Beautiful Weather, Tennis & Other Random Subjects

We have been having some beautiful spring-like weather here the past week! We have really tried to take advantage of these gorgeous days and stay outdoors as much as possible. Last week, I played tennis 5 times! It was awesome being outdoors!! I think Robert was able to play 4 times! In addition to playing lots of tennis, we also spent lots of time playing with the girls outside - playing t-ball, basketball, tennis, golf, playing on the playground, drawing on the driveway with chalk, etc. And we've also squeezed in a few walks!

Saturday morning we took the girls to the baseball field and let them practice hitting and fielding on an actual field instead of just the backyard. They did really well! Katelyn isn't actually playing this year - although she's old enough and good enough!! Rachel is playing t-ball 2, which is for 5-6 year olds. The coach pitches 3 balls, and if you don't hit that, then you get to hit off the tee. We'll see how it goes. Rachel is going to run track too!! It's actually just a 4 or 5 week program where they meet once a week and go over some basic running/track drills. There's a guy from our church who ran in the Olympics and he started this track club a few years ago. He saw Rachel playing soccer last fall and talked to us about letting her run track for him. Rachel is actually too young to actually compete - she's just doing it for the learning experience. But if she likes it, she would be able to compete in a few years. When you ask Rachel what her favorite sport is, she says "Running the race!" She likes to just run around! So we thought this track thing might be kind of fun. Especially since it's just 1 night a week for 4-5 weeks.

Last Saturday one of my spring tennis leagues started, and my team started the season with a victory! Actually, it was a great win as we won all 5 courts! Way to go team! I actually played doubles in that match, but I'll probably be playing singles most of the time. Singles is my first choice if I'm given the option! The team we played last week wasn't extremely strong, so my captain decided to let one of the other singles players play singles this week and just let me play doubles. It worked out fine. We're off this Saturday because of Spring Break, but we'll be back in action the 24th! I think I may play in a tournament this week-end. I have til Wednesday to decide whether or not I want to enter.

Robert's tennis league started yesterday, but his team got a bye this first week. There are only 3 teams at his level, so someone has a bye each week.

It is truly amazing what Rachel is learning in kindergarten! She's had sight words to learn from pretty much the first week of school. Each week more words are added to the list of sight words she's supposed to know. Now they're doing words like _at, where you think of as many words as you can that end in 'at' - like bat, cat, fat, hat, etc. After Christmas break, the ones who knew all their sounds were able to start bringing home little books to read to their parents. So Rachel has been bringing lots of books home to read to us. We have to sign her sheet, and then she takes it back to school and has to read it to an adult there (teacher, teacher's aide, parent volunteer, etc.). They've also started writing in journals! It's really cute because at this stage, the teacher isn't necessarily concerned if everything is spelled correctly - she's more interested in whether or not they are trying to spell things phonetically. So Rachel writes in her journal and then illustrates it with her original artwork. It's really cute! They're learning punctuation too like period, comma, question mark, and exclamation point. Did you learn that in kindergarten? I'm fairly certain that I didn't! They've been learning about money, and I don't just mean a penny is one cent. I mean in addition to learning a penny is one cent, a nickel is 5 cents, etc., they also learn who is on the front of the coin and what's on the back of the coin! Of course, with all the new quarters and nickels, it makes it a little tricky for Rachel to try to show off her knowledge at home. She knows an eagle is supposed to be on the back of the quarter, but she'll pick up a new quarter and it has one of the states on it and it confuses her. But I have been amazed at how much her little brain can soak up!!

Katelyn is picking up on lots of the things that Rachel is learning, which can only help her! She writes her letters really well, and knows how to spell things like 'Katelyn,' 'Mommy,' Daddy,' 'Rachel,' and 'Boo!' Not really sure how she started writing Boo, but it's a word she wrote one time and remembered how to spell. Most days while we're waiting to pick up Rachel Katelyn will get a notepad and ask me how to spell random things that she sees around the room - like table, chair, wall, etc. It's helped her with learning how to write her letters, and she does a great job of keeping her letters on the lines. She's probably the best 3-year old colorer that I've seen! She loves to sit and color, and she's very determined to stay in the lines and not "scribble scrabble" as she calls it. All of her teachers at school and at church always make comments about how well she writes and colors. She's learned a lot of that from Rachel - Katelyn wants to be like big sis!