You've Got Mail

Jacob and Samuel both have email accounts now and are in heaven. They feel so grown up and cool now. If there is something that I want them to do for school but they don't want to do it, I'll tell them they can email me the assignment and then they jump up and down and rush to do it. I love it!

Last night Samuel sent me an email about his favorite school subjects -art and music- and asked when we were going to study them this week. Afterwards he comes into my bedroom and we have the following conversation:

 "Mommy."
"Yes Sam."
"Did you get my email I sent you about school with my question?"
"I got your email but I don't remember the question. Can you remind me?"
"I asked you when we were doing music and art this week."
"Well we are going to do....
"Wait! I don't want you to tell me the answer! You have to email it to me!"
"Okay... so I'll email it then."

I love my kids! I remember getting my first email and being so excited to get emails and hoping people would email me. I still love email actually. I guess I'll be having email conversations with those two for the next couple of months until we can revert back to real conversations when the excitement wears down a little :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are some valentine's the kid's help me make. I hope everyone has a great day!

The Story of Katie's Name

Katie has been on a card making streek lately. She makes cards for valentines, just because, thank yous, and anything else she can think of.

On one of these cards she had written her name with pictures on each letter and told me the following story of the letters in her name:

The K is the queen with a crown or a heart for valentine's day.

The A is the princess.

The T is the messenger who makes sure they K and the A don't step in the mud.

I and E are T's sons and he is presenting them to the Queen K. I is the eldest and E is the youngest.

Today T was the maker or the one who makes things for the Queen K and the Princess A. The story is always changing and evolving and is very cute and very much my daughter. This is how she has adopted writing her name for school work now.

New year's resolution: Spanish

One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year is the Fluenz Spanish Latin America language learning software. It is the same idea of Rosetta Stone but better and I've been really enjoying it. You can check them out on their website to get an idea of how it works. I am already half way through the level 1. Mostly because I did take three semesters in college and it is a lot of review/remembering of things for me. When I reviewed the program online I did the German since I have never learned any of it before and wanted to get a good feel for if it would work. I felt like I had to work at it but learned- German would be going slower right now then the Spanish but progressing.  Still it is enjoyable, meets my criteria of using native speakers, and I feel like I am getting the basics down faster and faster. Hopefully by posting this here it will commit me to keep going. I really do want to learn- no matter where we have lived there is always someone that speaks Spanish and I want to be able to join the conversation.

The bonus of this is that my kids are now slowly wanting to learn and explore it as well. Jacob chose to do a session today on his own after watching me do them for the last two weeks. I've told the kids I am willing to help them learn whatever language they desire, but the programs are expensive and it's hard to find good ones for younger kids. The other problem is the kids like to switch which language they want to learn a lot so I am waiting for them to have a steady desire for a longer period of time.

That is one of the many projects I have going on right now. I hope everyone had a great Christmas as well. Hasta luego.