Lauren's 8

Yesterday this little girl was so upset because she was turning eight. Apparently being seven was so awesome she didn't want turn eight, but then she realized that she gets presents and cake, and all was right in the world again. 

She started off the day by waking up to Kristen singing happy birthday to her. It was the first year that I didn't have to remind her that it was Lauren's birthday. Talk about melting my heart.

Where did she want to spend her birthday? Monkey Joe's of course. And she got to spend it with the little brother she wished she had. 

It's always sad to say goodbye.

And she ended her day with CiCi's pizza, a cupcake and a present. 

I wish everyone had the opportunity to get to know Lauren, like really know her. She is the most selfless person I have ever met. Her giving, loving, caring self makes me strive to be a better person every day. From finding three quarters in her piggy bank and giving two of them to Dallas and Kristen so they can get bubble gum from Walmart too. To giving Dallas her only cookie because we don't have any left, although he already ate one! When it's time to choose anything, she always asks which one Kristen and Dallas want first and happily takes what is left. When she gets a stuffed animal and Kristen says, "I wish I had that one", she hands if over claiming that she doesn't really want it any more. That's the awesomeness of Lauren that I get to witness everyday.

She's growing into a wonderful young lady and has changed so much over the last year. It makes me sad when she says she needs new shoes because her Frozen tennis shoes are for little girls. When I asked her if she wanted a Peppa Pig birthday cake and she told me she wanted a hot pink zebra print cake instead...well, it made me want to cry. When she told me she wants to be called LaLa and dye her hair pink, I had to realize she is figuring out who she is, and if she wants to be LaLa with pink hair I'll love her just the same. 

She's awesome, but I already said that. She's always smiling. She loves playing outside, drawing, and coloring. She hates when people cry and will usually start crying too. She's content to play by herself. She still hates bugs, but will pick up frogs and ants. She likes playing Barbies, hide-n-go-seek, and house. She hates people dressed up in a costumes, school and carbonated drinks. She's clumsy and falls or hurts herself at least once a day. She loves to swing, go on "adventures" and she asks the question,  "What are we doing today" at least 50 times a day. 

Happy Birthday Lauren! We love you to the BIG moon and back times a million.

February

Well, I'm glad we got over the Christmas hump and the birthday hump and the sickness hump so that I can now devote some time to school. We have just been doing the important stuff, which becomes very boring. These past two weeks of school have been much more enjoyable and educational all around. Homeschooling....it's a never ending cycle of mundane and excitement.

So much has happened, where do I begin?

Why did the mummy go to the doctor? Because he was coffin 😜

Kristen has been reading book 3 of The Magic Tree House series. They also have companion books that help you dive a little deeper in the topic, so with Mummies in the Morning we did a little unit study on mummies.

Kristen enjoyed trying to figure out the hieroglyphics and creating some of her own. 

She did a book summary written on a mummy. At first she didn't think she would be able to fill up all of her blank spaces, but at the end she didn't have enough and continued on the back. I told her that was a good problem to have. 

She also did a gummy bear experiment for science. Science and experimenting are her favorite things to do. She had some pretty good predictions.

Lauren has really taken off this year. Some of the things I was very concerned about with her, seem to be falling in place. She has always done things in her own time. Not sure why I would expect any different.

One of our favorite beginning reader books is Katy Duck.

We love Katy Duck and all of her books and Lauren has been able to read more words in her book now than ever. We have been mainly focusing on site words, but she has also been sounding out words on her worksheets and getting them! This makes me so excited!!!  

We have been playing a lot of fun games to help her learn her site words. It does help, but she also benefits from writing them too. She really enjoyed playing the site word island game and was helping Dallas find the site words I was calling out. 

I've also been working with her on recognizing nouns. She knows the definition, but hasn't quite mastered putting nouns into categories, so any activity I find that seems fun we try. Since she loves balloons I thought I would try a fun game using them. 

She really thought about it, but when given too many options she usually just picks something. They did enjoy playing with all 15 balloons after school though. Dallas liked popping them for me.

While her progress in reading has really made me excited, her progress in math has made me ecstatic. She now works on math worksheets pretty much all on her own. She can add numbers like 48 + 7. She and Kristen played a game called Sailor Math and she was adding and giving Kristen a run for her money. Of course, I may have been giving Kristen the harder ones, but she still did great and had fun. 

She's also starting to write words all on her own by sounding them out.

I am just amazed at how far she has come from the beginning of the year. This time last year I was tearfully contemplating enrolling her in school. I really didn't know what else to do. But hard work has paid off.

Dallas is still enjoying his pre-school. Even when he was sick, he wanted to do school.

He has been learning how to cut all on his own. This is quite an accomplishment!

We also read one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books, Green Eggs and Ham. He had to match the rhyming words/eggs.

We are working on letter sounds and matching upper case letters with lower case letters. Thank goodness for the web, because there are a ton of ideas out there. I thought this was a cute game. The lower case letter was written on the back of the egg and he had to flip them over with a spatula and put them on the correct plates. 

