Things are moving quickly

in the McKenzie house. Our closing date on the house got moved up to next Friday, two weeks early. I only packed the first box today. I'm overwhelmed and excited. There's a lot to do, but plenty of time to do it all. We are extremely blessed to not have any reason to rush this move. On Thursday, we spent a long while in Target picking out Kayla's new bedding and the girls' bathroom. Those two rooms are set, and I think they'll both be very cute.

Lily is talking so much. I feel like I say every week, but it really is just unfolding so fast. Her sentences are amazing, and she's starting to try to read facial expressions for emotion. It's just a really neat thing to watch that little brain develop.

Kayla is becoming a little artist. It has been incredible to watch the evolution of her drawings. She loves to draw pictures of her "cuddly things" and other animals. She's progressing with her phonics and is just being really sweet most of the time. The best thing though is when they both play together in Kayla's room. They have a great time with each other most of the time.

That's the gist of our week. Not a lot of deep things going on right now, but still a lot of growth.

Homeschool Planning

I'm starting to plan for our biggest adventure yet, Kindergarten. A friend sent me this blog by Ann Voskamp. I really had compartmentalized school in my head, and I love the way she just describes it as something integrated into their lives. I think I will work on that, but I do think it will be hard for me at first. I'm slowing buying things I want to use next year and finding articles that show me that I really don't need to buy much at all. Planning is my thing, so I'm having fun with it.

This year, we are focusing more on phonics, reading, and counting. I want to add a few shapes to Kayla's vocabulary, just to make things easier later. She already loves to count everything and read numbers, so none of this is really forced on her.

I'm thinking about trying to start a book borrowing group with friends who have kids similar ages, in hopes of all of us saving money buying the books we can't find at the library. I'll have to think and pray about this more, but it just occurred to me that this could be pretty helpful to everyone involved.

Lots of news. . .

Kayla news: Since that last post, the girl colored herself green. When I walked in, she gave me her best deer-in-headlight look and said, "It was an accident." It was all I could do to not crack up laughing right there in front of her. We also had another bout of croup, but not so bad. Kayla overheard me saying something about, ". . . until Kayla gets rid of this bug." That was an interesting conversation that resulted in her locating the bug, which was behind her knee and itching. "I'm gonna kick this bug out of my body," she said and furiously started kicking the back of the driver's seat. She's also learning to read, very slowly, but some of that (probably a lot of it, actually) is due to my inconsistency. We're doing lessons in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and playing online games at starfall.com. It has been amazing to watch those neural connections being made.

Lily news: During the past few weeks, Lily has been talking nonstop. That's really nothing new, but now we can actually understand most of what she has to say. Most importantly, her birthday was yesterday. We had a big Mickey & Minnie family bash for her, complete with cupcakes. "Cupcakes mmmm." This statement comes with a full chest and tummy rub and a look of complete desperate need. It was a blast . . . a very exhausting blast.

Other Family News: We have a contract on a house! We're all very excited. The second time we saw it, Kayla walked into one of the kid rooms and said, "We'll take it!" There's a lot to do, but not a huge time crunch so I'm not really stress, but very joyful.

I'm not sure how this fits here, but I'm trying to make sure I don't forget it, so I'm putting it on this blog anyway. Fathers have been on the backburner of my brain for a week or so now, and this morning we were singing songs in church about God as rescuer, redeemer. Somewhere in there, it occurred to me that a perfect father would be the only one who could do this, who could see where we are, who we are, what we've done and pay our ransom, pull us out, restore us and still be able to love us. We've only sinned against him. Only the perfect daddy could forgive and still look at us with love. Probably just God's gift to me today, but I don't want to belittle that by letting it get piled in my brain with other stuff. I want to remember that, to not forget. I need to keep that Perfect Daddy in the forefront of my mind and heart all the time.