Hectic

Life has been a little hectic lately. We've had a lot of stuff going on with school. I've had to take the girls in for different tests to be done over the last couple weeks. Brooklyn has one more on the 28th. She has to be dropped off at 11am and the cut off time if she doesn't finish early is 4pm. It makes for one very long day for her. Tests all afternoon. This is just a practice test before they switch to it next year, I believe. Plus, both girls had to go in for their reading and math assessment tests. For the reading they read 3 different passages for 1 minute each to see how many words they can read in a minute. Brooklyn averaged 155 while using her finger. The teacher had her do one extra one without her finger and she scored 183 words per minute. 148+ is considered advanced. So she is doing amazing in reading. Rilee scored at grade level in her reading. And they both did well in math. Rilee needs to practice adding double digits, but that is about all she needs to work on. Kyndra will be starting kindergarten next year. I was working on her enrollment today. Hard to believe my baby is going to be starting school! Time certainly flies by!

My goal this year is to get my house cleaned, decluttered and organized. I'm not sure how well it's going, but I'm trying to make an effort. I've been passing on old kids clothes on to my mom's co-workers. I was going through baby toys and getting rid of some of those. It's a work in progress, but I'm sick of all the clutter and mess. I have some new rules for the kids that include making their beds as soon as they get up. Plus, I've come up with a new chore system that seems to help motivate them with their other chores. They each have one chore in each room of the house. It helps keep it from being to overwhelming and they enjoy crossing off the chores on the list when they are finished. It has really helped in keeping the house cleaner.

A couple weeks ago a friend of our's died. She had been suffering from ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease for 6+ years. She was only 41. It is so hard to see someone die so young. I've known too many who have died before they should have. It is always so heartbreaking. Prayers for her husband and children would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

We started growing our tomatoes, eggplants and pablano peppers for our garden. Erik and I got a yard of Couer d'green compost (comes from the water treatment plant) for our garden, but we need maybe 5 or 6 more yards. We have horrible soil here. We live in an old river bed so the ground is very rocky. We're hoping that with this compost we'll actually have a good garden this year. Our last garden didn't hardly produce anything. I'm really excited for the weather to keep getting warmer so we can plant and soon have fresh vegetables. Yay for spring!!