Happy 2nd Birthday Dallas!

My little man is two!  Whew...that pretty much sums up the past two years.  I had always heard about the bond between a mother and her son, but never expected it to be different from the bond with my girls.  I have to say...I was wrong.  It is something hard to put into words, but a bond that I am forever grateful for.  Who knew having a boy could be so different?

It is no secret that he is spoiled...rotten.  He has all of us girls wrapped around his tiny little finger and he knows it. He is hardheaded, fussy most of the time, and spends the majority of his day doing things he isn't supposed to be doing, God made him cute for a reason, which is exactly why he is so spoiled.

He likes ice cream, shoes, swings, fruit snacks, dancing, hats, music, juice, his pacifier, Cookie Monster, balls, poptarts, phones, Dora, brushing his teeth, baths, coloring, and yogurt. He absolutely loves his sisters.  He hates snow, night lights, oatmeal, brushing his hair, twisted socks, sun in his eyes, and being locked out of his sister's room.  He is my little cuddle bug and I am so blessed to be his Momma.

He had a Cookie Monster party and I decided to try my hand at a cookie cake.  He blew out his two candles all by himself, he's getting so big!  He got lots of presents, but was really eyeing Kristen's dsi.  At one point he quit opening his presents and just stood there waiting to get his hands on her new toy.


Happy Birthday little Dallas!  Here's to another year of fussy cuteness!

Happy 7th Birthday Kristen

Who knew seven years would go by so fast.  My little girl is growing into a big girl and it makes me sad. Like...really really sad.  When I was pregnant everyone told me to cherish the days because they grow up so fast.  I just couldn't imagine then how fast that would be.  It really does seem like in the blink of an eye she went from one to seven.  There is very little that she actually needs me to do for her anymore and while at times her independence makes it easier; I still miss the days when I was needed.

She spent most of her birthday on her Nintendo dsi or with her headphones on listening to her music and that was when reality really hit.  She is growing up...and that makes me sad...like really really sad. Although she is growing up faster than I would like, she is growing into a beautiful, loving, caring and compassionate little girl. She is the sweetest and most helpful little girl I know.

She loves music, drawing, Barbie's, stuffed animals, making books, her eetsy, headbands, popcorn, books, playing outside, dresses, strawberry  milk, dancing, and comfy clothes. She is such a good big sister and helps me so much each day.  She is a people pleaser and wants to do things to make others happy.  She hates school, jeans, peanut butter, Dora, potatoes (but not French fries), and hair clips. She knows what she wants and she is very particular about things...just like her Momma.
   
We celebrated with a Frozen party.  Actually, the only thing Frozen was the snow outside and the cake, but it was a good birthday and she got so many great gifts.  

Happy 7th birthday sweet Kristen. Thank you for giving me seven of the best years of my life. I am so blessed to be your Mom.

Christmas Spirit

He's back......

Eric, our elf on a shelf, has made his annual appearance.  I thought that he would do better than the tooth fairy, but not so much.  Oh how I wish this little elf could really fly.  Kristen woke up (extra early) on Monday completely puzzled because Eric was in the same exact place as he was the day before.  It just so happened that the kids were not good on Sunday.  In fact, Lauren said at bedtime that she didn't think Santa was going to bring her any presents this year.  I told Kristen that Eric was giving them a second chance to do better because he really liked them and wanted them to get presents.  Doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of an elf on a shelf?  But, I needed something so that is what I came up with.  She seemed satisfied.

We are definitely getting into the Christmas spirit.  We took the kids to go see Santa Claus.  I think they enjoyed it....

 

 

Well, not so much. Who doesn't like Santa?  He's a jolly old soul.  We also did the video from PNP where you upload a picture of each kid and Santa has a special message for them.  Of course the girls had been nice this year, but Santa said Dallas had been in between.  He didn't care.  He was busy running in circles in our living.  He probably knows it doesn't matter what he does Santa will still bring him toys.

