Currently…

It’s a icky rainy day here in our neighborhood. We are thinking of ways to entertain ourselves inside while we wait for the sun to come back out. I uploaded a few pics that I thought you might like to see. I was playing with this funky camera lens my dad got us a while back. So we have a daffodil bloom (one of many) and Miss Louisa hard at work on her “school”.
Speaking of school. We’re anxiously counting down the days. 20 remain. We ended up not taking a spring break this year. We are planning a family vacation to Maine this year and thought it would be slightly more enjoyable in late May than in early April. So we’ll go when we are all finished.
We had a fun mini vacation over the weekend. We took ourselves to Ann Arbor for lunch and a trip to the mall. We found this great little dollar movie theater, and watched Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler. We were slightly nervous because we didn’t know much about the plot line, but we figured for $1 a ticket even if it was horrible we got our money’s worth. We ended up really enjoying it.

Easter was sort of a low-key event in this house. I didn’t feel like going through the works, so we took ourselves out to lunch and played in the yard all day. No bunnies, no eggs, no fancy dinner. The kids didn’t seem to mind all that much. They got ice cream instead of candy.

Updates

Spring is slowly eeking it’s way into our corner of the world. The weather is slowly but surely getting warmer and we are enjoying more and more time out in the sun.
We’ve been working on our garden this week. Our veggie garden is still under construction. I’m hoping to get it closer to done before a system of icky weather hits us next week. We’ll see. Our daffodils are starting to bloom. It’s early enough in the season that we are still doing a little dance every time we find a new bud or blossom. I image when we get to bloom # 976 we won’t be quite as excited. I recently took a tour of the area where the bulbs were dug from and discovered I wasn’t nearly as thorough as I thought I’d been. There are probably 500 bulbs that are still waiting to be moved to a safer location. Know anyone who wants some daffodils?
School is going well. The end of the year is quickly approaching. 27 days and counting. If we don’t take a family vacation this spring I’m estimating that we will finish around May 15th. As the weather is warming up and the garden is beckoning, that cut off day is looking sweeter and sweeter. Glad that we kept our noses to the grindstone all winter, so we could play in the spring. I don’t know whether to be amused or annoyed that all of our friends will still have another month of school after we are finished.
So Ms. Patty survived her encounter with our children. They apparently had a lovely time playing, reading and singing songs. A good time was had by all.
Oh, and our lovely cardinal friend from last year is back. Picking a fight with our sliding door again. I have pictures of him this year, but really I’m too lazy to get my camera and upload them. Earlier this week he was threatened not only by our door, but by my bedroom window as well. He made his displeasure with my window known early one morning this week, and I managed to confuse him by covering the inside of my window with wrapping paper. I’m still trying to decide if it’s worth the effort to cover the sliding door with paper or not.

More stuff

I’m so impressed with myself for updating 2x in the same week. You have no idea.
So my son has become quite the little businessman recently. It started with him creating his own currency (because I wouldn’t let him play with real money), which led to a nice little discussion about counterfeit money. Now we’re using that money to buy and sell anything and everything. Not only are we selling stuff in a store setting, we’re paying each other to perform tasks – mostly those related to cleaning. This morning the boy actually rented a toy to his sister. Not bad.
This totally happened last week and should have been in my last post, but I completely forgot. So here it goes. We all know that Alex is a reader. Nothing new. But he’s picking up a book just for fun more and more often. So last week. He read 3 Magic Tree House books (about 70 pgs apiece) just for fun. This is in addition to 3 books of the same length he read as required reading. He read an entire book one morning before breakfast. Now we’re not making any comments about the quality of his mother who didn’t get breakfast on the table until 9:30 – that’s beside the point.
Moving on. This spring we’re trying something new. In addition to our flower garden we’re planning a vegetable garden. We’re not actually planning on eating our produce (the girls have an aversion to all things green). We’re going to donate all our produce to the local food bank. The girls are so excited. They went with me to get all our supplies, and helped pick out a few seed packets. As soon as it is above 50 degrees (and not raining) we’ll get started.
One last little tidbit to share… This weekend the kids are going to stay at Ms. Patty’s house for the whole weekend. They are sooo excited. I had a fun weekend planned scrapbooking with the girls, and Jory wanted to go visit family. So she and Mr. Jeff graciously agreed to watch our kids for us. Hopefully we are all still friends at the end of the weekend.

General life…

Well life in these parts has been pretty typical these past few days. Let me try to pull up some recent memories to record…
We had a pretty bad rainstorm awhile back. It left our yard pretty much underwater. Without actually having measured how high the water was, I’d guess it was probably about 2 feet deep in some parts. Deep enough to submerge some of my daffodils completely and make getting and out of the driveway an interesting experience. But not bad enough to do damage to the house, so it’s all good. The good news is we’ve had plenty of dry days since that storm and the water has mostly receded, so I have most of my yard back, the roads are all dry, and the park to our north is open again.
Spring is here. Well sort of. It’s still pretty cold at night, but starting to warm up nicely during the days. We were able to spend some time out in the garden this week. Uncovering new growth here and there, picking up sticks and all those other fun chores you do when it’s not quite warm enough to really get into the soil. Keeping a close eye on our daffodils, which are finally starting to make some progress towards being real flowers instead of little tiny green nubs poking out of the ground. The spring peepers have come out of hibernation and are singing to us from the swamps. They make me smile whenever I hear them.
School is good. We’re getting closer and closer to the end. We can almost taste the freedom. 7 ½ weeks remain. The kids are all working super hard, and blossoming right before my eyes.

