the Life of Olena

Yes that is a dog growing out of my dad's shirt! Introducing Mia. she loves the boat! even in the freezing MI weather! Nana (aka Nina) and Olena...Nina doesn't quite share the same love of the boat as Olena.

At the sink looking down on the dining room The wood burning stove goes in here. Hopefully J will get it in soon! Thanks for the great idea Tonya! this is our "home management" area. Part of the kitchen

She loves school. Enjoys and is pretty quick with spelling and reading. Not very patient with science and does not like math! That is everything I have managed to learn about her within 3 weeks. I have to admit it was a good feeling to know this about her so quickly. I know with her being in a regular class room I would have not figured this out for a while down the road. 1. I doubt the teacher would have enough one on one time to notice and 2. if the teacher did notice they probably wouldn't tell me until parent teacher conference in November. :) Oh and today she counted to 100 without my help but she did use her number chart. She started a new therapy about 2 months ago, therapeutic listening, and we have been very pleased with the results. She listens to a CD with a particular pair of headphones 1-2 times a day for 30 minutes. She does 1 CD for 2 weeks and then goes onto another one. The entire program takes about 12 weeks. We have just started CD #3 and in that time

just hanging out on the porch of her house. fighting dragons with her sword and shield (mommy's spatula handle and Tupperware lid) Fighting the dragon (or the rose bush) and loosing! YIKES! she came out of this battle with a few wounds! one tired and dirty little girl!

So here are a few of the before pictures. Beware...they are scary . Thankfully things look much better now, though we are still a bit rough around the edges, we are a work in progress. I will do my best to get after pictures tomorrow - every time I think to take some pictures my house is a mess from school, laundry or dogs so I keep saying "tomorrow!" Dining room dining room. We have a wood burning stove that will go in here. Can't wait! looking down from kitchen

One half of the family room the other half of the family room kitchen bedroom bedroom

These are a few pictures Olena decided to take of the old house before we moved. She said she wanted to remember! Her closet floor Daddy's legs cooking some breakfast...2 poached eggs, 1 slice of white toast lots of real butter please. (and this is for O, every morning!) AH some wrapping paper! very strange view of Luther, Olena's self proclaimed BFF. Otis our evil cat. Not a bad picture.

Today Olena seemed to be really interested in religion. She asked a lot of questions today about God and I thought I would share a few funny tid bits... She told me that she thinks God is a pickle. I asked her why she thought that? she said because his friends are cucumbers, tomatoes and peas so God must be a pickle! (maybe I need to limit her viewing of veggie tales??) LOL ! good logic I suppose! She asked me if she can get messages from the Lord? So I told her "Of course. Our Lord talks to us and gives us messages all of time. We just have to learn how to hear him" She protested and said "well I cannot hear him, watch....HI GOD! (as expected there was silence)....see nothing. He doesn't send me messages!" I had to laugh a little. and tried to explain that we usually hear God inside of ourselves. That He talks directly in our ear so that we can be sure we hear him clearly. She looked at me satisfied "OH that's cool. I will listen to him in

Tonights post comes from the comfort of my new cozy living room. Yes, we are finally in our new house. Though the move is not 100% complete it enough to satisfy my dire need for normality. Right now we are just trying to get settled and get a feel for what is going to work best and it is slowly coming together. I am very sleep deprived - having a lot of trouble sleeping and even considering trying to crash in our guest bedroom tonight to see if I can get at least 1 solid night of sleep. We got a new bedroom set, our bed sits much higher than our old one, Jason and I switched sides of the bed, and I have a street light that beams in the window that I face all night. All this equals, no sleep. School has started and so far my schedule and approach hasn't needed much tweeking so I am really happy about that. She is enjoying herself and we have been making it through the lessons each day without much hassell. Sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed because I feel like I need to use e