Parentheticals

This week Alison started official school in our homeschool. The kids were not particularly excited by this fact, but we're making progress:  Gideon had a baseline assessment for the beginning of first grade and did very well.  Sara is in the middle of an assessment of the math she learned last year, to see if she can keep doing her current math schedule or needs to spend more time on math. (She and Alison are disagreeing about this, so the assessment is supposed to settle the question.)  Timmy did a full reading lesson this week (a full lesson takes 2-4 hours), and his reading was very impressive! He is making a lot of progress, and we're hoping that he'll be reading independently by the end of this school year. Rea had her first week of doing all the assignments for her Challenge class. Alison was a little nervous about how it would all fit in our schedule, but Rea is very motivated and got it all done with no problem. Her tutor was very impressed with her on Thursday, esp

This week on Monday we got a cat. Sara has done such a good job of taking care of Rocket that when she asked for a cat and agreed to take care of it the same way the parents decided that she was mature enough to trust to do it. We looked online at a few options and settled for a mixed breed not-very-allergenic black and white cat. He has had a few names - he started with the name Choge but now he is being called Jello, because he is a jellical cat. We will attach pictures to the bottom of this post. He is 8 weeks old (his birthday is June 14th), and he is very energetic and loving. He enjoys playing with everyone and doesn't love rocket a lot yet, however he tolerates him. Timmy also seems to be getting sick. He slept through the visit to Grandma's house and seemed poorly. He is coughing a lot, but he claims to be well. On Thursday was Rea's first day of school for the year. She is doing a class that meets every Thursday from 8:30 till 4:00. In class they all bring interest

We haven't written for three weeks since it has been so busy, but now we have a normal Sunday, so here it all goes. Three weeks ago we spent most of our time getting ready for Dan's wedding. We packed and got a dog sitter and stopped the mail and everything. Our plan to get there was to ride on a series of trains. It should have taken three days each direction, however, the trains on the way there were all delayed. The first was 6+hours late and caused us to miss our connection. We had to have a 24 hour layover in Chicago because of the delay so we went to the Chicago zoo most of the day. It was pretty fun even though the kids whined a lot. We got on the next train and it was also running late, but not so late that we missed the third train. It ended up taking 4 days to get there due to the super long layover. Grandpa Mike picked us up at the train station, so we got to bed before midnight on Thursday. Having missed a day meant that we tried to get two days worth of touring don