Acting!

Haven't laughed this hard for a good long while, and I need to blog this so I can "keep" this memory...

We have a family devotion time at night before bedtime. Sometimes we read, sometimes we sing, sometimes we act out stories, and sometimes we just pray, but we always do something, unless it is a church night, and then we come home and get ready for bed, assuming that we've already sent our thoughts and hearts heavenward for the night. ;o)

Well, tonight was "act out a story" night. John and I picked out stories for the kids to each act out (without talking though), and the rest of the kids had to guess what the story was. Aleksa acted out the story of Elijah running faster than the chariot, and then later of Samson carrying off the city gate, catching the foxes, eating the honey, etc. That one got a little confusing to watch, but you should have heard her go on and on and on and on telling us what she'd been acting out for us. ;o) Adam acted out King Saul going to the bathroom in the cave and David cutting off the hem of his robe, (you can use your imagination as to how he was inspired to act that one out!) (Groan!) Liana acted out *beautifully* the story of Ananias and Sapphira... how they kept back a portion of the money from the land they'd sold, and told the apostles that they'd given them the entire sum. Liana even acted out laying the money at the apostles' feet, which I'd almost forgot about myself. She acted out the grave-diggers even! It was hilarious watching her "heave" the heavy dirt with her shovel!

We definitely have some actors and actresses in the family! The kids LOVE when we do this, though it takes them several more minutes than usual to calm down enough to sleep! But it sure makes those stories stick better, being able to act them out!

Speaking of acting! I need to take a video sometime (after I clear off my harddrive, perhaps!) of the kids acting out the last few paragraphs of Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty" speech. Complete with acted-out stab-in-the-heart death scene at the end. lol! (We're memorizing that as part of their history lessons). I definitely must post a video of that sometime soon. I'll let 'em polish it up a bit, and tell 'em that whoever gets it "down pat" first will have the honor of it being put online. They're drama queens, those girls. While this stuff comes really easily for the girls, Adam has struggled a bit because of his speech/language difficulty. I think this project has really helped him though, to be more careful with his articulation, etc. We've seen some good progress since we've started doing these more lengthy memorized passages. We've also seen some awesome progress with him in math. We backed him up recently to make sure he was "getting" things, and his last three tests have been all A's. Today's was a 100% even! Now, he's definitely not on grade level with his math, but when I think of how hard he has worked to get to where he is, it makes me teary! He couldn't count to 14 when he first came home. Numbers meant nothing to him. He couldn't even remember how old he was. We would practice and practice him saying "I'm nine years old." He'd always say, "seven" or "six" or "ten" or whatever. Not even when we did it in Russian was it sticking. And it took weeks and months to get him to be able to count to 25 or 50. Dot-to-dots were KILLERS for him. He just couldn't do even the simple ones. (Remember?! Oh, how I worried!) Then there was getting him to count by twos or fives! I remember having worked with him for weeks and weeks on counting by twos, and then I realized that he had unplugged "regular" counting. He could then count by two's but had forgotten counting by one's. Very. Frustrating. Ugh... Hours and hours and hours and hours and hours later, he's doing very well. It's still hard, and he's well below grade-level, but he's plugging along, and (shhhhh, don't tell him I think so), but I think he's actually enjoying his math right now!

(Sorry, can't make a decent ending right now - baby crying, must go!)

Easter Update, etc.

Been wanting to post an Easter update, but I can't get my pictures onto my laptop, and have been putting off doing the computer "housecleaning" that it would take to get them there.

Anyway, I guess you'll just have to use your imaginations as to what we all look like! ;o)

We had a really nice weekend, in spite of me being on the verge of tossing my cookies with worry about Dad all day Saturday... He went into the hospital again, this time with what they thought was a heart attack, but it turned out not to be. His heart is failing, but the pain he was feeling had to do with a blockage in his bladder and/or the pneumonia he had developed. Anyway, I spent Saturday wondering if Dad was going to be ok. Meanwhile, John's parents and brother were here for the weekend. It was a really nice visit in spite of the emergency with my dad.

