A winter picnic

While the rest of the country was getting another crazy winter storm, we were cozy and warm here in South Florida.  A couple weeks ago, we came home from the gym and it was beautiful outside, so we had an impromptu picnic out back.  It's been a while since we have done this, so the girls were very excited.

Here they are, all sitting on our blanket.

Nate loves to eat.

Especially blueberries

Nicole decided her beanie hat was a perfect way to keep her hair from blowing around in her face.

And then, she disappeared.

After she disappeared, she decided to lay down with her doggie.  

After our picnic, the girls started playing doctor in their little house.  I have a great video from this, but it is way to big to upload : (

 And Nathan decided to go for a little bike ride.  He's so cute!

 Look at my carrots!  I grew them in a container. 

 And, this is green onions.  I use them all the time.  I need to plant them in a bigger pot and not so close next year.  But, I was glad to see they grew so well.

 Nate went back for more food too

So, that is our Florida picnic.  While the rest of the country chipped their cars out from under blocks of ice, we sat outside in the warm 70 degree sunshine. 

Goats

I have to admit, that there are days I struggle with contentment.  Being content where we are and doing what we are doing.  Sometimes I get lost in my own fantasy world of "what if's" and "what it would be like's".  I must confess, that Sunday was one of those days.

My friend Jessica called me a couple of weeks ago and told me that her family had just bought three goats.  She knew I would be excited about it, because we really want to have a couple of acres and some little animals running around. We know nothing about living like that, but when we talk about it and think about, we get lost in the dream world of what we think it would be like.  Well, Sunday didn't help, because we were near Jessica's home, so we swung in, totally unexpected, and almost unannounced (except when I called her to tell her we were in her driveway).

We wanted to see these goats.  They were only a few weeks old.  Almost immediately, our girls wanted in their pen to get a closer look.  Nathan was screaming and flailing his arms (Nate talk for....let me at 'em...I want to touch it).  It was so fun!  These goats have been bottle fed (and de-horned...is that a word?) and so they were very comfortable around us.  Jess also has three children very close in age to ours. 

After a few minutes of casual observation and a few chases, the girls wanted to get closer.  Hannah was first.  She liked the black goat.  She worked up the courage for several minutes before she actually tried to pick him up.  It was very cute to watch her almost do it...and then jump away giggling. 

 

Once Nicole saw her little sister trying to hold the goats, she wanted in on the action too.

I wish I could describe all of the giggling we heard those 20 minutes  at Jessica's house.  The girls giggled every time the goats jumped on or off the chair or table out there. They laughed when the goats would run away when being chased, and when they would hide under the chair. They laughed when the goats would eat the leaves off of the bushes.  They enjoyed their time.

Nathan was also fascinated with these animals. He was very gentle when he touched them, and was always trying to get out of our arms to get a closer look.

Sunday, I wanted a goat, or two, or three.  I've actually never wanted goats...but, now maybe I do, one day...when we have more than a suburban backyard.  Until then, I must be content with what I have...because what I have is wonderful. We have a nice home that has AC and heat, a yard for the kids to play in, and most importantly...a family that loves each other more than any other family I know....now we just need a few goats (or maybe a dog.....hmmm)

Thankful

"Dear God, I am thankful for my family.  My sweet sweet family.  I love them so much"
~Nicole, age 4, during her bedtime prayers

Valentine's Day Surprise

I realized last night that I don't know what I want!  haha....the weeks coming up to a holiday, I have all these thoughts about the holiday being lame and I don't want to even do one thing during it...and then, the day hits....and I want to celebrate and have fun with my kids.  That's what happened yesterday. 

I did not do a big push coming up on Valentine's Day for a couple of reasons, but passing around a stomach virus last week didn't help.  By the time I realized when V-day was, I didn't have time to do much.  Somehow though, Nicole heard about it, and started asking me when V-day was.  We already had a play date planned at a friend's house.  She had some very fun activities that the girls could do with her children.  They did some educational activities, iced and decorated heart shape cookies and played for a long time.  To them ,it was a Valentine's Day party...and it was really fun. 