Update on life

So what’s happened since my last post? Well I turned 30 for one thing. Wahoo… My birthday was full of lots of my favorite things. Lunch with friends, a hike in the park (even though it was FREEZING!) and dinner with my parents. Fun times.
So the first signs of spring are starting to creep in around here. The weather is warming up slightly and little green things are poking their heads through the soil. I’d say about 1/3 of the daffodils we transplanted last fall have started to sprout. Every time we step out to play the kids run around the house taking stock of what is growing and how tall it is. We can’t wait to get out there and get our hands into the soil again.
So school is going well. The end of the year is creeping closer and closer. We have about 9 weeks left. If we don’t go anywhere for spring break we’re looking to be done in mid-May. Which is good, because who really wants to be learning when you could be planting something or taking a hike. Not us. We recently moved up to the 2nd grade texts for Spelling and Math. I just didn’t feel like the 1st grade texts were challenging him anymore. So even though he’s slightly annoyed that I took his “easy” work away, he once again seems sufficiently challenged. Which makes this Mama smile.

Bad bad bad.

Bad blogger I know. Don’t remind me.
So what’s going on in our house? Too much. Lets see what I can remember.
We’ve been a little sick this week. Lots of coughing and nose blowing, but nothing too serious.
Last weekend - President’s day weekend I took the kids out to the lake house. My mom and I took our scrapbook stuff and we crafted up a storm, Alex shoved his nose in a book, and the girls played. Then we hit up the President’s day sales at a local outlet mall. We found quite a few steals at Osh Kosh and at The Children’s Place.
Last night was game night for grown ups at our church. We used to have game nights all the time when the congregation was smaller. But for some reason we hadn’t had one in a while. It was good to get together with friends, and just hang out. Play some games, have some snacks, and just gab. It’s so hard to socialize on Sunday mornings anymore, it was nice to just kick back.
I’ve started working on the church website. We were having a hard time keeping it updated with fresh information and pictures, so I volunteered to keep track of the Children’s ministry portion. However, people are already asking me to take pictures for other areas outside of children’s ministry to post on the site. Eek. Just hoping it doesn’t get out of control.

Cabin fever is setting in around here. We’ve had a few days in the upper 40’s and 50’s. We are itching to get out and dig in the garden again. We (ok, I) are anxiously waiting for our little daffodils to poke their heads through the snow. Counting down the minutes until we can go outside without our heavy winter coats.

Play time

So the girls and I were goofing off in the field house while Alex was at his gym class. Louisa asked for a turn with the camera, and here's what I got.

Better than any of the pics that I took that day...

General life stuff

More than anything feeling guilty that I’m letting this thing called life slip past without hitting the pause button to record a few moments.
The girls have had their birthday. No big party, just dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. They got many fun gifts. Perhaps one of the favorites was a sleeping bag for each girl. Everyone knows that sleeping bags are for slumber parties right? As part of their gift, the girls got to spend the night at Grandma’s. I’m not sure who had more fun, my dad or the girls. I’m still working on their 5-year-old pics, I managed to get a nice one of both, but they flaked on me when it came time for individual shots. So I’ll have to do some retakes here one of these days.
On Saturday there was a huge carnival at our church. The carnival committee asked if I would be a photographer for the event. So since I was “working” and no one in my family wanted to wrangle my kids through the mayhem, I went alone. It was kinda nice to be at a church function and be able to socialize without little hands tugging on me. Heck, it was nice to just be able to socialize at all.
In other news, yesterday was the first day freezing in weeks, so the kids finally got to make a snowman. It was also the first time I let the kids dress themselves and go out unsupervised. I generally go out with them still, but I had a lot of work to do yesterday. They did just fine, except for a minor mishap with a sled. Little by little, independence is creeping in.
Oh and a kid funny that I almost forgot. Driving to town, the kids are all being loud and obnoxious as usual, and Louisa is trying to say something to Jory. Well she had had about enough of Annie, so she hollers "Annie, stop errupting!"

right now...

I was looking through some pictures I took of the girls at their gym class last week, and couldn’t resist posting a few of my favorites.
So all is well in Peterson-land. School is going well. Tomorrow is our 100th day, so we’re excited about that. We finished the 1st grade spelling text last week, so now we’re working on a few high frequency words that he should probably know before we plunge into the 2nd grade text. He’s also transitioned from reading picture books to full-fledged chapter books – which is hard because nearly all the beginning chapter books are geared towards girls. But the girls are enjoying their “school work”. I love how when I announce that it’s time for school they excitedly run to the table eager to learn.
Cathy Gresham was here over the weekend. The girls turn 5 on Tuesday, so she came in for a little pre-birthday goodness. It was good to catch up a little, and let her entertain my children with an endless stack of stories.
We’ve had our fair share of winter weather this week. It all started with a system last weekend that dropped about 8 inches of snow on us, then we had 2 or 3 smaller squalls come through that dropped a few more inches. That piled on top of subzero temperatures has us looking forward to spring. We’re trying to make the most of it though; our lovely mulch piles on the annex have been fun for sledding and jumping off of. And here's one of Alex I just found having fun in the snow just for kicks

Snowed in

We're in the middle of a nice gentle snow storm. Nice little flakes have been falling on our heads for about 30 hours now, we're supposed to have about 12 inches when it's all finished. We were out in it earlier, sledding on the mulch piles. So here's Ms. Annie in the hat my mom made her for Christmas. And young Alex who had just jumped off a smallish mulch pile into a soft mound of snow. He's so impressed with himself.

Stuff

Well Alex is sleeping in this morning, so I have a few extra moments this morning as I wait to start my day.
Over the weekend I had a girls night out. I went with some friends to a movie/dinner/game night to celebrate a friend’s graduation from nursing school. Seems like most of my nights out revolve around scrapbook get togethers. It was fun to do something different.
We had a couple of days off of school last week. It’s funny how productive I can be when there’s no school and it’s to cold/yucky to be outside. There was much reorganizing/purging done. Feels good to let go of the clutter. During my time off I also took the time to get formal lessons planned for the girls. I like to start giving my kids formal “seat work” the January before they start Kindergarten. That way we can be properly transitioned into “school mode” by the time August rolls around. Alex was not the worksheet type, so we usually just played counting games or something for his “school” during those early days. But the girls think it’s “fun” to sit down with worksheets. So they’re starting with letter/number formation.
This week the kids are starting gym classes. Alex is taking a homeschool gym class, and the girls are taking something called Energy Zone which sounds like a combination of creative movement and letters/numbers/shapes. They are so excited. One of my goals for the year is to get the kids involved in a few nonchurch extracurriculars. Expand our social horizons a little.

