Nate's 2nd Grade Class Dance

Nate's Advanced Dance Performance

Evie's 1st Grade Class Dance

Winter Performance

Nate and Evie go to a charter school that focuses on the arts. They attend dance, theater, music, and art in addition to their regular classes, and they spend the semester preparing for a performance. The teachers always do an excellent job putting it all together, and this year was no exception! Attending the performance is one of my favorite things.

This semester Nate was in advanced dance and Evie was in advanced theater, so they had those performances in addition to their others. Here are a few pictures and video to show off a little of their hard work.

I took this the morning of their performance. 

Nate and Evie were super excited to be spending the day doing dress rehearsal. 

Simon was happy to be spending the day with his recorder and saw. 

 Nate as Santa in his class's theater performance.

 Evie playing the "Little Girl" in her advanced theater performance.

 Evie as a penguin in her class's theater performance.

 Stephen went to get Evie from the stage and give her flowers at the
end of the performance. I was glad they looked in my direction for a second.

They were so proud!

My Semester

The end of my Library and Information Science degree program is in sight. I only have one online course to complete next semester, and then I'll complete my practicum next Fall. I pushed myself this semester with two classes. One was a beastly cataloging class that turned out to be way more challenging than I anticipated. The other was a Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults class that turned out to be even more enjoyable than I anticipated. I got to study literature from six different cultural groups within the United States. I learned A TON and can't wait to share it with my students some day!

For a sample of the work I did this semester, visit my blog Literature for Children and Young Adults.

50's Day

Nate and Evie love 50's Day at their school! It's how their school celebrates the 50th day of school for the year. Here are a couple pictures:

 Simon didn't participate in 50's Day. :)

Showing off their dance moves!

 This has nothing to do with 50's Day.
I just really love that these two still choose to share the chair! 

Simon is 3!

Sometimes we wonder where in the world Simon came from. He's so different than Nate and Evie. In many ways, Nate and Evie have always been very much alike, so we got in a really good parenting groove with them. Simon is completely throwing our parenting for a loop. Many days I just don't know how to correct his behavior in a way that he'll respond to.

But, he's by far our most sensitive child. He gives the best hugs! He's a fast learner. He wants to be anywhere and everywhere his older brother and sister are, and he wants to do everything they get to do. I definitely feel his pain as the third and youngest child!

He's our Simonster and we love him. He requested an oo-ah cake for his birthday. He still calls Curious George and all monkeys "oo-ah's." I hope that never changes!

Halloween 2015

So. Much. Candy. We live in an older neighborhood, which means trick-or-treating is hit or miss. This year it was mostly miss. But the pro was that the people who were giving out candy were giving it out by the handfuls! Our kids somehow came home with full buckets.

Evie was a ballerina. Nate was one of his favorite book characters - Dink from the A to Z Mysteries series, wearing a skeleton shirt. Simon was a disgruntled construction worker. He refused to be a happy, or even a content, one. :)

We've created a tradition of trick-or-treating with our neighbors and their little boy, Chet. Some of their friends joined this year, and it was great. There's nothing better for parents' nerves than a bunch of hyped up kids running down the middle of the street together!

We carved pumpkins a couple days before. Nate's was a scary face, Simon's was a rocket, and Evie's was a cat with the moon behind it (hers isn't pictured here.)

 A picture of the picture.

 Scary faces.

Here's the whole trick-or-treating crew.

Mid-semester

Well, I'm mid-semester, wishing I had time to blog, and dreaming of my (somewhat) carefree days of summer when I could do things like this:

This picture is helping me push through today. Hope it brings someone else a smile! :)

Crazy Hair Day

The Winklers come to Texas

My sister and her kids came to visit this past week. We don't get to see each other nearly enough, so I was really glad to have them come for a few days. It was loud and chaotic at times, but it was well worth it. Ethan and Ellen have grown and changed so much since we saw them last summer. The cousins played like cousins do - with a lot of laughing and a little aggravating. They're figuring each other out. And the goodbye wasn't much of a goodbye this time because we know we'll be seeing them again in another month or so when we travel to Kentucky. I know the trip wasn't easy, especially for you, Elizabeth. But we're SO glad you came!

 Evie reading to Ethan and Ellen before bed.

 Simon and Ellen playing with bubbles. Ellen knows exactly how to push Simon's buttons. And Simon is going to be a really good soccer player one day. He can throw himself on the ground and act like he's been injured like you wouldn't believe! But I really think these two will be good playmates someday soon. :)

 Ethan!

 Simonster.

 Lining them up for a picture.

 And then Ellen runs off.

She's back. Now for the impossible - to get all five of them to look at the camera and smile. Evie's face is my favorite in this one! The face she's making perfectly describes her mood that morning.

 This is as good as it's going to get. Not bad!

Disney's The Jungle Book Kids

Nate and Evie attend a charter school whose focus is on the arts. They take dance, theater, music, and art in addition to their core subjects. Each semester they work toward a performance to show the skills they've been learning in dance, theater, and music. Grades Kindergarten-2nd perform together. This semester they have been especially excited to be preparing for Disney's The Jungle Book Kids. Evie was a flower and Nate was an elephant in the elephant troupe.

