Grammy Visit

It's tax season and so grammy had an excuse to come down and stay a while. Rebekah was very excited. So excited in fact that she decided everyone needed a checkup. 

After much consideration, Don was pronounced well. 

Next up was grammy. She looked pretty good but upon further inspection it was decided she was in need of emergency surgery on her leg.

I had to have surgery as well. So nice to have a doctor in the house.

The next day Rebekah decided she needed to decorate cookies, but I needed a bit more notice to make the cookies and frosting and such, so grammy went out to Walmart and made it happen.

Love those little frosting sprinkled hands.

And that squishy snuggly "I'm smiling" grin.

Then we played dress up with my phone. I present Queen grammy.

Sleepy grammy.

Rudolph grammy.

My all time favorite:

Rebekah Claus

And her little Reindeer.

It was great to have grammy visit. We sure love her lots!

Art, School, and a Sunny Day

Art: Rebekah loves to create with any type of medium.

Rainbow she cut out of craft paper (with stickers of course).

Cupid she painted while at an art class.

A spontaneous sketch of Don while sleeping. (That's him laying down with his hand on his head, other arm on his belly.)

A quick sketch on my phone.

School: she continues to improve greatly. This school is doing so much more advanced work and Rebekah has jumped in with no issues. So proud of her!

From her art class (one of her favorite subjects). Here we have trees in a snow storm and a "Beep Boop Boop Robot."

Also a snow man. She wrote the top without help. I think she spelt everything correctly except for missing the "e" on "Shimmer." Again, so proud.

Sunny Day: it was so nice that after church Rebekah and I explored our new town and came across a park with a highly entertaining slide. 

January Books

This was well written. I wish I knew more about science and so forth but the book did a great job explaining things to the layman. It reads very well and held my interest until the end. Very recommendable.

The best thing about this book was his analysis in last section. I liked how he pointed out struggles but then came back with plans of what could be done about it. I got bogged down with each war, especially the ones I knew less about, as he went through each general and their trials; but the analysis brought it together. I actually kind of want to go through the book again since I read that. But just kind of. It was a long book. It's also interesting how foreign the history during my life is compared to history of WWII and so forth. One would think I would know more about what's going on now. I'll have to work on that. 

This had a good plot but the character development fell short to the point where I didn't care about any of the characters. Despite my small curiosity to see what happens in the next 3 books (ugh) I don't have the motivation to do so. 

This was a massive undertaking. In my desire to learn about WWI I have read two books, both of which were extremely long and taxing. This one a little less than The Guns of August, which is ironic because Guns was only about August, the first month in the war. 1914 covered September through the end of the year. 1914 was more understandable but still I had much difficulty. So much happened including so many people. I have much to learn and yet it's such a harsh subject. I need to take a break from wars for a while.

This was the last of the Merlin / Arthur books (the next book is Arthur and Mordred, which I doubt I will read; the great pull for me is Merlin, not to mention the darker content). I really enjoyed the books and would recommend them highly. They are very well done and follow the legend nicely. 

This is a great story. Highly recommendable. I find myself wanting to write more but I'm at a loss for words, so read the author's words instead. Well worth it.

I learned a lot reading this book. I liked his writing style which read easily. This will be my 3rd Vietnam book that I can highly recommend, this being more of the civilian perspective.


A Higher Call was my favorite. I learned the most through Most Dangerous. Henrietta Lacks was pretty incredible too.

Rebekah's been hard to find books for lately. Picture books read too fast and I end up taking the whole library home with me. So, I'm getting easy readers for her to read to me and then I'm searching the junior fiction section. It's been difficult. Rebekah wants pictures - preferably color. Not to mention most of the junior fiction books are geared for the pre-teen mentality and present subjects I'm not ready for my 6 year old to delve into.

These are great. I had a hard time selling it to Rebekah but once we opened it up and got into it she was hooked. Colored pictures, cute little owl main character writing her diary about her school adventure. Who could ask for more. (I'm well aware if she was a princess in some fashion Rebekah would have liked it more.)

No color picture but still cute story about a little mouse and her life at school and home. Rebekah seemed engaged. 

This was a tough sell too. Good thing one of the Mercy Watson books had a cover with Mercy wearing a princess outfit. The books are amusing. Rebe even laughed a few time. Amazing what trouble a pig can get into. And yay for hot toast with too much butter.

This is a picture book and it seems trite but I actually cried at the end reading to my little snuggly. Very recommendable. 

January Stuff

More various January pictures:

Love how Rebekah jumps in! 

Rebekah's feet keeps getting bigger, so we got a new pair of shoes. Pink ones. 

Sunday afternoons have been more peaceful since the move. So much so that we had fun with a little lego project. 

I'm a pretty big fan of legos. 

Love the bear. Love that girl behind the bear too.

One of the cool things we discovered (or Don discovered) was we had an attic! A very nice and needed surprise!