Snow and ice

My mom has the kids for the afternoon, and you know what that means - play time. Here are some pics that I’ve been playing with from a recent ice storm…

Post Christmas post.

We kicked off our holiday week with a visit from some of our extended family. Some of my mom’s family came up for a few days last weekend. It was so good to see them again. It’d been a while since I’d seen my cousins. We had a little gift exchange, where I received a nice hat and scarf, which were promptly snatched up by my daughters.
Next up was a visit to Columbus. Our first stop was with the Alexander family, where my kids fell right into step with their kids all over again. Just like peas and carrots. And Cathy and I? Well, peas and carrots. So good to visit with them and see their house all decorated for Christmas. Good times. Our second visit was with some of my friends from college, the Smiths. They got married about 3 weeks after we did, Jonna and I tried on wedding dresses together. It was great to finally meet their cutie, Natalie (who shares my birthday!)
Christmas day? Well that was a flutter of twinkling lights, wrapping paper and hot chocolate. The kids got some great toys. The favorites were marble works (which was one of my favorites as a kid), some “talkie-hawkies” (walkie talkies), and some “comfy dolls” handmade by my mom. And Jory and I? Well we got lots of toys ourselves. Scrapbook stuff, a portable GPS and new lenses for my camera. Not a bad haul in the end.
Now the only problem is which toy to play with first…

Kid funny and other misc.

The other day I was cooking supper and there was a bottle of soy sauce on the counter. Louisa wanders over and says “Mom, you’re not using that soil sauce on the chicken are you?”
In other news, we are all about the paper airplanes this week. Alex received a book about how to make paper airplanes as an early Christmas gift. So he’s been perfecting his craft all week. He’s had a ball learning all the different styles, and creating his own unique creations. Some work better than others of course, but that’s part of the learning right? So glad that I can provide a learning environment that embraces paper airplanes, and sees them as a learning opportunity and not a distraction. I’m sure some teacher, somewhere is breathing a sigh of relief that she doesn’t have his fleet of paper airplanes taking over her classroom.
Alex’s 1st Christmas play performance was this week. Of course I was in the front row for his acting debut, camera glued to my eyeball. He delivered his little line perfectly, right into the mike. Proud mama.

Thanksgiving pics and general updates.

Well, since my children are still mostly asleep (at 9:30 - gotta love that), I thought I'd take a minute and post a few Thanksgiving pics.

I took so many that I love, so it was hard to pick. In the end, I went for shots of the cousins since my children are fairly well represented on this here blog. So we have Levi, wearing Alex's hand me down coat, and sweet baby Lance. As well as a group shot for Grandma P.

Currently…

Well I meant to do a big post about our trip at thanksgiving complete with pictures and the whole works, but frankly I’m thinking that’s not happening. So you get the 10-second version. We took the train out to Kansas City to visit with Jory’s family. We went there because it was sort of a central location for everyone, and most of us hadn’t been there yet, so it would be fun to explore. And it was. KC was a very fun little town indeed. We went exploring at the Crown Center, and shopping in the shopping district. We saw a fun cultural presentation about Russia at the Toy and Miniature Museum. The museum itself was also very fun. We had lots of fun playing with Grandma Peterson in the pool, playing board games, and getting in some cousin time. I got to meet my new little nephew, who is a cutie pie. It was very fun indeed.
Um… life here is a little crazy. I don’t have any of my cmas décor out yet. The children took pity on me earlier in the week and put out some “decorations” which mostly consisted of legos and action figures. If you look at it with your eyes half shut it could be a nativity I suppose. Whatever. No shopping has been done, no gifts, no wrappings, but I’ve got the hot chocolate thing covered, and the fire in the fireplace – oh yeah.

Mostly random

It kills me to look at the pics in the last post of us playing outside in tee shirts. How quickly the weather changes in these parts.
Checkers, checkers, checkers. I think it was a mistake to teach Alex to play checkers. He’s slightly obsessed with the game now. He asks everyone to play about 20 times a day, and the only one who ever obliges is Jory. Poor little guy.
We’re getting ready for a train trip to Kansas City for Thanksgiving. We’re meeting up with the rest of the Peterson clan. We’re very excited for another ride on the train, and to meet our new little cousin, Lance. Not to mention exploring a new city that none of us have ever been to. So lots of packing, baking, and Christmas gift-wrapping are happening in this house.
Yesterday I had a photo shoot with my friend Emily’s daughter, Eva. Eva’s birthday was last week and instead of selecting a gift for her party, I volunteered to do her 3-year-old portraits. She did super until my own children came in and got her all wound up. Mental note: Don’t take yahoo children to photo shoots unless absolutely necessary. When it is necessary, LOCK THEM IN THE VAN.
More random stuff: Christmas cards are done, make sure I have your address. We caught 2 mice this week (yuck). We got an inch of snow. And I think I’ve figured out how to help our children’s minister design our publications without using her stupid (I mean wonderfully terrific) software.

At the park

Last week was in the 70's around here. Which is really rare, to have a whole week in the 70's, this late in the year. So that coupled with a new understanding of how my camera works = lots of pics to share. So here we are playing at the park. Louisa's in green, the other two are of Annie. The photogenic child.

Playing in the leaves

More of my kids from the leaves.

Swing ones are coming. Perhaps.

Crazy times.

