Growing Everyday

Jared especially has been wanting to play cards all the time lately. Beka enjoys playing too. We play War, Go Fish, Crazy 8’s, and Uno usually. Any ideas for some other easy card games?

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My children are going through a learning spurt. Now, if I said they were going through a growth spurt every parent would understand what I meant. The kids being on constant feed, they sleep a little more, they might be a little more cranky. And this is similar, except Beka and Jared can’t get enough knowledge lately.

Every morning this week by 8am, Jared has wanted to do worksheets. Asked for and begged for worksheets to do. Reading worksheets, phonics worksheets, math worksheets, anything to keep his mind busy and learning something new. Phonics has finally clicked with him and he is sounding out words left and right and reading short sentences. He is adding and subtracting. And he doesn’t want to stop!

Beka is just as bad. She gets home from school and we do her homework, but it isn’t enough. "Mom, can I type on your computer? Mom did you know this is the right way to hold your hands on the computer when you type." And on and on it goes. She is learning money and how to tell time. And it is wearing me out.

Don’t get me wrong I love it that they have a thirst for knowledge and that they want to learn. This overwhelming desire is wonderful to see. And I am already preparing myself for when the spurt will end and I will have to force them to do homework or to get away from the TV. But right now, my brain hurts.

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Halloween has come and gone. Beka and Jared had a blast dressing up and then going all around the neighborhood getting candy. Beka chose to be Supergirl and Jared chose to be a vampire.

I couldn’t resist getting a picture of the kids’ loot this year. They made out pretty well.

Beka’s

Jared’s

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The church we attend closed its doors this week. They sent over 3,000 people out into the community to do works of service. There were lots of different projects you could sign up for; anything for playing board games with senior citizens to prayer walks to helping organize food banks. Whatever your desire, there was a project. I was reluctant to do this…it is outside of my comfort level. But the whole family had a really good experience. The kids were helpful and polite while we were doing our service. The project we did was really helpful to the community. It was a nice change from just warming a seat on Sunday.

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Once again this year, we took on the task of carving pumpkins. I am beginning to think the kids do it just so I will bake the pumpkin seeds. Anyway, Jared had brought one small pumpkin home from a field trip and we had purchased two bigger pumpkins so there was plenty of work to be done.

First, we cleaned all the seeds and goop out of the pumpkins.

Then, I had the kids design a face for the smallest pumpkin. The design for the bigger pumpkins came from a book we had. Andrew enjoys a challenge.

This year Beka tried her had at carving portions of the small pumpkin.

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And yes you do have to say it in that sing song voice because that is how Beka and Jared say it all the time.

Andrew signed the family up for a membership to the YMCA recently. Sunday was the first time we used the membership. The best thing about this Y is that they have an indoor pool. The kids are in love. On Sunday, we went and played in the pool for an hour. The water was nice and warm. They actually have two pools. The one we stayed in is basically the kiddie pool although the Y calls it the "fitness pool". It was wonderful! Beka is a little fish and swam around the whole time and was nicely exhausted. Jared splashed, played, and swam a little, and he was exhausted too. We are going to try to make it a weekly family playdate. At least, we will all get a little exercise this winter.

*titled stolen from the Village People lyrics

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Jared was bored the other day. He was playing with his actions figures, but they just weren’t fun enough by themselves. So, Jared got the brilliant idea to make a zip-line on the staircase. I had to keep him for covering the whole stairs in yarn. He had so much fun watching the figures fly down the stairs.

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I just love this picture of Beka outside reading her book. She is really getting into reading and loves to take a book with her most places. The problem now keeping her in books that she can read and that she is interested in. She can’t wait for the next Fancy Nancy book to come out in December.

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I talked about the swords I bought Jared in an earlier post. Here you can see him in action. The other picture is Jared enjoy his freezi pop while swinging. Jared loves to be outside no matter what he is doing.

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