool workbooks for him that I got at Walmart, and we mostly work in those. There’s a lot of matching, counting, learning “same as,” “opposite of,” etc. He really enjoys it and would do it all day if I let him! But when we do too much, I don’t have time to get anything else done, which makes me frustrated, so I’m trying to limit the school time. :) Since he doesn’t actually HAVE to be in school till he’s 6! I’ve also been working on reading basics with him. I got a LeapFrog DVD to help teach him letter sounds, along with working through The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading. I almost felt guilty using something “fun” like the DVD to help teach him, but then I thought, why shouldn’t learning be fun?! And he picked up the letter sounds so fast, I was amazed. Even Julia has learned some of them.

I am planning to use Sonlight curriculum with them, and have been having a blast poring over the catalog and thinking about next year. If we have the money, I may buy the P 3/4 curriculum and do that with the kids during the winter/spring. I originally planned to just use their book list as a guide and getting the books out of the library, but I’m not sure that I’m going to get to the library often enough to do that. (Our local library doesn’t have many of them, and I’d have to go to a library in a bigger town, which would mean extra trips out . . . and I really want to stay *in* as much as possible, so . . . ) Anyway, we’ll see. As it is, we already own tons of good books and the kids love to snuggle up and read with me, so we’ll have fun no matter what.

Jim heard last week that he did not get the job at the nature center. I think he was a bit relieved, as after the interview, he wasn’t really sure the job would be a good fit for him--more of a desk job than he was expecting. Anyway, we were thankful for an obvious closed door--making it clear that wasn’t God’s will for him right now! Currently, he is working on finishing a roof, and then he has another roof coming up, with the possibility of yet another one after that. So we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, we’ll keep scanning the job ads, just for fun, and see if something else comes along that he wants to check into.

The foliage is starting to get really pretty around here. It’ll probably be peak in the next week or two. The colors seem especially nice this year! On Saturday, we are hoping to take the kids to Story Land (if the weather cooperates!). We had planned to go last Saturday, but it rained. We haven’t told the kids yet; we’ll probably wait and surprise them that day. It should be a lot less busy at this time of year, and also hopefully a lot cooler than last time we went (Labor Day 2007).

I lost another pound or two over the past month--nothing earth-shaking, but still progress. :) I think our mountain climb definitely counted for some good exercise! Last week I read this great post on Tammy’s blog, which gave me some helpful motivation. I’m working on really watching what I eat and also getting some exercise each day. I dug out my Leslie Sansone walking video that has 1 mile and 2 mile workouts, and have been doing the 1 mile every day this week. My goal is to do it at least 5 days a week, preferably 6, and work up to doing the 2 mile. I really want to make this a habit and stick with it!! Please continue to pray that I’ll work hard and get down to my goal weight. Right now I still have 24 lbs. to go to hit my goal, but I’ve set a smaller goal of losing 10-15 lbs. by Christmas. We’ll see how it goes.

Well, I suppose I should go and make some biscuits. We’re having leftover cheeseburger soup for supper, and I need something to go with it. :) Hope you’re all having a lovely week!!