Shortly after Christmas we took a tree house vacation. It was AMAZING, and I highly recommend taking one yourself. We went to Timber Ridge Outpost in the heart of the Shawnee Forest. We stayed in the White Oak treehouse, and it was fantastic! We had great weather (low 30's and sunny) so we also went to The Garden of the Gods to hike. Wow, wow, wow. What a great trip! The boys said it was better than Niagara Falls, and I didn't think anything could top Niagara Falls.
Ian lost his first two teeth...bottom fronts. One fell out all on its own, the other...well, the other was ripped out, long before it was ready to come out, by Eli. Ian didn't seem to mind too much, until I calmly informed him he should go to the bathroom to wash his face and hands as there was a quite a bit of blood (ALL over him.) He was over it pretty quickly, though, and happy to have lost TWO teeth!
Eli's reading skills have exploded recently! He's always been more language and arts oriented than Ian, but here lately he has really given it the gas. Almost every night Ian has a reading assignment. After he reads the book, Eli hops up in his place and also reads the book, pretty much just as well as Ian and with no prior practice. It's pretty weird watching your kids learn more and more, but there is something about listening to them read that makes it painfully apparent that the toddler days are long gone...and I'm just not ready for that. Eli continues to live life in costume, which just melts my heart, and brings a lot of joy to this house.
Ian has been tearing it up at school with multiplication. Yes, that's right. The kindergartener has progressed through the regular curriculum and is now doing 3rd grade math. This really shouldn't surprise me as he has always had a mind for math and science. The thing that I absolutely love the most is that we are in a position to have that material presented to him since he's at a Montessori house. I'll be very sad to transition him to a traditional classroom next year and sincerely hope that his teachers will continue to nurture his strengths to his maximum potential. He also started violin lessons. He's doing quite well and is so darn cute with that little tiny violin.
Speaking of getting edumacated, Cole was accepted to grad school! I'm so proud of him! He will be returning to his alma mater, U of I, in August to start his masters degree in mechanical engineering. I'm also preparing myself for flying solo for the majority of the next two years. I'm definitely not looking forward to that aspect, but it will be worth it in the end!
I have been pretty busy at work lately. I somewhat inadvertently created a new job at work and gave it to myself. My almost-sole-duty at work now is converting all of our training materials to foreign languages. I've been doing this for Spanish for a year now, but I just started converting lessons to Mandarin a couple of weeks ago and French is on the horizon! It's very challenging and mentally exhausting to create educational material in a language you know NOTHING about and in NO way understand. (Chinese is unbelievable to this native English speaker.) I only work part-time while the boys are in class, and with the conversion to Mandarin, four hours at a time is all I can take. By the time I'm ready to leave work my brain is a blob of mush, and I can barely recall my own name. But...I truly love it, and I truly love my boss for letting me create my own little corner of AgCreate.
We bought a new-to-us car. The Sonata we bought in November of '13 had SERIOUS, on-going electrical problems. We went through FIVE batteries during the 15 months we owned it, and three of those 15 months were spent in the shop at three different dealerships trying to find a solution. We finally threw in the towel and traded. The dealership was absolutely fantastic to work with and tried their best to make it right. I couldn't be happier. We opted for a '12 Fusion, and I must say...I am in LOVE with this car!!! This little baby has stolen my heart. It is by FAR the fanciest thing we've ever owned (it's a Ford...we're simple folks), and it even has color changing ambient lighting which is kind of fun actually. The only thing I miss about the Sonata is the gas mileage.
Cole and I went to a fundraiser for the Eastern Illinois Foodbank last Saturday. We had a blast dancing the night away (we danced over 10,000 steps according to Cole's iPhone) and having probably one of my most favorite pictures of us EVER taken in the photo booth. It was seriously So. Much. Fun! Hopefully, we can make it an annual event for us. We also, ahem, bought a vacation during the silent auction so...WE'RE GOING TO ST. LUCIA! St. Lucia is where I really, really, REALLY wanted to go to for our honeymoon, but we had NO money at the time so we didn't take a honeymoon at all. Well, now we are a bit more established and so off to St. Lucia we shall go. But, much more importantly, the money went to an AMAZING cause that we are happy to support.
