Happy 6th Birthday Kristen

Wow...six years! I never knew six years could go by so quickly. It is very hard for me to believe that my baby is now a little girl. She has grown so much over the last year. I really do wish I could stop time. Kristen is such a sweet little girl with a big heart.  She loves to learn and still gets excited when it's "school time". She loves listening to music and dancing. She likes playing outside with Lauren and "planting her garden". She is such a big helper and keeps Dallas entertained when I am busy. She loves books and going to the library. She even makes her own books. Her favorite books right now are the GiGi, God's Little Princess books. Her favorite movie is Barbie, The Princess and the Popstar. Her favorite television show is Doc McStuffins. She loves fruit and yogurt and would eat them for every meal. Her favorite thing to wear is a dress, as long as it isn't itchy. Her favorite game to play is I Spy. Her favorite saying is "Well, that's awkward", even though she really has no idea what that means.   I am so very very very blessed that God chose me to be her mother. She makes me so proud.

Into Everything

This morning we did school super early since we have errands to run and a lunch date with my parents.  Dallas usually naps from 9:30 - 11:30 (during "school time").  This morning was a bit challening.  Once he ate is poptart he wanted to be down moving around and was quite a distraction.  He finally got quiet and entertained himself with making a mess. 

See what I mean? He is cute even when doing something he isn't supposed to be doing. It is very hard to punish this cute little man.

Captured Moments

I thought I would post a couple videos I took of Dallas. He is growing so much and is just so adorable. Everything he does is cute...even if he isn't supposed to be doing it. When he wakes up from his nap Kristen and Lauren will go in his room and entertain him if I am trying to finish up what I am doing. They can usually really get him going. The first video is one I took when he first got up from his nap one day.

So, I definitely have to write an intro to the next video.  My sister got a fiddle for Christmas.  She learned to play Mary Had a Little Lamb in a day so she could play it for us.  When she started to play we all took out ear plugs and put in our ears.  We put these big headphones on Dallas and it was really quite funny.  Well, we didn't keep them in our ears, but forgot to take the headphones off of Dallas.  So, this video is very short, but Dallas looks super cute in his little headphones....so I just had to post it.  My sister is on her way to a successful fiddle career.

Merry (Belated) Christmas

One of my many New Year resolutions was to do a better job at blogging...and I have already failed. I cannot believe it is 13 days into January and almost 3 weeks after Christmas and I still haven't posted anything about our Christmas. My daily life has been a little crazy these past few weeks and I am hoping to get everyone back on a schedule come Monday.

Christmas for us was celebrated over two weeks. A couple weekends before Christmas we celebrated with Paul's dad and step-mom. The girls were very excited to travel to North Carolina. Surprisingly, presents weren't on the top of their list though. They just couldn't wait to play with all of the toys in the playroom. We had such a great time with a wonderful dinner and it definitely got us all in the Christmas spririt.

Grandaddy with all of his grandkids



This year Christmas brought with it sickness. Dallas was getting over double ear infections (he still has one) and both Paul and I were feeling under the weather. Well, that is an understatement. I felt horrible on Christmas Eve. I had a sore throat, cough, sinus drainage...all the icky stuff that comes with a cold. We didn't get to celebrate with my extended family, but we did go to Paul's mom and step-dad's house. We had another yummy meal and got to open some presents.

Since I was sick and Paul was starting to get sick, we didn't go to my extended family Christmas Eve get together. We ended up having a quiet Christmas Eve at home. It was really nice. The girls got these little stuffed animals from Paul's mom that they were able to stuff and sew themselves. They were so excited to do them, so we came home and got in our pjs and let them put together their stuffed animals.

After the girls stuffed their animals, we ate our Christmas Eve dinner of hamburger helper and then watched the Polar Express (great movie). Before bed we opened the presents under the tree and let the kids play with their toys. Dallas loved Lauren's toys (he has a HUGE crush on Dora) and Lauren loved Dallas' toys.

Who knew a game where Doggie Doos could make a little girls so happy. This is what Kristen really wanted.

Lauren loves her some Dora..and so does Dallas. He wanted to look at her Dora stuff instead of opening his toys.

Dallas had no interest whatsoever in his toys. He just wanted to try to climb on them.


We then had to set out the cookies and key for Santa and the reindeer food and dust for the reindeer.

Then Santa came....

Our last holiday get together was a few days after Christmas. We celebrated with my mom and dad and sister and brother-in-law (plus my cousin and uncle were there too making it extra special). I was actually feeling better...Paul was feeling okay and Lauren was starting to not feel good at all. We were just passing our sickness around at this point. We had another wonderful meal and it was a great Christmas spent in our new home.

I'm Back

We're still here...still alive...still homeschooling, although we are on our Christmas break.  We will be resuming our homeschooling journey on January 2nd.  Hopefully this will give me a little bit of time to prepare and to start back with a BANG!  We will be tackling reading and really buckling down in our letter sounds when school starts back.  I do have to say...learning to read is very tough and I will definitely be starting the preschool hooked on phonics with Lauren.  I am going to need all the help I can get with her.  Learning is not something she looks forward to.  I put a couple dvd's on hold at the library to help with letter sounds.  I downloaded some games on the ipad for them to play that specifically teaches letter sounds.  I make Kristen play it at least once a day.  It's not her favorite, but that's the only way she will learn.