John's mom made the girls' Easter dresses, and made Adam a snazzy grey vest and tie. They were all adorable! (Hence my frustration over my pictures!!) They all had a different color dresses, but the same pattern and type of fabric. Liana's was yellow, Aleksa's light blue, and Abrielle's was pink.

Good Friday the kids and I made hot cross buns... (gotta love bread machines!) We'd been making Easter crafts all week, and started our cooking for this weekend on Friday.

There was a big breakfast at church Sunday morning, nice service, and then we went back to our house for a big Easter dinner. Well, first there was the egg/basket hunt. John wrote out clues to find their baskets. It was sort of scavenger hunt-ish. Abrielle got her first taste of solid food too- I let her suck on a marshmallow peep for a few minutes while we took pictures. (Thanks for the idea, Sharon!) Abby also found her feet for the first time (as in, grabbed her feet). She also stood by herself propped against the couch, and even without it for a few split seconds at a time. Liana is determined to teach her to walk - before she crawls even, I guess!

I can't believe how big my kids are getting. It makes me so sad to realize how short our time with them is. I'm going to blink, and they'll be all grown up. I keep thinking, "If this were our last (insert holiday, birthday, etc.), how would I want them to remember it?" And that makes it a lot easier for me to want to do that extra Easter coloring page, know what I mean? The week before Easter we even made roll-out sugar cookies in Easter shapes and frosted them. Never done that for Easter before. And as for the hot-cross buns... well, I'VE never even had those before, let alone the kids, but I just had to squeeze it in after I found a recipe that I had all the ingredients for, and looked rather easy. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Hot-Cross-Buns-I/Detail.aspx Well, anyway, it may be morbid to think that way, but it's a good way to live life without regrets... I'll look back twenty years from now and be glad I let Leks put on those extra sprinkles on the Easter cookies, etc. Wish I could keep that in mind on the "regular" ole' days when the kids are on the verge of driving me BATTY. ;o)

Not so much happening over here today. Regular Saturday routine today - library, groceries, laying around. Kids flew their kites, played a few games, I gave everyone haircuts after supper, and we all watched the pilot show to "Greatest American Hero" from NetFlix. (Remember that show?! John found it and couldn't resist...)

Hope you're all having a good weekend!

Fisher Girls

Since I posted a pic of Adam the other day and not the girls, (well, I guess Brelly's bottom was in the last one, but that hardly counts...) I thought I'd share this one from tonight....

Liana Zingers

It's funny I can go weeks without thinking of a thing to post, and then bam! I have a morning like this where I actually have TWO things to tell you!

First was yesterday... We were all sitting quietly at church, Liana and Aleksa were curled up next to me listening to the Pastor... Then Liana whispered over to me, "Mama?"

I asked her what she wanted.

"Did Abrielle throw up on you this morning?"

"Uh, no..." I said, "Why?"

"Because you smell like it."

Nice. Leave it to Liana to tell me what's what. lol! I thought about being self-conscious about it, but I thought it was too hysterical to be ruffled over. Plus I was trying too hard to hold back a great big guffaw. I'll just maybe remember to douse myself with a little more perfume next time... *wink*

Ok, then this morning, she sprung another one on me. During school time (we're actually still in full-swing right now but I HAVE to blog this before I forget to...) Liana was going through our library book basket looking for something to read. She pulled out one that she'd already read yesterday afternoon and said, "Oh, Mama, this was a good one!" I looked at the title, not having remembered it coming home with us on Saturday's library run. It was "Romeo and Juliet" for junior age readers.

"Oh, brother," I thought, "like she really read the whole thing yesterday." (It was kind of lengthy and difficult-looking.) I asked her if she *realllllly* read it, or just enjoyed the pictures.

"I did too read it, Mama!" she said. "It's about Roma and Julia. They loved each other, and then they died, happily ever after."

After I quit laughing I decided to quit arguing with her. ;O)