Long Overdue

Okay so I've been told not once but twice today that I need to put more pictures up here, so here we are. We've all had head colds these past couple of weeks, making even the most normal of household tasks seem monumental. But the last few days have been progressively better. I don't know what it is about being ill, maybe it just breaks down their defenses, but the kids have been getting along great! Not that they are usually fighting all the time, but they do tend to get on each other's nerves after a long day of being together. Who wouldn't? But they've been recently playing like best friends, rarely resorting to video games or movies or anything apart from each other. This may be a result of Alex's getting back into school after the holidays (fondness makes his heart grow stronger) or the fact that Avril grows up more each day, making her a more entertaining playmate. Whichever it is, I've been taken aback plenty of times this last week just watching and listening to them play together.
Alex is doing exceptionally well in preschool; he really enjoys learning. He loves to count, add and subtract; he knows money denominations and loves to count money too. His new thing though is learning to read - something I am going to have to supplement at home with phonics material because the school system here teaches reading by sight words. **ugh!**
Avril is doing well with the potty training. I'm not pushing her at all, and that seems to work well for her. She loves the whole experience of the toilet and the last thing I want to do is to bring punishment into it, so we're staying in pull-ups for the forseeable future, but she will go pee when asked to and twice last week told me beforehand that she needed to go. So it's improvement. I pottytrained Alex this same way, and after a few months of letting him experiment with it himself, it only took a week to get him in underwear with no accidents once I tried. So hopefully it will work with Avril too. She's growing up so fast these days it's weird. She loves church and goes everytime the doors are open even though I don't. Her and Alex ride the church bus together to Awana on Wednesday nights and it is the highlight of her week. She is definitely a social butterfly and Alex the brain. Lol. Avril has several friends her age that she talks about all week and is so excited every time she gets to go to church to see them.
Just this week I have volunteered to join the janitorial staff at our church, and I'm actually pretty excited. If I can do nothing else, I can clean. And it is something I can do to help. Tomorrow I go to learn the ropes and see exactly what it is I've signed up for. Looks like twice a week I'll be cleaning the main church building - once thoroughly and once lightly. Anyway, that is about all that is new with me. I've just about finished the bedroom makeover; isn't it aweful that it can take me only four days to do the majority of the work, but now that it is just down to filling in holes in moulding I'm putting it off for weeks? I'm having motivational issues getting that last step done. Next comes replacing the terrible tile around the tub with fiberglass walls and installing new faucets and handles. That will begin in a few weeks.
Frank is doing well. This semester he is retaking a couple of classes he didn't do so well in last time around, so it is going pretty good so far. He's going to school full time and working pretty much constantly from Thursday afternoon till Sunday night. So we don't see him a lot around here.
That's all I know to give as an update for now. Here are a couple of pictures.


This is Avril being a tired puppy dog. Her new thing is to walk around on all four's saying she's a "puppy gog" and saying whatever it is the puppy is doing. She prefers to do this while wearing shoes on her hands. Don't ask me why.


Here they are rolling a ball back a forth (until Arwen decided to steal the ball) but you can't see the ball in the pic, so I thought it looked kinda funny. Oh well.


They decided just to give in to Arwen after she had been pestering them for awhile.


Mommy and kids.


Daddy and kids.

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They really are quite affectionate sometimes.


The faithful Arwen, recovering well from the hit to the eye with the tennis ball two weeks ago.