A Kansas City weekend

We spent last weekend in Kansas City.  We bought the older 2 kids each a refurbished Nintendo DS.  Alison has been wanting one for several years.  They needed headphones for school, so we started with that present...of course their reaction is not what we expected, but they really were excited and we definitely got our money's worth out of them.

Second best thing we did= took Colin's carseat on the plane.  The tornado was contained and with fruitsnacks and the iPad, he was a happy camper.  He actually slept on the plane too and I got to read an entire book!

The kids really are troopers when we travel.  Everything went smoothly, but it was still a long day.  When we got to Kansas City, we headed over to our friend Lydia's house for a little high school reunion.

Picture courtesy of Alison:

Alyson and Brett, Ben and me, Lydia and Kyle, Brett and Diana

All of our kiddos, with 2 more on the way!

I love the look Colin is giving Courtney in this picture.  He was in love with her and hilariously called her 'Park Mint' the entire time.  It didn't matter how many times we said Courtney, he still called her Park Mint.

It didn't take long for Ben and I to feel old this night.  Alison was the oldest of the crew and while we're done having kiddos, everyone else was in the middle of baby-ness.  However, I am so thankful to have friends still having babies.  I really loved being able to serve my friends; to hold their babies while they ate and sweep the floor while they rested.  I've been in the 'sleep deprived - spit up all over my shirt- constant crying baby' shoes before and it was nice to step into different shoes and be the person helping.

Lydia, me and Diana.

We have a picture just like this of us in college.

Saturday morning, the kids played in the White's unfinished basement, Lyd and I sat and talked and the boys played video games.  It was so refreshing for me!  

We had lunch at Fritz's, a train restaurant. A train delivers your food and the kids were in complete awe.  Plus you got to call in your order on a phone and they had kid shows playing on a TV.  It certainly was a treat for our kids who don't eat out much.

Colin and Courtney waiting for lunch

The last time we were together with the Whites, we were on a trip in Mackinaw Island and Alison was just learning to walk.  They generously let us stay with them a few nights and it was so fun to see our kids together.

 

After lunch, we met Elizabeth and Kent at Lego Land. 

Eli was in heaven.  

He was in a trance building at this table and I'm sure he could have stayed there all day.

The only thing that pulled him away was this huge play area.  While the kids were having the time of their life, I won most negligent mom award.  Alison assured me she would keep an eye on Colin, but must have forgotten because she came running out alone after about 10 minutes.  I panicked and found Colin stuck in the middle of the play area.  He was too little to climb over a huge block, but had been trying his hardest for probably 10 minutes.  There was a sweet little girl trying to help him, but she too was too small.  Even the other girls mother was trying to help...all making me look really bad.  Good news is, Colin thought he was awesome and kept saying "I can do it mommy!"...not even phased at being stuck. 

Ben took Alison on this ride twice and Elizabeth took Eli.  I'm so very proud of them!  I couldn't even watch it twirl without feeling nauseous, so they win points in my book.

We spent Saturday and Sunday afternoon hanging out at Nana and Granddaddy's house and ate lots of ice cream :)

Elizabeth also took us on a little shopping trip and did a good job of spoiling us.

This week

 

2nd week of homeschool and the kids have adjusted to the new routine beautifully.  Colin has done a great job staying quiet while we work and will sometimes sit at his little table and draw while we're in school.  That has been the most surprising to me; I thought for sure he would be loud and destructive, but I'm thankful to be wrong.

I've already seen so many blessings from homeschooling.  I love that reading time looks like this:

If they had been in public schools, both would have missed 2 days because of "snow" and colds.  But we were able to continue our work even with some sniffles and flurries.

We also made a trip to Williamsburg to the Yankee Candle village.  We have been trying to get here since before Christmas, so it was big deal to finally make it happen.  Alison earned a gift certificate while in school and has been anxious to use it.  So here she is, making a wax hand:

This is how excited Eli was about the event:

 

And then daddy found the candy factory part of the village and a smile appeared.

 

It was a good week and I'm ready for a few more solid days of school before we head to Kansas.

1st week of homeschool

Sunday night, Ben and I set up the school room in the "sitting room" (aka random room off our bedroom that was never used).  We had talked about school room plans for months, but with the holidays and weeks of passing around colds, it didn't actually happen until the night before school was starting.  The kids were very excited about having their own desks; I didn't think Eli would care, but I think it's made school a little more real for him.

