Up and Up

Thank you for all of you who have asked after dear little Chloe, she is doing much better. Not every day is perfect, for instance, yesterday Chloe came home and her cheeks had dried dirty tear streaks down the sides ever so noticeable probably only to her mother, but not because she was sad. She shakily told me that during P.E. that day she had run into another boy when she wasn't looking and hit her front teeth really hard. She bared her front ones at me and her left one was dark and bloody at the root and was jutting down a quarter inch lower than it was when she left the house that morning. It's a baby tooth, and was already starting to get a little loose, but we are going to the dentist today just to make sure she didn't do any further damage. Most days, however, she leaves the house with no tears and a big hug and a kiss and comes home a starving jabbermouth and generally seems to be enjoying school more than she was.

 

Last week we were able to go visit Craig's sister and brother in law and girlies in Buckeye, who graciously watched our kids for us on Friday evening so Craig and I could go to the Mesa temple for a much needed visit. Firstly we haven't been for ages, and secondly, we were able to take my grandfather's name finally through to finish his temple work (almost). AMAZING. I wish I would have taken a picture of Craig and I by the temple, it is gorgeous, and the sunset when we walked out made it just stunning. It was a really refreshing experience that both Craig and I were glad to be a part of. We spent the weekend hanging out with the kiddos, catching up, and watching movies. :-) Glad we have some family nearby to hang out with. 

Linus is getting smarter I'm pretty sure exponentially by the minute. I was nervous about going to his parent/teacher conference a couple of weeks ago, just because I was so worried about him succeeding behaviorally. I neglected to really focus on the benefits of how he'd do academically. Let me preface this by saying that when I did at home pre-school with Chloe, I was pretty diligent with her helping her learn all her letters and sounds, capitals and lower case, some sight words as much as we thought she could, and she still had to relearn a lot of it when she started Kindergarten. Linus I was less diligent, mostly because I was so busy last year, between photography, seminary, daycare, soccer, blah blah, I just didn't sit down with him one on one as often as I should have. We went over a few more things before school started, but in the short time since then he's mastered about 60% of what he needs to know before he goes to 1st grade and he's well on his way to learning the rest. I asked his teacher how he's been doing with his frustration control in class and she laughed and said he's had a  couple of outbursts. She then explained a couple of occasions when someone didn't understand the instructions and apparently he's exasperatedly exclaimed such things like, "She JUST told us that!" and usually is on top of his group making sure they are doing what they are supposed to be. What a kook. Although we are working on him helping people with kindness instead of frustration. 

Odell is getting bored I think judging on the amount of things she's been getting into that she knows she's not supposed to. She talks. All. The. Time. Mostly it's comforting to me to have conversations with her and answer all her nonsense questions and giggle with her when she finds something funny so it's not so quiet around here. She LOVES watching Tinkerbell when I let her. She gets out all her princess castles and then grabs Linus' batman doll and jumps from castle top to castle top with him. She loves any kind of sandwich with peanut butter on it. Thankfully she still loves to cuddle with me in the mornings, and sometimes I need that more than I think I do. 

Keeping up with life. As much as we can. :-)