It's February!

Woohoo, another January has come and gone and I survived it. It was cold, it was dark and we spent second half of it sick, but we survived it. Today the sun is out, the snow is melting and I'm happily moving forward.

There is still some sickness lingering in our family. I still don't feel super great and Matthew had a fever this morning so he stayed home today. It's been a weird cold that appears to go away and then reappears a few days later. Weird.

Monday is Clarissa's birthday! Can you believe that she'll be FOUR?! I can't comprehend that the time has gone by so quickly. She's super excited and every time I ask her what she wants for her birthday she just tells me a chocolate cake with pink on it. That's my girl. :) We are looking forward to celebrating her birthday with some fun activity but I haven't decided exactly what yet. I'm waiting to see if we're all over our sickness first!

Today I'm super excited for Josh because he is being honored at a school assembly for being on the honor roll and he was also chosen to receive a special character award that I believe is voted on by the teachers. I'm really proud of him for how well he's doing in school. He's such a great kid.

In book reading news, we're still a bit behind. We're having a hard time getting a consistent reading schedule that works for everyone. Between being sick and having other things going on in the evenings we're still tying to work out the kinks in our plan. Josh has had a lot of homework and studying to do lately and Matthew is doing a big research project for the gifted program and that has kept both of them busy in the evenings and I hate to cut into study time for other activities. It's really just a time management issue and I haven't felt well enough lately to address it, but now that things are getting back on track I'm going to find a way to make it work. In the meantime the kids are reading consistently on their own. Matthew is halfway through the final Harry Potter book, which is a gigantic book, and Josh is getting close to finishing up the Hiding Place. Every day he reads and then we discuss it, which I'm loving.

So all in all, things are going good here. I wish the sickness in the house would hurry up and go away, but January is over, the sun is shining, we get to eat chocolate cake with pink on it on Monday, there are books to be read and that sounds like a happy life to me. :)