Other than learning not much has been going on here.  The kids did make their ornaments for Christmas presents.  That was an exhausting all day event.  It did not go as I planned and they did not turn out as I had planned.  Actually, the girls did, but Dallas' didn't.  I am not sure who was more traumatized...me or Dallas.  He did NOT like making them at all.  At one point he was laying the floor crying and I felt like crying as I frantically tried to get everything ready for us to start over for the eighteenth time. I worked on those ornaments up until dinner time. I was covered with flour and glitter, had burns from the hot glue gun and my back and head were hurting. Needless to say, I was so happy for bedtime that night and a long hot shower.  I will post picture of the ornaments after Christmas, but overall they turned out pretty good considering Dallas' wasn't at all what I had planned.

Kristen and Lauren were in  a play at church and both of them did so well.  I didn't explain to Kristen what exactly she was going to be doing.  Back in November the children sang in church and I made sure I practiced the hand motions and song with them. She kept saying she didn't want to go in front of people, but I thought once she saw everyone else going up she would do the same.  Well, she didn't and since she didn't Lauren in turn didn't either.  So, I decided we would just show up to play practice and learn the song.  She never asked why we were doing it and I never explained.  Ignorance is bliss!  The Sunday before the play the kids got their costumes and Kristen was an angel.  She loved her costume, wings and halo and I knew once she put on that costume we wouldn't have any issues.  Lauren did not want to be an angel so she was a cow, but still walked in with all of the angels.  I knew Lauren would just follow whatever Kristen did and she didn't disappoint.  They both learned their song and did great both nights of the play.  This was the first play either of them have been in and I was one proud Momma!

 

Weekly Wrap Up

I'm not sure why I have skipped a couple weeks of our weekly wrap up, but I am back now.  This week we learned all about plants.  It is amazing how God designed everything including the bees that He specifically made to help the flowers.  I have been reiterating to the girls that EVERYTHING God made was part of his perfect plan.  He didn't just make the bees and the flowers and they just happened to need each other.  No, when He made the bees He knew they would need the flowers and vice versa.  I have been amazed when studying the creation of His beautiful world. 

I wanted the girls to be able to identify the parts of a plant (flower, stem, leaves and roots). Kristen pretty much had this down. They also drew pictures of what plants need to grow. (Which I can assure you is not always just water, sunlight and soil. I have attempted to get a flower to grow with just sunlight, soil and water and it hasn't yet worked for me). We planted a garden, but not a real one because I was not blessed with a green thumb. If you give me a plant that is living it will not be living by the end of the week. I figured I wouldn't waste my money on seeds. We also learned the difference between fruits and vegetables and played a couple games to go along with this lesson.

 

We have been reviewing memory verses this week.  The girls are doing VERY good with their memory verses.  The letter of the week was C.  We are learning the letters, upper and lower and their sound.  Kristen already knew some, but I can't start her hooked on phonics until she gets all of the letters down and most of the sounds.  I am going to order Lauren the preschool version to start this summer so she will be on target to start the kindergarten in the fall.  Lauren is working on memorizing her numbers and Kristen has been working on adding the last few weeks.  She asked the other night if she could start having homework.  We'll see how long this lasts.

 



Halloween

I just love holidays!  I love making it an all day celebration for my kids and seeing their excitement.  This year we were in our new house and I was really excited to decorate.  I decided that we would take a day off from school and have a little Halloween party. I stayed up late cutting out ghosts, pumpkins and bats (with Paul's help) to hang from the ceiling.  I was really impressed with my bats because they actually looked like they were flying. 

I also made some Halloween cupcakes the night before.  (By the way, Kristen informed me that she no longer likes cupcakes.  Really?  I can see not liking carrots or broccoli, but cupcakes).

So, we started the morning off with Halloween shaped pancakes. 

We had a Halloween party where we played monster memory, did a Halloween dot-to-dot, played peek-a-boo tic tack toe, did a graveyard look and find, played find the black cats, played creature mix match, did a fill in the tale worksheet and carved pumpkins. 

My thought was to have the girls paint faces on their pumpkin this year because they usually don't participate at all with the carving.  When I brought the pumpkins in to paint Kristen said, "We have to carve pumpkins because that's what you do on halloween." So they picked out faces they wanted carved in the pumpkins and Paul ended up doing pretty much all of the work.  I tried to pretend I was helping for a little bit, but then I bailed on him too.  I hate carving pumpkins!  They turned out good even though we didn't have a carving kit.  It is hard to make heart eyes with a regular sharp kitchen knife.  Now I know why our pumpkins growing up always had triangle eyes and nose.  Next year I will purchase a kit if I can't talk them into painting them. Here are the three pictures I snapped during the 3 seconds they were interested in trying to carve and clean out their pumpkin.

We also had mummies in a blanket for lunch and for an afternoon snack I cut out Halloween shapes in crescent rolls, put cinnamon and sugar on them and baked them.  I then made a spiced apple dip to eat with them.  My kids love spiced apples.  It was a big hit! 

We ended the night having pizza and cupcakes (since I made 24 and no one wanted to eat them) at my sisters and going trick or treating.  It was a great Halloween for the Harris'.  I can't believe it's already November 1st!