Celebrating 13 Years

On Thursday we paused in our Christmas activities to celebrate Eli's 13th birthday. His wish was for the family to have dinner together at Applebee's and then go to the movies for a double header to see Rogue One and then Assassin's Creed. We had a great time honoring our sweet boy! Throughout the day I posted 13 photos of Eli on Instagram. I thought I would share them here, too.

This year Eli turned into a young man. You can see the difference just one year has made between the photo of him holding the Millennium Falcon and the one of him sitting at Applebee's. The transition has been a difficult one for him, but he is pushing forward. He has started to talk about his future, to have dreams and plans and aspirations. But, mostly, he just enjoys hanging out in his room playing video games and with his Nerf gun collection. He is a true teenager in every sense of the word. We get a few sighs and some attitude these days, but those do not outnumber his smiles and hugs. In fact, I think his attitude surprises him as much as it does us. We love our boy and cannot believe he is 13 years old. It does seriously feel like yesterday that we were bringing home our tiny little 5 1/2 pound baby on Christmas Eve. Time goes by so fast!

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ABCya

Eli's reading resource teacher shared a website with me yesterday that I would like to pass along. It's called ABCya . There are separate educational sections with fantastic games for ages kindergarten through 5th grade. I browsed the 2nd grade level, and it includes age-appropriate games about Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Geometry, Patterns, Mouse Manipulation, Art and Holiday games. There are lots and lots of fun and creative games for children to play. They are fun, but oh, so educational. Eli's favorite, in his short time playing it, was Create a Car . A lot of the games also have Apps available for purchase (99 cents for most of them) for the iPad and iPhone. I have been looking for another free website for games similar to Starfall , for some time. I think I have found it. I can feel confident having Eli and Brynne play these games.

A Thomas Jefferson Education "This Week in History" ~ Schoolhouse Review

Talk about a GOLD MINE! A Thomas Jefferson Education's This Week in History by Rachel DeMille is her "labor of love" ... and I absolutely LOVE it! " This Week in History is a daily resource that brings your home school or classroom to life." For just $9.99 per month, you can log onto TJEd.com and click the "This Week in History" link to obtain many, many, many resources tied to specific events that occurred in the upcoming week in history. Or even better, you can receive the summaries and links to ALL resources right in your email Inbox each week! It doesn't get any easier than that! What does this really look like in real life? Each week, I receive an email from Rachel DeMille that sets out each date of the coming week. Under the date, there are listed anywhere from one to several events that occurred in history on that date. THEN there are ALL kinds of things to do related to that event, such as books to read, websites to visit, ac

Cells ~ It's What's for Dinner

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