Their arts teachers do an INCREDIBLE job preparing for these performances, and I've been blown away by each one we've seen so far. So, I was really looking forward to seeing The Jungle Book. Nate and Evie have been listening to the music for it and singing the songs all semester (so of course I have them all memorized too), and they've even been acting it out for fun at home. The performance did not disappoint, and we were especially proud of Evie. She has improved tremendously since the fall semester performance in her confidence on stage and in her ability. She was comfortable on stage, and it was such a gift to watch her perform so confidently. And she LOVED every minute of it! Needless to say, we are proud of both of them!

 It was difficult to get good pictures of the performance, and I really just wanted to watch and not worry about pictures anyway. This one turned out okay. Evie is the flower in the front row with the black leotard and green tutu.

 My little flower holding her flowers. :)

Nate with his elephant ears.

Evie is six!

Evie turned six last week. SIX! I'm not very sentimental about my kids growing up, but every once in a while I'm surprised by how time has passed. Evie was born on Memorial Day, and her birthday fell on Memorial Day again this year, so we had fun reminiscing about the day of her birth. It was really nice that everyone had the day off and we got to spend the day together celebrating our girl. We played putt-putt golf and arcade games in the morning, followed by lunch of her choice - tacos at Rosa's Cafe. I made cupcakes in the shape of a princess dress (which didn't turn out as nicely as I'd hoped), and some neighbor friends came to eat cake and play outside for a while in the evening. Even though she was disappointed not to have a party (I'm holding fast to our decision not to throw birthday parties, but to spend birthdays as a family), I think she really enjoyed her day!

Catching Up

Here are just a few random pictures from the past few weeks. Life has slowed down quite a bit for me since my classes ended. I took two classes for the first time this past semester, and I finished them four weeks ago. I took two so that I could take the summer off, and I am SO EXCITED to have the summer without classes! I'm looking forward to just being with my family without having assignments in the back of my mind.

School will end for Stephen, Nate, and Evie on Friday, so it looks like summer break is actually going to come. I had some serious doubts about whether or not we would make it this far a few months ago. :)

Here are those pictures I mentioned:

 Evie's reading has taken off in the past few months. 

She enjoys reading to Simon even though he doesn't always enjoy it back.

Simon has made this ball his official seat for choosing a book. 

I guess bending over to see his choices was too hard.

Seven Years

Today marks seven years without Mom. Mother's Day and the anniversary of her death has come with much less anxiety this year. Whatever the reason, I'm thankful for the abnormal quiet of these past few weeks. It has been a difficult semester, and my writing energies have all gone to academic writing. So, instead of writing some new reflections on the day, I'm going to re-post what I wrote last year. My thoughts are very much the same this year - minus some of the dread of the upcoming day. 

The picture above was taken in September 2006. Mom came to Turkey for a visit, and we planned to surprise her with the news that I was pregnant. Instead, we met her in Istanbul to tell her the news of a miscarriage and we spent a few days there while I was recovering. Of course "recovering" meant showing Mom around the city. This picture was taken during a quick trip to the Black Sea.

And here is last year's post:

So, here we are again. Another Mother’s Day. Mom died on Mother’s Day six years ago. So, this is the first time since then that we’ll celebrate the anniversary of her death on Mother’s Day. Every year I dread Mother’s Day. Advertisements for it begin the day after Easter (although this year I saw a commercial the evening of Easter), and escalate until the day. Especially the week before. Every morning show and talk show and commercial is finding the sweetest and best ways for you to celebrate your mom this Mother’s Day. It makes me nauseous.

So, I can run and hide during this season. No TV. No radio. No ads of any kind. No social media (which isn’t such a bad idea anyway). Or I can use this season to lean in. I can remember how the Lord spoke deeply into my soul that He is enough for me AND for these little ones I spend my days with. And then I can recount how He has proven that time and again. I can ask the hard questions. I can rest assured that I’m not the only one.

I can reflect on the kindness and goodness of the Lord. I’m a different mom than I would’ve been without losing my own mom. When your world is turned upside down, so are the things you value. You see things differently. Rough edges are smoothed. Character is sharpened. Being a mom is a really hard job. But walking with joy in the hard – not escaping from it or even pushing through it, but finding unspeakable joy in it - is what will make me a better mom. Because of this - because He’s taught me these things through loss - in the places of my heart where bitterness should be, gratefulness lies instead.

Soon after we lost Mom I clung tightly to verses like Psalm 147:3 that says, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” I said many times that time doesn’t heal all wounds, He does. And it’s true. He does. But I thought healing meant that I would eventually reach a point of not grieving anymore. Of not being sad. Of not missing her and not wishing she were here. I get frustrated sometimes because I feel like I should be over this by now. It’s been six years. SIX years! Why can’t I shake this?

But I think I was wrong. She was my Mom. I’m not supposed to get over her. I’m supposed to honor and love her in the days and years after she’s gone. And I’m supposed to remember the examples she set for me – especially the one of clinging to Jesus in the midst of grief.

The anticipation - the anxiety and the dread - of the upcoming day is always worse than the day itself. I know that six times over. It’s been ugly. But, as Sunday approaches, I’ll try not to hide. I’ll go to Muffins with Mom with Evie. And to a tea party Mother’s Day celebration with Nate. I’ll let them celebrate me. And, by His grace, I’ll be an example of joy and gratefulness to them during these days.