Sunday was a momentous day! It was MiniMe's first recital! She's been taking piano lessons for almost a year now, BUT she started lessons the week after last spring's recital (which must have been later in the year than this year) and then the fall/Christmas recital was while we were in Florida, so she missed that one too. It was fun to see her combination of excitement and nervousness about it :) She practiced over and over and over, not only playing the songs, but announcing the songs, and she did great!!! I was most nervous about how Little Bit would do. Our neighbor was willing to watch her, but she said she wanted to come. Sassy did a great job of helping her "practice" sitting quietly while MiniMe was practicing her pieces, and we talked lots about how she'd need to be super quiet and all, and she did GREAT! MiniMe has been carrying a doll everywhere lately, and Little Bit loves to "help take care of Marco", so MiniMe asked her to "babysit" Marco during the recital, which worked beautifully, Little Bit held the doll and helped him "clap" for "his mommy" after MiniMe played. Sassy took a video of MiniMe playing her pieces on her (or maybe MiniMe's) iTouch, so when I figure out how to do it, if MiniMe ok's it, I can post it here (no promises though, tech isn't really my thing LOL).
The rest of the week was more "routine". We're finally getting into a routine that allows for more of our normal school stuff, though the unpacking/organizing has slowed down . . . part of that is the "easy stuff" has mostly been gone through, alot of what's left to go through, it's easier to wait until I have the school room back, and the whole garage to sort things in (Dad's using it as his workshop while he does the renovations) and the weather is more conducive to sorting in the garage). The other part is needing to do more school-stuff as we get back into the full swing of reviewing things for the Schoolhouse Review Crew, AND starting to get into the routine of Little Bit's preschool curriculum (the same waldorf one that the big girls used at this age, I LOVE the emphasis on art and nature!!!!)
One of the fun projects this week was making "birdfeeders". We took toilet paper tubes and smeared peanut butter on them, then rolled them in birdseed. This was for Little Bit's "nature" time, but the big girls were just as into it as she was.Little Bit has also been enjoying the books we read for school, her current favorite is "Horton Hatches an Egg" :)
She's also enjoying the lapbook we are reviewing for A Journey Through Learning (watch for that review in a few weeks), she asks, multiple times per day if she can do more school, gotta love that! :)
After all the bitterly cold weather we've had this winter (I know, those of you in REALLY cold places are laughing, but weeks on end that never get above freezing aren't normal around here and I'm not a fan!), we finally had some warmer weather! The girls had fun running all over the yard to figure out the PERFECT places to hang their birdfeeders. The big girls chose places that can be seen from our windows, Little Bit opted to hang hers in a tree way back by the stream though LOL.They also spent a good part of the afternoon that day playing "basketball" (minus a basket, so just dribbling and trying to steal the ball from Papa or me when we took time to play with them) and otherwise getting lots of fresh air and exercise :)
Our garage has a "bonus room" above it, but it's currently only accessible by ladder (changing that is on the "to do list" but it's not real close to the top of the list LOL). For now we're using the space to store the empty boxes as I empty them and other lightweight, not-needed-often, items. While the weather was nice, we took another batch of empty boxes up. The big girls love getting the chance to get up on the roof of the lean-to and help put things in the bonus room. Though MiniMe insists on getting her turn up there, but is a nervous wreck while she's up there LOL.For the last couple of weeks, MiniMe has been asking if we can get back to having monthly "dates". As you may remember, if you've been reading my blog for awhile, we had a schedule going for awhile where dh & I went on a date one night (or day) during the first week of the month, I had bookclub the second week of the month, MiniMe chose a date with either Daddy or me the 3rd week of the month, and Sassy chose a date with either Daddy or me the 4th week (the day & time for all but bookclub varied depending on dh's work schedule). But then we were travelling tons and moving and such and the dates fell by the wayside. MiniMe was always the one who cherished the alone time with me (Sassy alternated between us, MiniMe always wanted time with me) the most, whereas Sassy saw it as a time to choose a fun activity like bowling, or a restaurant she liked, more than the "time" aspect of it, so it didn't surprise me that, with all the upheaval lately, MiniMe was seeking that one-on-one time again. But dh's schedule has been insane, so we hadn't yet found a time that would work.
Meanwhile, my dad has continued to work on the renovations. The big news is that the shower actually WORKS now!!! There's still lots to do, before it's completely DONE (like put in the permanent shower rod (right now it's a piece of conduit laying across the top, which is why the shower curtain looks too short), and drywall the wall that had to be built), but when MiniMe and I got home from piano lesson and our date, Mom told me that she'd taken a shower upstairs. Woo-hoo! I can't tell you how thrilled I am to not have to go across the cold, basement to take a shower!!!!!
I found the shower curtain at Goodwill, and am SOO excited! The wainscoting is a kind of greenish grayish stain, and this shower curtain picks up that color along with the blues and lavenders. I'm thrilled to have found one that matches the colors already in the room, and bring in other colors that I like, for $2.50!!! :)And a lovely bonus to having a separate tub and shower, Friday night is bath night, in the last house, once the big girls had decided they were "too old" for baths, that generally meant that Little Bit would take a bath, then one of the big girls would have time for a shower and the other would have to wait and take a shower Sabbath morning. While the only shower here was in the basement, MiniMe opted to take a bath, either with Little Bit, or after her. Sometimes Sassy took a bath (alone or with Little Bit) and sometimes she took a shower in the basement. THIS WEEK, was was awesome!! The girls got Little Bit settled into the bath, and once the tub was full enough, MiniMe went ahead and took her shower, then Sassy took hers. Plenty of time, since they didn't have to wait for Little Bit to finish her bath, Little Bit loved getting a LOOOOONG bath, with her sisters in the bathroom keeping her company, it was awesome :)
Dad also finished his work in the storage space off the girls' bedroom, so I was able to start utilizing that space. When we moved in, we stacked some of the boxes of the girls' toys in a corner of their room. My thought was that they could work through the boxes, sorting the toys into categories, and finding places for them. But what I found was that, with the boxes taking up part of the room, and cluttering it, they were paralyzed. They couldn't see where to start or where to put ANYTHING. Anything that I asked them to put away, they just shrugged . . . so, now that we can use that storage space, FOR NOW, I moved the still packed, and half-packed boxes into that space and arranged/organized what is left in their room (other then the fact that all bookshelves in the house are currently just filled with books, once Dad builds my staircase bookshelves, I will sort through all the books again and find their long-term homes organized by topic, but for now they are stacked into the shelves however they happened to come out of the boxes, to have room for all of them, SOMEWHERE). That took pretty much all of Friday, but it's done. The girls can hopefully keep things organized/put away now, and we can slowly work through the still packed boxes without things being so chaotic.
So that was our week. Things are slowly but surely falling into a new normal . . . :)
No comments:
Post a Comment