Sunday Summary

I'm giving up on writing any kind of synopsis of our lives since my last post.  Here's news from the past week!😊

Eva's orthopedist said her stress fracture was healed enough to run.  Sort of.  What he said was to jog on grass and train on a bike and to let pain be her guide at the region race.  What Eva heard was to let pain be her guide. She ran region Wednesday and qualified for state.  Her entire cross country team gets to go to state and she is thrilled.  But I can tell she's hurting because she has been icing a lot and she seems tired all the time.  State is this Wednesday so hopefully she will have time after that to fully recover!

Ethan had a big Court of Honor Wednesday night.  He got his Star rank and is working on his Life.  He received several merit badges.  The Scoutmaster made a point of telling everyone how helpful Ethan is.  He has diligently worked to help other boys receive their merit badges and advance their ranks.  We are so proud of him!  Ethan also had a birthday Sunday.  He's 14 now and was ordained a teacher last week.  On Monday I went to his Parent /Teacher conference and was impressed again with his phenomenally high math and science scores.  His core test results rival kids two grades above him.  Which is great since he wants to be an engineer one day.  I love seeing him work hard to develop his talents.

Ivy started taking piano lessons from me this fall.  This has bee a bit of an adjustment for her because I do things a bit differently than her old teacher and since she is an intermediate student I expect things to be learned/polished better than she is used to.  She is really improving!  She practices diligently and she is doing quality work.  She is enjoying orchestra and toying with the idea of private violin lessons.  We'll see.

Nathan LOVES school this year!  This is exciting for all of us!  Nathan has been going to school for over 7 years and has disliked every day until this year.  I can remember him hiding from me when the bus would come to take him to preschool and having to carry him to the bus kicking and screaming every time.  Things have been better than that for a long time but it is a huge relief to have him looking forward to school and learning!  It makes mornings and homework so much easier!

After several months of no dishwasher and some car trouble things are improving.  Vince fixed our dishwasher yesterday.  Washing dishes isn't the end of the world but after three months without it I know it will be easier to keep up with everything with a functional dishwasher!  It turns out that our Expedition may not need a transmission after all.  For now anyway.  We are halfway through a month long trial to see if new transmission fluid solves the problem and this week it's looking really good!  I think this is a tender mercy because we and a couple of mechanics were certain it needed a new transmission but after waiting and praying about what we should do we were all inspired to try this instead...a little miracle for us.  We'll take it!