handwriting

Handwriting has been really hard for Aidan. He got glasses when he was 4, and it was amazing to see how well he could draw shapes after that!

This year for homeschool we decided to use Handwriting Without Tears for his handwriting curriculum. Can you believe we finished the kindergarten curriculum last week? Aidan has consistently wanted to move faster through the workbook than the "schedule," so I've let him. He loves to do the workbook page and then color the pictures.

Now that we're done, I have him writing his uppercase and lowercase alphabet on separate days as practice. For the other 2-3 days, we're working through book 1 of Draw Write Now. LOVE IT!! We're using HWT's Draw and Write Notebook to do the lessons.

I bought book 1 at the beginning of the school year because I thought it would be a fun activity book for Aidan since he LOVES art. I wasn't sure if writing the 4 short sentences for each lesson would be too much for him, but he is doing so awesome with the drawing and the writing. Today I let him color his drawings with colored pencils, and you would have thought I had given him the moon!

Yeah, my boy LOVES art. Any kind. We bought him a STACK of $.10 notebooks at the beginning of the school year and it was the best purchase! He has filled about 10 of them with his drawings...they started out as just ninja turtle after ninja turtle, and now he draws creatures he makes up, draws his toys while they model for him, and lots of picures of the family.

I think I'm going to buy the complete set of Draw Write Now books this summer and then sell this copy of book 1. We can work through them slowly over the summer and then when we finish our first grade HWT cirriculum early...

It's so amazing to see his progress in handwriting after all the specialists we've seen for his motor skills. God is so good, and Aidan is so determined! He is such a huge blessing.

Meanwhile, Iona has taken to drawing because she sees her beloved big brother doing it. She scribbles all over a paper and then says, "Ta-Da! Mommy, see!"

next adoption?

We've been getting really excited about starting another adoption this summer. Right now the short list includes Russia, Ethiopia, Thailand, and Swaziland. Not in that order.

Please pray for us as we pray through this huge decision! We hope to announce the news sometime this summer, after we move and settle in.

I just filled out a ton of paperwork to change our address for our foster care license. It doesn't end!!

SOLD!

We had an offer on our house in the afternoon after our open house. After going back and forth many times, we accepted a deal on Sunday morning!!

So we had our houses labeled 1, 2, and 3. While we were waiting for our house to sell, we had finally decided #1 was just too much money and out of our reach. Sunday afternoon we went to see #2 again. We were about to put an offer on it, but we were not at peace. It was a lot smaller than we remembered from the first showing. We went home and spent some time with our realtors, and we decided to go and see #3 again...of course we had to give the homeowners time to get out!! Finally, late afternoon, we went to see it again. WE LOVED IT!! We got to see it with the sun shining in the windows. We realized that once we took #1 out of the picture, this house looked a lot more appealing. We are very overwhelmed by God's grace, giving us the PERFECT house in so many different ways. Pictures are on Facebook.

We're still waiting to hear our close date. Our buyer wants in on March 15, but our seller would prefer to get out by March 30. Thankfully our realtors are working that all out. We have the basement almost completely packed.

The garage door turned out to be a relatively small fix, and our repairman was able to fix another problem with it at the same time. We're so thankful!!

We're taking a small break this week to go visit some adoption friends who are traveling nearby from MA. We're excited to see the Laughners again and anyone else who can come as well!

We had fun celebrating Valentine's Day this weekend with the kids. Aidan and Pete made sugar cookies with icing and got to use a bunch of fun cookie cutters. We gave the kids tiny boxes of chocolates. And tonight we had take and bake pizza for dinner. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!!