There's a monstrously huge spider under that container. Looks like me may need to invest in pest control again. But the good news is Don works close enough that he can come home for lunch from time to time and therefore said monster doesn't have to sit there long.

Rebekah loves drawing. She drew this one for a friend at school. It's our house (complete with house numbers) so her friend can come play. 

Here's what she wrote on back:

And here's me loving my Christmas socks.

Probably the closest thing I'll have to a pet.

Rebekah is still missing her old school and so forth. She wrote this to Mrs. Schnepp her kindergarten teacher:

And she drew this for me. Love it! - couldn't figure out how to rotate it on here. It was rotated before I put it on here....

Some of Rebekah's school work. She is pretty incredible.

Donnor Swim

Rebekah started her new swim team / class. I had high hopes. Unfortunately it was less than a promising start. First there was a communication problem with the team's leaders: I wanted communication, they didn't. I finally called in a call to the realtor that helped us purchase this house and he called someone he knew and left a message to call me back. A long time later that happened. Meanwhile one person told us to do this, another told us to do another thing.... Crazy. 

But that wasn't my only problem. The instruction Rebekah was getting was tremendously poor. She was put in a class where some kids had trouble swimming the width of the pool where Rebekah was use to swimming the length. Kids were swimming down and back wherever they wanted, not using down on left, back on right. Kids were slamming heads. 

It got so bad I actually got up from my seat and grabbed the head coach. "Can you resolve my concerns," I said. I then gave him an earful about how Rebekah's swimming ability has decreased since she started with them. I gave examples of certain things. Then I went on to describe the behavior in the lanes and the fact that the teacher isn't correcting anything, etc. and so on. The coach got up from behind his newspaper and said thank you for being my eyes. At that point I wanted to say, "I wouldn't have to be your eyes if you would get up from behind your cushy chair..." but I didn't. 

He came out and brought the head of the swim program in tow. They used their weight and cleaned up the class for the duration they were there. After they left it gradually became poor again. The climax of that practice was one girl pushing off the side to do a back stroke and slamming into another girl who then came out of the water with a bloody face. The teacher looked somewhat shocked as she tried to get the coach to come out from behind his smart phone so he could help her. And where was the parent of this poor child? No one seemed to notice. Horrifying. 

Here are some pictures that I took from her duration with that team.

I always thought I would be taking my little girl to an auditorium surrounded by instrument cases, not a gym surrounded by bags and equipment.

After the first day we took her out for dinner and a shake.

She's in the white hat.

Rebekah doing a sit dive for her teacher.

Love that little girl.

Love her so much that one night after I took her to swim only to discover they moved that day's practice to the previous day but just didn't pass on the info to me, seeing that I was new, but assured me they would check into it...., I came home and searched the internet for any other swim opportunity in town. I found a brief mention of a team and their standards on some lady's Facebook post.

I love Rebekah so much that I instant messaged this total stranger. I told her of Rebekah's skills and suggested rather boldly that she makes all of the criteria except the age - they want age 8 and older, Rebe is a young 6. She messaged me back and, skipping to the end, said she would talk to the coach.

A week or so later I had still not heard anything back from this stranger. So - deep breath - I took the number she messaged me and texted her. At that point she told me to come to a practice and have Rebekah ready to swim but be okay if it only resulted in a discussion.

The next day I told Rebekah what we were going to do and brought her to practice - all the while acting like I wasn't anxious at all. Once there, the coach made herself busy and I let her do so. We eventually sat down and watched. Rebekah wanted to go but I was determined to talk to this lady. The safety and skills of my child were at stake! Eventually there was a down moment and I took Rebekah's hand and jumped in.

I told her my problems, Rebekah's skills (to which I must have used the wrong terminology and Rebekah corrected me, peaking the coach's attention), and asked if there was anything she could do for Rebekah. At that point she mentioned she couldn't do anything right now but to email her. The assistant coach took over from there.

Skipping to the end, she had Rebekah swim for her and she was impressed. (The assistant actually bonded with me a little. She started her kid at the same school I was leaving and told me it was so bad she would bring a book to read so she didn't have to watch. See, it's not just me.)

The coach emailed me back the next day saying Rebekah could come and talked about meets and so forth. I emailed back basically saying how young Rebekah is and we are not looking for meets right now but basically someplace she could work on her technique until she is mature enough to make those decisions for herself. The coach emailed back that she agreed and told me to come to practice.

Rebekah's been swimming there for a week and a half. They meet every day for a couple of hours, including Saturdays. Part of me thinks I'm in over my head. Most of me worries about Rebekah, but she seems to be doing well. She is obviously younger than the rest of the group, not only physically but mentally, but if they are willing to work with it I suppose I should let it happen. And how awesome is Rebekah's skills that they are willing to do that!

Don looked up the head coach. Apparently she swam in the olympics at 15. Won a few medals. Oh, and that lady I instant messaged? Her son is a 3 time state campion. Yes, I'm even more intimidated and pondering my boldness.