Whitney’s Visit

I got to spend the day with one of my very favorite people.

Whitney and I lived on the same floor freshman year at BYU, and we became such good friends. So good in fact, that when she introduced me to her cousin, I decided to date and eventually marry him so that I could be related to Whitney…or something like that. ;) But seriously, I am so glad that I married into her family so that we have good reason to keep tabs on each other, and hang out when she comes into town.

 

Sunday we went up to Aunt Karen’s house for dinner with all the family members that live near enough to come. Karen and Whitney made us excellent food. And the kids played and watched frozen together while the adults chatted.

 

Then on Tuesday Whitney and her two cute girls came down to spend the day with us while Aunt Karen was at work. Adelia was SO excited to have some more girls around to play with, especially one that was just her age. We played dress-up, petted the chicks, and went outside and jumped on the trampoline and dug in the sand box. It was great to have some one-on-one with Whit to catch up on life. I wish she lived closer, or that she could stay forever. This once-a-year business is not enough!

Spring Has Sprung

Today is a glorious day. My apple tree is beautiful in bloom. My first attempt to grow spinach is a success so far. My peas are popping up nicely. And my favorite Linden tree is about to flower and make my back yard smell incredible. #ilovespring #garden

Puke

Sunday night Adelia was up every hour from 11:30-5:00 with the stomach flu. We finally just let her sleep in the hall by the bathroom door, because it was faster, and because we’d run out of clean sheets. (She never manages to use her puke bucket successfully.) Poor kid. She was pretty miserable Monday morning too. But by Monday afternoon she perked up…just in time for me to come down with it. Ugg. I don’t look as cute on my sick bed as Del does, so there will be no sick photo of me. (You’re welcome.) I was up all night Monday night, and pretty much confined to bed all day Tuesday. I’m very grateful that Aaron has a flexible job that allows him the ability to come home on days like this and take care of our family. Luckily, no one else seems to have caught the bug. And we are all doing much better.

Easter 2014

 

To celebrate Easter this year, we went up to Hooper the Saturday before. Gramma Tam helped the kidlets dye eggs. I think this might have been my kids’ first real experience with egg dyeing. They had a good time. Uncle Jackson and cousin Emree joined in on the fun as well. And Uncle Tanner did one egg before he had to go to work.

Aaron and Papa Kerry took the kids to the park for the afternoon. They had a blast. While they were gone, Mom and Juicy B and I put candy in the eggs, and hid everything out in the yard for the big egg hunt. Much fun was had. And the kids got way more loot than I will ever let them eat ;)

 

Then we had some delicious hamburgers with all the fixin’s, and chocolate milk shakes for dessert. MMMMMMmmmhhhhhh. Our trips to Hooper always go by too quickly. I wish it was closer to Springville.

 

Easter morning was really low key because we have 9:00am church. But I did manage to snap a quick picture of this gal in her adorable Easter dress.

 

 

And after church, we did the above family picture. It didn’t turn out as nice as I’d envisioned it would. But hey, a picture is a picture. We commemorated the event. It’s not a bad picture, it’s just not one I’m going to frame and hang on the wall or anything.

 

We are the meanest parents alive, and made our kids have lunch AND quiet time before we let them have their Easter baskets. Those were really low key too this year. Everyone got a book, some sidewalk chalk, and some candy. Yay!

 

Most importantly on this Easter Day, I’m grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ. I’m thankful that he knows me so well, and that because of him, I have this beautiful, crazy bunch that I get to be with for the rest of forever. Halleluiah! Amen.

Have Bike Will Travel

The Rest of the Flock

Yay! We got the rest of our chickens today. Two Black Sex-Links and two Rhode Island Reds. (The store didn’t have an Americaunas, and didn’t know if they would be getting any more in, and I didn’t want to take my chances. Besides, I saw the Reds and they were freaking adorable, so that was that.) Ivan’s is one of the black ones, he named it Thunder Storm. The other black one is Ollie’s and it’s name is Ravenclaw (I think also Ivan’s idea) because it’s all black except two of it’s claw-toes are orange. The Reds are mine and Aaron’s. We chose to name them after literary characters that had red hair. So mine is Pipi for Pipi Longstocking. And Aaron’s is Carrots for Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables (we thought Anne was a stupid name for a chicken, and Gilbert Blythe calls her Carrots in the book as a term of endearment, so we thought it was perfect.)
And there you have it folks, our chickens: Charlotte, Crab Apple, Thunderstorm, Ravenclaw, Carrots, and Pipi. My kids are ecstatic. Let the games begin! May the odds be ever in our favor.

Anything is School…And School Can Be Anything

For writing today, Lincoln wrote an informative piece about his new pet. He took most of the pictures himself, and was really excited to use real pictures on his project.

And, as promised, here is the Harry Potter Book Report in it’s entirety.


And I never got around to posting about the Science Class I taught the other week on Mollusks and Crustaceans. I read them a book about each, then we did a crossword puzzle, and a paper where we cut out pictures and sorted them under the correct categories. Then for our fun activity, I taped everyone’s four fingers together so they had claws like crabs, and had them eat their snacks that way. 


Also, we set a goal with Lincoln a little while ago, that if he read 1,500 pages we would buy him a book of his choosing. He was super excited about it. It took him about 10 days to meet this goal. Faster than I anticipated, I'll be honest. But he did it, and I was very proud of him. He and I went on a special trip to the book store, just the two of us, and I showed him where the chapter books were, and we spent about an hour and a half paging through books, and trying to decide on one that was just right.

 Finally he chose Geronimo Stilton The Journey Through Time. The Geronimo Stilton series is his new favorite series. Once he finished all the Magic Tree Houses, he asked the librarian to help him find another good series to read (while I was helping Ivan look something up in the computer, it made me laugh that Linc didn't want to wait for me, and went and found a librarian instead.) and she recommended this one. It's great. And there are about a million books in the series, so it should keep us going for awhile. Each book is about a hundred pages long (except The Journey Through Time, it's a special addition and is about 320 pages long), and it takes Lincoln about 45 minutes to read one. He's been going through about one a day for the last couple of weeks. They are cute and humorous, they have funny pictures, and use cool fonts for key words in paragraphs. I like them, Lincoln likes them, and Ivan even likes them when he can convince Lincoln to read one out loud to him.

For reading out loud, Lincoln is in the process of reading the first Harry Potter book to either Aaron or I. One of us listens to him read for 20-30 minutes each night. He is half-way through the book. I think the fact that we did it as a family read aloud first is really helping him. He doesn't have to spend a long time trying to figure out how to pronounce names and things, he can just read. We are trying to focus on vocab, and really encourage him to stop and ask what a word means if he doesn't know. This is going well I think.

We've made a small shift in Ivan's reading too. We've discovered that he prefers to read at night, as opposed to during the day. I think it's because at night both Aaron and I are home, so after we put Ollie and Del to bed, one of us can take Linc and the other can take Ivan, and we can listen to them read in a quiet place with no distractions. Whereas if we read in the daytime, it's me and all four kids, chaos everywhere, and lots of noise, and interruptions while Ivan is trying to read. The distractions frustrate him, until he flat out refuses to read anymore. It's a night and day difference (haha!) when we read at night. He's much more agreeable, reads more material at a faster pace, and enjoys it when he's done. We've made more progress in the last couple of weeks of night reading, than we have in the past couple of months of day time reading. So I think we'll stick to night time reading for Ivan.

Smörgåsbord

 

Ollie is still not walking. But he’s very creative in his methods of getting around. He LOVES this trike. He scoots around on it happily whenever we are all outside. He’s also doing what we have termed “knee walking”. It’s basically walking, only on his knees instead of his feet. It’s kind of hilarious actually.

 

His first officially word is “ball”. If I say, “Go get your ball.” He goes and gets it, brings it back and says “ball”. He also tries really hard to make a monkey sound, “eeeeehhh eeehhhh” when we hand his monkey to him.

 

He loves to be outside. He throws a huge fit if I make him stay in when the other kids are out. And then he’ll sit at the sliding glass door and watch them.

 

 

This last week was Spring Break in our area. We still did school most of the week, because we are headed to Goblin Valley at the end of the month, which will be our official homeschooling “Spring Break”, but we did take Thursday off to go up to Hooper to visit my mom. On the way there I got a flat tire. Luckily, I had just gotten off the freeway in Provo to get gas. And thankfully, I have the world’s most wonderful husband. He was quick to borrow a car from someone at work to come and rescue us.

 

He got the spare put on, and we drove over to Les Schwab, and spent the morning in their waiting room eating popcorn, while they patched up our tire. Then we were on our merry way to Hooper. It was lunch time when we got there, so Mom and I took the kids to Chick-fil-a so that they could play on the play-place while we chatted. It was a really nice afternoon. I love spending time with my mom. I wish we lived closer to I could see her more often.

 

After lunch we went back to her house, and she put some highlights in my hair and cut it. I was in dire need of a haircut. Mine was getting out of control. I keep thinking I’m going to grow my hair out, but every time I try, I hate it. I think I’m just a short hair person. I like it short. I like the way it looks, I like how easy it is to take care of, I like that it’s never in my eyes. And I like my stick-straight-up-in-every direction morning hair. My mom did an excellent job doing the cut to fit my new DYT adjective which are, choppy, chunky, textured. I’m really happy with it overall. Thanks Ma!

 

On Saturday we went to the neighborhood Easter egg hunt. I got to follow Miss Del around. The older boys pretty much did their own thing, which is why no pictures of them hunting. But we did get everyone together at the end for a group photo. It’s kind of nice to have the egg hunt out of the way a week early so we can just focus on the important stuff.

