Just thought I'd say hi.
Hi there, Cousin! I got your phone message - I would have answered it, too, but I pulled off my suit jacket [immediately after church] with my phone in it and left it in the garage when my dad showed up suddenly to load some furniture he was taking down to [my sister] in Salt Lake. So I didn't get your message until late.
So, how are things going for you?...I can't quite remember who it is that you are driving out to do therapy with. Is it problem youth, or something else?
I am doing therapy for kids who have committed some sort of sexual crime, usually against younger children. I do their individual, family, and group therapy sessions (as well as run a lot of errands and do a lot of other miscellaneous duties). Right now, work is very stressful in that I never seem to catch up with the paperwork that keeps getting bigger.
How is your family? ... I think it will be a lot of fun when we get our kids together and compare notes.
I hope I'm taking good notes. Of late, Emily has been carrying the torch of family history. But she puts her updates in the form of a weekly email to her immediate family only and does not let me post them to our blog or forward them to other people. It's strictly an in-house email. So I feel relieved of the immediate duty to record our family history because I know Emily is doing a thorough and regular job - but nobody on my side hears from us much lately.
Is everything going okay for Emily? I know that finance problems cause a lot of stress, and I don't know how stable things are for you right now.
Tax returns are blessing us right now. We have been so close to broke for so long that it feels nice to have the extra in the account even if we're not using it much. So I think this has reduced Emily's stress level. She is also happy about the weather turning warmer so the kids can get out of the house, developing some solid babysitting resources so we can go on dates, and about homeschooling, which I'll address below...We're renting the house, we're able to keep just under what we earn (until we start paying off student loans, shortly), and we often feel HIGHLY blessed that we have good people around who help us tons.
I also don't think I know about your callings in the ward. It seems like you and I have talked about it, actually, but I don't remember. Do you have callings yet?
We have callings with the Primary. Emily teaches the sunbeams 1/2 the time. She and I are (hopefully) making a slow break with Matthew so that he can handle having Nursery without us in the middle of his usual nap hours. I am actually called and set apart to work with just one child who tends to hit and tantrum and have lots of other issues. I try to keep him from hurting/disrupting others and help him learn a few gospel things and hopefully have an overall positive experience in church. I stand like a bouncer, part of the time--ready to haul him out of class and down to a seat outside the Bishop's office to help him calm down and make a plan to return to class. Other times I just wrestle with him and follow him around as he runs from me. It's rather crazy, but I think he gets better slowly and I know his family would have to stop coming to church if someone weren't there to help with him, so it's good.
How is home-schooling going for you? I am sure the children are learning a lot more academically. What are you doing about their social progression...Do you feel your choice is working out well for them?
Yes, homeschooling is going very well. I think Emily pretty consistently reports that the home school part of the day tends to be the best. Hayley is doing (I think) history, science, grammar, reading, writing, and math. She also does typing, spelling, some poetry memorization and a few other things that fall into the above categories and has some art and piano lessons under her mom's instruction. So far, Hayley seems to really be loving it and is soaking everything in very fast. Most every day, Hayley does one of her subjects followed by a "narration" - she dictates a couple of paragraphs to Emily about what she learned using complete sentences and employing her grammar rules. Hayley sat at the computer and typed some chat messages to our old friend...this very morning and I was surprised by Hayley's word selection, typing (she's only had a few lessons, but she types without looking at the keyboard much), and spelling without any help. Most days, Hayley is done with school in a few hours; plenty of time for her to soak up lots of information about Ancient Egypt. Nathan joins in on a lot of it with her. We have some pictures posted of their their recent projects - cave paintings, Lego pyramids, and the "flooding of the Nile" in a cake pan. Emily is struggling to find ways of supervising/including Matthew In the mix, though. So far in the three weeks or so we've been doing this, Matthew got to accompany them on a few field trips. If I understand it correctly, the home school group provides quite a lot of field-trip-type social events which help with the "social progression" you were asking about. I would need to ask Emily for a list of the different places they have been. Unfortunately, I haven't seen (m)any pictures of their outings...I would guess Emily has her hands PLENTY full and doesn't have a chance to bring the camera along.
This turned out to be quite the little message. I'm glad you didn't answer the phone. Who knows if I'd have thought of all these things to write about.
Yeah, same here! Now that I've responded to your email, I realize I could probably edit and post some of this fairly easily to our blog.
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