lately. – gentino family

Happy Halloween!

Everyone in our house is pretty excited about trick-or-treating tonight, and David’s busy giving the big kids tips on how to remain focused in order to maximize the amount of candy they can gather.

I find myself enjoying the start of Adoption Month 6. God gave us wisdom and help from a variety of sources in October, and answers to some burning questions. So I enter November a little calmer and more determined to celebrate the very small victories. One of those is noticing that lately there seem to be fewer times in my day that I feel totally frazzled. Another is that God is helping me with my constant, low-level anger and frustration. Isn’t it funny how we typically think other people are the problem, when really the one God wants to work on is us?

Here’s a peak into what we’ve been up to lately . . .

David turned 34 in October! We celebrated with his favorite dinner: beer and a Berger burger at the Whig.

These two. Finding any sort of bug, but especially a roach, is a cause for celebration. They adore bugs. If you’re tempted to judge me for letting my boys handle roaches, please understand that I just don’t have it in me to say “no” to them one more time.

To prove my point about bugs: here is “Gabey,” as we call him, singing to an almost-dead fly.

Thank you to my dear friend Inge for somehow knowing how badly I wanted Jan Karon’s newest novel and for surprising me with it. It is so good. David teases me for laughing and crying through every single Mitford book, no matter how often I read them. I can’t help it!

Few things make us happier right now than seeing this boy curled up with a book. His reading interest comes in fits and spurts: for the most part he still prefers poring over his Star Wars character encyclopedias, but he’ll take breaks for a Magic Treehouse or Henry Huggins novel every few days. He and Amie and I just finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory together. We loved it, and had fun watching the Johnny Depp version of the movie last night with David (while eating chocolate, of course).

Speaking of bookworms, Gabe is becoming more and more interested in books and his attention span has grown so much (Noah, on the other hand, couldn’t possibly bear to sit still for a whole book!). We still read mostly board books together, because there are just so many great ones I want Noah and him to experience. He knows the whole of Sandra Boynton’s Blue Hat, Green Hat and Is Your Mama a Llama? by heart.

We just finished Week 7 of Classical Conversations, and after a year of being in separate classes, Judah and Amie are happy to be back in class together with other first and second-graders. It took about 6 weeks for me to feel like I could actually do CC with four kids; I was so completely overwhelmed at first. But now everyone is settled and legitimately enjoying themselves, and I’m more thankful than ever for this structure and homeschooling help in our week.

My parents had a booth at the Rosewood Art Festival last weekend (my mom does watercolor painting and my dad wood-turning). It was so fun to visit them and explore the festival.

My brother Danny came in town to help our parents with the art show, and the four of us enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the Farmer’s Market. David was out of town and his folks kept all four of my children from early afternoon Friday until lunchtime on Saturday. I felt like a new woman!

Danny bought me this fun cheese and butter stone at the market. I’ve used it every day as a trivet or for making sandwiches, and can’t wait to serve cheese and crackers on it.

Noah has been busy being a goofball, which includes parading around the house in Amie’s baby doll’s outfit. He is his own person, and so it means even more that lately he races up to his siblings or David and me for a big bear hug.

We were invited, along with our friends John and Anna, to the soft opening of Persona, a new pizzeria on Main Street. It’s Chipotle-assembly-line style fast food, in which you choose your pizza toppings (or choose one of the restaurant custom toppings), and watch your pizza as it cooks for just a couple of minutes in the fiery-hot brick oven. So fun and the pizza tastes delicious! We can’t wait to go back with our kids.