December was a whirl wind, between finishing up Thanksgiving and getting ready for Christmas. We also took a short trip to stay overnight in Linden and then ran up to see Regine in Hot Springs for a couple of days while Keller was traveling. On the way to Linden we stopped in Longview to see a model train exhibit they had set up for the holidays. We were the only people there and the kids loved getting to ask the engineers questions about each train and seeing where they would go. Linden was quiet and peaceful, but also exciting because we found a green snake! Kamy held the snake because Caden did, though she was a lot less confident about it than he was. Lol!
In Hot Springs we got to see Regine’s new house! Saturday morning we went to the Mid-America Science Museum where the kids happily tried out all the exhibits. Their favorite was a water set up that they could use to shoot balls across the room. The museum even had several of the original props from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on display.
After the museum, Regine took us down to the river where the kids threw rocks into the water and attempted to stay mostly dry. There is just something about kids and water …
Kamy’s been super helpful lately. She loves to help and knows when she’s actually helping or if it is just something to keep her occupied. She helps me cook in the kitchen, move around laundry, and get things from the upstairs fridge for me.
Both Kamy and Caden wanted to be involved in decorating for Christmas. This is the first year in several that we have actually set up the Christmas tree and put out decorations. Min gave us her large tree, and I found one at a garage sale a while back, so we actually set up TWO trees. The large one downstairs was “Momma’s tree” — decorated with white, glass, and silver ornaments. Upstairs we also set up the “Family tree” with all the colorful and funny ornaments we have collected or been given over the years. The kids followed directions to decorate the one downstairs, but they had free rein to put ornaments wherever they wanted to on the upstairs tree.
Kamy and Daddy are still training for the 5k they would run in March. They are pretty consistent about running and having the built-in accountability of each other makes them very likely to go run in the morning. The exceptions are rain and below freezing. Barring those two conditions, they run three times a week. Kamy is learning how to be encouraging and working on having a positive attitude during the run. Self-talk is a learned skill too, so they make a point of talking about their “happy legs.” Kamy remains a little chatterbox and they talk about anything and everything while running. It helps pass the time and gives her an outlet for all her random musings. =)
School work this month focused on finishing the reading curriculum by Christmas — which she achieved! She has gotten much better at reading and she is getting more confident all the time. For math she worked on fractions, telling time, subtraction, measurement, skip counting, 3D shapes, bar graphs, and reading a thermometer. We’ve also introduced nouns and verbs and Kamy’s learning how to identify proper and common nouns. Kamy also created her first “book!” She took several sheets of paper, folded them in half, stapled them, and then wrote and drew a story called “Me and My Kite.” It has since earned a home in her memory box.
