Craziness and a birthday!

Since thanksgiving I have been in overdrive. We hosted thanksgiving here so that came with its our stresses. Then I co-organized a “Christmas for Kids” one day event with a friend for our church. We hosted about 20 kids for a morning of crafts, snacks, stories, and singing. It was a lot of work and both of us were exhausted afterwards, but the kids heard the wonderful story of the birth of our Savior so it was worth it.

Then I had a ton of baking and prep for Miss G’s birthday party. We wanted to do something special but also keep it fair (since we did only small gatherings for the boys 2nd birthdays). So we hosted a gingerbread house decorating party. I made 5 batches of gingerbread for the 10 houses (one for each kiddo) and several cookies for the adults to munch on as well. G and everyone had fun. (And one friend even hinted to maybe making it an annual thing,lol.)

So funny when G opened her gift from Grandma and Grandpa that had new hair “pretties”, she wanted to wear them all! And that backpack from family (Daddy, myself, and the boys) was an instant hit. She even went to bed with it!

 

Halloween learning

The boys had been noticing all the fake spider webs that neighbors had been using for Halloween decoration. I looked through my pinterest boards and found something that was perfect activity for the kids to do.

Using masking tape (which I get at the dollar store), I made a spider web on the corner of one of the archways in our house. Then I gave the boys pieces of paper with either letters or numbers written on them. The boys would read off what was written on the paper, crumple it, and throw it at the spider web. The point then was to get the crumpled paper to stick in the web. It was great gross motor skill practice with throwing and letter/number practice too. We ended up using a chair in the end to get the boys throws closer to the web. They got so excited when it actually stuck.

It will be an activity that will be “on deck” next year too. I can imagine sight words in addition to the letter and numbers. 😉

Apples, apples, and more apples

We did lots of apple activities since we got back from vacation.

For school, the boys were busy little bees. we started with scissors practice. I was truly amazed at how well J did with it. E had more fun cutting little pieces than cutting on the lines. I figured as long as practice of holding and cutting with scissors was done it was a completed lesson.

Then the boys colored in trees and added apple stickers according to the number written on the tree.

We practiced out numbers some more with a roll and color chart. Both boys would do a happy dance after they rolled a number, chanting what the number was. It was cute and funny how much they were getting into the chart activity.

And last up was an apple investigation complete with cube weighing and measuring…

and of course tasting too!

Playing catch up-part 1

So we stalled in homeschool back in April when I lost my computer to the blue screen and all the craziness of moving entered into our lives. We still managed to find time to learn about the letters Q,R, S, and T before we moved though. I just didn’t have a computer to update. So is what we “sneaked in” before our move.

Q is for quilt.

R is for rain, rainbow, and racecars.

S is for snow.

T is for turtle

In effort…

Moms are mire often than not the one behind the camera trying to capture their kids childhood. I.am certainly no different. My kids see my camera out and they say “cheese” (or looking away if feeling shy that particular day).
But yesterday I made a tiny effort to make sure there was at least one picture of me with my kids. So they know how much I loved being home with them.

I love it. Because I know I took it just after we got done with a water fight (all of us were more than a little wet). A water fight where there were belly laughs in “getting mom” with the water and squeals of fun anticipation as I chased them with my own water supply. It was a fun summer day filled with great memories.

Protect yourselves from the sun

The past few days have been pretty hot (104*Friday, 108*Saturday, and a cool off to 91*today). So we have gotten back into the sunscreen before outside play routine (we tend to fall out of it during winter).
Since today was not quite as hot as previous two days, I took the opportunity to weed a little bit in our backyard. Well, as I came back to the patio from the sideyard, this is what I discovered…

So evidently I need to put the sunscreen bottle up out of reach after slathering up the kiddos.

Past few weeks in pictures

It has been a bit crazy the past two weeks. We went onto overdrive in packing, cleaning new place, moving, unpacking, and cleaning old place. But it has been so worth it.

This was in Target where J said “thank you, thank you Mom! I love my new vacuum!”. He has made claim to it and has used it every chance he can. Hopefully that feeling sticks around. 😉

Kids and I took a break from packing one afternoon for some water fun.

E has discovered that he loves to collect rolly polly bugs. He gathers so many in his hand-he easily had 20 pollies in his hand at one point!

J had his last games of tball season and even got to play catcher. He was so excited!

And finally, these are the effects of a bigger house. All three kids have been running around more, playing outside more, and falling asleep sooner. It has been wonderful.
So until next time….

Sorry I am busy

I haven’t been updating this like I have in the past. I, to be honest, really haven’t been doing formal school time either. Between J’s t-ball, the spring-wonderful weather and packing for our move, I have been letting kids soak up more than their fair share of vitamin D.
We have been going for walks, riding our bikes, playing in our jump house, having picnics under the big tree out front, and just playing.

So pardon the lack of postings. They should might resume after we get moved in.. well if actually decorating our first adult home doesn’t consume my time. 😉

Computer is still down for the count

My computer is having issues that I really haven’t made it a priority to fix. So that means I am far behind on school updates or frankly any updates.
But I will share that I (and my dad) have survived another mud run. We completed all the obstacles with only a few injuries 😉  I managed to get better-meaning I could actually do a couple obstacles that previously defeated me.
Oh, and we have been blessed with gorgeous weather so we brought out our bounce house (which is a generous hand me down from my in laws). This is G’s first time in it and she was having a blast!

Awesome way to spend an afternoon.
Hopefully my computer becomes a priority-but not likely in middle of packing for a move that will happen hopefully very soon….

Because it captures my everyday

Some pictures are perfectly posed. Others are posed but still candid. And others like this one are simply a snapshot taken with no special attention yet are a perfect picture how everyday life is spent. Toys everywhere (because the wanted toy was at the very bottom of the storage bucket). Grass starting to become a bit too long (because it is hard to find the time that all three kids would be safely away but in ear/sight range). But, best thing of all, all three kiddos are happily playing.