It's a GIRL! and other things

First, I would like everyone to meet Lorelai Elizabeth Scott.

It fascinates me everyday that this little person is inside me right now. She is such an amazing gift from God. 

Here our some other things we've done the last week or so. 

Brenda practiced her math skills with some fun St. Patrick's
Day activities.

I held a lock-in for our youth group and we started by going bowling. My kids came for that part. It was Dominick's first time bowling. 

He picked up the spare here!

We went to a St. Patrick's day homeschool party. This is Brenda playing one of the games.

We got out some Easter stuff and Brenda couldn't wait to do an Easter craft.

Brenda had her first soccer practice.

This is my Wednesday night Rainbow's group. I have a great group of kids.

We've spent the rest of our time preparing for our family vacation and working with Brenda on memory work. She is going for memory master in her classical conversions group. For those who don't know what that consists of, here is the break down of everything she has to memorize with 100% accuracy :

•   160 events and people in a chronological timeline
•   24 history sentences (including the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution,  the Bill of Rights, and U.S. historical events from Columbus to 9/11)
•   44 U.S. Presidents
•  120 locations and geographic  features in North America:  States & Capitals, U.S. Rivers, Mountains and Deserts, U.S. Bays, Canals, and Great Lakes, Historical Trails, Territories, Terrains, and other prominent features
•   24 science facts
•   Latin rules, vocabulary and the text of John 1:1-7 in Latin and in English
•  English Grammar facts (including the principal parts of 12 irregular verbs, sentence parts, clauses, and sentence structures and patterns)
• Skip counting up to 15x15, common squares and cubes, basic geometry formulas and unit conversions, and the algebraic laws of addition and multiplication

She is doing a great job so far preparing for this. She mastered Latin last week of all things. She's close in Science and Math, so we will see. She is also the youngest trying for this. Most kids don't attempt memory master until they are 8 or 9. Brenda is 4. She's amazing and I would love to see her get it this year. Even if she doesn't, I am super proud of what she has accomplished and we will celebrate her hard word and dedication when the testing is over.

Cleaning, 25 weeks, reading fun, and tortillas

Me

       Spring cleaning is in full force for me. I am proud to say that our living room has never looked better. It's not done yet, but it won't be long. All I have left is the pile of stuff on, in, around, and under my desk. Woohoo!!! Clean all the things!!!

Baby Scott      

       25 weeks down! That's right. Our littlest Scott is 25 weeks along. I can't believe how close we are to meeting Baby Scott. If Baby was born now, there is a good chance she/he would live. However, Baby needs to stay put for another 15 weeks.
        I love this part of pregnancy. I'm no longer feeling sick and I'm feeling baby move regularly. I'm finally feel pregnant and I'm eating up this time in Baby's life.
        The only thing that would make this pregnancy better would be finding out if Baby is a boy or a girl. I was hoping to find out this week, but I wasn't able to get ahold of the ultrasound lady. Unfortunately, if I can't get ahold of her next week, it may not happen at all. That's ok, I guess. Baby will be a surprise. I just didn't want to get out all the baby clothes we have for both genders. I'm crossing my fingers that we can announce the baby's gender next week.

Brenda

        Brenda did awesome in school this week. The highlight for me was math. She is almost completely done with her kindergarten math book and will be moving on to the first grade book before summer at this pace. I was curious how much she is actually learning, so I decided to quiz her on addition problems for +0 and +1. I gave her a page with 20 problems on it and told her to do them as fast as she could. She finished the page in 2 minutes and 30 second without any mistakes. I was shocked. The best part was that she loved doing math this way. Next week, I'm going to do the same thing with +2 problems added in to see if I can stump her, because what I gave her this week was too easy. 

        Brenda's favorite part of this week was reading. We had a couple sensory activities that made practicing the letter sounds a lot of fun for her. She made play-doh letters and salt letters.

 

   

 Dominick likes playing in salt, too.

Dominick

       The highlight for Dominick was gymnastics. I cannot believe how well he is doing in class. He loves it! I see a gold medal in his future.

       His second favorite part was having a tortilla for snack today. We ran out of apples which are is favorite.

 

















Say Cheese!















My kids love each other so much.

School, Snow, and HF&M Disease

         The month of February has been super busy for our family. First, Dominick started Gymnastics this month. He loves it! It's a special time that is just me and him. He was so focused, he participated, and he followed what the other kids were doing. I'm so proud of him.

        Even though I love those special times and I look forward to them. I also look forward to the rare "me" moments. For the first time ever, I was able to get away for two weekends in a row without kids. I have to take advantage while I can since Dominick is finally ok with staying with Aaron and I know it will be another two years before I can get away again, because of baby Scott. Both were busy weekends, but well worth it mommy breaks. The highlight for me was meeting Ben Carson who I personally hope to see win the 2016 presidential election. If you don't know who he is, you should look him up. He's an amazing man.
         After my second weekend away, I came home to a sick baby. Poor Dominick got Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease which led to the quarantine of the kids and I for the last two weeks.

Poor Dominick with his spotted face. He's feeling much better, but is still pretty spotty.

        The first weekend I was away, I bought Brenda a new reading curriculum. This is number four that I've tried with her and so far she LOVES it. I'm so happy. I hope my smart girl will be a reader soon.

Coloring by sight words for Valentine's Day (not part of the new curriculum, but still fun)

Brenda and the letter D. 

       The highlight this past month for Brenda was the recent snow. She was so sad that Christmas came and went without any snow. She was equally excited last Friday when she woke up to snow on the ground even if it was just a dusting. 

All bundled up to play in the snow.

Kitty Aaryn liked the snow, too.