Library

On Saturday our Colleyville Library had a kick-off breakfast for their summer reading program. It was so much fun for the girls and Jimmy and Ben... a little hot for this 8 month pregnant mommy! =) They had a yummy breakfast of pancakes and sausage, crafts, face painting and balloons. After standing in the balloon line for a LONG time (you don't even wanna know how long) each girl got an adorable balloon that looked like a gum ball machine, complete with beads inside to look like gum balls. Thrilling to two little girls! I didn't get photos at the event but I got some at home afterwards.

I added the picture of Ben hammering the wall because this is a common occurrence around here. He loves to use the hammer to beat anything and everything in sight....the wall, the windows, his sisters... =) He's a wild man!

Sunday school fun

This past week in our class all the supplies for VBS were out in our room which included about twenty of those pool noodles. The children made it through almost the entire class without getting into them but right at the end they found them and it was a total free for all. They had the best time! They are all very obedient children though because after giving them about 10 minutes to go hog wild with them, when we asked them to put them away, they piled them back in a nice stack and that was the end of it!

Backyard golf

Nana's birthday

June 5th was my mom's birthday. We spent the day waiting for Jimmy to get home from his long anticipated CFA level 2 exam and then spent the evening going to dinner with my mom and dad and then swimming at their house. We had a very nice evening and obviously Serene enjoyed the chocolate pie we made for Nana! =)

Eggs

This past Saturday Anna made her first scrambled eggs pretty much by herself. She loves to help me cook and was pretty proud to do this on her own!

Neighbors

I thought since mentioning my neighbor who was concerned for Anna's socialization, this might be a good chance to write about all our wonderful neighbors on this quaint little court.

There is the super sweet couple across the street (the aforementioned "socially concerned" neighbor). He is a Methodist preacher in Grapevine and the home they live in is actually the church parsonage. They are both two of kindest people you could ever meet. Since our first days of owning the house they have welcomed warmly. She has been so kind to bring me information about the local library, given the children coloring books, brought us muffins our first week in the house, brought the children bubbles and some extra pool floaties she found when cleaning out her garage. Lots of small kind gestures such as those and always stopping to talk and chat when we are out in the yard with the children in the evenings are some of the reasons we are totally going to miss them when they move in just ten short days.

Being that he is a Methodist preacher they are being moved to a new congregation and a new preacher and his wife will soon be moving in. We will greatly miss Randy and Naomi and Nathan and feel sorta slighted that we only got them for neighbors for such a short time.

Next on the street we have Mr. Whitmire. He has lived on this street for 45 years... amazing. He moved in when he was in his late thirties and is now in his eighties. Kind of where we are now... Jimmy and I are both 33 and I can't imagine being here for 45 years and the memories we will have of the changes life has brought over that amount of time. He is our local historian of the street. If there is anything you want to know about anything that ever went on over the last 45 years on this street he knows it. He can tell you how many snakes sightings there have been, who had marriage problems, who had financial problems, what year the pecan trees had a good harvest, how many fish have been caught in our pond, about each preacher that has lived in the parsonage, etc. etc... you get my point... the many KNOWS this street! We really like him and Jimmy enjoys "chewin the fat" with him out in the yard in the evening!

Now we come to the front half of the street.... A sweet young family with three kiddos and one on the way (sounds like us). They have two of the sweetest little girls you would ever want to meet who have been super friendly to Anna since we were first just coming over here to work on the house. They love to ride bikes and often ask Anna to ride with them and this just makes her day! They have a little brother who rides his bike up and down the street about as fast as lightening.... he would make any daddy proud!!! He is all boy and hopefully can show our boys a thing or two when they get bigger. I regret that we haven't reached out to this family a little more to get to know them better for ourselves. My dad knows him really well and we know they are a great family we just need to get them over to our house for a cookout or something.

Next door to that young couple are her grandparents and parents. They are super friendly and have made the transition to a new neighborhood much easier.

All in all we have been so blessed to discover this little street with lots of friendly people and beautiful surroundings. Can't wait to see if we will be the old couple in our 80's telling the new young folk about how this street looked WAY back in 2010!! =)

So what are you going to do for Anna's socialization??

This is the question Jimmy got from our VERY sweet neighbor tonight when he told her we would be homeschooling Anna this fall. She was actually positive about the general idea of homeschooling but was concerned for Anna's social future.

Honestly, this is the most common question we get, which I find interesting for several reasons. Mostly, I wonder why it is everyone's first thought. I mean seriously, why is their first concern not the level of education she will receive or whether or not she will learn to read and write properly. They just have the need to know if she will be properly socialized with that one single age group of children.... hmmm...

Here is a good excerpt from a blog I was reading tonight. This comes from http://greggharrisblog.blogspot.com

"To those who ask, "But what about socialization?" I can only weep. Socialization has always been a double-edged sword; it cuts both ways. "He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm" (Prov. 13:20, NASB). What my wife and I are doing in our home school is positive, biblical socialization that makes our children become wise. My children walk with me, and though I definitely have a long way yet to go, I try to be an acceptable companion to my children.

Most of our modem school-based socialization is of the foolish, harmful sort. Pooled ignorance leads to poor taste in clothing, music, films, and TV - the kind of people who read the grocery store tabloids and believe them. But the harm is far more than cultural. Disinterest in school, disrespect for teachers, rapacious dating, promiscuity, substance abuse, and gang violence also come in waves-- pounding waves of youth culture that erode moral standards. Even a small population of these poor creatures requires that high schools be run like youth prisons.

Good socialization is primarily age-integrated. It occurs when the young are included in the lives of older and wiser people, especially parents and other family members at home and the spiritual family of one's local church. Walking with the wise is a lifestyle, not a program. It is a club of fellow enthusiasts, not a class of uninterested age-mates. It includes working together, eating together, playing together, worshiping together, and studying together, This is where God placed the responsibility for child training and education, and it works very well in aiming children at God's highest and best targets in every area of life."

Good stuff!