Lately.....

I figured there wasn't much point in waiting until tonight to write a new blog (I was planning on waiting in case anything happened that needed to be included in the post today) because it's been so long since I've written that there's already more than enough to write. Jon, the kids, and I are living in Tennessee now and are really loving our new church. We started in February and can genuinely say that we love the church and people in it. We are really amazed at how God brought us out of our last situation and put us here. It's so humbling. The kids are also making friends here very quickly. Asher's "best" friend goes to our church, and his name is Seth. They have so much fun together in Sunday School, and I'm sure they give their teachers a hard time because they're wild together! Seth's mom told me the other day that when he sings "Ring Around the Rosy" he'll sing "Asher, Asher, we all fall down!" I thought that was really funny. :)

The kids are also in gymnastics here together. They go two times a week (Monday mornings and Thursday evenings). Next week we're trying Asher out in the 4/5 year old gymnastics class. Last night they told us they felt like he was ready to move up even though he's still 3. We'll see how that goes. Lorelai also does dance on Thursday mornings. It's actually a mommy and me class that we do together and it's really just a movement class. Some weeks they'll make their own costumes out of scarfs or something. She has a great time, but it's a new class so there are only a couple of us in it. I'm hoping that more will join soon especially since she's by far the oldest in the class - she's the only one walking. Next year she'll be able to join in the 3 year old class. We had Asher enrolled in soccer because he'd been asking if he could play baseball. Since baseball season isn't until Spring we decided we'd try soccer. Unfortunately he wasn't loving it. I think it was a mixture of it being so hot outside and all the strangers (there were almost 40 kids in his group alone plus all the parents and people on surrounding fields). He told us he didn't want to do soccer and just wanted gymnastics and baseball which was fine with us. We weren't going to push him to do something he didn't ask to do since we were the ones who decided to sign him up.

We also started "school" at home this year. Obviously before we had learning time, but this year we're doing a more structured learning time complete with desks and a whiteboard. Lorelai doesn't really participate, but I got her a desk anyway because I knew we would have fights otherwise. Asher really loves school, though. He's always really excited about doing it every day. Last weekend he asked to do school (on Saturday morning), and we had to explain to him that we don't do school on the days that daddy is home from work. Since starting school 2 1/2 weeks ago he has memorized Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:3. He has learned to read the words airplane, apple, and Asher. He gets very distracted during the time that we work on reading so we're working on it. He has also learned to do more complex math sheets like where he'll be given a picture of a bunch of alligators and mutiple choice answers on how many alligators there are. At first he got confused and thought that they were all the right answer because there would be like 5 alligators and the numbers were 2, 4, and 5 or something. Well, technically there were 2 alligators, 4 alligators, and 5 alligators so he thought they were all right. :) He now understands. He can also read most letters of the alphabet and can read all numbers up to 10 (and some beyond that). He knows all his colors and shapes. Most of the stuff we've been doing in school is review for him (other than the memory verses and reading), but soon we'll be learning more new stuff. I'm excited about seeing his progress!

Lorelai is just a wild and crazy girl! Her and Asher are complete opposites. While he is more shy and reserved (at times anyway), she is outgoing and super friendly no matter who you are (most of the time - she still has very clingy moments). She talks so much and speaks in complete sentences. And there is no doubt that she is all girl. She loves to wear her princess high heels and sometimes makes us let her wear them out. She'll go out with a dress, big bow, purse, high heels, and beaded necklace. And she picks it ALL out. She also makes sure that people compliment her on her outfits and shoes. It's really insane - I didn't think 23 month olds could be like this! The other day we were at the doctor's office with her, and while the doctor was trying to listen to her breathing she kept trying to get him to look at her shoes. She kept yelling at him to look, but he was just paying attention to listening to her breathing. Man, did she get mad! I finally had to tell him he better look and compliment her because she would never stop.

That's about it for us. We're just staying busy between church, school, gymnastics, dance, friends, etc. We'll be going to visit our parents (both Jon's and mine) and friends back home in 2 weeks, and we're really excited. Asher keeps asking about it every day. Here are some pictures of the kids from this morning.

This is Lorelai's pouting-about-to-cry face:

This is the crying face: