While Aaron's Away

I told Ivan and Adelia no shoes on the trampoline.

Aaron was gone on a business trip to Dayton, Ohio on Monday and Tuesday. He'll write about that later, and it will probably be a lot more interesting than this post. We were stuck at home in the blizzard. No. Fun. I wish we could say we did something amazing, but other than a quick trip to WalMart for milk, we didn't leave the house.

I finally broke down and shoveled the walks myself in case anyone needed to get to our front door.

What is it about looking out the window at the snow coming down that makes me want to curl up in a ball on the couch and not move until Spring? If I didn't have three children to entertain, I think I'd spend the entire winter reading books. I just finished Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay a few days ago. I was really disappointed in it. It was dumb. Huge let down. I didn't feel like the author had any talent with words whatsoever. The entire book felt like a word vomit. No inspiring quotes, or beautiful descriptions, not even lovable characters, or a good plot. Nothing. It was a waste of however many hours I spent reading it. Right now I'm rereading How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown, and I'm much happier. Scientific memoirs aren't usually my thing, but it's a really interesting and funny book.

Recently in this pregnancy I've had a thing for Chocolate Cheerios. Yum. So one of the nights Aaron was gone, that's what we had for dinner. The second night he was gone, we got spoiled, and Aaron's mom came over and made a delicious chicken pasta dinner, and helped me bathe kids and put them to bed. It was wonderful.

That same night, I also hosted book club at my house, which was a good distraction for Aaron being gone as well. For the month of January we all read humorous children's authors and then talked about them when we got together. One of the topics that came up was children's poetry, like Shel Silverstein. I like Shel Silverstein as well, but at our last library visit the kids checked out a big book of Jack Prelutsky poems, and we've been having a blast reading them. In fact, we're working on memorizing one to recite for Valentine's Day. It's called My Mother's Chocolate Valentine, it goes like this:

I bought a box of chocolate hearts,
a present for my mother,
they looked so good I tasted one,
and then I tried another.

They both were so delicious
that I ate another four,
and then another couple,
and then half a dozen more.

I couldn't seem to stop myself,
I nibbled on and on,
before I knew what happened
all the chocolate hearts were gone.

I felt a little guilty,
I was stuffed down to my socks,
I ate my mother's valentine...
I hope she likes the box.

So far, Linc has the title and the first stanza memorized. And Ivan is funny, because he has a harder time memorizing the exact words, but he's got the main idea down, so when it's his turn to practice, he usually says something like..."I bought a box of chocolate hearts, a present for my mother, and then I ate them all." And he laughs and laughs. My little comedian.

For Christmas Lincoln got this set of Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. We have been loving them! Linc likes to come sit on my bed, or next to me on the couch during quiet time and read me stories. He doesn't consider it school. :) The other day, he was so excited to read me one he thought was funny, that he came and stood next to me while I did the dishes and read to me while I worked, so I could hear him over the running water. Frog and Toad are classic and enjoyable for kids and well as adults. We've gotten all the way through three of them. I wish there were more because I'm not sure what to move onto once we're done reading these.  Any suggestions?

Yesterday I was sick, sick, sick. I stayed in bed the whole day. It's been a long time since that's happened. Aaron was home from his trip by then and thankfully was willing to stay home and take care of the kids. He even taught preschool for me, and drove the boys to clubs. He's pretty much the most amazing person I know. I don't know how I tricked him into marrying me, but I sure am glad I did! :)

Magna Tiles Are Cool Because...

I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home

I love when Aaron comes home. Not just because he'll wrestle with the kids, but that helps. :) Everyone loves Aaron, including me. And I love that all of our kids want to be just like him. This week Adelia in particular was showing some of her Daddy genes.

She wanted to dress like him...

And build cool towers like him...

Yes, this is a five-sided structure that was almost as tall as she was by the time she ran out of squares, and she built it all by herself while I did a reading lesson with Lincoln.

Also, if Aaron is riding in the car with us, she wants him and only him to undo her buckles and get her out of the van. She prefers him to read her stories, and goes to him when she gets hurt. Daddy's girl much?

N is for Nest, Night, Noodles, and Necklace

This past week, the kids and I learned about the letter N for preschool. It was a fun letter, and I learned that there are a lot of cool N activities out there. We didn't get to do everything I would have liked to do, but what we did do was great.

As I mentioned in my last post, we have been stuck inside and you can almost feel the pent up energy of my kids radiating throughout the house. I knew that worksheets, handwriting, etc. were not going to be an option this week. We needed something a little more fun and interactive.

We started out as usual, with a letter N craft, making N's with nests. Each of the kids did their N a little bit differently, but I thought they all turned out great. To go along with this activity we read the book In the Nest by Anna Millbourne. We talked about birds and the kinds of materials they build their nests out of. And of course, I wished for the zillionth time that it was spring so we could go on a nature walk and try to find bird nests. But since that isn't possible, this book is the next best thing.

More appropriate for the season, was our reading of Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buchner. This is a really fun book that makes the kids laugh. We talked about nighttime, and what we do at night. Then we compared that with some of the funny things that snowmen do at night. The we made puffy paint snowmen. I made the puffy paint myself, it was super easy. One part Elmer's glue mixed with one part shaving cream. I only made a cereal bowl full, but it was WAY more than we needed to make four snowmen, so be aware of that if you decide to try our the recipe. It has a cool texture and was fun to paint with. We hung them up to dry over night and plan on adding some snowman accessories another day.

One morning we attempted to make structures out of spaghetti noodles and marshmallows, but the marshmallows I had in the cupboard were to old and stale, and the noodles kept snapping. I bought new marshmallows and left the kids to build with Grandma Swan while I ran to a doctor's appointment. They had a great time. Grandma taught them how to build and identify different shapes, triangles, rectangles, squares, parallelograms, etc. And they they built some really cool houses and other structures. I love Grandma School! :)

We also did some patterning with Cheerios while we made cereal necklaces. Adelia pretty much just ate her pile, but the boys really got into it. I used the multi-grain Cheerios so that there'd be some color variation for the patterning.

Grit My Teeth, Count My Blessing...Ready, Go!

I'm having a rough day. It's a tired/uncomfortable/claustrophobic pregnant lady meets extended periods of freezing temperatures and bad air quality meets cooped-up energetic 2, 3, and 5 year olds kind of a day. Not good. And that's the understatement of the year. 

My body hurts. I have reached the uncomfortable-no-matter-what stage of pregnancy. And only two months to go. Yippee. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to sleep, which I'm sure contributes greatly to my cranky mood and negative patience levels. I bet my kids are loving that they get to spend all-day, every-day with me. Psyche.

Fact: pregnancy makes me extremely claustrophobic in my own body. As a result my "personal bubble" is at least two feet wider than my normal, already pretty large one. It's more than I can bare to be climbed on, sat on, touched while eating dinner, in-your-faced, clung to, cried on, used as a tissue, or even hugged too many times in one day. Ha, ha, ha...and I have three children five and under, heaven help me...or them, as the case may be.

But tonight, even though I'm ready to bawl my eyes out because my husband is off Elder's Quoraming and my children refuse to stay in their bedrooms and go to sleep, and I've threatened them with every single negative consequence I can think of....Tonight, I am going to try and focus on some blessing and things I'm grateful for, because if I don't, I might scream. So here it goes.....

-This child took a nap today. (This is not a picture of her napping, it's a picture of her sleeping the other night. I didn't want to risk waking her today just to get a picture of her napping.) This is indeed a tender mercy. I doubt Adelia has taken a nap for me in the last month and a half. But miraculously, somehow, today she slept. I didn't have to do anything extra to get her to do it, either. In fact, I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that she's just going to sit in her room and play every day while she's supposed to be napping. So today I read to her, and sang to her as usual, and left her in there to play with her dolls, figuring she'd have quiet time. Blissfully, she fell asleep.