So the last few days around here have been a little crazy. For one thing it’s been in the 70’s since Friday. So of course we’ve been outside playing as much as possible, soaking up the last few hours of warm temperatures outdoors. Getting absolutely no work done. It’s all good right?
So let me think… Halloween was good. We made our trick or treating debut this year. The kids were so excited and nervous, they bombarded me with questions for days. Alex was a spooky planet (that looked remarkably like a pumpkin), Annie was a butterfly, and Louisa was a dragonfly. We went around in my mom’s neighborhood, and afterward the kids spent the night at my mom’s house. Fun stuff.
Saturday I had my first paid photo shoot with the Beam family from church. They wanted a 4 generational portrait taken with their new little boy. So I got some good family group shots and a couple of cute candids thrown in for good measure. While I don’t see myself going professional anytime soon, it was really fun, and slightly addicting. So I imagine I’ll do more in the future. If people ask, that is.
So I have a ton of pics to share, but frankly I don’t really have time to retrieve them right now. But some seriously cute ones of Alex in the leaves, and the girls on the swings at the park yesterday. Not to mention that cute little Beam baby.

Adventures in my world

It’s been a while. Suppose it’s time for another update. It was a pretty good weekend in our house. Saturday was Make a Difference Day at our church. They had like 8 service projects planned, plus they were serving lunch. So we went and had pizza with some friends, then we took Alex to the Senior Center to play Uno (the girls stayed and played in the nursery). Afterward he told me that when he’s a grown up he’s going to go over there every day to play cards. I hope he does.
This weekend we were glued to the TV watching The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. I had never heard of it, but Annie picked it up at the library, so I figured why not? Well it was an instant hit with all five of us. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a cartoon series from the 60’s and it’s FREAKING HILARIOUS. When you get a chance, go look for it on u-tube or something. It’s worth it.
That’s about all, we’re gearing up for a busy week around here. In addition to the normal humdrum of life, I seriously need to get started on my Christmas projects.

Scenes from my life

Playing outside recently, we have:

Alex and his missing teeth

Louisa strangling her brother

Annie playing under a pile of leaves

Random

Over the weekend Alex lost his second tooth. So I mentioned to him that we should put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy. (We lost the first one before we could request the tooth fairy’s services.) He looks me in the eye and asks if the tooth fairy is real. Not being one to lie to my children, I asked him if he wanted the truth, or if he wanted a story. He’s not dumb, he wanted the truth. So I gave it to him, and asked if he wanted to pretend that I was the tooth fairy. A pretty good arrangement if you ask me.
Last night the fire department came over to run a training practice on the house on our annex. We went over to watch, and learn a little about their procedure. The kids got a tour of the fire truck, the ambulance, and got to look through a heat-seeking camera. Then before we left we got to watch them suit up and go in. Way cool.
I am currently dealing with another round of poison ivy. I’m still waiting for it to stop getting worse so it’ll start getting better.
Went to the apple butter festival over the weekend. We were late so we didn’t get to see them making apple butter, but we got to watch them make cider instead, so it was ok. The living history encampments were excellent as usual. The kids met Mark Twain, sat inside a teepee and made candles. Good stuff.
The garden is good. I used up the rest of my bulbs over the weekend. Planted the last 100ish so that I could say I put in 1,000. The rest were scattered around to various people in the community. I have a few tasks left to do before I’m ready to call it done for the winter. We’ll see if I can’t bang them out here in my last few really nice days of fall

The life and times

Fall is rapidly descending on our house. As much as I hate to see my garden fading, I love the fall colors! We are very blessed to live in a heavily wooded community, so we have lots of pretty leaves to admire. While they aren’t out in full force yet, it’s only a matter of time…
So in other news, the daffodil project is coming along. At last check I have planted around 875 bulbs. My goal is 1,000, but I’m seriously running out of places for them. They’re completely surrounding the house, under all the trees, in the iris bed on the corner, and in the overflow garden. I’m thinking about starting a second overflow garden for the remaining bulbs. We’ll just have to see…
The kids are good. Not a whole lot to report. Settling into the new fall routines… Getting lots of outside time in before it gets too cold…

Another week bites the dust

The last few days have been rather creative in our house. My children found my stash of clean trash (milk jug lids, empty food containers and toilet paper tubes) and went to town. We had a whole fleet of ships, some of which actually floated. We also used the toilet paper tubes to make binoculars. And finally the paper shredder. My children have used it to shred every piece of scrap paper they can find. We are currently on day 3 of our obsession with all things shredded. My vacuum has definitely gotten a good workout this week. In case you were wondering, the little collections of shredded paper that I keep finding all over my house are called “hugcug” and you will get in big trouble if you throw them out. (Ask me how I know).
I continue to dig up my yard in a vain attempt to find homes for all my daffodils. I think I have planted about 200, and feel like I haven’t made a dent in my stash. Currently working to clean out an old iris bed on the annex in hopes that I can squeeze about 25 bulbs in there. We shall see.
In other news, school is going well. We’re through with about 6 weeks. Alex has become rather good at spelling. He aced the last 2 pretests I gave him. I’m faced with the eternal struggle that all homeschoolers eventually face – do I let him work ahead, or divert his attention to something else. Right now I’m letting him work ahead, so he’ll be done with the 1st grade spelling book before the end of the year. When we’re done with that, then I’ll worry about what to do next.

The times

Jory has been out of town this week. He went down to NM with his brother to ride motorcycles. So I’ve had an interesting week as a single parent. I’m a little spoiled, in that Jory almost never travels for work, and doesn’t really have any “guys” that he hangs with, so he’s usually here when he’s not working. It’s not that I mind that he has some “me time”, it’s just a little bit of a kick in the gut when he goes off and does it all at once. Having fun for a whole week with no responsibilities while I hold down the fort. Anyway.
We survived, but we’re glad it’s almost over.
The kids and I have been digging a new garden this week. Trying to figure out what to do with our 1000+ daffodil bulbs from the annex. It’s along our front walkway leading to our door. I’d take a picture, but it’s just dirt right now. Not very interesting. We’ll talk again in April when it’s a lovely swatch of yellow and white.
So my children have entered a new phase. We’re done with the challenging adult authority stage common to 2-3 year olds. Now we’re in the teasing phase. I swear every 5 minutes someone is playing copy cat, poking someone, or just generally annoying someone else (not to mention me!). The joys of parenting, right?