 

Only 17 days left until Christmas.  Bring it on!

 

 

I can't believe it's...

December already!  Where did 2013 go?  Really.  I swear the days seem to last forever, but the years seem to fly by.  I'm still trying to figure that out.

This year was our first Thanksgiving with just us (Paul, Kristen, Lauren, Dallas and me) at our house.  I was excited to cook my first turkey...EVER...even though I hate everything about turkey.  The taste...the smell...gag.  I did eat two bites and it wasn't dry at all.  It turned out as good as turkey can turn out.  While I was preparing the turkey Kristen asked if it was a real turkey.  Why I would have a fake one I am not sure.  She then asked if we were Amish and at that moment I was pretty thankful we weren't. 

Our Thanksgiving feast consisted of turkey with gravy, cooked seasoned cabbage, stuffing, macaroni and cheese and a sweet potato casserole.

Of course...no meal is complete without dessert, which was made by my wonderful hubby...and it was delicious.  You can't go wrong with an apple cobbler. 

 

 

I also got to sleep in until 8:30 on Thanksgiving day, Paul made breakfast and I got to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving's Day parade from start to finish while perusing the black Friday sale papers.  It doesn't get any better than that!

 

I was one of those crazies that went black Friday shopping. It's usually me, my mom and my sister, but my sister bailed on us because she has a new puppy. It really wasn't bad at all and I was able to get most of the presents bought for the kids.  Paul and I went back out shopping on Saturday and got a little more. I think we will be finished this week.  We only have about 5 more things to get. Now we are broke...oh wait...we were broke before we started.

 

I came home and got a couple hours of shut eye to wake up on Friday and decorate for Christmas.  I always have this vision of us singing Christmas carols while drinking hot chocolate and hanging ornaments on the tree and it never happens quite like that.  This year our day started by lugging 569 bins out of the attic.  It was actually only 7 bins, a Christmas tree box and a wrapping paper box, but it felt like 569 bins.  Really....why do I need so many decorations?  And then with every trip I had to say "No" and "Get back".  I found myself saying this even if no one was around or if they were making a move in any direction.  It was like I was a broken record and I was annoying myself.  Once operation Christmas decoration retrieval was complete we started putting the Christmas tree up...and that is pretty much where it went down hill.

 

Now, if I were going to design a pre-lit Christmas tree, I would make sure that if one light went out the others did not.  In fact, I thought that was a given, but apparently not.  Instead of coming out with a new and better cell phone with 10,000 cooler apps, someone needs to work on a different design for Christmas tree lights.  Anyways, the top half and bottom half of our Christmas tree lit up, but the middle did not and after spending an hour figuring out nothing, we went ahead and threw some color lights on the tree and called it done.  This is where Paul goes outside to put up the outside lights and gets even more frustrated while I am stuck inside with three kids asking 800 questions all while trying to "help" unpack bins and put ornaments on the tree.  I would like to tell you that I let them put the ornaments wherever they wanted and we sang Christmas songs and drank hot chocolate, but that would be a lie.  My OCD kicked in and after about three ornaments being put on the same branch, 4 getting dropped on the floor and two broken ones I forbid anyone to touch another ornament. I kept trying to remind myself that we were making memories, but it really just felt like one big nightmare to me so I put in Happy Feet Two, gave them a snack and told them not to move from the couch.  They ended up running laps around the house, stepping on their snack and completely ignoring the movie.  Where is Eric the elf when you need him?  At one point I just needed a break and a snack so I hid sat down in the kitchen floor behind the cabinets praying I wouldn't be seen.  I was found by Dallas while eating my peanut butter crackers and that evening when I gave him his snack he went and sat down where I had been sitting earlier.  I guess he figured it was the new place to eat.

