Unexpected Great Finish & Handwriting Motivation

It's Friday.  It feels like it's been a challenging week, which is probably why the flow of my blog came to a near halt.  Every day this week Ehren and Christian have had "color changes" at school, which means a lot of behavior issues (talking when they weren't supposed to, not following directions, tipping back on their chair, swinging their backpack and hitting someone one with it, writing in a school book...).  Ehren is still struggling with his in-class work, so he brings home a lot each night.  In addition to completing all this work, he needs to work on his math, memory work, Bible readings, and vision therapy exercises.  Did I mention he's a slow eater?  Plus, I really want him to get some exercise after school, but it's hard to fit it all in and get to bed before 8:30 pm!

As far as I can tell, Anna seems to be sailing right along in Kindergarten.  She is very proud when she takes responsibility for herself (packing her backpack; being the first one all ready and in the van in the morning; choosing and matching her own clothes).  She's very independent-minded, and actually told me she would prefer it if I would just drop her off instead of walk her into school each morning.  Her strengths and weaknesses could not be more different than the boys'.  She has great penmanship, great art skills, great speaking skills, great socializing skills and is very athletic.  But she doesn't remember her sight words (the boys were great at this), and she has trouble with "Think of a word starts with [fill in a letter here]."  Lucky for me, she doesn't really have homework so far, so we can work on these things.

BUT, this long week had an unexpected great finish.  First, neither of the boys had a color change at school today.  Second, they brought home two weeks worth of corrected papers (second grade teachers have a lot of papers to correct!), and there were some good surprises.  Let me mention that I completely forgot about that "whole spelling test thing" last week.  We never even looked at their spelling words at home.  Despite this, Christian got all 15 of his spelling words correct on the test, and he also got two out of the three challenge words (these are extra credit).   Just in case you were wondering, "Echxsideing" is the really complicated way to spell "exciting."

Ehren got only one wrong, so still an "A" on last week's spelling test.  Both boys got one "A" and one "B" on their math tests.

But, the best news is that Christian got his first ever "S+" in handwriting! 

Last week, when Ehren and I really started hitting the handwriting hard, I said all-exciting-like:  "What if you got an S+ in handwriting?"  My super-bargainer and quick-thinker said, "If I get an S+ in handwriting, can I play Plants vs. Zombies?"  This game has been completely banned in our house for a long time, but Ehren and Christian still wish they could play it.  Thinking this would never-in-a-million-years happen, I replied (so both boys could hear me), "If you get an S+ in handwriting, you can play Plants vs. Zombies for an hour.  Plus, I'll be so excited I'll be jumping up and down."  You cannot believe how hard they have been working on their handwriting for the last two weeks.  Even though Ehren hasn't seen an "S+" yet, all the worksheets he brought home except one had an "S."  In under two weeks, he's gone from this:

 to this:

To top off my Friday, Christian asked me if he could give five minutes of his time playing Plants vs. Zombies to Ehren.  Of course, I said "yes."  I have always loved Fridays!