A week in the life

These past few days have been pretty typical. We had another stray dog decide to take up camp on our porch, but a call to the dog warden took care of him. Alex actually enjoyed having a pet for a few days, but the girls – not so much.
I have been wrestling with the garden again. We think that we will probably end up burning the abandoned house on the corner down, which means that all of the plants (and bulbs) next to the house need to be dug out. Which means that I have to find places for all these things. I’ve already started one overflow garden and am contemplating a few more. Speaking of gardens, I finally took some pics of the one I started earlier this spring. It’s in full bloom and is beautiful. So stay tuned for those.
School is going well. We have nearly 3 weeks under our belt. We are starting to notice the workload difference between Kindergarten and 1st. Pursuing ideas more in depth, and much more writing. Plus we’ve introduced the concepts of tests and grades – which has been a great motivator. Alex is always asking, “did I get 100%?”
Alex was invited to his first real birthday party over the weekend, a little friend from church. I was exposed to what birthday parties have become. I don’t want to know how much time and money was spent on this party, but it was over the top. Can’t say we’ll be joining in on that competition any time soon. We’ll stick with cupcakes and balloons. Thanks.
Other than that, life is good. Squeezing out every last drop of summer. Hanging out with friends, starting Sunday school at church, and back to school clothes shopping.

Recent photos and stuff...

Here's a new pic of Alex without his tooth. I took one at Nelson Ledges, but I accidently deleted it. Nice.

And here's another one for my dad - with that lense he's letting me borrow... Trying to be artistic...

What’s up?

Life has been crazy these past few days, just popping in for an update…
Over the weekend we had a fun outing. Our main reason for the outing was a car race at Nelson Ledges. This one was a fundraiser for Muscular Dystrophy that we agreed to help with. But the race didn’t start until the afternoon, so we had lots of time to kill. First we stopped by the Gilliland’s (the family with 7 kids). We hadn’t seen them in over a year, so it was time. It was good to reconnect with them. While we were there, Alex lost his first tooth in his sandwich at lunch. Yes I have a picture (somewhere), and No the tooth fairy hasn’t been to our house yet. Bad mom. I know. Don’t remind me.
After the Gilliland’s we went hiking at Nelson Ledges State Park. Which we had driven by several times this summer and never made the effort to stop. The ledges are a great place to hike, we went there several times while I was in college. However they really aren’t designed for children aged 4-6. As the name suggests, they are full of rather dangerous cliffs and rock formations that are just begging to be climbed on. Mix that with loose soil and kids in sandals. Eek. Even for these laid back parents. It was fun, but we’ll go back in 5 years when the kids are old enough to recognize danger a little better.
So after the (near fatal) hiking trip, we headed over to the racetrack to put in our time. (AKA socialize with our racing friends and eat cherry cobbler) Despite being completely exhausted, and confined to the tent we were working out of, the kids did rather well. Sure, they had no interest in playing with any of the toys I brought, no desire to watch the races, and had no little friends to play with this time; but they didn’t really complain, and they weren’t overly annoying either. They’re such troopers.
So those were our weekend highlights, yesterday my friend dropped her 9 year old off with us, so she go to work. It was kinda nice having a “big” kid around. He watched over my kids so I could do yard work. I took full advantage by diving headfirst into a patch of daffodils on our new property that have been very neglected over the years. I think at the end of the day I ended up with around 400 bulbs (which is just a fraction of what is there!) Now I just have to figure out where to put all these babies where I can see them…

kid funny

Over breakfast this morning Alex bellows "Mom! Annie is naked with pants on!"

????

School starts this morning! Wish us luck!

The end of summer

It’s official. Summer vacation is nearly over. I have my lesson plans written for Monday. Feels good to be able to meet my deadline this year instead of slacking off and pushing it back like I did last summer. Feeling slightly panicked that I don’t have enough lesson ideas to take me to May, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.
So what did we do with our last week of summer vacation? I’d like to say we went out and did all sorts of fun things like the water park or the zoo, but we didn’t. I have been working on my lessons, and cleaning up the property next door. We don’t know when we’ll be able to take the house down, but we’ve done a lot of weeding and mowing and making the ground look a little more presentable, found some flowers and plants that we need to transplant.
Oh, and we’re watching the Olympics. Well, Alex and I are. The girls prefer to watch a video for their 30 min of tv time. Too bad the gymnastics is on so late, I don’t even stay up to watch that.

Winding down

Well our summer is winding down around here. The pressure of school is looming down on our little heads. Pretty gosh darned stoked to get back in the groove, and enjoy the learning process once again. Last year I opted to not purchase a boxed set of curriculum, and just used the resources available at our public library. Risky move I know, but it paid off pretty well. This year I have again opted not to buy curriculum in favor of the public library. It would be a lot easier to buy a bunch of workbooks and say, “here you go, have fun!” but the educator in me cringes at the sight of a pile of worksheets, so I go in search of authentic learning experiences (and a few worksheets). And searching, and searching. Lots of searching. But this year I understand just how much searching is involved, so I started early. I feel like I have a pretty good outline set up for the year, now it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks. Better than the pile of worksheets I started with last year. (eek! I know) So I’m excited about where we’re going.
Anyway. Life around these parts is good. Busy, but good. Working on curriculum, going on play dates, picking blackberries, sleeping in a tent, picking wildflowers (ahem – weeds). Squeezing the last little bit of fun out of our summer before it’s over.
Excited for the Olympics to start tonight. Looking for a schedule of events, trying to figure out age appropriate ways to incorporate the games into our learning.

Welcome August

I’m not sure where July went, or even June for that matter, but August is here and there’s not much I can do about it, so I might as well celebrate it’s arrival right?
VBS has come and gone. Week two went by faster than the first. I ended up with seven preschoolers in my class, which was just the right amount. Seven super sweet, slightly wiggly little ones, three adult helpers, who complimented each other’s strengths (and weaknesses) amazingly. Very fun, but glad to be done. None of my own children seemed to mind the fact that they had to go to both weeks of VBS, which was a blessing.
Now that VBS is done I can contemplate the areas of my life that have been ignored for two weeks. A garden full of weeds, loaded blackberry vines, and enough cleaning to keep me busy for a while. Did I mention school? Oof. I have a general map in my head of where we’re going with 1st grade, but the details are pretty sketchy. I think my plan is to start on August 18th. We’ll just see how that deadline holds up to the craziness of August.

