Praise

The girls have had a full and wonderful week! This has been different for us because we have never had the girls away from us in the way of school. They are still "homeschooled", however I would call it more of a co-op now. My relatives also have children using the same curriculum and method for their homeschooling AND they have an oh-so-wonderful, adorable classroom that they use. Our girls have been given the opportunity to go with their cousins to homeschool. They absolutely love it. They talk about it ALL OF THE TIME! Even Noe wants to go and was sad to leave when we took them on Friday. It is such a positive, loving and fun place for them. It is top notch and something one would normally pay the utmost tuition to attend. They love being with their cousins and Aunt JuJu of course. They don't even want to leave =). Today, Aliyah got to start up swimming lessons again. Having lessons in non-summer months is new for us. Since the park has them in the summer, the YWCA was new for us for swim lessons. She had to join level 1 since she hadn't had lessons at the Y before. I understand that because programs are very different I'm sure and you never know if your child is with a group of great swimmers or just average. So, it is hard to know if they know what a different program requires for various levels. She got into her class and we watched the other kids go through various skills while at the same time watching a higher level class and realizing that she could do more than what the higher level was doing. She went through with ease and it was funny when they had them go to the deep end and jump off blocks. For her group, they had them wear these arm floats that were big circles (I hadn't ever seen anything quite like them). One of the teachers took her aside and asked her where we were sitting and then he asked her to swim breast-stroke. She did that and then he had her swim over with him to the side where we were sitting. He came over and said, "your daughter is an amazing swimmer". "She is an awesome diver and she can do all of the skills I asked". So, she got to move up a few levels. You should have seen her beaming when she heard him say that stuff. She hopped out of the pool jumping up and down to join the other class who was working on throwing a heavy brick thing to the bottom of the deep end to see if they could retrieve it. No one could get it, but Aliyah picked it up and almost had it all the way back. It was pretty heavy for our 40 pounder. I think she practically floated out of class after that experience. I know she will work even harder to keep moving up. We are so excited for her to hear positive feedback =).