We are learning

We made it through Week 1 of End of Summer, Start of School Year! I'm learning lots of Mommy Lessons that I hadn't anticipated God would throw into the kids' lesson plans :-) Day 2 of school I went into Kelton's room to wake him and tell him that it was time to get up for Kindergarten. He says, "Again?!?! I went yesterday!" To which I replied (of course) that we get to go again today, too! Yay! As his balled up fist and rubbed his eyes, he said, "Mom, we don't have to go every day! I'll go tomorrow." Soooo, we made a calendar showing 5 days of school, Cartoon Day, and Church Day. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Labor Day weekend is gonna throw us off, but I can at least tell him he got an extra day off for his birthday... he thinks the West Texas Fair is in honor of his birthday, so for now we go with it!





We floated through the week pretty well completing Kenlee's Life Timeline and a Family Tree (luckily it was our household on the tree... Mom, Dad, Kenlee, Kelton, Cricket the Baby, and Allie the dog)--- it starts getting pretty confusing when we map beyond that! But then on Thursday, Kenlee reports No Homework, and the assignment folders are not quite as parent-information-friendly as they were in the early grades. They rely more on students developing responsibility for their own assignments, which is a good thing. Anway, Friday morning, we are up in our Tiger gear, all ready for school early, and I am addressing Kelton's birthday party invitations, and Kenlee is putting stamps on them for me. She casually says, "I have to do a leaf collection." I calmly replied, "That's cool. When is that due?", and just as calmly, she says, "Today." I very distinctly feel the calm of the morning begin to drain from my forehead, down to my nose, down to my mouth, and I was glad I had the presense of mind to breathe and not freak out. I reminded her that she told me she had no homework, and that she does not get help nor sympathy from mom when she announces at 7:35 AM that she has an assignment due... after all, we are approximately 7 minutes from getting in the car. She lost some of her calm at that point and said, "Then what am I supposed to do? I don't want to get in trouble!", so I told her to get a Ziploc and fill it with leaves from the yard and to hope that counts as a collection. I can tell I am going to have to let her fall/fail this year to teach a lesson, but that's hard to sit back and watch. We had a similar episode Monday morning, but I'll spare you all the details. But it did lead to an apology at lunch where I told her that it was both of our faults, not just hers. That as a 3rd grader her teachers are expecting her to learn more responsibility, but that as a parent, it is also my job to run down the checklist to show her how to develop that responsibility. We are learning :-) It has been a great week, though. Here are random pictures from the week.

Kelton has had a good week. Here is a picture from his Classroom Blog.

Justin & I both got off work early yesterday, so we took the kids for a little bit of golf. Not sure how we both play right-handed and ended up with 2 left-handed players for kids.

They were putting right on top of one another, but both putted in =)
Driving the golf cart is the highlight for both kids.

Kenlee & my nephew Corbin (Can't believe he's almost walking!)

Kenlee took a pic of my 17-week profile.

We haven't been documenting that up to this point, but I figure it's time.

I can't believe we're closing in on the halfway point!!

Funny how most of the time I just feel pretty thick, but at night, it seems to grow a lot! The kids are amused how I look more pregnant at night. I bought a doppler off of eBay, so we have all had fun listening to "Cricket" as well as to Kenlee's & Kelton's heartbeats.