6 years old

It's 9 days late, but who cares right?

I'm enforcing a new rule in my house. No more growing.

The speed of light

Is it just me or is this summer going by way too fast?
Alex’s birthday was a full week ago, and I haven’t even taken a photo of him for his baby book. Lame I know.
So what have we been up to this week? Well VBS started on Monday and the kids are all having fun in their respective classes. I am pretending to be a photographer this week. My friend Sharon and I have been collecting images for the end of the week slideshow. Next week we will have another round of VBS. The kids will probably stay home with Jory, but I will teach the Pre-K class with my dear friend Patti.
We’ve been out in the garden of course. My mom found some treasures on clearance at a local nursery and plucked them up for our yard. The new plants all seem pretty happy in their new little home behind the garage. We’ve also been picking blackberries – well I’ve been picking them and the kids have been eating them. They have some pretty wicked thorns that are a pretty big deterrent for little hands.
In other news, my parents have officially purchased the property next to ours. They had their closing today. They will be tearing the house (and shed) down and donating whatever is salvageable to the Boy Scouts. Then we will care for the property (aka dig up all the daffodils, irises and grape hyacinths and replant them in my garden!). Yahoo! Glad the process wasn’t a huge headache.
Ok, so the kids movie is over, and dinner is calling my name, so I guess I’d better hop to it!

Birthday buddies

Yesterday was Alex’s 6th birthday. He and his little friend Hope share a birthday. So of course Cathy (the mama) and I had to have a joint birthday party at the lake. We had so much fun playing in the sand and water, eating caterpillar birthday cake and just hanging out.

And here’s a lucky shot of little Ben who was having trouble keeping up with the big kids. Next year, little guy…

Fancy hair day

Yesterday was fancy hair day in our house. I found a link to this blog, about how to do different hairstyles, and well we got a little creative.

Other stuff

So I finally sorted through all of the holiday weekend photos. I could easily post about 30, but I don’t feel like putting forth that much effort. So you get the two that sum up my weekend the best.
That one of the girls cracks me up every time. It might find it’s way into a frame.
Anyway. Other news. We put an offer on the piece of property next to ours. It’s an abandoned lot with a house that’s basically falling down. We’re planning on tearing the house down and maybe some day planting an orchard over there. I can’t wait to go get over there and get started. I’ll know more by Friday.

All that jazz

All sorts of crazy adventures to share from my last week. Including 250+ photos. I’ll try my best to share some of them over the next few days. We’ll see.
The craziness started on Wednesday night when we received upwards of 6 inches of rain in the night. Lots of rain = a yard full of water (which will eventually = tons of mosquitoes) but so far the bugs haven’t been too bad. I have a handful of pictures of my kids running through our yard full of knee-deep water around here somewhere.
Thursday morning Jory left to visit his brother in Missouri, I’ll let him blog about that. Thursday evening the girls new bed arrived. They’ve been having lots of fun climbing up and down and up and down. Now all that’s left in that room is the bedding (which I already have the fabric for) curtains (not sure where we’re going with that yet) and a few more pieces of artwork/photos and we’re golden.
Friday morning I took the kids out to the Boy Scout camp for the annual parade, which Alex participated in with Grandma and the girls stayed with me to cheer (and take pictures). We also spent some time exploring camp and swimming in the pool.
Saturday found us at the lake. Some of the boy scouts came over to borrow my parents beach as the landing spot for their jet skis. Saturday evening, after we had arrived home from the lake, Jory and his brother surprised me by showed up at our house unannounced.
Sunday was a flurry of church, hanging out with Jory and Jake (and taking more pics of them together) before Jake had to leave again and going to the church picnic.
Now instead of recovering from the insanity I’m frantically (ok, not that frantically) trying to get ready to West Virginia for some quality time with my dad and the kids.

A day at the races

On Saturday Jory and I took the kids to Nelson Ledges Road Course over in NE Ohio. My friend Cathy and her dad were both driving so we went to watch, and hang out with the pit crew. The girls had fun playing with Cathy’s kids (Hope and Ben) Alex actually watched quite a bit of the racing, and Jory made himself right at home with Cathy’s family and crew – playing with all the kids and “helping” the pit crew. So we had a very fun time and we can definitely see ourselves at more races in the future.
Jory “helping” the crew

The smile says it all…

New Room

The girls new room is coming along nicely. My mom and I sat down this week with her fabric bins and pulled out this color palette that is loosely based on some artwork that I had. We found the perfect fabric at JoAnn’s to make their new bedding with. All that’s left now is curtains, and we’re good.

The parachute pics

So we managed to get out yesterday and play with the parachute I borrowed from the church. I was worried that it wouldn't be that fun with only 4 of us. Clearly I was wrong.

Enjoy!

Ps. I snapped a pic of the girls in their new room, so you could savor the pink-ness. Sadly my photo editing program won't let me resize it. Oh well. You'll just have to tune in later to see if I managed to sweet talk Adobe into fixing my photo for me...

