We are now entering the autumn season. Summer made one last push at the beginning of the month with temperatures reaching over 100 deg for around 4 days. Fortunately, things have cooled down toward the end of the month and it’s even been cool enough to put a sweater on in the morning. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re getting ready for another heat wave going into Oct. We celebrated Natalie’s 3rd birthday and enjoyed a visit from Mini, Papa, and Tim’s brother and family. The change in daylight hours seems to have happened suddenly as it is now getting dark after dinner time. Kids are in the full swing of things at school. Things appear to be going mostly well to start off the school year.
Cordelia started her third year of T&T in the AWANA program. She’s enjoying her group and has some nice friends there. She seems to be doing well at school. She’s working through some social dynamics with some new kids in her class this year. It’s all part of the learning journey – learning how to handle social interactions as well as the books knowledge. We’re also providing her with some supplemental teaching videos for her math and science to help ensure she’s staying on track in those subjects. Cordelia is continuing to improve in her piano and ice skating. She completed her current session of skate classes and in October will continue in her Academy 1 class. Additionally, she’s going to try out Synchronized skating with a team and see how she likes that. She will also participate in her second skating competition in October.
Anthony started his first year of T&T in the AWANA program. It’s a big transition from Sparks and it’s taking him some time to get used to the new lesson format and weekly expectations. He has one of his good friends in his small group, which has been a positive point to his transition. Anthony’s new soccer league started and they’ve played three games so far. Unfortunately, his team this time is not very good. They seem to be newer kids to playing in a team and they’re not really sure what to do. However, Anthony is playing his best soccer and is contributing to his team, regardless of the final score. He’s also doing well in his Skills 3 class and is getting much more confident in his abilities. School seems to have started well for him. He still has some good friends there, although his best friend left this school year.
Lydia started her second year of Sparks in the AWANA program. She has a nice group with some friends from last year and seems to be enjoying it so far. At school she’s doing well, getting used to being in elementary. It doesn’t seem like it’s been a challenging transition. Lydia finished her third piano book this month and is in the final book of the introduction series. Lydia also started a tumbling class with a classmate and has a fun time doing that.
Natalie is now three years old! We celebrated her birthday with family and friends from her new classroom. She is having a good time in her new Primary classroom. She’s starting to work on recognizing letters and the sounds they make. Natalie continues in swimming. She got a new instructor at the end of the month who pushed her a little more and leveled her up to level 3. Now she’ll start on doing more continuous swimming with rolling over. Natalie started soccer this month and is really loving it. Her best friend joined her class, which has made the introduction even more fun. Every Thursday she wakes up and asks if it’s time to go to soccer. Natalie started in her first year of Cubbies at AWANA. She’s having a fun time and is doing great with her verses.
Alicia was able to get some milestone reviews completed during September. One of her projects is progressing well and the final deliverables seem to be in sight. Hopefully things will continue to follow through and she can close this project off nicely before Thanksgiving. The workload is still pretty high for her modified schedule. At home Alicia has been taking care of the school transition. She’s been making sure the kids get their homework done each day and coordinating the extra-curricular activities. AWANA has been filling any remaining time. The first club night was not the smoothest but not the worst. It has been taking time to get all the backend administrative items sorted out and figuring out how to adjust group dynamics. Thanks to Tim joining and taking over the teaching portion, that’s one less thing that Alicia has on her plate. Overall September has felt pretty tiring with lots of to-dos and activities with not enough rest and margin to recover from the daily and weekly activities.
Tim’s work has a lot of deadlines for a number of different programs coming due in October and November, so things have been a bit chaotic. He’s doing his best to keep up, but is being stretched pretty thin. Tim is continuing his training for another half marathon in mid-December. While the early wake-ups have not been fun, the actually running is rewarding and he’s seeing a good improvement in his stamina and speed. On the home front, Tim’s been continuing to prepare the shop for home remodeling. He finalized his router table build and is in the process of adding another cabinet. He started serving with Alicia at AWANA, and has been enjoying teaching. Tim is continuing to lead Cordelia and Anthony in a small devotional study on Thursday nights.
September was a very busy month and lots of activities resulting in lots of tiredness. Overall, the school transition has gone well. We pray for a positive school year for all the kids. We also pray they have good years in AWANA and continue to build their foundation and knowledge of God. We’re back on the hunt for a contractor to do our home renovations we want done. Hopefully this month we act find someone to actually give us a bid.