However, Sunday, I was on one of my favorite blogs, and I saw a post about a "quick and easy" Valentine's Day surprise this blogger did for her children that morning.  I thought this would be a great idea to do with my family.  I liked that it was "quick and easy", it was special...but not gourmet, and it was something I could enjoy preparing with the girls. I talked to Nicole about it, and we decided we would make it a big surprise for Jeremy.  (by the way, I would not post this under the "quick and easy" category. I find making breakfast to be a big mess that takes longer to prepare and clean up than a normal meal")

Yesterday during naps, I cut out a bunch of small and large hearts, and wrote on them, like conversation hearts.  These were our decorations, scattered around the table.  We also had a heart table cloth, and pink balloons hanging from the light and the walls.  When daddy got home, there was a large heart on the door, and small hearts on the floor that lead him to the table.  (Nicole thought that part was really cool). 

For dinner, we had pancakes with a pink heart in the middle, bacon, egg sandwiches...also cut out in a heart shape, strawberries, and pink strawberry milk with a strawberry on top.  Everything was pink...everywhere.

We also made a heart shaped cake.  Nicole insisted upon buying blue sprinkles, because "blue is for boys, and this cake is for daddy, so we don't want pink, we want blue".  And, you can see the extent of Hannah's reach...yes, she put on the multi-colored stars.

We had such a fun and yummy dinner and evening.  The anticipation of daddy coming home made the afternoon lots of fun.  When we knew he was on his way, Nicole went around and closed all of the blinds and turned on the lights down.  She likes to "set the mood".  We turned on some piano music (which she said makes her "want to dance and dance all night long and not even eat her dinner".)

At the end of the evening, Jeremy said it best, "This was way better than going out to eat tonight".  It really was. 

I have decided to forgo the "I don't want to celebrate anything attitude", and just go for it and have lots of fun with my family.  St. Patricks Day....here I come! (what is that holiday all about anyway?)

Calendar Time

I found a really wonderful website that has a ton of resources for stay at home moms, as well as homeschooling moms.  Confessions of a Homeschooler has created her own preschool curriculum (which is free), a ton of printable ideas to help you organize your home, your schooling, your chores,  your time. 

I have been working on creating a functional board for Calendar Time over the past few weeks.  This is something I have tried to implement, but failed several times before.  This time, I don't think I will fail because of the great ideas and resources I have found in this website.

I printed a lot of ideas for Calendar time, laminated them, and glued  or velcroed them to a large, sturdy white board.  Because we are trying to sell our house, I did not want to mount this on a wall, so I can hide it for showings.  But, then I discovered that since I'm not mounting it on the wall...I have the back side of the board to use too.

There is velcro on the back of nearly every piece....that was the worst part of the project, but if you have fingernails, then it will be easier for you.  I love the velcro idea because once I created this thing...it can be used over and over!

So, here is what we have....
~A daily calendar, with month titles that can be changed.
~To the right is an envelope that has the days of the week.  We put this up every day so the girls can see the name (Friday) and hopefully begin to recognize it.  Inside this envelope, we also have a collection of straws.  Each day receives a straw.  Once we have 10 straws, then they get bundled to teach Nicole how to count by 10s, and add.  For example, today is the 11th...so we already know that we have 10 straws in our bundle, we don't need to count them, we will add one more straw (unbundled) and know that we have 11 straws total. 
~Below the calendar is our Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow section. 
~Above the straws we will chart the weather outside.  Honestly, I thought this might be silly because most every day is sunny in Florida, however, this week...we have had a variety of weather.  On Friday, we will transfer our daily weather into a graph (which you will see in a moment)
~Next, we have our personal information.  The girls need to learn our full address, our phone number, and then emergency numbers, like 911 and our cell phone numbers.
~Finally, we have our Bible memory verse.  Right now, we are memorizing Ephesians 6, because that is what Nicole's CC group is doing.  I'm excited to add this into our daily routine.  Almost all of the memory verses I know, I learned when I was Nicole's age (dad, remember when I recited my verses on the way to Pre-k4, at each stop light?)  Because I laminated the page, I can use a dry-erase marker, and then erase it each week.  I'm not sure how long this will last, I may need to use a sheet protector eventually.