More insane summer adventures

It wouldn’t be summer without its share of insanity now would it? So here’s a peak inside this weeks insanity.
My mom’s cherry tree has put out a bumper crop of cherries again this year. So we’ve made several excuses to go visit so we can steal some – I mean, help with the harvest. I have enough cherries in my freezer to last all winter, but sadly am contemplating my next date with the tree. It also means I have enough to share. Let me know if you want some.
So I mentioned that we bought bunk beds for the girls. Which means that I’m sucked into this process called “make the room look great in anticipation for the new bed”. Starting with new paint. Pink - melted strawberry ice cream meets pepto bismal – pink. Jory hates it. (I can’t honestly say that I’m surprised, being raised with 2 brothers, he’s just not that crazy about all things girly). Anyway. Since I have a while until the beds actually arrive, I have time to think about what else to do with the room. New curtains, new pics for the walls, bedding. Sigh. Trying to think of something cute but not too in-your-face-little-girl-ish. No Strawberry Shortcake (sorry Louisa) or Barbie or princess (gag). Thinking about pairing the pink with something sandy colored, ecru, maybe a touch of cool blue… Maybe a little bit of vintage fabrics… I have time to think.
I got to baby sit over the weekend. Okay Eva’s pushing 2 ½ so she’s not exactly a baby, but she was still cute. She followed the big kids around, and they watched over her. So sweet. So fun to remember “being little” and appreciate how far we have come. So glad to give her back when the day was done. Yes, my friends as much fun as it is to snuggle cute sleepy little ones, I am so glad to be through with that stage. Independence is a marvelous thing.
P.S - I finally managed to track down a parachute for the photo wall project that I’ve been working on at the church. I even managed to bring it home with me so I could get in some “extra practice”. So watch out for pics of happy kids with a big parachute that might make their way over here if I ever get my act together.

So much fun

The last few days have been rather packed in our house. Let’s see if I can remember all things fun.
Louisa has returned from her first camping trip with Grandma. She went with my mom to southern Ohio to camp in the Hocking Hills region, then continued on to my grandmother’s house in West Virginia for a little visit and a bridal shower. She apparently had a great time, because she keeps spouting random memories and rules about camping.
While she was gone, Jory and I took the other two to Ann Arbor, MI for a little shopping. We picked out some new bunk beds for the girls at the Ethan Allen gallery, then hit up the Archiver’s (scrapbooking), Motor City Harley Davidson, and of course the Ikea. It was slightly odd to have a fun family outing without Louisa. Hopefully she’ll like the beds we picked out.
Yesterday I took the kids to Columbus to visit my college pal Cathy and her kids. We hadn’t gotten together since college, so it was wonderful to catch up while our kids played. We had so much fun. The kids got along famously (big surprise) and we chatted about anything and everything. We already planned our next two play dates – one of Cathy’s car races in late June and of course a joint birthday party for Hope and Alex at the lake.

It’s summer!

Summer has officially arrived in our neck of the woods. 2 weeks ago it was in the mid 60’s. Today it is currently around 90. It’s about time! We’re ready to start enjoying our favorite summer time activities.
I had a nice little girl’s weekend this weekend. My mom and I met some of our scrapbooking buddies at the lake (with NO KIDS) and we plugged away on our scrapbooks. Mine is sadly out of date and one of my goals for the summer is to be caught up through February by the time I have to start school again.
We’re still working on our garden. My first big project for the summer is nearly complete. I turned a “problem area” of my yard – an area that had a few flowers and a bunch of weeds that were hard to mow - into a proper garden with a brick divider, mulch, a few new plants and best of all – no weeds! I’m still waiting on some lamb’s ear that my mom promised me in order to pronounce the area “done for now”. One of these days I’ll go out and take some pictures.
Last Friday was Alex’s end of the year program with his group of friends from Capable Kids. It was fun to see the fruits of all their hard work. We got to see a slide show with pictures from all the little classes, and see some of their little art projects. Then each class preformed a few songs.
Oh and I almost forgot. I have a new nephew. Jason, Vangie, and Levi are thrilled to welcome little Victor Lance into their family. He was born on Saturday, and is apparently doing just fine.

Stuff and a kid funny.

First off before I forget, happy anniversary to my sweet husband! Today is our 7 year anniversary. I love you!
Anyway. We had a good weekend. We went to the lake and visited with our dear friend Cathy, who was in from Illinois. It was not quite warm enough to be outside, so we kept our selves entertained with the normal lake games (aka beanie baby fights), and a trip to the outlet mall (which was dangerous as always).
The girls have had their eyes on the garden this spring. They have taken a particular interest in all things blooming, and what is about to bloom. Every time we step out into the yard, they always run to check on the progress on the buds of our irises and the roses (which finally sprung forth this morning – yippee!).
I may have mentioned the diaper issue before, but our girls have had the worst luck with staying dry at night. Nearly 20 months after they gave up diapers during the day neither girl could stay dry for more than 2 nights in a row. Not sure what’s up with that. Anyway. Louisa has finally managed to break free. She has completed 10 dry nights in a row, which means that she gets to go camping with Grandma. Even though I think she may have had an accident in the night. Annie on the other hand has not had more than one or two since we got back from vacation 2 weeks ago.
Something kind of cool. Last week I got an email from a friend at church who needed photographs of happy kids wearing cheerful clothes to decorate the new children’s ministry wing at church. She asked if I could snap off a few of my kids to hang up. I plan to try and get a few shots of some of our little (and big) friends from church to round out the collection. Hopefully I can share those when we’ve figured out which ones will go up. (If not, I suppose you’ll just have to go in and see them yourself!)
And I almost forgot the funny. When talking to Cathy about our garden, I was trying to get the girls to tell her what we had growing. I prompted the girls with “it starts with an I…”(meaning iris). Annie pipes up “I know Mommy! An Ipod!”

Outings

Well it wasn’t New Orleans, but we had a pretty fun outing over the weekend. We took the kids to Maumee Bay State Park to play at the beach. Even though the temperature was only in the lower 70’s, the kids still had fun getting wet and sandy. We had fun watching (and shivering).

This time with photos...

As you can see, I managed to find the camera.
Too many good ones to pick from, so I’ll just throw out a few. I might get to more later, we’ll just have to see.
So here’s Louisa climbing Grandma Peterson’s tree.

A lucky shot of Annie playing ball with her brother.

And this one of Alex was his idea.