 

 



 

I did get everything decorated, except for the bathroom.  I just couldn't find the motivation to put up a shower curtain and take down and put up new pictures on the wall just to turn around and take it all back down in four weeks.  Our day ended with carrying the 7 bins and one Christmas tree box back up to the attic and wrapping some presents. 

 

 



 



Next year I am going to decorate when the kids aren't home and then when the come home we can sit back, drink our hot chocolate and sing some Christmas songs while admiring our beautiful tree.

This and That



I asked Kristen what I could do to make school fun for her and she replied, "Remember when we used to eat the special snacks that went with our lessons.  I want to do that again."  Who knew snacks could be so exciting and make all the difference.  Well, back when we were doing preschool we learned about a certain letter for a week and our snacks for that week would be things that went along with that letter.  It was easy then because I had to calm well behaved girls.  Now that Dallas has entered into our lives and we have started to homeschool, the girls are lucky to get a snack, much less anything special. I told her that I would try to plan a special day during the week where we would do some fun things and have something special for a snack, but she had to do good in school the rest of the week.  She agreed and this week went a  lot better than last week.  Every day, except for Monday, we were finished with school before lunch.  That's an awesome week!

 

 

This week in our reading the optional book to read was Horton Hears a Who.  I love Dr. Seuss and his books.  They are silly books that are easy to read.  My all time favorite Dr. Seuss book is Horton Hatches an Egg, but I really like all of his books.  I thought our fun day would be a Horton Hears a Who Day.  I printed off some fun connect the dot worksheets and coloring pages and I made elephant ears as our fun snack.  We also watched the movie Horton Hears a Who.  A person's a person, no matter how small.... I just love Horton.  Kristen and Lauren both had fun and I realized how important it is to do these fun things

 

Overall this week was a very good week in school.  I am really looking forward to only doing school three days this week.  I am also looking forward to a laid back Thanksgiving.  I think we usually have so much going on during the holidays that it is hard to enjoy them as a family.  I plan to relax this thanksgiving and just be thankful for all the things in my life, big and small.  There is so very much I have to be thankful for.

 

Oh...and before I go...Kristen lost another tooth today.  This makes a total of five so far.  I guess for Christmas all she is going to want is her front tooth.  She might just loose the other one before Christmas. 

 

 

 



Changes

To say this week was a bad week would be an understatement.  This was the first week that I was very seriously contemplating enrolling Kristen in school and wiping my hands clean of homeschooling.  Yep, I just wanted to quit and never look back. Wouldn't it be nice to go to work and have adult conversations and only be responsible for me?  Not to mention the extra income would be awesome!

I know you probably get sick of my moaning and groaning about it, but it is a lot tougher than I thought it would be when we started.  I know she is not going to catch on to everything easily and I am fully prepared to go the extra step and incorporate some new ideas to help her.  What I can't stand is the constant whining, crying, complaining and pouting about school....and the fact that it took her an hour and twenty-seven minutes to do one side of a spelling worksheet! Talk about reaching the end of my rope. 

I hand picked the curriculum that she is using this year because I wanted to make sure I got things that were challenging and fun...well, as fun as school can be.  If I'm honest, when she complains about school (which she does to everyone), it hurts my feelings.  It makes me feel like a failure.  I want school to be fun for her and for me, so I knew some changes needed to be made (not sure what those are, but I am praying and asking for guidance).  I decided...again...that instead of focusing on the negative things I will be positive and focus on the good things.  So this week we are going to have the best week EVER....we are going to do fun things....and we are going to learn.  Okay...I'll stop before I get carried away.  One thing we are going to do this week is wipe away the last eight weeks of spelling and start over at the beginning...now that's the joy of homeschooling.  See, I am focusing on the positives...and there were some from this past week.

Kristen did try to make my week better by writing both sentences down in her writing...and she surprised me with it. This was after it took her so long to do her spelling worksheet.  I was still glad she was trying.

We packed our boxes for the Operation Christmas Child for church.  These boxes are sent to children around the world to show them God's love through a shoebox filled with gifts.

