Weekly Report and a Happy Surprise

A happy surprise arrived in the mail last week: a package from my blogland friend Deanna with all sorts of goodies from Russia and the Ukraine! She had emailed me when she saw that we'd been studying those countries and said she'd like to send a few things, but I didn't know she meant all this! Blogland homeschool friends are great! Kathryn was beyond delighted because she has been talking about wanting Matroyshka dolls since she first learned of them, so it was like Christmas when she saw those in the box! We sampled the chocolate candy, and oohed and aahed over the pretty places on the postcards. Ken looked up how to pronounce the animal names in Russian; I guess this is a baby book? And it's so weird to look at the Bible in such an entirely different language.

This week, we "visited" Italy. We learned why the Tower of Piza leans, and that it was built as a bell tower. I never knew any of that, but I love all that I learn as we study! We touched on a bit of ancient Roman history, and decided we all want to see Venice in real life someday.

As far as our other subjects go, it's just been a normal week, plugging along and trying to get back into the swing of things after a week off at Thanksgiving. But we do have one big announcement: next semester, Lindsey will be doing school at home full-time, rather than continuing in the 2-day/week classes. There are many reasons for this, which I'll go into later, but the short answer is that we feel this is best, and much prayer about it has confirmed this decision for us. When we first told her, she was upset, but she soon got excited about it. God is good. :)

I have much more I want to blog, but things have been super-busy. Most of my computer time has been doing business stuff. But I have updated the WorleyArts blog, if you want to see some of what we've been doing there! I promise to get more things updated here at Rose Cottage soon, too...