Home again, home again

Our great adventure is over, and we are home safely (if not reluctantly). We had so many fun adventures together as a family, it’s hard to remember everything. I’m sure Jory will have to chime in and add parts of the story that I left out.
So here goes. Our adventure started last Tuesday with us leaving early and driving all day to get to Joplin MO in time to eat dinner. We spent some time hanging out with Uncle Jake, and went swimming in the hotel pool. We completed our journey on Wednesday, arriving at the Peterson ranch in time for dinner. Thursday – Sunday we spent hanging around the ranch. The kids went swimming (in a livestock feeding bin), played with Papa’s cars, and just ran themselves ragged while we kicked back and relaxed.
Our real adventure started on Monday, we drove to Las Cruces, NM to visit Jory’s favorite authentic Mexican restaurant (YUM!), and let the kids run off some steam on the campus of NMSU. It was really hot and windy, so we retired to our hotel rather early.
Tuesday we made a long trek from Las Cruces to right outside of San Antonio, TX. We had planned on going to Big Bend Nat’l Park, until we realized it was 6 hours out of the way.
Wednesday we went in to San Antonio. We went to the Alamo – which was amazing and beautiful. We were pleasantly surprised to find out the Alamo is not set in a dry dusty wasteland (like in the John Wayne movie) but rather in a beautiful (and humid) garden with trees and flowers and fountains. We also went down to the river walk area, which was also a pleasant surprise. Lots of fountains, 3 levels of shops and restaurants, and of course lots of trees and flowers. It was absolutely beautiful. We had lunch at the Hard Rock Café on the walk, which was definitely a highlight.
Thursday we found ourselves in the Houston area, looking for Johnson space center. Which we found, but it was closed and we didn’t want to wait for it to open. So we drove south to Galveston Island and got out to look at the gulf, we could have spent a lot of time there, but we had to get going. From there we drove along coastal Texas to Louisiana (a new state for me!), where we continued our trek along the gulf. We took a scenic highway through swamps and marshes. We saw lots of hurricane / storm damage and a few alligators.
Friday we drove into New Orleans. After a fiasco that surrounded a certain Harley store, we wandered into the French quarter, which was awesome. We ate lunch at a restaurant with a history dating back to 1788 – the food was to die for. Then we took a carriage ride through the city and learned lots of local history. It was really hard to tear ourselves away, but we had lots of miles left to go. So we got back in the car and drove ourselves to Mississippi.
Saturday was spent mostly watching the world go by. We did have a brief adventure at a park in Mississippi, but mostly we just put miles under our belt. We stopped outside of Chattanooga, TN for the night.
Sunday we completed our journey, arriving home in time for dinner. We passed the miles by thinking back over the fun adventures we’d had and plotting out future family road trips (Maine is totally calling…).
So it was a long trip, but we totally could have spent another week exploring the Mississippi – Ohio corridor that we neglected in the interest of time. The kids did awesome. It was good. Real life is such a let down.
(Don’t worry, pictures to come. I have to find the camera first.)

Updating

Pushing the pause button on life to give a little update.
Nothing real exciting happening in these parts.
Going to New Mexico to visit with Grandma and Papa. Should be fun. Looking forward to some time to just goof off with my kids and Jory. Take lots of pictures, maybe do some hiking, and lots of playing. Holy cow does it take a lot of work to get my family ready to take a long vacation.
The last few days Jory has been attending a motorcycle class in the evening after work. He’s been really enjoying it. My mom has been hanging out with us while he’s at class to help fill the void and to give me another adult to talk to.
School is good. 18 days left. Planning on having school while we are on vacation. Let me tell you how interesting it was trying to plan a whole bunch of lessons that will travel. I think I did all right though. I guess we’ll see.
The kids are driving me crazy. They are so crazy excited to get in the car and go. Tearing around the house. Impersonating Tasmanian devils. Screaming. Needing to be outside. Mama busy with details and lists. Trying to ignore mayhem.

Beautiful babies

What can I say. My kids are cute.

The one of Annie, well... like mother like daughter right?

Crazy times

I totally need to be working on “more important” things right now, but screw it. Sometimes you just need to make unimportant things a priority right? That’s me right now. Screw the schoolwork, I’m blogging.
So what’s new. Lots. It is warm and springy in our neighborhood. We have been spending as much time outdoors as we possibly can. Last week it was all about running errands and visiting all our favorite parks. This week it has been all about the garden. I summoned the courage to go and “relocate” (aka steal) some of the mulch that someone dumped on abandoned lot next to us. Then with my mom’s help we also relocated some irises and daffodils (since mine apparently became someone’s lunch) from that lot.
Okay, I have a question. Does anyone know about cardinals? We have a male that has continuously been attacking our sliding door for well over a week now. I’ve seen him with a female, so I’m wondering if they have a nest somewhere (probably in the big oak behind my house) that he feels he needs to defend. So here’s the question. Short of posting Louisa on the porch to scare him away every time he comes over, what can I do to get this bird to leave us alone? Mom suggested putting a picture of an owl up, which I haven’t tried yet. Other suggestions?
In other news, school is going well. We’re getting close to the end of the year. Close enough that I circled our last day on our number chart and we are counting down. Still counting by 10’s until we reach it, but getting closer. The end is in sight. This week we are learning about money – different ways to make certain quantities and such. Also talking about plants – an obvious choice as we are out in the garden this week.

Happenings

I can’t believe it’s been 2 weeks since my last post. I’m lame, I know. Don’t remind me.
Life here in these parts is typical. The weather has warmed up nicely. It’s been in the low 70’s for the last few days. Which has been really nice. We spent most of Saturday outside cleaning up the yard, and splashing through all the standing water in the corner of our yard.
But now Annie and I have the flu. Achy, runny nose, coughing 100+ temperatures, the whole works. We’ve watched enough PBS to last us for years. I’m hoping we can shake this thing soon. I keep trying to give it to Alex, but he doesn’t seem to want it.
Speaking of Alex, he’s still hard at work on his planet project. We have the whole solar system hanging from his ceiling. I think that he wanted to make the correct number of moons to hang with each planet, until he found out that Jupiter has something like 47. But he’s learned an amazing amount of information during this project, which has been really cool.