We made it through Drew's first day of Kindergarten. Brian took him to school and walked him into the building. Drew was super excited. When I picked him up he talked the whole way home. He even admitted he was tired. :) He said he learned to say "Hello" and "Good-bye" in Spanish. He got to see his BFF's Conner and Margaret. He played at recess and loved lunch time in the cafeteria. He is willing to go back for day 2!! As for Parker, he's been in class for a week now and still is flip flopping between going and not going. His teacher is very nice, I think it's a drastic change and he's still trying to adjust.
We've had a fun and busy last week or so. Drew went to the East coast with my parents, Brian put the tube slide on our new jungle gym and is now almost finished with the second tower, we went to the Indiana State Fair and the quads had their first ever ferris wheel ride (they loved it), the kids all had their first soccer practice for the season(I failed miserably at this one), and we've started homeschooling. Drew loved the beach with my parents. He came home and told me his favorite part was watching my mom dig in the sand for their sand castle. My poor mom...she was a trooper. But Drew is her buddy and that's Nana's job! We spent over eight hours at the State Fair on Monday. We went first of all because Brian loves fair food and second it was wrist band day. The squad rode rides until the sun went down!! We were able to take them on their very first ferris wheel ride. We rode Jack's favorite: the carousel, Maddox loved the bees. Emma and Drew liked the Dizzy Dinosaur and Parker was just giddy about it all. We saw the largest pig.....boy that's a lot of BACON! That excited Drew because he loves bacon. Tonight we had soccer practice for the whole crew. It turns out that I am totally dingy when it comes to directions to practice. Drew completely missed practice and the quads made it to the last 10 minutes of practice. Parker and Jack dove right in and loved it. Emma and Maddox shut down and laid on the field to spectate. Seriously....they both laid in the middle of the practice field. Both coaches seem really nice and forgiving, so I'm hoping I don't get labeled as the "mom who is irresponsible". I'm also hoping Saturday's games go well. Since Drew and Parker go to school, we decided to homeschool Jack, Emma and Maddox. It's going better than hoped. Maddox is struggling fine motor and gross motor wise. We decided to have him referred for OT and PT. He starts with a new OT on Monday. She is great. He responded to her well during testing. We are still waiting on PT to evaluate him, but he is toe walking, has some other things going on that are raising some red flags. Emma and Jack are doing great. They do great with seat work, are able to recognize about half of their alphabet and all three of the kids can identify their numbers, colors, shapes, names, and do great at circle time. We've slowly introduced working with a mouse on the computer. This is an area where I need to learn patience. Overall though, I'm doing better than I thought!!
I will try to post pictures from soccer next week. Pray we all survive!!
Wow! We love soccer. Drew has scored two goals this season so far, compared to none last season. Emma and Maddox have scored a goal each as well. I am most impressed with Emma. She went from laying in the middle of the practice field to standing in the middle of the game field, to scoring a goal in just her second game. Maddox and Drew both scored in the first game of the season. Maddox showed off his little Mario and Luigi jump with his arm in the air; while Drew airplaned it out down the field. Parker and Jack have yet to score goals but do a great job moving the ball up and down the field. At first I wasn't able to leave their sight while they were practicing, but finally last night I was able to walk the walking trail around the soccer field. Brian was really nervous about them participating and I'll admit I was on the fence about it. I'm glad we allowed them to play and get out to do some fun things this Fall. It's always been following Drew to his fun activities and now it gives Drew and I a chance to bond while watching the quads play. We have such fun.
School is going great for everyone. Drew has shown us that he is ready to read. He and I have been reading chunks of Green Eggs and Ham together. He does a great job sound blending to make his words. We've been doing ok with keeping up with homework. It's going to be those silly fundraisers that get us though. At least with Saint Susanna the fundraiser is per family, where as the public schools are per child. Homeschooling on the days the little ones are not in school is going well. They love counting and coloring. We've been having some fun with stories. We have tried using a computer mouse and I'm not just ready to tackle that yet. The kids are so button happy, and fast too. I'm afraid they are gonna blow the place up from pressing too many buttons at once!!
We haven't thought about Halloween yet. All the costumes from last year fit and the kids love them so that is a strong possibility. Considering last year we Trick or Treated with friends in another neighborhood, they would be new to our neighborhood this year. OH SUCH FUN!
We are coming up on our one year anniversary of our house fire. I can feel myself fighting the anxiety some nights before bed. Usually its not bad, but last night was one that gave me chills. I have found myself going to bed later at night, sleeping lighter throughout the night, watching the clock usually around 3am, listening for unusual noises all the time, and have been extra jumpy if the smoke alarm goes off on accident when our oven sets it off. I'm thankful that I'm not scared to be living here. You know how sometimes when something tragic happens you have that fear of going home? I really thought that I would feel like that, and I don't. It's amazing how much everything in our lives has changed in the last year. I'll post all that in a separate post later! Right now I'm thankful for my family and friends.
Hope you all have a great rest of the week! I know I'm looking forward to watching more goals being scored by the squad!!