-This child pooped in the potty yesterday. Maybe you don't understand the full magnitude of this event, let me explain. I have been trying to potty train Ivan since he turned 3, last March. So, we're going on what? Ten months? During that ten months he has pooped in the potty a total of three times. Yes, you read that right THREE. That includes yesterday. Can you see why I'm ecstatic? AND, although he didn't poop today, he didn't have an accident either. Huzzah! I bought him this Superman shirt as a reward for pooping in the potty. I also let  him stay up from nap time yesterday and play games on my phone. I want him to know that I am very happy with his accomplishment. I want to encourage a very swift repeat, and start forming a habit. That way, maybe...just maybe, I can avoid having three children in diapers when Oliver gets here. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

-This husband loves me. Which seems like it would be very hard to do as of late. Not only does he love me and put up with me, but he allows me to use him and his technological intelligences for my own selfish pleasures. In this picture, he is redoing our blog background, which is not as easy as it sounds, since I'm picky about what I want, and it requires him to rewrite some of the scripting on the page. Not something I could do for myself. And I am grateful for him, his abilities, and his willingness to use his abilities for his wife's sake. :)

-We are, and have been, healthy. Lots of friends and family members have been sick with one thing after another this winter, and so far *knock on wood* we have managed to avoid it almost entirely. And it's not because I've been good at disinfecting my house. Ha ha. My house. Oh boy, my house. We won't go there. We'll leave it at this: my house is not clean. The end. I took this picture from my driveway this morning. We've been having REALLY bad inversion for the last several....weeks? Normally you'd be able to see a beautiful field, and the snow capped mountains in the background. But not lately. We know lots of people with asthma and other breathing issues who are having a rough time with the inversion. Again, I am grateful we are healthy. I am grateful the inversion hasn't caused us any major problems. And I am also grateful that we recently replaced the air filter in our furnace, so hopefully most of this junk will stay outside.

Letter M: If You Give A Moose a Muffin

I love the book If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff.  So this week for Letter M I wanted to do a book theme surrounding that book. I miss doing book themed units, and even though this one wasn't as elaborate as I've done in the past (hey, give me a break, I'm a tired, ornery, pregnant lady!), it was still really fun to be doing a theme again.

We had to improvise on our letter craft a little bit, but I think they turned out cute, and you can still tell it's supposed to be a moose right?

Another activity I had Ivan do was a clothes pin matching number game. Basically there were cards for each number 0-10. At the top was a picture of a moose, in the middle was a certain number of muffins, and at the bottom were three numbers to choose from. Ivan had to look at each card and decide how many muffins each moose had, and then clip a clothes pin onto the correct number.

For the grand finale of M week, we made muffins. Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins to be exact. And they were very tasty. And surprisingly, even with all the "help" I had, they still turned out. 

Of course they had to lick the bowl clean.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup brown sugar or honey

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/ tsp salt

1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen work fine)

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

3 Tbsp oil 

Topping

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 375. Mix dry ingredients in bowl. Make a well in center. Add egg, buttermilk, and oil. Stir until moistened. Fold in blueberries.

2. In a separate bowl mix topping ingredients together.

3. Fill greased muffin cups 1/2 full with muffin batter. Sprinkle topping generously on top of each muffin.

4. Bake for 15 minutes. 

And, since we've been kind of cooped up all week and needed a change of pace, instead of lunch we had a tea party and served our muffins with bananas and oranges and Tang. It was the first tea party my kids had ever had, and they thought it was great.

Friday Fun Classes Start Again

 Some of the kids decided to curl up on a shelf to wait for the opening prayer and Pledge of Allegiance the signal the start of our day.

After a nice long Christmas break, our home school group started up their Friday Fun Classes again for our second session of the year. I am still teaching Lincoln's class first hour. My goal this go-around is to simplify. In other words, I am trying to come up with activities that are still educational and fun, but don't require as much prep time or money out of me. I think today went well.