Now, on the back of the board, we have several sheet protectors so that I can put information in and out as it is needed.
~Well, first is a season's chart, which doesn't change much.  But, my girls need to learn that it's not always summer here, even though it feels like it.
~To the right of the season's chart is a personal character curriculum that I printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  It's a four day study on different character traits that young people deal with (who am I kidding, old people deal with it too!). 
~To the far right is our weather graph.  You can see that last week, we only had sunny days.  This week though we will color in blocks with other weather.      This is a great math introduction to the kids.  We will fill this chart out for the month.
~The bottom left sheet has our maps from Nicole's CC class. Right now she is learning where countries, seas, rivers, mountains and cities are in Europe, so that map is showing.  I also have a world map behind it.  The other great thing about using sheet protectors is that you can write on them with a dry erase marker, and then just wipe off :-)
~Finally, we have our weekly CC info.  So, now when we do calendar time, it can transition right into review of our CC memorization!

Confessions of a Homeschooler also lays out how she does calendar time and gave me a few ideas on helping the kids learn basic information. Here is our basic routine.
1. We pray
2. Say the pledge of allegiance (I have a small flag we got at a parade or something, the girls take turns holding it)
3. We sing the months of the year song, to the tune of "The Macarena".  We also do the macerana hand motions.
4. We sing the days of the week song to the tune of "The Addams Family"
5. We go through the board and hit each item.  The girls take turn adding the dates and other information.

I am really happy with my calendar.  It's compact and very useful. The girls seem to enjoy it, and Nathan will too as he gets older.  There are some really neat Calendars out there that this is sort of copied from, but they can be upwards of $50.  I believe I spent $8 or so on the supplies, and spent about 2 hours putting it together (most of that time was tearing itty bitty pieces of Velcro)

Random pictures

I am so far behind on my posts and pictures, so this is a random picture kind of day. Ready for photography overload???

My birthday was a few weeks ago, and Nathan enjoyed every bit of cupcake.

Didn't he?

No, I don't think he liked it at all

Maybe just one more bite!

 All Done!

The kids all play together (sometimes).  As you can see, Nicole was crying, while Hannah and Nate were having a good time crawling over her.

I realized the other day that Hannah still does not have a firm grip on her letters. So, we started playing some letter games, include "Go Fish" Bingo. The are "fishing" for letters (this is a game I made as  part of our unit a few years ago on Hello Ocean.  I plan on doing lots of unit studies this summer when CC is over for Nicole.

Hannah had a photo shoot with daddy a couple of weeks ago. She is so darn cute!  Especially when she rests her cheek on her hand like this.

or this....

or this....

Here she is, all dressed up as a doctor.  Dr. Brown, she calls herself

Rassln' with daddy

Finally, finally, I have more space for all the zillions of pictures and stories to tell.  I have much to catch up on, so this may take a while :-)

I had to share some of these fun photos from a weeks ago.  It is well known that we love to spend time in the evenings, hanging out and playing as a family. Well, to be honest, I'm usually just a spectator, the kids are the players and Jeremy is the arena.  The poor guy can not sit or lay on the floor without someone jumping on him.  Most of the time he joins in the fun and a great time of laughter, tickling, chasing and an occasional tear comes out of it.  This night was no exception.

After a long day at work, Jeremy laid down on the floor in the kids' room,  Moment later, he became a bouncing bag.  Nicole was tackling Hannah while she was sitting on her daddy's back.

