The Last Few Weeks

I really do intend to write blogs more often. 

We have cleaned up the back porch a little and turned it into a playroom.  Jillian and Eliza Cate love to be out there.  It's screened in with both a window and French doors that lead to the house.  And it has a ceiling fan.  And when the dog dirt is swept off and the pollen is washed off the walls it is a pretty comfortable place to be.

Alan turned 7.  We had a cookie cake - chocolate chip cookie with ice cream between the layers.  It was delicious.

 Alan received some wonderful gifts - and he is working on thanking everyone.  He loved the strawberry jam he got in the mail from Grandma Sarah.  Something about his reaction to that gift made my heart happy. 

We also started soccer.  Holly's team color is orange again.  The coach is a girl - her dad is the official coach I believe, but the girl is in charge.  Holly is a head taller than most of the kids on the team.  But she's having fun.

Jillian knows what the camera is now.  And she knows to look on the back to see the picture after it's taken.

 But she's not always cooperative.  We dressed her up this morning and went to church.  She had fun at the church playground with Sean while the other kids and I enjoyed the sermon in the overflow seating area.

 And somehow Alan wasn't enthusiastic about having a picture made either.  The girls just wanted to hold Jillian close enough so I couldn't see anyone's face or the dresses.

 The rest of our nutshell is that Julia was a little under the weather this week and stayed home one day.  She accidentally dropped Holly's iPod on the tile floor of our kitchen that day.  The screen shattered in the corner.  She was obviously upset about it.  But after a few moments she got over it.  It was an accident.  She didn't have the means to replace or repair it.  So when Holly got home, Julia showed her what happened, but she didn't really do anything to make it up to Holly.  (In fact, we are pretty sure that Julia ate Holly's Cadbury Egg this morning, too!) 

I tried to tell Julia that 'sorry' isn't really enough.  That she should say 'sorry' and be sorry but she should also try somehow to make amends.  Even if she knows it's no use.

I think it fell on deaf ears.

Then the next day I went down to the Apple store. (30 miles away in the city where I have to pay to park.  I don't like to drive in the city downtown.  Or park there.  So this was kind of a big deal to me.)  I traded in Holly's iPod for a fresh one.  She lost all the pictures and music and apps on it because I didn't know the passcode she put on it.  (Not locking me out was one of the rules of having the iPod in the first place.)

Holly was really mad at me.

She was angry I'd exchanged it instead of coming home and finding out the passcode and going back. 

She must have had some wonderful pictures on there. 

So I'm struggling at the moment to figure out how much my children really do appreciate what they have.  And wondering if I'm doing enough to help them learn to be appreciative.  Wondering how to I teach them to really care for and about the things we have without making the things too important.  You know, just little things like that.