New Beginnings

Last week marked new beginnings for our family.

Kyle competed in his first triathlon on Saturday morning. I also did the triathlon, which was my second. Kyle did a great job! He worked really hard for 2 months training. i started about 9 min ahead of him in a different wave. He passed me about 1.5 miles into the run (last leg of race). My biggest goal was to not walk during the run and I was able to accomplish that. We're hoping to both do another one before the end of the season in early October.

Prema started school again on Tuesday. She is now in 3rd grade and thus has new teachers and classmates. She spends the morning with her Language Arts teacher and the afternoon with her math, science and social studies teacher. Her first week with the change she did very well. Both teachers have been extremely accommodating and are really trying hard to keep her time structured and consistent with home so that she feels safe. Hopefully the trend continues. We were very worried she would spiral down hill with all the changes.

Isaac started school this week as well. We are doing a homeschool curriculum this year. We meet once a week with other Classical Conversation families at a church about 5 minutes from our house for 3 hours. During that time a tutor goes over each week's new material for both students and moms, so I stay in the room with Isaac learning myself. Classical education believes in training your brain to memorize during the early years of schooling so Isaac is working on memorizing History (from creation to present), Latin, scripture verses, English grammar, science vocabulary, geography, and math facts. I am responsible for teaching him reading, writing and math on my own time.

Eli has started going to kid's church during mass and went to Tot's class during Isaac's first school day. Eli doesn't jump into new things too quickly. He tends to sit back and observe before he exposes his animated and rough personality. He definitely prefers being home so most of the time he will probably be with Grandma Cullum when Isaac is in school instead of being at the Tot's class. At home Eli is potty training which means most of the time he is naked. He has also started to love playing the ukulele and compose new songs singing about his life and life around him. The naked ukulele player/singer is often performing for the family.

here are some random photos of the family. I'm not up to date yet on uploading so these are a little old.