School, Hunting, Baseball and Messes

SCHOOL

This will be our 7th week of school! WOW! We are seeing some very cool things coming from these boys! Keep in mind, Mark does not sit for more than 5 minutes at a time-ever. He's still learning. I started to do their Bible reading at breakfast since I have a more captive audience! Two weeks ago Mark couldn't say any of his shapes, as of yesterday he now knows, circle, square, triangle and star! This make me feel good for several reasons-I still do question if I can teach starting from the very basics...because CJ learned a lot of the basic things in preschool. He even learned to potty train in preschool and part of all this makes me feel bad since I don't know how to repeat some of this for Mark. We're all learning together! CJ on the other hand is starting to read better each day...he's sounding out the words as we are working in his reading book and he's remembering sounds that we have just introduced. One of my favorite parts of our day is lying on my bed with him cuddling next to me for our reading work. We do this once Mark and Peyton are down for naps. We need it quiet! I told him the other day that reading with him was one of the best times of the day for me...he hugged me and at the end of our reading and writing, he picked out a crown sticker for me and told me I was the "queen mommy"! He is supposed to pick out stickers for himself after he does his writing work but he always picks them out for me instead :) He is not only learning his basics but he is showing real hearts for the Lord and applying the biblical principles from our reading to real life situations! This homeschooling has been one of the greatest sacrifices for all of us but as long I see the fruitful blessings I know we're making huge impacts on these precious boys!

HUNTING

Clark took CJ on the church dove hunt this past weekend. CJ really enjoyed it, he loves to be out with his dad getting dirty and shooting his little BB gun. Poppy went too and they got to fish in between hunts. At lunch they took a break and CJ had a 2 hour nap in the truck.

BASEBALL

Little, big boy had his first coach-pitch baseball game on Friday. He never had to use the T and hit on the third pitch every time! He was real proud and so were we!

We had someone else who wanted to get dressed up for the game!Here's CJ waving at Grammy and me.

Getting ready to hit for the first time. Looking at his daddy after he had hit his first ball!

Running home!

The hardest part about these games is keeping Mark and Peyton contained and happy. Thankfully Pop held Marky and rationed his skittles for as long as he could while Peyton sat in the stroller at times being loud but for the most part he did pretty good.

Mark and Peyton's Mess
Saturday while Clark and CJ were gone, we cleaned the upstairs and played outside. It was pretty peaceful until Mark woke up from his nap. I went in to his room because he was crying and he typically wakes up pretty groggy but not crying. I walked in and found that he had pulled his poopy diaper off during nap-it must have been during the first part of his nap because he had smeared poop on the floor and the walls and it was caked and dried on him. The amazing thing is that I was sitting right by the monitor reading for most of his nap and I never heard him up to anything...! He had fallen asleep on the floor not on the freshly cleaned sheets thankfully. I put him in the bathtub to soak. He had to soak and I had to scrub him, the walls and the carpet. After I got him cleaned up I went and got the Bissell to clean the carpet but I had to close the doors so that he and Peyton would not come in. While I was cleaning, they figured out how to pull the stuffing out of the upstairs coach and this is what I saw as I was headed back upstairs with the vacuum cleaner...Mark stood at the top and said, "Oh cool" and the proceeded to slide down saying, "This is fun". Maybe he's ready for snow, but I certainly didn't want it on my vacuumed stairs.

I am really wondering if this little girl we are going to have will be any less active than all these boys. It's absolutely always something...I wonder why I even take time to exercise!