Everyone had to try this game. Kristen also read him the Green Eggs and Ham book. 

Since he doesn't like eggs, we made green eggs and ham out of white melting chocolate and green m & m's. His favorite color and favorite candy.

We had a fun February and are looking forward to all the fun times ahead in March.

Happy Birthday Dallas!

It's amazing how fast four years go by. It seems like just yesterday little Dallie was born, especially when I go through pictures of him as a baby.

It's also amazing how long some days seem when he is being particularly ornery. But I love this kid.

He really does keep us smiling and laughing, when we aren't yelling that is. Even when he is bad he is so darn cute! 

We celebrated his birthday this past weekend. He loves Paw Patrol and wanted some cupcakes "with the things ticking out the top"...and that's exactly what he got.

He also got a lot of cool presents and has been riding his new "cooter" all over the house.

We celebrated his birthday today by going to the candy store. This kid loves candy, especially jelly beans. He was able to get some root beer flavored jelly beans! We also rode the train around the mall.

We were lucky Aunt Kelly had a doctors appointment and could spend the morning with us. She always makes things fun. We love hanging out with her. 

We ate some yummy burgers at Red Robin.

And I was even able to get some snuggle time in with my big 4 year old.

He ended the night playing with friends at growth group. A great birthday indeed!

Dallas has grown so much this past year. He is so smart and doing well with his school. He loves candy, root beer, Paw Patrol, trucks, four wheelers, hats, break dancing, his Papaw, candy, socks, pop tarts, playing outside, running super fast, the color green, playing the matching game and puzzles. 

He doesn't like eating his dinner, drinking water, people messing up his room, green beans, cutting his finger nails. He is a particular little boy.

Happy Birthday Dallas! We love you to the moon and back.

Nine

Nine...9...NINE!!! It seems like yesterday we were bringing a 7 pound 15 ounce baby girl home from the hospital. 

Now she's a 70 pound big girl with such a gentle joyful heart. I am extremely blessed to be her mother, but also blessed to get to spend my days with this awesome child. 

We celebrated her birthday with a small party this past weekend. I made her an Ever After High Raven cake. That's her favorite. Madeline Hatter is mine. 

She got lots of great presents. Here is a picture of her with her new bike and shooting her pink BB gun. 

We started the day with a birthday waffle and sang happy birthday to our sweet girl. 

She wanted to go to Monkey Joe's, so they spent the morning jumping, climbing and sliding down inflatables and playing games.

Meme and Papaw treated us to lunch at Friendly's and they ended the day getting to spend the afternoon and evening playing with their favorite cousins. It's been a very wonderful birthday. 

Kristen loves drawing, painting and just being creative. She is always doing little crafts with Dallas. She loves to pretend that she is the teacher with Dallas and Lauren as her students. She loves riding her bike and being outside. She loves playing Barbies and watching Jessie and K C Undercover. She is still obsessed with stuffed animals. Her favorite subject in school is reading and science. Her favorite foods are chicken (on the grill), tacos, yogurt, fruit and popcorn. She is such a helper and is always doing little things to try to make my day go smoother. 

She doesn't like going to bed, peanut butter and potatoes (whose child is she?), wearing jeans or tie up tennis shoes, waking up (yeah..I know), and having to share her bedroom. 

Daughters hold our hands for a little while, but hold our hearts forever.

Happy Birthday Kristen. We love you so very much. 

Another Month Bites the Dust

I swear these days it seems as if life is moving super fast. I can't believe November is gone and December is already here. Christmas will be here in the blink of an eye and my kids are excited about the upcoming festivities, but mostly just the presents. They're kids...what do you expect?

Because we had so much to do this month, I wasn't able to complete the thanksgiving lesson I had planned. We got some of it done. I guess I have it for next year, so one less thing I will need to plan.  We did learn about turkeys and read some funny turkey stories. 

We also did some fun turkey writing activities and math activities and made some thankful turkeys. 

We've had a good month homeschooling with a few breaks for trips and Thanksgiving. We took the kids to see my grandmother and to also see the Santa Train. This is a tradition that has been in my parents home town for 70+ years and I am so glad my kids got to experience it. 

Santa rides in on a train and throws candy and stuffed animals out to the kids. There are people also handing out wrapping paper, backpacks with toys in them and bags of snacks to people too. It was a fun time.

We also got to hear my uncle Pooch play bluegrass at Ma's and Pa's, a local restaurant that my parents hung out at when they were teenagers. 

Audrey, the Girl Scouts bear got to travel along with us. Kristen and my sister learned how to two step too. I'll only post a picture of Kristen though. 

And Lauren's Girl Scout troop got to open the Powhatan School Board meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance.

We finished off the month going to see Santa Claus and decorating for Christmas.

Also, Eric came back. Dallas had a few very bad days when Eric suddenly appeared. Eric had to leave him a very important message.