For Family Home Evening tonight we got chickens! Well, some of them at least. Meet Charlotte and Crab Apple, Lincoln and Adelia’s Buff Orpingtons. Lincoln decided to name his Charlotte after the spider in Charlotte’s Web. Adelia chose a whole bundle of names, but most of them were nonsensical like Gabldin or some such, Crab Apple was the first one that was even in English, so that’s the one that stuck. The store didn’t have any Black Sex-Links or Americaunas, but will be getting a new shipment in on Wednesday, so we’ll be picking up the rest of them then. So stay tuned for the rest of the awesome names that are sure to be coming to a chick near you. ;)

Last Week All Squished Into One Long Post

This Miss Adelia cracks me right up. She is definitely a wild-child, free-spirit. In the top picture she was drawing pictures, and narrating a story about what the characters in her picture were saying to each other. It was a pretty intense scene and she was scribbling furiously to keep up with her narration. She insists on dressing herself most days…multiple times. Saturday’s outfit consisted of boots and shorts and a long sleeve shirt. She wanted her hairy “curly-crazy all over the place”. She likes to ride balanced on the bottom of the shopping cart and use her chip to smear dip all over her face before she licks it off.

 

The boys and I finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets the other day. Lincoln wrote a book report on it, which I will post in it’s entirety later, but this was my favorite picture. Please note Harry’s scar, the arrow showing the dagger going into the mouth of the basilisk, and the arrow indicating that the basilisk fang is going into Harry’s arm. He even drew Harry wearing wizard robes. I thought all those were pretty excellent details, considering he’s never seen any pictures or any of the Harry Potter movies. And has only listened to it read out loud once through. Yay for reading comprehension.

 

Speaking of excellent pictures, here is one of Ivan’s recent masterpieces. I just love it!

And now for some Dressing Your Truth funness. Exhibit A: The biggest earrings I have every owned to date. They are perfect. Exhibit B: I finally got a pair of sunglasses. Who knew driving could be so much easier with sunglasses? And Lincoln was in a photo bombing mood, so I let him stay.  Exhibit C: Trying a new style, tunic top with a long pendant necklace and green skinnies. I like it. I bet it would look good with my cowboy boots too. Exhibit D: My new favorite color combination peacock blue and orange.

I saw this funny picture the other day, and it reminded me of me and my friend Wynter. She and I just click. We are enough alike that we “get” each other, and have the same goals, and like to do many things in similar ways; but we’re different enough to make it interesting, and to bring in different talents and ideas to the the friendship. And it all adds up to equal a very beautiful thing. It also helps that she has kids that are my kids’ ages, and that she homeschools. I think everyone needs to have a friendship like she and I have.

I taught preschool last week. It as my last time teaching for the year. I’ve loved our preschool co-op, but I am glad to be done with my part of it. The weather is getting warmer, and my thoughts are shifting to different things, and different ideas…and school just hasn’t been on the top of the list lately. But, anyways, it was my last week to teach. Tuesday I taught about letters X and Y.

 

For X, we did X Marks the Spot, and I had the kids come to preschool dressed as pirates. They were adorable, of course.

 

We read our two favorite pirate books, How I Became a Pirate by David Shannon, and Shiver Me Letters by June Sobel. Then we colored a treasure map, and went on a treasure hunt for X’s all around the house. Each X had a clue to tell us where the treasure was buried. At the end of our quest everyone got three chocolate gold doubloons.

 

Then I introduced Letter Y, and we did X and Y jumping jacks, making each letter with our bodies. Then we made one of my favorite crafts, yellow yarn yaks.

 

Thursday’s preschool was a little tougher. My theme was vehicles. It was only tough because I’d never taught a preschool on that topic before. But it ended up being a lot of fun. For starters I brought down our wood train set, a car mat with cars, our four pirate ships, our space shuttle and toy airplanes. And I put each type of thing in it’s own special little space in the family room. When the kids got there, I let them just have fun exploring different vehicles for about a half and hour. It was cool to see the different creative ways that they played.

Then we read books. So many good books about vehicles.

 

Then we did pattern blocks, which is one of my favorite preschool activities. I was so happy to find free vehicle patterns.

It was one of the kids’ birthdays, so we spent some time drawing birthday pictures for him and putting them into a book. Then we had snack, which was cupcakes and cheese stick airplanes.

 

This week I caught Ivan and Adelia playing nicely together. For like a half an hour! They sat on the “two-couch” (which is what the kids call the love seat because it has two cushions, as opposed to the “three-couch” which has three cushions), looking at pictures in books and making up their own stories to go with them. I love that Ollie sat on the floor and copied what they were doing. :) These are the moments that make motherhood worth it.

 

And these:

 

 

If you get more than one person in a selfie is it called a groupie?