Kristen really enjoyed filling her box and understood the meaning behind it.  She very carefully picked out each thing she wanted to buy and meticulously placed all of her things in the box.  Lauren...well....she threw it all in in no particular order.  I had to fix her box.  It is hard for my kids to imagine other kids not having things.  We are surrounded by toys and anything they ask for they usually eventually get.  It really makes me sad, so my goal for this year is to bring the meaning back to Christ and not so much on the gifts.  Now, if I can just get Meme on board with me.

Since we have been discussing Mercury (which we still have our final unit project to do this week....we are a little behind), we did an experiment of sorts with a bowl of flour and some different sized rocks....on one the coldest day of the week.

Mercury is a terrestrial planet, but it has no atmosphere so asteroids fall and crash into it's surface therefore making it very bumpy.  We were recreating what happens when asteroids slam into planets.  Makes me very thankful for our atmosphere.

We ended up taking Thursday and Friday off from school, which was a HUGE positive.  We needed the break and on Thursday enjoyed running some errands and eating lunch with my mom.  It was nice to get the grocery store shopping over with.  By the end of this week I probably looked a little like Lauren....who was in matching clothes when I dressed her that morning.

And felt a lot like Dallas.

New Things

I usually have a few ideas that I want to blog about prior to a post, but tonight I have nothing.  I guess my mind has already called it a night.  Maybe it's as tired as Dallas, who by the way is already in bed an hour before his bedtime.  I am not a fan of doing this because that just means he'll probably be up an hour earlier in the morning, but he was so very tired and so am I.

Speaking of Dallas....he is currently getting the remainder of his baby teeth in.  Four at one time. I'm not sure what excuse I will use for his fussiness once he has them all.  It surely can't be teething.  He will have reached all of those milestones that I thought for sure would be the cure for our whiny child.  Oh well, I will look back and miss these days.

Our week was good.  I started babysitting a little boy who is just a few months younger than Dallas.  Take my word....he is so cute and sweet and such a good eater.  I am in awe at his eating skills, since my three have pretty much been picky eaters since birth.  It's nice to be able to feed a child from a spoon and not have to pry their mouth open just to get them to taste something they have eaten before and liked.  We have enjoyed having a new little friend around the house and he fits in just perfectly to our days.

Speaking of new little friends....Lauren got to bring the Girl Scout bear, Audrey, home. She was so excited.

Our week of school was good.  In bible we learned about Noah and his ark and did some fun crafts to fill up our bulletin board.

 

(Oh, and acorns have nothing to do with Noah's ark.  I just wanted to do some fall crafts and these were the only pictures I snapped during craft time this week.)

And what happens when you give your almost 2 year old a crayon without a coloring page?

It was easy to wipe up and he had no idea he did anything wrong.  Actually, he was very impressed with his artwork and gave me the biggest, cutest grin.

I did forget to mention in my last post that the girls are doing an awesome job at their memory verses.  Last week they finished up learning Ephesians 6:1-3.  Both girls can say them all!  I was so proud.

Kristen did good with her spelling test this week.  She only missed two words!  This week is a review of past spelling words.  It will do her good. I have got to come up with something to help this girl with her spelling.  This week we are going to read some Dr. Seuss books. She is doing good in her reading, but needs some extra practice.  She did complete her Pocahontas report this week.  I am so glad to have that done.  She was very excited to complete it.

Lauren is doing good with her letters and math.  She has already completed letters a-h in her second hooked on phonics book.  I am actually very excited to start reading.  I think she will do better than I first thought.  She is doing good in math and knows things I didn't think she knew.  Her writing is coming along, although it still isn't anywhere near what it should be.  I am happy though.  She is making progress.

I am tired and really have no idea what I just wrote.  I am not even going to proof read, so hopefully there are no horrible grammatical errors and it accurately reflects our week and the pictures are put with the correct paragraphs. Good night to you all.