right now...

I was looking through some pictures I took of the girls at their gym class last week, and couldn’t resist posting a few of my favorites.
So all is well in Peterson-land. School is going well. Tomorrow is our 100th day, so we’re excited about that. We finished the 1st grade spelling text last week, so now we’re working on a few high frequency words that he should probably know before we plunge into the 2nd grade text. He’s also transitioned from reading picture books to full-fledged chapter books – which is hard because nearly all the beginning chapter books are geared towards girls. But the girls are enjoying their “school work”. I love how when I announce that it’s time for school they excitedly run to the table eager to learn.
Cathy Gresham was here over the weekend. The girls turn 5 on Tuesday, so she came in for a little pre-birthday goodness. It was good to catch up a little, and let her entertain my children with an endless stack of stories.
We’ve had our fair share of winter weather this week. It all started with a system last weekend that dropped about 8 inches of snow on us, then we had 2 or 3 smaller squalls come through that dropped a few more inches. That piled on top of subzero temperatures has us looking forward to spring. We’re trying to make the most of it though; our lovely mulch piles on the annex have been fun for sledding and jumping off of. And here's one of Alex I just found having fun in the snow just for kicks

Snowed in

We're in the middle of a nice gentle snow storm. Nice little flakes have been falling on our heads for about 30 hours now, we're supposed to have about 12 inches when it's all finished. We were out in it earlier, sledding on the mulch piles. So here's Ms. Annie in the hat my mom made her for Christmas. And young Alex who had just jumped off a smallish mulch pile into a soft mound of snow. He's so impressed with himself.

Stuff

Well Alex is sleeping in this morning, so I have a few extra moments this morning as I wait to start my day.
Over the weekend I had a girls night out. I went with some friends to a movie/dinner/game night to celebrate a friend’s graduation from nursing school. Seems like most of my nights out revolve around scrapbook get togethers. It was fun to do something different.
We had a couple of days off of school last week. It’s funny how productive I can be when there’s no school and it’s to cold/yucky to be outside. There was much reorganizing/purging done. Feels good to let go of the clutter. During my time off I also took the time to get formal lessons planned for the girls. I like to start giving my kids formal “seat work” the January before they start Kindergarten. That way we can be properly transitioned into “school mode” by the time August rolls around. Alex was not the worksheet type, so we usually just played counting games or something for his “school” during those early days. But the girls think it’s “fun” to sit down with worksheets. So they’re starting with letter/number formation.
This week the kids are starting gym classes. Alex is taking a homeschool gym class, and the girls are taking something called Energy Zone which sounds like a combination of creative movement and letters/numbers/shapes. They are so excited. One of my goals for the year is to get the kids involved in a few nonchurch extracurriculars. Expand our social horizons a little.