Fall/Winter Happenings

We are so busy these days that I completely forget about the blog!  The Monday after Thanksgiving, we took Nick out of public school and put him into a home school program.  He goes to the tutoring group for 3 hours, 4 days each week.  There they work on math, writing (including handwriting), reading, and vocabulary.  At home I work with him myself on math and spelling, some grammar, and reinforcing his work from "school."  He does Explode the Code for phonics, and Rosetta Stone for English.  Finally, just YESTERDAY, we had a small breakthrough!  On the way to school, Nick said, "I know how to spell 'English.'"  And he did!  You have no idea how big that is, but it really, really is!
Some family pics from September:

But I digress.  The holiday season was nice.  Randi was here for 6 weeks doing a clinical rotation at River Oaks Hospital in Hammond.  It was awesome having her here with us!!!! 

Dima's adoption by our local friends fell through.  Oh, they went to Ukraine, all right -- but everything fell apart when someone at the orphanage let his grandmother know he was being adopted.  She came and made a big scene, and there's some other stuff that complicated matters, but they came home shortly without him.

The most important recent news is that I'M A NANA, AGAIN!!!  WOOHOOO!!!!  and YEEHAW!!!  Oakley Marie Schmucker is as beautiful a baby as her mama was!  She begs for kisses, already, of course. ;)  She was born November 20, 2011 and weighed 8 pounds, 2 ounces.  Here she is!