Back on Track

It was a really nice day today. We're back to our normal schedule. Everyone is over the cough, except maybe Eli who still has a bit of a nighttime tickle. We got our learning done very efficiently. I've reorganized our schedule to include more focus time on Eli (a regular scheduled story break + 45 minutes of 1-on-1 time with mama in addition to the morning tefillah, alef bet, and torah time). It worked really well today. Then after lunch we (finally) had art and music time with friends. We did a tree art project in honor of Tu B'shevat (Jewish new year for the trees). I'll post pictures later... We had a great discussion about everything trees do to make our life possible: providing wood to build houses, paper to print our seforim on (holy books), enabling us to do mitzvos like building a sukkah, giving us oxygen to breathe, giving us fruit and nuts, providing shade and beauty... I'm sure there are many more things we talked about. It's pretty amazing when one starts to contemplate it.

In other news, our car window should finally get replaced tomorrow (yay!). We're waiting for our appraiser to get our appraisal to us. We filed the complaint with the state against our insurance company and are waiting to hear the insurance company's response. The appliance guy is also coming tomorrow morning to fix the drier and re-anchor the dishwasher. AND we met with someone who is giving us bids to fix up the house for sale. There's a lot more work to do than we thought... Oh, well! Dean has been applying for lots of jobs. Recently, several jobs have turned up at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Real estate has also come way down there, so we've added it to our list of potential cities.

I spent most of the evening researching various phonics programs for Amirah. I've settled on Explode the Code and have ordered her level, thanks to a gift certificate we had! Also got the ancient history text we'll be using for 1st grade so I can get a bit of a head start on that. We have LOVED the R.E.A.L Science for Kids biology program. It's right up Amirah's alley. Tomorrow we're making jello and candy models of animal and plant cells. Should be yummy!