I'm supposed to teaching ABCs/Early Reading. It's a little bit of a challenge for me because the class consists of a mix in ages of 4, 5, and 6 year olds. And there are about 18 kids in the class. So we have some who read fluently, and others who don't know their letter sounds. I generally try to shoot for reaching the kids that are somewhere in the middle.

Today we were doing the letter D, so I made this cool dragon fly game. Basically I printed out a bunch of simple words that started with D (Dad, dog, dim, etc.) on to dragon fly shapes, then glued the dragon flies onto a piece of poster board. Then I made up cards with each of the words on it. To play the game, I would give two kids each a fly swatter, then I'd choose a card and read it out loud. The first kid to find the dragonfly with the matching word on it and smack it with the fly swatter was the winner. The kids got really into it. And for the kids who couldn't read, I'd hold up the card and spell the letters out for them, so they could try and match. They did surprisingly well with this method, so everyone was able to play, and everyone was happy.

Since being pregnant, I always come home from Friday Fun completely wiped out. I fed the kids lunch and put the younger two down for naps, and told Lincoln that I was really really tired and needed to lay down. Next thing I know, he's crawling into the bed beside me and telling me that he's going to read me a story to help me rest. :) What a sweetheart.

I'm not sure how restful listening to the Jr. National Geographic book on storms was...but it was definitely the thought that counted. Thanks Linc.

One of the sections he read talked all about monsoons. So I mentioned to him that when I was pregnant with him, we lived in Arizona and got to experience a monsoon season there. When we were finished resting, I showed him some pictures of Aaron and Jake and Rob (Aaron's brothers-in-law) playing in the monsoons in Phoenix.

Later, after Lincoln had gone to bed, I was flipping through his notebook. He's recently started wearing  a backpack everywhere he goes and carrying a notebook and pencil inside of it. Every so often he'll pull out the notebook and take "notes". He started doing this all on his own, (though I think it might have been inspired by the Magic Tree House books he's been listening to on CD), and I am loving it. It's fun to go back and see what he considered worthy of jotting down. Anyway, so I was flipping through his notebook after he went to bed, and I saw this picture:

It made my heart happy.

I love my kids. And I like those rare moments when I can spend some one on one time with them, like I did with Lincoln today. Sometimes I wish I could clone myself, so their were three of me, so that I could give each of my kids the one on one time I feel like they need. Aaron and I try really hard to be good in this area of parenting, but so much of the time I feel like I fall short.

And here I go adding another child to the mix. As excited as I am, sometimes my head hurts to think about trying to split myself one more way.

Finishing Up

Today we put the finishing touches on our snowmen from last week. I thought they turned out cute.

Article of Faith 1 - Lincoln

After the first Sunday of the New Year, Lincoln came excitedly out of his new class, telling me that we had to go home right then and learn the first Article of Faith, because if he could have it memorized by the next Sunday his teacher would give him a treat. He was very intense about it. So we went home, and wrote down the first Article of Faith on a piece of paper and taped it up next to his bed, so he could read it and practice it whenever he wanted. Then throughout the week I would quiz him, or cover up different parts and have him repeat it back to me. By the next Sunday he was ready, and he passed it off.

His teacher told me later that she was very impressed. She said none of the other kids in the class had even remembered the challenge. True to her word, Monday night she dropped by with a frog cupcake for Linc. He was SOOOOOO excited. :)

L is for Lady Bug

Last week we did Letter L. We started with these cute L lady bugs. I followed a pattern I saw on Pinterest for this one, but I think if I ever do it again, I'll make the L black and the wings red and put the dots on the wings instead. But the important part is that the kids like it.

Another fun activity that Ivan and I did was Lady Bug counting and matching. I saw a similar game on Teacher Pay Teachers, but it was $2.00, so I opted to try my hand at making it myself in Word. Lady bugs are not hard to make using the shapes tools, just circles and half circles, pretty much. And Ivan got really into it. Even after a week, he's still asking to play it just about every day. We do different versions. Sometimes he lines all the lady bugs up in a row and then matches the numbers to them, and sometimes he lines up the numbers and matches the lady bugs. Either way, I'm glad he's counting and enjoying it.

