The girls and I managed a little trip to Tulsa for my youngest niece’s first birthday party this past weekend. The girls had fun playing with their cousins, I stayed sane (mostly due to the fact that my parents were there in the same hotel to help!), and overall we had a good weekend.
Anna and Addie are good buds!
Hopefully Kendall and Sarah will be too, when Sarah gets a little older. They’re only 6 months apart.
Anna got to take the “Star Board” to school this week and be the class star! Every week a different child takes it home and brings it back filled with pictures and things. Then they get to tell their classmates all about the things on the board. Anna and I had fun picking out pictures that represented some of her favorite places, events, and moments.
I thought, since I need to blog more and all, I’d just post the pictures she chose. (Click “more” to see them all.)
Riding her bike (this was on her 4th birthday):
Reading to Sarah (she does this a lot and we all love it):
We are learning Spanish around here. The whole family. Well, Sarah is still working on learning English, but she’ll probably pick up some too. I totally used Google Translate for that title sentence, so if it’s wrong, blame Google. :)
I studied Spanish for several years in high school, and I actually got to a point where I could read and write it pretty well. I never could speak or understand it nearly as well, and I’ve since forgotten most of what I learned. But as I study, it is coming back to me. I think it’s still in there somewhere.
I’ve been wanting to brush up for several years, but now I have a new motivation: Anna wants to learn. And why not? We can learn anything we want to, right? Learning a second language as a family sounds like a great idea to me.
So at the dinner table, we’re going through a little e-book that introduces some very basic common words and phrases. I’ve bookmarked some websites that have free video/audio lessons. We have a couple of Spanish-speaking friends who would love to help us out. So that will get us started. And for myself, since I’d like to progress at a faster rate? I’ve pulled out my old high school textbooks—which were an old edition even back then, dated 1984—and have started going through them. I know learning from books will not create fluency, but it should help build enough vocabulary to converse a little. And I’m a visual learner; hearing it is necessary, but I HAVE to see it as well to get it cemented in my brain.
Well, ¡hasta luego!
… because that’s where the book bags were sitting after our trip to the library. That’s where the girls just plopped down and started looking at them. My, how these girls love books! And I’m so glad! We have a lot of good times reading together.
Anna is reading picture books and easy readers very well on her own. We read plenty of them to her as well, of couse. I’m about to start reading aloud some chapter books to her. Sarah still loves board books, but more and more she is reaching for “real” books to look at and be read to her. She’s pretty good about sitting through the whole thing, although sometimes it’s hard to get through it because she is so excitedly pointing out things on every page! But that’s wonderful as well.
Wow, it’s already the start of another year. Last year, I made it a goal to read at least 24 books. I did. I also made it a goal to blog at least once a week. I didn’t. Maybe I’m only able to handle one resolution per year? So hopefully this year, I can keep up the reading AND add some blogging (and maybe even go back and blog about things that happened that I should have written about but didn’t).
I either need to blog or scrapbook. And being the type of person that feels anxious and overwhelmed upon entering Hobby Lobby rather than giddy and excited, blogging is probably the better option.
Hmm, so what’ll it be? The beach trip, playing in the snow, the school Christmas program, playing with the cousins? Or how much Anna has grown and learned and changed, or how much Sarah has grown and learned and changed, or how much I wish I could un-muddle the thoughts in my head and write or do something that actually makes sense?
But not tonight. Time for bed. Let’s see what the next few days bring…
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