Monday morning, Alison was as excited as Christmas morning.  She was dressed and at her desk before 8 am!  She had this dress set aside for weeks to wear on her first day of homeschool.  She said it was going to be her uniform (daddy wears a uniform everyday, so she would too) but it only lasted 1 day.

 

It was a good week.  It was hard, but a good hard, if that makes any sense.  It was hard coming off of 2 weeks of colds and doing absolutely nothing, to a new schedule and routine.  We jumped into working on chores and behavior on top of school and extra activities.  The things that were challenging, were good things to work on and I know won't be challenging soon.  We'll get in the groove of this schedule, it will just take some time.  However, I was exhausted.  A new tired hit me and I know the kids were feeling it too.  

Proof: Eli fell asleep in his snack bowl on the way to the Y.

The best advice I got before starting school, was to set a schedule but do not assign specific times.  Thankfully, this person knew me well enough that I would do that and knew that it would only take an hour for the whole schedule to crumble and I would be discouraged.  We started school between 8 and 9 each morning and got everything done for our scheduled day without stressing about being 5 minutes late.  By Thursday, I came upstairs to get dressed and found the kids had done their morning chores and started school all on their own without me telling them a thing.  See?  Good hard.  The hard work of training them was good and paid off.

I was so thankful that the schedule I concocted actually worked and went pretty smoothly.  In the morning, Alison does language arts, math, science and social studies on a computer program.  While she does that, I work with Eli on letters, numbers and 'Before 5 in a Row'...it's a literature study that I did with Alison in preschool.  You read one book every day for a week, and do different activities that go along with that book.  One day we talked about the art the book used for illustrations and then made watercolor/collage pictures.  The great thing is, Alison joined us for art time and they had fun painting together.  Alison made a picture of Elsa's castle and Eli painted monsters eating snowflakes (it was supposed to be snow themed).

The set up of our room has worked really well.  I love having the couch for our reading times, I write down Eli's work on the easel and the shelf holds all of our supplies.

I also have on the shelf, boxes of things for them to do when their done with school.  There's things to craft or word search books or building paper airplanes or extra books to read.

This week, we also had a piano lesson, played basketball at the Y and went to the library.

 

One afternoon, Alison did a Pilates for kids video while the boys napped.  She got really into it and it cracked me up watching her exercise.

When I asked the kids how they were liking homeschool, they had all positive things to say.  Eli said that he likes that he gets to do more things.  Alison said that she likes that it's quieter, there are less distractions, she can get her work done quicker and she gets to have lunch with me everyday.  I was most surprised by Eli's answer because I didn't feel like we were really doing a ton.  Looks like there was a lot more playing going on at that expensive preschool than I thought, and I already thought there was a lot.

Notice Colin wasn't in any of these pictures?  Colin has always had a different rhythm than the other 2 and often sleeps later in the morning and takes a good nap in the afternoon.  Most mornings he ate breakfast at the Elmo table in the school room and then watched Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood in another room until we were done.  It worked for this week and I'm hoping it continues.

When a tornado hits a light bulb

Our kids never cease to keep us on our toes.  Take, for example, when picky eater Eli decides to put pomegranates on his pizza and ate the entire thing.  Guess I need to start thinking outside of the box when I feed my kids.

But the real reason for this post is more than pomegranate pizza.  You see, the tornado hit a light bulb this past week...a verbal light bulb.  And it's scary.  And exhausting.

I've never been one to buy into the new age child development theories.  I guess I couldn't even tell you solid truths about these theories, I just hear other mommy friends say things like "the book says that this week my child's brain is developing color recognition, and that's why they are suddenly so hungry."  But theory or no theory, we did witness a crazy thing with Colin.  He woke up one night at 1 am.  It's not typical for him to wake up, so when I heard him, I got up to check on him.  Except, he wasn't crying, he was just wide awake talking.  When I stepped in his room, he said, "I sit in rocking chair momma."  Clear as day.  He couldn't sleep and he wanted me to rock him and he has never before spoken a full sentence in that clarity before.  It was like a light bulb switched in his brain at 1am that night and it hasn't turned off since.  It was crazy!  He was up for 2 hours that night just talking and now there is a constant running commentary coming from his mouth.  You pick him up from his crib and he tells you he was sleeping and then asks what each person is currently doing (i.e. he wants to know what he missed out on). 

