So preparations are going well. I painted a bathroom which just leaves one more bathroom and a bedroom to go. I can't believe those rooms have sat unpainted for over five years! Nothing like needing to rent your house to focus you on getting all the odd jobs done.

Lisa has been photographing everything so that we can post everything that is for sale, and since it really is just about everything, it's a lot of photos! Not to mention a lot of cleaning and cataloging.

We have pretty much decided that we will not do any cross cultural training here in the States before we go, but we will try to get in a program there. Right now we are inquiring into a program run by SIL/Wycliffe that happens twice a year in Chiang Mai. This means that we will be able to move in June. Working back from that we will need to go to Detroit one last time before we leave, so we should be in Michigan the end of May. Working back from that it means we only have about 18 weeks or so to go! Yikes!

One last thing. I'm hoping that I'll get to go to Chiang Mai for 7-10 days in early March to tag along on some meetings. This will help me meet some people and get acclimated to some of the work I will be doing. It will also be nice to just look around although there won't be much time for that. It would still make the move just a tad less scary having actually visited first.

I’ve been using Sonlight’s Language Arts D with all three girls. I chose this with some fear and trepidation, knowing that I was going to have to do a lot of adapting to make it work for everyone. For the first 6-8 weeks it was fine. Then things got more demanding, and I eventually realized that it was just too much for my 3rd graders. I started reflecting on what I did with Bethany when she was in 3rd grade and decided to go back to the writing portion of that. So as of this week, I’m using Writing With Ease 3 with Ellie and Micah and dropping Sonlight. For grammar for them, I found a free online program called English Grammar 101. So far (three days in), it’s perfect. I have them each do one exercise each day. I’ve made a schedule so that they’ll go back and review concepts as they go along. When each girl finishes the day’s work, I print it to a PDF and put it in a folder on my desktop.  I think once we get through a solid review of the basics with this, I’ll go on to First Language Lessons Level 4, which I already have.

For right now, Bethany’s still using Sonlight LA D. But I’ve downloaded a 10-week sample of  Writing With Skill to check out. I’ll see what she thinks of it and who knows, I may end up returning all of the Sonlight LA materials and going with that.

Our American history studies have been going really well so far. We’ve read some great books and have just started another, Johnny Tremain. Two days in and everyone’s hooked.