Aile and Anaya go to school...

...but they don't go far! :) We are homeschooling this year! Pre-Kindergarten, but our enthusiastic students might fool you into thinking this is a college prep course! They love to learn, and are having a great time with our character-based curriculum. Since I am posting this so late, I can cheat and bring it up to date more, hee hee. :) So far, we have learned about being Attentive, Obedient, Truthful and are now learning about Gratefulness. Each lesson has a nature story, and historical story (about Abraham Lincoln), and many crafts, games, object lessons, and a song to use in teaching the character trait.

Here's Aile on her first morning of Pre-K:

Here are Aile and Anaya displaying their "Attentive Deer" that they made during craft time. Using animals to portray character traits has proved to be quite a success, and helpful in general with parenting as well, surprisingly enough.

Aile's 5th Birthday (yes, I know it is long past...)

Better late than never, eh?! :) With the school year starting (to be covered soon) and also Brenner potty training (also to be covered soon), keeping up with the blog has fallen to the wayside, to say the least! But I really want to have a record of our family happenings to look back on. So even if everyone else out there has long moved on, I am still going to post a few more outdated entries to catch myself up in the logbook. Hope you don't mind... :)

Since, oh, about February of this year, Aile has been asking (rather, already planning) to have a "pink poodle in Paris" birthday party. This idea came, of course, by way of an unsolicited party magazine that arrived in our mailbox. Aile LOVES to get mail (this is extreme understatement), so she gobbled it right up and found the 5th birthday party of her dreams... The rest is history:

This first picture is from Aile's Sabbath School class. They sang to her and prayed with her, and promoted her to the next class.



Oma apparently did not have the grandma magic touch at this moment! All three little grandbabies were howling! I think Claire started first, followed by Ashlyn, then Caelum. Too much sympathy here, or just didn't want to be left out? :)

Brenner's favorite part of the party: the noise makers! No break in character here...

Caelum's Dedication

August 23 was the big day for Caelum to be dedicated. We waited and did it on this day because we thought it would be a good commemoration of Aile's birthday as well, and she was very excited about that. So here they are on that morning, ready to head out to church:

Sean's cousin, Kevin, who is also the youth pastor at our church, did the dedication service for us, and it was really nice. A few of the ideas that he spoke of included the following:

Caelum Scott Pitts
Born March 19, 2008

Caelum: the name means “the Sculptor’s Chisel” or also “angelic”
Scott: means “from Scotland” and is Lindsey’s maiden name

Significance of being dedicated on this day: It is also Aileana’s 5^th birthday, and she considers it an extra blessing that her baby brother is to be dedicated on this day. She has been learning about what it means to be dedicated to the Lord as a child (we’ve read the stories of how Samuel was brought to the temple, and also how Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to be dedicated at the temple).

As a parent, what it means to me to dedicate my child to the Lord, which also fits in a bit with the meaning of his name: “How earnestly and perseveringly the artist labors to transfer to canvas a perfect likeness of his model; and how diligently the sculptor hews and chisels out the stone into a counterpart of the copy he is following. So the parents should labor to shape, polish, and refine their children after the pattern given them in Christ Jesus. As the patient artist studies, and works, and forms plans to make the results of his labors more perfect, so should the parent consider time well spent that is occupied in training the children for useful lives and fitting them for the immortal kingdom.” EGW, Child Guidance 467

Bible verse: 2 Corinithians 4:7, talking about jars of clay. The basic idea is we are weak, but He is strong, so we give our lives over to God and let Him “sculpt” us and speak through us and live in us.

“The same God, who in the beginning said, ‘Let there be light,’ also made His light shine in our hearts to give us knowledge of God’s glory as seen in the face of Christ. We are only jars of clay, filled with the treasures of the gospel to show that its power is from God and not from us.” 2 Corinthians 4:6,7 (Clear Word)

Each child dedicated in our church gets a handmade quilt with the child's name and birthdate embroidered on it , as well as a nice gift tag from the lady's quilting ministry. This is a picture of Caelum's quilt, which is very nice. Brenner got one when he was dedicated too, and it hangs on his bedroom wall. Caelum's will probably have the same honor, as we really appreciate the work and love that went into this beautiful quilt.

Family Day at Red Clay

Sometimes it's nice to get away from the busy-ness of our everyday lives and simply relax in nature with those that we love. So we drove out to a nice State Park and had a lot of fun! Here are some of our moments:



The park has a replica of an old Indian village, and this is supposed to be a corn barn. The kids thought it was the perfect playhouse!

The water in the creek was cool and refreshing, and Aile has a blast finding tons of little snails!


Brenner could not allow himself to miss out on the fun his sister was having, so he played in the water too. But you can see he had to take a minute to get used to the idea of actually getting his feet wet --and dirty!

New Yoga Pose

This one is called Yummy Baby Toe. Caelum has perfected it.

Aileana's New Hobby

Here's Aile the very first time she tried on the new roller skates Nonni gave her for her birthday. About five minutes before this picture was taken, she was also all decked out in her helmet, knee pads and elbow pads. She looked ready to take on the challenge with full force! But I missed that picture, so here she taking a break to rest against the wall. She has now traversed that hallway innumerable times and is getting quite good at her new skill!

Nonni's Visit--Part 2

Continuing our tour around Chattanooga sites to see, we headed up to the top of Lookout Mountain to Point Park and enjoyed walking the paths and taking in the spectacular views of the valley below.