More daily photos

People ask me what is new and I don't really have anything to say.  Right now life is just moving forward.  That isn't a bad thing.  Some weeks are super busy and others are manageable.  The kids seem happy and while I don't feel that the boys have been pushed a whole lot with school this year, I have seen huge, huge growth in Piper.  A little boy at her school told her that he had a crush on her and she said that her response was, "That's weird.  Well, I guess I am very smart so..."  When she told me that I couldn't help but feel so happy.  At the beginning of the year and a large portion of last year, we struggled.  She hated doing school and there was frustration all around.  She had such a hard time learning to read and she would call herself dumb (though not often, thankfully).  To have her say that she is smart and that must be why he has a crush on her makes my heart want to explode.  I felt as though I needed to take a step back and figure out how to make her feel successful and good about her efforts and her learning and I feel like her little statement is a good show of how things have improved for her and me.  Yay!  Besides that, I just like that she sees herself as crushworthy outside of any physical reason.  I hope she will always see herself in a positive way.  

The girls are in gymnastics and they love it.  I've made some good friends with some of the other gymnastic moms (who also homeschool).  I got a new calling (more on that later), Mike enjoys his job a lot but it isn't particularly challenging except for the times where he has to deliver bad news to guys or when guys do stupid things that he has to correct them for--like the time one of his guys broke his toe to get out of his PT test!  That is dedication and seriously, if you have that much dedication to something, why not just channel that into passing the PT test?!  Breaking your toe on purpose?!