What happened to July?

Summer seriously has gotten too short! July was a blur and I didn't get around to blogging even one time. We actually did a lot of work on the house early in the month and then put it on the market to see if we should sell it and try to change our lifestyles due to the downturn in the economy. Our agent is so great and his wife staged our house beautifully. I really loved the work she did and how it turned out.

We have since taken the house off the market and are praying that we are through the worst of the bad times and can plan to stay where we are for as long as we want. We are open to God's calling though and will be flexible to where He leads us.

Visit with Pop - Father's day

For Father's Day, we celebrated in the morning with Daddy and then took off for a drive to Waco to visit my dad, Pop, and my sister & her family who were coming in for the day too. It was about 103 degrees and was a very stifling heat. We had to wait for it to cool down a little to go to the pool!! But then we went and wow! it was soooo refreshing! Everyone enjoyed getting in and cooling off!





Later on, we headed up to the Elite Cafe on the circle to celebrate father's day for Pop. YUM!

Happy Fathers Day dad! We love ya!!

Emma's Prize Winning Reading

Emma has been working on learning to read for a few months. She sometimes likes to do her lesson but most of the time, there is something better to do. So, recently, when she was asking for a particular rolling dog toy (that her friend Caroline has and she plays with for the whole time she visits her), I had the bright idea to get her to "earn" it. She had to do as many lessons as the prize costs in dollars. So she was at 14 lessons that we had stickers for and she needed about 14 more to earn the toy dog. What was really exciting is that by the end of that prize winning lesson, she was actually reading all the words in the little story! We are so proud and she is starting to really love reading and doing the lessons!!

Here's the book we are using to learn to read. It focuses mostly on sounds and has an interesting way of introducing sounds in a "logical" way for learning. The Pooh book is for the writing practice. I got it at the dollar store.
Emma was sooooo excited about getting to get her Spot out of the box! The box arrived a few days before she completed the lessons, so then we had a new lesson to learn: PATIENCE.

She loves Spot so much she wants to sleep with it... for now. ;-)