Holy Thursday!

We just received Jonathan's Catholic kindergarten home school kit. He missed the kindergarten deadline by a few days, but he's ready. If we do accredited kindergarten for him, he will have the option next year of entering first grade or repeating kindergarten at school. The only accredited home school kindergarten in the area is affiliated with the Catholic church.

As you probably know, we belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tracy called the school before we ordered the kit to find out about how "Catholic" the materials are. The man on the phone said not to worry; there may be an image here, a sentence there, but for the most part the materials are strictly academic and non-religious.

I'm sorry to report that the gentleman, perhaps unknowingly, broke the ninth commandment. Or the eighth commandment, depending on your denomination. Whichever one says "liar liar pants on fire." (Okay, I don't think he meant to deceive us. It's all about your point of view.)

Actually, it's not that bad, and we can substitute those materials that are not in harmony with the gospel with materials of our choosing. And we have had a few good laughs already. For example, if you're Catholic, you might not find anything funny about the term "Luminous Mysteries," especially when appearing in a kids' coloring book, but believe me.

As another example, there was a rosary in the box. For our non-Catholic readers (which I believe is all of you), a rosary is a bead necklace that helps Catholics count the prayers that they recite. It has a crucifix at the end of it. We focus on the resurrected, living Christ so we don't even use crosses, much less crucifixes, so Jonny may or may not have seen one before. His reaction to the rosary was priceless:

"Why did they send me a dead Jesus necklace?"

The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 5): To the Brink

< The Short Sale Shimmy (Part 4)

If everything goes well, we are less than five hours away from finally owning our house. It's about time:

• Ten months ago we decided to get a bigger house.
• Seven months ago we offered to buy this house.
• Five months ago we sold our condo and moved to this house.

Is this really going to happen? We'll see. We were already delayed from yesterday because of the weekend's giant snowstorm. If we don't close today, we might be delayed again by today and tomorrow's nor'easter. We're so close that it would be really sad not to make it.

Meanwhile, we're dealing with the snow. School is closed for the whole week, but work is as busy as ever. It's a busy time to close on the house, but at least we don't have to move this week too!

Green Thumb!

In Joy School, Jonathan planted some lettuce seeds in a cup. The lettuce has started to grow! It's hard to see the sprouts from these photos, but they're there. In the closeup photo, you can see one little white sprout.


Jonny wanted to give this plant to a cousin for Christmas. I told him that wouldn't work out since the plant would not survive being shipped that far. Instead of breaking down into a tantrum, he handled it like a big boy and resolved to give his plant to Mom instead. What a sweetie!