Daddy occasionally gets some lovin', in between tackles.

Soon, the "monster" awoke and chased whoever was closest.

Hannah hid under Nathan's crib

Nate was wondering what the heck was going on!

At one point, Hannah bonked her head (and her big sister immediately jumped up to get her ice...because we always have ice around for the boo-boos that come about each day).  Unfortunately for Hannah, we got ahold of that ice, and stuffed it down her jammies! hehehe

  (This is where the tears came in, but they were quickly washed away by giggles).

And, of course...as always, there is lots of sweet "make up" time

Then, we decided Nicole needed to know how cold the ice was too.

 If you look closely at this picture, you can see Nicole's mouth open because she is cracking up!

This was just before bed time (of course!) so Nathan was hanging out in the crib, screaming with joy and encouraging his sisters along.  Isn't he cute?

I love this expression of Hannah. you can see the pure joy and excitement in her face.

CC - Presentation - and ramblings about the family

I'm home.  I made it!  The kids made it.  The other sweet moms in the class made it.  Thank you Lord!

This morning I had the opportunity to be a substitute in Nicol's CC class.  I was thankful for the routine and schedule that her regular teacher has, because I was able to follow it pretty closely and the kids all stayed engaged.  We made it through the day, and it was actually pretty fun.  The morning is extremely fast paced.  You have about 4 minutes to introduce each subject (1/2 hour total), then we have science for half an hour, then presentations for half an hour, then art for half an hour and finally review for half an hour.  Latin was the hardest subject.  The paper I had for the kids was a level above them, so they had a hard time filling in the blanks.  But, I think the rest of the subjects were introduced fairly well.  The kids especially liked kicking the ball to learn about Newton's First Law of Motion. As a review game, we played Alphabet bingo.  I put letters on the review cards with a paper clip through a whole.  Then the kids "went fishing" with a magnet.  They had to answer the question and then everyone could mark their bingo pads.  I wasn't sure how it would go...but it worked.  They didn't get bored until the very end.  I enjoyed the opportunity to teach and would certainly do it again, if they ever asked me to:-)

I forgot my camera, so I couldn't tape Nicole's presentation. She talked about groundhogs.  Since she had been sick, it was a little rough coming up with a topic this week.  But, she pulled together yesterday to learn the info she needed to know. 

Next week, Nicole and I will be leading the opening ceremony.  I'm not sure what to talk about.  I was thinking about talking to the group about coupons.  Does that sound lame?  Nicole knows quite a bit, just from helping and watching me.  Maybe it could be informative for the moms and we could talk about being a good steward of our money.  Any other ideas out there?

On a different note....I want to always remember how Hannah, at the age of 2 1/2 always asks us if we remember things.  For instance, this morning, she was talking to Jeremy before work and she said, "Daddy, we went to your work, you remember?" (we were at the office with him last night while he caught up on some paper work).  I wish I could take a picture of the way she says it, with her head cocked to one side and a sincere and inquisitive look on her face.  She's so stinking cute!

I also love how she doesn't call Jeremy "daddy" right now.  She's calling him "Daddy-o"  For instance, today I was helping her go potty and she said, "mommy, you help me...not daddy-o"  hehehe.  Two phrases I know she'll outgrow that I don't want to forget.

Finally, I have a prayer request I'd like to share with you.  Jeremy is preparing to take a sate certification exam within the next few weeks. This will give him a certification to do low voltage  or "limited energy" work anywhere in the state.  Passing this test is sort of a job requirement for him.  It is a very difficult exam that generally needs to be taken several times for people to pass.  Of course, he would prefer to only take it once.  If you think about it, would you remember him in prayer this month as he prepares?  He will need many hours of studying.  When we have an exact date for the test, I will let you all know so you can pray for him then.  We were hoping for Feb. 9th, but he may not be "approved" in time.  So, thank you....I appreciate it.