I was going to have the kids do a paper plate lady bug craft, but then we had a snow storm and the kids really wanted to go outside and make a snowman. I wasn't up for it though, and the temperatures weren't really cooperating either, so I bargained with them and said we'd do a snowman craft instead of our lady bugs. The snowman craft has absolutely nothing to do with letter L, but I'm ok with it.

We used q-tips in white paint to make the snowmen look like they were made out of little pieces of snow. Once they dry we'll add hats and scarves and faces and all that groovy stuff.

The last thing we did for L week was to make our own lemonade. It was really easy. Basically you take a half a lemon, 2 Tbsp of sugar, and a cup of water and seal it up in a ziplock bag. Then you squeeze the lemon until it's juice mixes with the water and sugar. Then open up the bag and pour everything into a cup and enjoy. It's the perfect amount of lemonade for preschoolers too.

Catch Up

Yikes! Brand new year and I'm already behind. I have only one thing to blame it on...

I've been reading. :) I got a little bit of money for Christmas, and I spent just about all of it on books. You can never have too many books. When my sister-in-law was in town, she mentioned that she'd recently re-read Gone With the Wind, and how it had a lot more history in it than she remembered. A historical fiction romance that won a Pulitzer Prize? Yes please! I have always heard about Gone With the Wind, but had never read it or seen the movie, so really, other than the famous closing line, I knew nothing about the story. I decided it was a must read.  And now that I've finished it, I'll highly recommend it as a must read. So there. I'll give it 5 stars (out of 5) and put it up there with all of my favorite books.

The book is well written, and pretty deep in parts. It made me think, which I loved. I'll admit that Scarlett's character was really annoying to me at times, but I think that was the intention of the author. And it was really interesting to read about the Civil War from the perspective of the South. I've never done that before. I find that I want to re-read Uncle Tom's Cabin right this minute, so that I can compare and contrast them to my little heart's content. It would be more fun to do as a group though, any takers?

So after a wide open ending, I find myself sitting here debating whether or not to read the sequel, Scarlett, which is written by a different author. Usually I shy away from sequels or prequels written by different authors. And I can surely appreciate that Margaret Mitchell left the ending the way she did on purpose. It's more literary that way. But dang it! The female in me wants some closure! So whose read Scarlett? Is it worth my time? It is about 1000 pages, and I don't want to invest that much time into it just to read a crappy story so that the romance will end how I want.

(Looks cold out there hu? It is.)

Anyway, that's why I'm behind on my blog (and my laundry, and my house cleaning, and everything else). Other than my book, we haven't been up to a whole lot. Mostly we've stayed cooped up in the house because the weather had been below freezing. I have a hard time being motivated to do anything when I'm freezing. So here we've been.

The kids have been loving their mini trampoline. And I have been loving Adelia's hair when she jumps on it. :) I had all sorts of high hopes that the mini trampoline would mean the end of jumping on the couch. But no cigar. Now they like to jump off the couch onto the mini trampoline, or vice versa. Oh well. The good news is that they at least have some method of burning off their never ending energy.

Aaron and I got around to setting some New Year's Resolutions for the first time in about 3 years. I was proud of us!
-Have a baby (Krystal) (I wanted to start with one I KNEW would get accomplished, hehe)
-Daily family scripture study (we were pretty good last year, we want to be better this year)
-Pay off the van (very do-able if we can add some extra onto each payment every month)
-Save $1,200 (this is on top of what we already try to save for emergencies, retirement, and that sort of thing, we just want to have $1200 dollars lying around just to have it, without it having a predetermined purpose. We'll try to do it $100/month.)
-Read 8 books on my To Read list (Krystal) (I will read more than 8 books total, but some of them will be for book club, some will be for educational purposed and a lot of them will be out loud to my kids...the 8 in question are going to off of my To Read list, which has gotten rather long. 8 is also a bit of a low shot for me, but I tried to take into account that I'm going to have a new baby this year.)
-Read 3 books (Aaron)
-Print 2 Blog books (2010/2011)
-Grass! For our yard
-Get up at 6:00am (Aaron)

So there you go, our awesome goals. I'm already 1/8 of the way to my reading goal, and I think we've only missed 2 days of scripture study so far. Yay us.

