Happy Birthday Katherine Mae!

Kate turned 5 this week and it seemed like we celebrated the entire week! Her birthday fell on Tuesday, so I took cupcakes (which she and James made - props to Daddy) to her school so she could celebrate there. That day I had lunch with her at her school and then took her and a school friend to the movies to see Ramona and Beezus and then home to play. Tom and Laura came over that evening and we opened presents. Some of the highlights were a castle for her miniature Disney princesses, a strawberry shortcake remote control car, and a canopy for her bed.


After opening presents, we went out to eat to celebrate Kate's birthday as well as her Grandfather's birthday, which was the following day. Kate had requested macaroni and cheese for her birthday meal, and she and Owen both love the mac and cheese at Puleo's (where kids eat free!) so we headed there and then back home for some cake and ice cream.





And that was only Tuesday.

Wednesday, a package came from Aunt Carrie. Thursday a package came from Grandma and Grandpa. Friday was spent preparing and shopping for groceries and party essentials for the big day on Saturday.

Saturday, we had a few girls over for a girls only dress-up tea party (but Daddy, Grandfather, and Owen were invited at the last minute because Kate wanted her Daddy to be there).


I didn't think to get a picture of all the girls together all dressed up, but they were cute. Everyone came dressed up in princess attire (how else would a girl dress up?) and they really just played together for a while and then we ate. Then they played a little more, changed clothes and then went outside to play. It was a pretty low-key affair, but still fun for the girls.

I was glad when the party was over and we could stop celebrating! But, I was also a little sad to think that my little girl will never turn five again and won't really be a "little girl" any more.

My Little Redshirt

Kate started pre-k on Friday and seemed to enjoy it. She didn't appear to be nervous going into her class and she was just fine when I left despite the fact that the one girl she knows in the class wasn't there yet. When I picked her up, she said she had fun, though she was a little confused as to why her friends from last year weren't there. Prior to this year, she had attended the same "school" (Mother's Day Out) for four years, so I guess she expected everyone to move on with her, even though we had talked about the fact that most of them would be going to kindergarten or other schools.

Kate's class is a transitional class for five-year-olds (which she will be tomorrow!) at a preschool very near our house. We decided to give her one more year before sending her to kindergarten. Lots of people have asked her if she was excited about kindergarten in the past few weeks, unaware that she wasn't going this year, but she hasn't asked any questions about it.

The New York Times published an article this weekend about people waiting to send kids to kindergarten. They called it "The Littlest Redshirts..." which I think is pretty clever - if you're not familiar with college athletics (I know my mom is asking herself what a redshirt is...), the term comes from the practice of postponing the participation of college athletes in competitive games so they are freshmen on the team when they are actually sophomores in school. If you're interested, you can read the article. It takes a pretty good look of the reasons parents choose to have their kids "sit out" one more year and the some of the affects this has on other kids.

I was a little concerned about how she would react when the five-year-olds at church with her moved up to the elementary class this summer, but Kate didn't care that she did not move up and seems very comfortable to have stayed where she was. She always seemed to get along better with the kids who were a little younger rather than older than her.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this school year. It's going to be a busy one for us with Kate and Owen in two different schools with different schedules and Owen in speech two days a week!

Hablamos Espanol

Over the past few weeks, several little instances have led me to the decision to teach my family (and/or learn with them) to speak Spanish.

A local Hispanic church congregation plans to start meeting in our church building in September and the minister of the church will have his office there as well. I am hoping that our congregation will form some relationships through this partnership. Our church has also taken several family mission trips to Mexico to serve a family and church with whom we have a relationship. To help build these relationships, two of our ministers were recently discussing the possibility of holding Spanish language classes for our congregation. In addition, a woman at our church, who teaches ESL in the local schools, has also recently begun a ministry to provide the Hispanic population in Knoxville with information and resources and just to help them where needed and I think it might be pretty awesome to help out with that.

All of these things had already gotten me thinking about brushing up on my Spanish. I took five years of Spanish in junior high and high school - actually four if you take into account that I actually skipped Spanish 4 - so I wouldn't be learning the language from scratch.

Then I recently stumbled on a blog that I really like, so I was going back and reading a few of the past posts. The blog is written by a mom who is homeschooling her children, including teaching them to speak French. That's when it hit me - I could teach my kids to speak Spanish! I don't really know why we all need to learn Spanish, but I have heard that young children learn second languages pretty easily. Plus there are numerous language, literacy, social, and cognitive development benefits.

Besides, it just seems like God has something up his sleeve...

So, I'm getting ready to do some digging to figure out how this will work for us. I hope it doesn't end up just being frustrating and time consuming. I'll definitely need to find some fun resources. Wish me luck!