Miriam

It is with great pleasure that I announce that we have a new READER in
the house!! Miss Miriam has join the ranks of the literate. She read
her very first book last night. Yes, it was one of those Bob Books for
beginning readers, but she was so incredibly proud of herself. She was
actually jumping up and down and yelling. So cute. We are so proud of
her!

Our dog Snoopy has a very bad habit of running away. He could have been Houdini dog! Seriously.
But today Miriam has found the solution to keeping him in our yard...

Miriam: Momma, I'll put up a sign to keep Snoopy in our yard.
Momma: What?
Miriam: I'll put up lots and lots of STOP signs in our yard so Snoopy will stop and not run away.
Momma: But Miriam, Snoopy can't read.
Miriam: I'll teach him.
Momma: But Miriam, dogs can't learn to read.
Miriam in her 4 going on 14 voice: Of COURSE, they can, Momma!

Well, DUH! Guess she told me!

Four years ago today, a young woman walked up a flight of stairs in a large house half way around the world. A video camera was rolling, hearts were pounding, and in the distance there was the noise of babies fussing. At the top of those stairs was the portal to a whole new world. At the top of those stairs was the answer to prayers and tears and heart longing difficult to describe.  At the top of those stairs, in the last room at the end of the hall a tiny 5 month old baby girl lay sleeping. Her caregivers woke her and placed her in my arms. She fussed for only a few seconds and then looked curiously at the strange people who were cooing over her and crying. Her life begin before me, but in many ways mine begin over that day. I walked up those stairs that morning just another woman, but I walked down them a mother.

To sorrow Jehovah shall add JOY!  Miriam Josephine Desta

Happy Family Day, my beautiful, wonderful little girl!

Day One

Fall 2006

Fall 2007

Fall 2008

Fall 2009

One of those things that we have struggled with as Christian parents is that pesky little holiday at the end of the month of October. I was raised without any acknowledgment of Halloween and never dressed up or when trick-or-treating. Brian was allowed to dressed and t-n-t, but still it was not a good holiday. Interestingly enough, I am actually the one with the least hang ups over the kids dressing up. At this point, we do not want to celebrate Halloween and all it's dark meanings, but this year we did dress the kids up for a few party type things in the week prior. I'm not sure exactly what we'll do in the years to come, but I would love to see some type of celebration of All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day. But who knows.

Anyway a few picture of our Princess, Cowboy, and the Ladybug!

Well, we have completed our first full month of homeschooling for this school year. :)

Even though Miriam is only 4, I decided to start her in a kindergarten curriculum since she is starting to read already. I felt like if we go slow she can handle it. So far it looks like I was right.  I decided to use the My Father's World From A to Z which is the kindergarten level for My Father's World (MFW) curriculum. I am very excited with how MFW has everything set up. It's easy for me the teacher. It's interesting for the kids. It is a mixer of a number of different styles of homeschooling all of which I really like. It is 100% Biblical world view. They even teach Creation Science!  

Anyway, we spent the first 2 weeks on a unit about the days of Creation. The last two weeks we have been working on unit 1 which is the letter "S" and a study of the sun. We didn't do all the activities they suggested but we did go out an play with our shadows. We even outlined them and watched how they changed over time. The kids loved that. (See picture below.)

Some people have already ask me, "How do you homeschool Miriam with two other little kids??"  Well it really isn't hard. The lessons are short, only take 30-40 minutes a day total. Evan often joins us for the lesson. I don't require that he does but when he does, I focus on letter recognition, learning colors, shapes, and counting for him. So I focus the easy preschool stuff to Evan, and the harder stuff to Miriam. When he doesn't want to do school, he plays quietly or he does Starfall on the computer. Evan LOOOVESS to do "ABC's" on the computer. (See picture.) Now Katie is bit trickier cause lit' Miss isn't missing anything! LOL Usually though I can convince her to sit in a chair and "color" or  put the crayons in and out of her bag. After awhile of that, she comes and sits in my lap as we finish up. It's really not bad at all.

As I mentioned, I am slowing the program down a little since Miriam is a year younger then expected. Each unit is designed to be 6 days. But I decided to make it into 10 days or 2 weeks.  So we do Lesson 1 on Monday. Lesson 2 on Tuesday.  Wednesday is storytime at the library and we do a worksheet or catch up if needed. Thursday is Lesson 3. And Friday we do Lesson 6 which is actually reading a book and doing activities around it.  Then the second Monday is Lesson 4. The second Tuesday is Lesson 5. Wednesday is library again.  Second Thursday is Lesson 6 again but with a different book (they give you 2-3 options each unit).  Then the second Friday we can catch up anything we need too or do other worksheets or games.  So far, so good! I may speed things up though as Miriam gets better at stuff and more used to the routine. We will see! Tomorrow we start the "M"/moon unit. Should be fun!

We were very blessed to be able to make an all expense paid trip to Dollywood this month. Brian's employer has a Family Day there as part of their yearly employee appreciation week. We got free admission for the whole family and a free meal. Since all our kids are young, we took our time getting there and didn't actually get into the park until about 11:30. Still we had a wonderful day.

There were a lot of rides even for our little kids. Besides the kiddie rides, Miriam was actually tall enough to ride all but 8 rides in the whole park (not that we even came close to riding all she could ride!) We did some for the whole family like the carousel. Miriam was standing in line for it when she spotted THE carousel animal she HAD to have. Yeah, a chicken!! LOL

Even doing kiddie rides, we soon learned that Katie liked the rides ONLY if she was with Momma or Daddy. If she wasn't the tears flowed.

We also learned that Evan is much like his father. He doesn't much care for fast, high rides. In fact Evan hates heights. So I think he only rode about 5 rides all day. We tried, he preferred to sit it out.

Miriam on the other hand... well, we couldn't get a ride high enough or fast enough for the little adrenaline junkie!! She wasn't tall enough for a real roller coaster which I think she would have loved. But she was just tall enough for their indoor roller coaster. If you ask her what her least favorite thing about Dollywood was she would say the fire in the roller coaster. The theme of this ride is that you are a firefighter rolling through the back hills of Tennessee putting out fires. It scared Miriam. However, if you ask Miriam what her favorite ride was it was also the roller coaster. Cause little Miss Fearless might not have like the "fire", but she DID like dropping 50 feet into pitch blackness at 45 miles an hour. Yup, that's my girl!! :o)

All in all, it was a really fun day! Hope we can go again next year. And maybe Miriam will have grown 6 inches. :oD

Well, Miriam and Evan had their 4 year and 3 year physicals the other week. I am happy to report they are basically healthy and certainly developmentally on track! LOL  Miriam weighted in at 38 1/2 pounds and is 42 inches tall. That puts her around 50th and 89th percentiles respectively. Evan (the dear boy) weighted in at 40 pounds and is 38 1/2 inches tall. That makes him about 60th percentile for height and somewhere around 99th for weight. They did a BMI on him which of course was off the charts. I think this is a case of US growth charts not being the best measurement of little Guatemalan boys. Thankful my Pediatrician agrees. Seriously, dude is not fat... he is just a TANK!!

Miss Miriam has always loved the color pink and is quite fond of princess things. She likes "pretties" but doesn't mind getting covered in mud.  So I don't know that I would call her a girly girl. However that may be changing. Sunday, in an attempt to trim her horrendously long toenails, I agreed to paint her toenails for the first time. She LOVES it. Unfortunately, Momma didn't have pink polish so silver had to do. She was still VERY please. Something tells me pink polish has been added to the shopping list!!