Now, on to too many videos.  Blogger is being a booger and won't let me put spaces in between so I'll put notes of the videos first.

 Here's a glimpse of the new Colin:

1.  Ben was home for almost 2 weeks over the holiday's and Colin LOVED him getting him up

2.  Every night, I tell the kids to set the table.  Eli sets out forks and Alison sets napkins.  But Colin can't stand being left out and will throw out random utensils.  This particular night, he marched over to the butter dish, scooped up a big glob of butter, sat down at the table and ate it.

3.  Turning on a movie and before it even started Colin was chattering.

"Oooh!  Awesome!"

"I watch Toy Story momma"

"It's coming.  The movie is coming on."

"I can't see it.  Turn it on momma."

p.s. love how he says Eli

4. I was not prepared for life with 2 boys.  They made up a game of baseball using strainers, a plastic strawberry and an oven mitt.

Every night he takes his socks off his feet and puts them on his hands and this is how we find him in the morning.

 

His reaction when I took away the butter.  Ben convinced me to give it back because he needs the extra calories.

Eating the butter.  Apparently it goes well with nachos.

Wearing a basket on his head while eating kielke.

The stories of Colin could go on forever.  I think you just have to be around the tornado for an hour to fully appreciate his velocity.

Colin William 2.5

 

Christmas 2014

The kids were jumping on our bed at 6:30!  I actually heard them up before that, but they were nice enough to wait a little longer to wake us up.  I feel like this was the first year they were all very excited about Christmas and it made it so much more fun.

We opened stockings on our bed.

Alison finally got her longed for fake glasses...apparently it's all the rage in 2nd grade.

Eli's excitement over every little thing was worth getting up before the sun.

 

We finally woke Colin up so he didn't miss all the fun.  He was not ready to be awake, but he perked up once he started opening his stocking.

 

Then we headed downstairs for tea pasteries and presents...and most importantly, coffee!  We hadn't put out a single present, so the kids were excited to see everything under the tree.

 

The Boomer's handed down a Cinderella castle to us, complete with a pony pulling carriage and several princess barbies.  I kept it hidden until Christmas morning and found it to be the best Christmas idea.  Having a toy already set up and ready to play with gave the kids something to immediately do while we got food and coffee ready.  It also gave them something to do while others were opening presents and while we were getting other toys set up. 

Alison and Eli asked for "shot guns".  They really meant nerf guns, so we got all the kids a different gun and thought it would be fun to have "fights".  Well, these little guns were a big lesson for these parents.  Ben opened Colin's and playfully shot him in the tummy...little did we know these suckers are much stronger than we anticipated!  Ok, no shooting people.  He got out Eli's and shot it into the kitchen and it nearly flew through the house!  Ok, no shooting in the house.  We took Alison's outside and spent the rest of the day searching through the neighbors yards looking for the bullets.  Finally, we set up a target for them and let them take turns shooting toward the front door.  However, now Colin walks around saying, "I shoot you!".  I'm praying he doesn't say this around anyone else!

We spent the rest of the day playing :)

Ben helping Alison make a bracelet

 

Boys playing with fireman playdough

 

And watched a Mickey Christmas movie.

 

"I upside down"

 Ben spoiled me this year.  He got me winter running clothes and a suspension training system.  I have really been wanting this to have at home so I can workout even in the midst of homeschool and kids sickness, but it can be very pricey.  Ben found a great deal and set it up for me in our sitting room.  I was so excited; I felt like a kid again on Christmas.  Alison was pretty jazzed too, maybe because I was so excited.  She spent quite a bit of time that day trying to figure out the exercises.  I think this Christmas really set me up for some great discipline techniques.  Disobey in our house and I'll shoot you with a nerf gun and make you do some exercises until you say your sorry.

Ben and I took turns going for a run and then cooked dinner.

I caught Eli playing with the Barbie house while we were cooking.  Don't worry, I think he was planning on the transformers invading the castle soon.

 

Alison colored while she waited.

 

 Best Christmas present!

No holiday is complete in this house without some amazing food.  We had prime rib, yorkshire pudding, braised white beans and greenbean casserole.  Aren't you sad you weren't here?

For dessert we had apple pie and homemade vanilla bean ice cream, which was beyond amazing.

 

We had a great Christmas and I think presents were spot on this year.  The kids have continued to play with their new things and really enjoyed them.  Now if just had some ice cream left, everything would be perfect.