The other day when quiet time was over, I went up to tell the boys they could come out and found this:

They had taken every single toy in the toy room (the closed door at the end of the hall you can see) and put it in a box, bag, or hat, and set it out in the hallway. They thought they were hilarious...me, not so much. I was to tired to make them do more than just set everything back in the toy room. But you better believe when Daddy came home they had to put everything away in it's right place before they could come down for dinner. Thank goodness for dads, eh?

I had a conversation with a friend one time in which I mentioned that I as going to the store again to get more construction paper, and how I had such a hard time keeping my kids in construction paper and glue sticks because they go through it so fast. I was met with a blank stare, and the remark that she never bought either of those things for her kids. Ok, so I'm the weird one, and my kids have pretty much free reign over certain craft supplies, while I sit back contented that they like to be creative. In my mind it's a trait worth encouraging. But lately this has been causing me two problems. #1 The paper is getting out of control, because we have so many different kinds and no place to put it. And #2 my children get very attached to their projects and don't like to throw them away, and I have no place for the many many many works of art they want to keep.

Aaron came to the rescue for problem #1. He spent a few hours Saturday morning building me a paper shelf. He's the greatest. (And he enjoyed using some of the new tools his parents gave him for his birthday.)

Aaron's sister Lisa gave me the idea of how to solve problem #2. I bought each child a thick three-ring binder. Every time a child does a project they want to keep, we three-hole punch it and put it in the binder. Then when the binder fills up, I will sit down with the child, and together the two of us will go through the binder and pick their favorite two or three pieces and toss the rest. I think the thickness of the binder will give them enough time to feel like they've saved their work long enough to do it justice, and that it will be a good skill to talk about how to get rid of old things to make room for new ones. I'm also hoping they'll be able to see how their skills are improving as they look back through the work they've done.

My mom came down to spend a day with us. I was glad she did so I could have someone to brave the fabric store with. (I HATE taking my kids to the fabric store, for some reason they are 20 times worse behaved in the fabric store than at any other store we go to, why is that?) She bought some really cute fabric to make Oliver a quilt with. And I kept trying to convince myself that I am ambitious enough to attempt to make a baby blanket. I have made one for all my other kids, and feel like I'll regret it if I don't make one for Ollie, but holy schmoly, I haven't sewn anything since I was pregnant with Adelia, and I'm not sure where the time, energy, or motivation is going to come from this time.

Lincoln made something really interesting during quiet time the other day, and although his art skills are about what you'd expect from a five year old boy, the idea behind it was really impressive, I thought.

This is a diagram of the ways humans write. Lincoln told me, "The box on top is a pencil and paper. The second box is they way the Egyptians write by scratching pictures into the wall. The third box is a feather, a bottle of ink and a piece of paper. The fourth box is a cell phone and a computer. The fifth box is a happy face because people like to write." I love this. And I have no idea where he came up with it. We've never talked about the evolution of writing in our studies.  It's definitely a good piece for the binder.

I mentioned that it's been cold, and that we haven't gone anywhere, and you saw the awesome picture of Adelia's hair. Mostly, Adelia's hair had run wild these last few days. But finally this morning, I was so tired of it all over her face and standing on end with static. We tried a new hair do. We'll call it "Princess Leia" I did her hair in two piggy tails, then braided them so their were two braids. Then I wound each braid around into a bun and held the bun in place with a white flower bow. It turned out really cute. And her hair stayed out of her face for a whole hour...until she ripped it out. Such is life.