We had a busy week!

Sunday night, we took our "old" van to the dealership and lined it up behind 9 other vehicles for some diagnostic test on Monday. After Bernie ran the car through the test we found out that "hiccup" in shifting was a result of a valve issue in the transmission. Yes, anytime one hears "transmission" you know it comes with a hefty price tag - just under $900.00. After hearing the prognosis we decided it was best to have it repaired now versus doing more damage and ultimately a much more costly job later.


Monday was filled with another visit from Buck to sign more insurance papers, rugby practice, and soccer practice.

Tuesday began with the neighborhood breakfast. We have one every month. It's nice to venture out (especially now that I home school) and catch up with the ladies on the block. I missed the last 2 gatherings, but this month I will be hosting - guess I won't miss it! After the breakfast, it was off to the west side of town to walk through our home (rental property) with a contractor to begin some much needed repairs. I will say is difficult to walk through 'your home' and see damages. I could go on and on here, but since it is a sensitive subject I will just move on to lunch. The kids and I met with Auntie Zenia and her daughter Astryd for lunch at Applebees in the T.V. room. The kids love it there. We had a nice lunch then scurried home for piano lessons. Ella Grace went first so I could dress her for ballet and scurry out for one more errand to El Paso City Lights to attempt to find replacement crystal "drip dishes" for the broken ones on the chandelier in our home - the one we won't discuss because it is a sensitive subject. Of course, the original dishes are no longer available so we had to search for the most comparative both in size, similarity, and cost. Ana was a huge help and she successfully found some which are compatible. Now we are running behind for ballet, so we zoomed back over to base and were just about to get out of the car when Amanda called to cancel ballet. Whew....that came in handy for today as I have bunco and I need to rush home to make a dish to share or as Carson calls it 'whip something up' Momma. No winning tonight at bunco, but we had a blast!


Wednesday, thankfully, was a light 'to do' list today and the kids and I focused on school and quiet time. We did not study yesterday (the beauty of home schooling) so today we made up for lost time. The boys' knocked out several math lessons, literature, history, spelling, and science. Ella Grace did a beautiful job working on the letter "E" in both capital and lower case and worked on her colors. It was great to have all of them jump right in without any belly aching!


Thursday was another packed day starting off early with Ella Grace's trip to the speech/language pathologist. I have to say the appointment was insightful. She noticed almost immediately Ella has some fine motor issues and some balance issues - both correctable. She was impressed with Ella's sentence structure capabilities and knowledge/comprehension of the English language. We are ALWAYS working on her vocabulary/word usage/knowledge/sentence structures/vowel sounds/etc., she is doing remarkably well. She will work with Ella using a couple of different programs to assist her in progressing forward. After her appointment, we headed home to check in on the boys' and their classwork status, pick Patrick up from school and head back out for his oral surgery consult. I must say I didn't know wisdom teeth extraction could be so expensive! It's a good thing those teeth don't fall out for the tooth fairy at at $1000.00 per tooth! Patrick does need his lower 2 wisdom teeth extracted, however we will not be doing this through the oral surgeon we saw....creepy guy. We headed back home since Patrick has piano lessons in the late afternoon and I needed to get dinner going before we headed out to soccer. As life would have it, there was no time to cook dinner and just enough time to ready up for soccer and head over to the field - we won! Ben, our neighbor is an awesome soccer player and he scored BIG for our team. Way to to to all the Longhorns!


Friday was a nice slow day all the way around. We typically only work on language, reading and spelling in the morning and in the afternoon the boys' have art and gym class. We wrapped class up at noon then headed over to meet daddy for lunch before I dropped them off for their afternoon classes. Ella and I use this time to run a few errands...groceries, bank, gas for the car, etc., or sometimes (like today) we sneak off for some girl time and a little ice cream. After we picked the boys' up from class we had to head over to the vet to have Izzy's leg looked at. She is limping terribly and has been for about 4 days. The vet feels it is most likely a soft tissue injury (perhaps wrestling with Oreo - her buddy from next door) and she cannot play for a week. She is on some dogie Motrin and should be good by Friday of next week. Jim attended West Point Founder's Day here at Fort Bliss - I stayed back with the kids. Patrick had some friends over, we ordered pizza, and the little people and I disappeared upstairs.


Saturday, the kids had riding lessons and afterwards we came home worked in the yard picking up trash/dogie poo/sticks/planting flowers/and planted Jim's beloved garden.

The weather is warming up here, and the trees/flowers are blooming beautifully. Have a great week!