We’ve been caught up in so much lately.
No more long distance trips, but birthdays, dance classes, emergency oral surgery, a field trip, school, and cleaning.
Christine had her 9th birthday at the end of September and Amie had her 12th birthday in the middle of October. They chose the option to have $20 allowance to buy what they wanted for their birthday instead of having a surprise present. Christine picked out two small stuffed animals… a cat and a dog. Amie picked out a Blue Tree CD and a fantasy book about dragons.
Amie quit her ballet class. She wasn’t enjoying it as much as she used to. She wants to focus on learning to use her voice, so I’m calling around to see if I can find out how much voice teachers cost. I don’t know if we can afford it though. This really hurts to not be able to do this for her. In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to help her.
We are working on learning piano here at the house. I got a beginner book with Christian songs for Amie and James to work with. James is doing well with it. Amie is not as diligent in her practice, so she’s not picking it up as quickly as James is, but that’s ok. I’m not pushing her. I also got myself a piano book for my birthday. It is some Praise and Worship songs. I am working on one of them at a time.
In October, Martin came up to visit the weekend after Amie’s birthday. He came up on Saturday and stayed until Sunday afternoon. The girls hug tackled him. I have a picture on my Flickr. It was a bit of a break in our normal routine and the kids enjoyed having him around to draw pictures for and to talk to and to climb on (well, Noelle did that.)
A few days after he left, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago while it had free days. We didn’t even have time to see all the exhibits, there were so many of them. The kids really enjoyed it. We are already planning on going again during next year’s free days. I have a lot of pictures of that trip on my Facebook and Flickr. It was really fun.
Noelle still prefers the tumbling part over the dancing part in her class, but she is starting to pay more attention and do better with the dancing. She picked up on the tumbling part fairly quickly and is getting a lot of “very good, Noelle!” during that part of her class. She’s made a friend and enjoys talking about her friend, but I have noticed that they don’t goof off during class for which I am grateful.
James’ jazz and musical theater dance classes are going well. He is learning and doing better and better. A few weeks ago, the teacher let us come in and watch them. They were doing a routine to part of “Marian the Librarian” from “The Music Man”. It was so fun watching them and seeing how much he was enjoying his class.
I am taking tap classes. I’ve only had one class so far, but I had a lot of fun. I had to borrow shoes from the studio for that class and they were split sole and a little big, so the heals kept slipping down and hitting the floor when they shouldn’t have. I got my tap shoes this last Saturday. It was hard to find them in my size (I have children’s size feet.) and be the type that my teacher wanted, but we found some. It is much easier doing the tapping with them.
About two weeks ago, I suddenly had one of my wisdom teeth give me extreme pain, so I had an emergency dental appointment. He gave me some vicoden for the pain and referred me to an oral surgeon. I had to wait about 5 days before I could get my appointment and the vicoden wasn’t always able to mask the pain though it did a good job of making me dizzy and sick to my stomach. It got pretty bad. I was very happy to get that tooth out. They also removed the wisdom tooth on the opposite side of my mouth as it probably would have been just as bad soon. I lived on vicoden for another 2 days and then only used it at night for about 3 days after that. I am just now gotten to where I’m able to eat normal food.
This last weekend was nice and it is still nice today. I got the front yard raked and I’m working on the back yard. It’s a lot of leaves and I have to take breaks to let my shoulders rest, but I am enjoying being outside.
Speaking of which… I need to get back to doing that raking. Talk to you all later. Hopefully much sooner than I did this time.