October has mellowed some for us. While still busy we have not felt quite so thinly stretched. In the middle of the month we celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles by camping out in the backyard for a week. It was a good time of reflection and re-calibration to what our focus should be on. We did make a car trade this month, trading in the Subaru BRZ for a Ford F150 truck. So far we’ve been happy with the truck.
We did a few more minor house updates this month. We got our gutters replaced so we should be set for the rainy season.
Cordelia continues in kindergarten at Legacy Montessori and we have been very pleased with her learning so far. Corrie is really starting to bloom into a sweet little lady. It has been a joy to see her taking ownership of her emotions and watch her become others focused. She has been having some difficulty still but such an improvement from a year ago. She has her next set of molars coming in and we think this is having a negative impact on her overall attitude lately due to the pain. Cordelia is thriving in Sparks and has been speeding through memorizing her verses. At the end of eight weeks she’s only a few sections away from completing her book. Cordelia continues practicing the piano and now can play a basic right hand and a left hand song.
Anthony got to do some extra activities this month, as October is “Kids go free” to various museums in San Diego. He’s also been doing his gymnastics class and is excited to go. He especially likes wearing his sleeveless “muscle shirt” to gymnastics. Anthony is enjoying Cubbies at AWANA too. We’re having more conversations with him about God and accepting Jesus as his friend. So far he has not been as receptive as we would like, we will continue praying for him. Tim has been doing a few reading practices with him so he can earn some quarters. Even though he’s still young he seems to understand the concept.
Lydia has been talking a lot this month. She now has lots of words and understand both English and Spanish. Lydia has been doing much better in swim class this month, no more crying. She continues to increase in her development, which has pros and cons. She can be a lot more fun and interactive but she can also get quite angry and mad.
Alicia’s work is going very well. She’s splitting her time between technical skills and some group administrative oversight. She’s really enjoying her position. At home, we have been enjoying some family time. The week of camping was a fun change of pace, with some more time sitting around the campfire at the end of the night. Alicia is settling into her volunteer role as Sparks Director. While it’s still a lot of work (8-10 hours every week) she’s understanding her role and is gaining the trust of the leaders under her as well as the AWANA commander team.
Tim’s work remains slow. He spent most of the month creating a diagnostic and qualification matlab GUI for manufacturing. He’s not getting as much support from the other people involved as he needs to be successful. His other projects have been focused on other things and he has been feeling a little bit sidelined. At home Tim smoked a few pulled pork dinners during our camp-out week. He also repaired and cleaned up a propane grill we were given and we made some yummy burgers. The raised bed gardens have completed their latest round of tomatoes and pumpkins. As we head into the next month Tim is going to focus on getting the trees along our back fence thinned out a bit.
We are grateful to have a wonderful Au Pair to watch our kids and give us the opportunity to go out for quality time. We pray we will get another wonderful match as we look for our 2020 Au Pair.
We are meeting a few new friends through Alicia’s old co-worker. We still looking for a new church to attend but may have a good lead. Going into November things are starting to look more positive on the community connection side of things for us.
