Charles can read!

A couple of weeks ago Charles started actually reading.  We have been reading Dick and Jane.  We started with the "Look, look.  Oh, oh.  Oh, look" stuff, and have progressed to the "Sally said, 'Come Mother.  I see something.  See Spot run and jump.  Oh, my.'" sort of reading.  He is getting really good at sounding out new words and remembering the old ones.

Charles has also been really interested in learning to play the violin like Emma.  I decided to teach him what I know and then if he still wants to learn more, we can get him real lessons.  He is really good at remembering the details of things I teach him and being very precise.  So we'll see, but I think he may end up really playing the violin.

He has also picked up on the pattern for counting, so he jumped from counting to 20 to counting clear up to 100, with some help (like saying 30 instead of twenty-ten).

Charles has been really interested in the Magic Tree House books lately, so I've been reading him one about every other day.  We've also been playing a lot of games together lately.  It is fun that he has progressed to this level.  He seems to have jumped from toddler-who-can't-do-much to kid-who-can all at once.

Emma has also had a lot of exciting things happen since we moved here.  First of all, we decided to have her go to school.  She has been attending St. Paul's Christian Day School for this last half of 4th grade.  St. Paul's is an Evangelical Lutheran parochial school.  St. Paul's only goes through 4th grade, and we will be homeschooling her again after this, but she really wanted to try the school experience, and we'd heard so much good about St. Paul's (and really liked it when we toured it), so we decided to give it a whirl.  She has loved it.  St. Paul's is a great school with lots of good opportunities.  For Emma's school play, they put on Seussical (Jr.) the musical (Emma was a citizen of Whoville).  It was a full-on Broadway production.  At the end of school the 4th graders and their parents are going on a 3-day Texas history field trip.  It has also been great for her to be able to see what other churches believe and how they worship.  Emma has done well in school.  So far on her report card she has had all Satisfactory marks (highest mark) and her scores for the individual subjects were all in the 90's.  She also is in 2nd place so far for most AR (accelerated reader) points for the entire school year.  Yeah, she likes to read.

We found a great ballet teacher for Emma too.  Her name is Libby Lovejoy, and she moved out here to retire, but can't seem to make herself actually quit teaching.  She has taught at many universities and at Ballet Austin, and is a great teacher.  She and Emma hit it off right away.  Emma is taking ballet and musical theater dance from her.  She also encouraged Emma to audition for Ballet Austin's junior summer intensive, which she did, and she made it!  The summer intensive is two weeks of intense ballet training at Ballet Austin in August.  Emma is very excited.  She loves to dance, and her current dream is to be a professional ballerina.  She would dance every day if she could.

Texas is beautiful.  We had a bit of a cold snap in late January/ early February, which would have been okay except our heater wasn't working and our pipes froze, so we had to bunk with Dad and Mom for a few days one week and then a few days the next week.  But since then, it has been great weather.  We have been mostly hanging out in the 80's lately.  Our garden is growing nicely.  We planted some box gardens on our porch.  There is a sister in our branch who has good dirt (most of the dirt around here is clay), and she let us take whatever we needed.  So now we are growing a good little garden with tomatoes, peas, beans, lettuce, garlic, swiss chard, melons, pumpkin, zucchini, cilantro, peppers, spinach, carrots, and cucumbers.  Yay!