Max
1. Max is loving sports right now. Loves listening to sports talk radio in the morning, wants to know who won the game when he walks down the stairs when he wakes up, loves wearing sports clothes (in fact he has specific days for certain teams/brands..Tuesday is Vikings day, Wednesday is Nike and Fridays is Oilers) It's fun because Chris and I like to talk sports and now he's joining in. He even sat and watched the entire superbowl party with us at our friends' house!
2. He had his first big boy weekend a couple weekends ago when Chris, Mya, Ivy and I were out of town for a gym meet. He got dropped off at a friends house after school, spent the night there, went to his ball hockey game and then went with a different friend until we got home that night. He was pretty nervous, but did great. We're very fortunate to have friends who are like family here that we felt comfortable leaving him and being out of town. It was so good for him to get that first experience behind him!
3. He is very motivated to finish all of the books on the YRCA list of nominations. (YRCA is the pacific northwest's library association list of books) Once you read all of them, you can vote on your favorite one. Things like that are all the motivation Max needs to get reading. Here's the list...he's on the last one right now and then he can vote!
Absolutely Almost – Graff, Lisa
Loot – Watson, Jude
El Deafo – Bell, Cece
The Fourteenth Goldfish – Holm, Jennifer
Rain Reign – Martin, Ann M.
The Thickety: A Path Begins – White, J.A.
New Kid – Green, Tim
The Circus Dogs of Prague – Rachelle Delaney
Mya
1. She's in competition season right now with gymnastics. She works super hard every week (10.5 hours of weekly training) so we are super excited for her to finally get to compete. Her first competition was in Lethbridge (4.5 hours south of here..close to the border) and she ended up in first place overall! Chris and I are basket cases at these events, but she's as cool as a cucumber. We have this weekend off and then 5 meets in the next 7 weeks. Luckily, 4 are in town so it's not as big of a commitment.
2. Mya is a great big sister to Ivy at school. They play together every day for morning recess (the only recess that Ivy is at school with the half day program). When I pick Ivy up at lunch and ask about her day, the best part is always that she played with her sissy at recess. I'm hopeful this relationship will continue to be a good one for both girls and maybe, just maybe we can even skip the horrible years when sisters hate each other!
3. She is loving reading right now too. It wasn't too long ago that I was sure that day would never come. Right now she's very into my babysitter club books (she even talks to me about them like I still remember..."Mom! I'm at the part where Maryanne is babysitting and someone is calling her and hanging up!!" She also likes the diary of a wimpy kid series. She had to do a current event this week at school and chose to do an article about the Muslim ban. Her teacher sent me a nice e-mail afterwards saying she did an awesome job and he appreciated her bringing that up so they could have a class discussion. It's fun to have kids with opinions.
Ivy
1. Ivy is doing great in school. She's starting to read and loving all of the attention she is getting because of it! I could have 10 kids and I would still be amazed when the 10th one learns to read. I just think that whole process is unbelievable. She's sounding out words on signs along the road and loves to write notes to people at home. Her spelling is hilarious and even some of the words she's sounding out. She pronounced "nice" today as Nike. Still trying to learn all of those pesky rules!
(still finding lots of selfies on my phone!)
2. She is in gymnastics once a week and is training with Mya's coach. Christianne is big on conditioning so Ivy is getting quite the workout each week. She is very proud of herself and all of her rope climbing and frequently asks me to feel her muscles even though she doesn't know how to flex:)
3. We have not had much time for her to be involved in anything except the gymnastics one afternoon a week when Max and Mya were still in school. Next week though that's all changing and it could be crazy for us! She starts swimming lessons and ski lessons. Honestly we kind of forgot about the fact that she still needs some major swim lessons. Max and Mya do too, but they're at the point where they can swim a lap and pass the swim test, so we've kind of put lessons on the back burner. Ski lessons will be great and hopefully will speed things up for her in the mountains.
