New Roads, Old Books

Last fall, a few roads in our neighborhood were resurfaced. With E's meet season over and some warmer weather in our neck of the woods, we decided to have some fun on the skateboards this week.  

Have I mentioned that E's season is over? Although he qualified at State for Regionals, we opted not to go. Many would argue that we are stopping him early, holding him back...and maybe we are. But this is his first year in competition. He is Level five, which is still small stuff. Regionals are expensive- registration and coach fees/travel expenses, plus our own travel/lodging...all said hundreds of dollars on top of the thousands we've already paid thus far. It would have been an adventure to drive north to New Jersey (we've never been north of Maryland) and for E to compete against different gymnasts, but in the end we decided to complete the season at States.

On the drive to gym today, E told me that he was kind of glad to be done. It meant he could use his grips every day! Ha. He only recently received the okay to use high bar grips- leather hand cover thingies with a dowel under his fingers- so was still competing bare-handed (and thus training bare-handed). Soon to come are still ring grips. Moving on up!

Remember those little square scooters in elementary gym? e belly-down on her skateboard totally reminds me of those.

C has been reading the Redwall series to E for a little over a year now, and they are just over halfway.  E loves this. He has a hard time when a series ends. (Don't we all?) So he is pretty happy to have what appears to be another year left to go. Brian Jaques is an amazing author.

e has been listening to C read one classic after another. Our first grade Christopherus read-aloud book list includes so many sweet, older stories. She has enjoyed them immensely. Among the titles are those most of us have read- Pippy Longstocking, Whinnie the Pooh, Socks, Charlotte's Web, The Chronicles of Narnia- but also many most have not heard of, such as the Burgess animal stories, Twig, and the Freddy the Pig books. I would love to know more. What classics has your family read recently?