This week

I've been absent from the blog for a long time. My goal is to come up with a more streamlined way to blog regularly. I haven't figured it out yet but I'm going to try some new things and see if they are good.

This weekend we...

* celebrated my baby turning three. Three! It's insanity. It's sad and wonderful all at the same time. I love this kid.

But I miss this little guy, too. Remember him?

* Ate more cake (this after the amazingly delicious cake Jenna made for Grandparent's day the weekend before and it's amazing that I haven't put on 10 lbs!)

* Played 90's Trivial Pursuit. A game I had been wondering about recently and then spotted at Goodwill for $2.50! It's been a good investment and Eric and I enjoyed playing with his sister and brother-in-law.

* Had so much fun watching Alex really get into his birthday for the first time. My heart was melting with love.

* Got the house cleaned up for the first time since we got home from California. It was bad, real bad.

* Eric gave himself a mustache. I hate it. He does make me laugh with his willingness to try new facial hair styles though. I think it's brave. I still hate it though.

* Colored Jenna's hair a dark brown. She loves it. It's the little things that make life lovely.

* Really just enjoyed each other's company as a family. I love my family. We're nice.

Today...

* I'm enjoying Coconut Macaroon coffee and... leftover cake.

* The kids all ate cake for breakfast. Why not?

* Alex is still playing with his new toys and loving them.

* We are going on a nature walk so we can draw in our nature journals.

* We're going to buy ingredients to make apple pie for the first day of fall on Wednesday.

* We're going to play some games and maybe play at the park for a bit.

* It's absolutely beautiful outside.

* Jenna is excited to show her Girl Scout troop her new hair color and she's been running around all morning picking out the perfect outfit and getting the flat iron prepped for me to make her hair smooth and asking if she can wear eyeliner and lip gloss. Oh boy.

* Now she is asking about nail polish. :P

This week...

* We'll be having a Fall celebration by making leaf prints, apple pie, ice cream in a baggie (link: http://homeparents.about.com/od/recipesandcrafts/r/zip_icecream.htm), possibly a fall picnic if it's not raining or incredibly windy, pulling out the Halloween decorations, and some other things I haven't thought of yet.

* The girls will have PE at the YMCA. It was really great last week. I'll have to blog more about that another time.

* Jenna is starting up at the Stable Days program where she will get to learn about caring for horses and riding. She is super excited.

* We'll be celebrating Marah's birthday on Saturday. She's going to be seven! More family time and... cake!!

Make each day count.

Science Camp Week 1

The month of July is here and I am just sitting in amazement at how quickly this year is flying by! Eric is on break from summer school this week so we have just been enjoying having him home and being together. There are days when I wish he was on a normal, gone 9-5, schedule each weekday because the erratic school hours and work hours he is keeping right now make it difficult for me to stick to any sort of a routine and has really just thrown me out of whack. However, I know that this is just a season in our lives and before I know it he WILL be in that regular job and gone most of the day and I will miss him. So I'm trying to just enjoy it for the most part, but of course I still get annoyed sometimes :)

Having said that, I am trying to get back into a routine and the month of July was when I had planned to get started with school for the children. So that is what I am doing. I coordinated with a dear friend of mine, who also homeschools her kids, to put together a sort of informal science camp for the kids during the month of July. Every Tuesday this month we will be getting together for a specific theme with a loose science curriculum based upon that week's theme. We are not trying to do anything extravagant, just simple lessons that are not too structured so that the kids can do what interests them and we don't have to stress out if they aren't interested in a certain activity, they can just play or whatever.

So this week the theme was nature and we headed out to a local park that has some nature trails for some exploration. I put together a few games and activities for the kids and we had a good time with it. It was a fairly warm day but there was a nice breeze and some of the kids didn't want to do all of the things I had planned, but that was okay. I think for the most part we all had a good time and hopefully I introduced some activities that they might one day decide to try out on their own time and maybe they learned a little about how they can explore the world around them. Maybe they didn't... :P I'm okay with that, too.

I have to admit that I was a bit out of my comfort zone, nature not really being my thing, but I think I did a pretty decent job of not letting that show. I do plan to expand on our nature unit at home and that's the main idea here; introduce the unit and then expand upon the ideas throughout the week.

information kiosk at the park

The kids used a binder ring full of paint chip cards to do a nature color match (idea from Frugal Family Fun blog)

The kids split into teams to play Bug Bingo. The girls won the game but the boys found the most bugs.

Some of the kids looking for bugs under some driftwood.

Marah started a nature collection.

The river has been higher than usual which made this area especially pretty (and also quite smelly).

My cutie pie drinking from a cup like a big boy :)

Jenna records her findings in her nature journal.

Mara and the wee baby Shamus :P

We kept seeing these Barn Swallows swooping through the picnic shelter and one of the kids looked up and saw this nest! We could even see the baby birds peeking their heads out and the mama kept coming over to bring them food. It was pretty cool!

Next week's theme is SPACE. Come back and see what we do :)

Eleven and stuff...

My girl just turned eleven. It happened before I even realized it. She'd been talking about her birthday for months. I thought I had so much time, and then.... the day was here and I was not ready. I'm never really ready.

My goal was to keep it simple. Super simple. I told her one friend could spend the night. I did no decorations for the first time ever, I think (except for maybe when she turned two and we had no money to even buy her a gift.) And you know what, it was totally okay! I was able to relax and enjoy her day and not worry about the little things that normally make me crazy. I even was flexible and let another friend stay over at the last minute (literally, like at 10 o'clock that night) and I only stressed a teeny little bit about it! That's a huge deal for me! :)

Jenna and her best friend, Brenna.

Marah, Brenna, and Jenna

The four layer cake I made for the birthday girl.

Her favorite color right now is turquoise. I saw the idea for this ombre cake on Pinterest.com in pink and thought it would be fun to surprise her with the blue version :) She loved it!

Jenna got the Nintendo DSi that she has been begging for (everyone chipped in for the gift) plus two new games (Nintendogs and Zelda). She's pretty much had her face buried in it ever since! I'm letting her catch a break with it because it's summer vacation but in July we start up "school" again and then she won't have as much DS time.

Yep, that's right. I said school. In July. Does that make me a mean mother? Here is my line of thinking; rather than three months off in the summer we take one month off every five months. Plus a week or two off here and there to coincide with family vacations, birthdays, holidays and such. So our schedule will look like this:

School- July, August (first 2 weeks off for family vacation), September (last week off for Marah and Alex's birthdays), October (one week off for Halloween), November (two days off for Thanksgiving)

Break- December

School- January, February (last week off), March, April (one week off for Easter), May

Break- June

There will probably be one more week off in that second semester for a family trip or something but we don't have anything planned at this time. I'm pretty confident that this schedule will work well for us and I am excited to get started! I'll be blogging about our curriculum plans for this year soon.

Here are some pics from the summer outdoor fun the kids are having. They aren't inside playing video games all the time :)

This one totally cracks me up. Every picture of Jenna running through the sprinkler looked like this :)

The girls with our neighbor's boys, Sam and Benny.

Oh, and I found some pics of Marah and Zion that I thought were cute and worthy of sharing. :) I loved how they played side-by-side on the computer and would tell each other secrets. <3

whisper, whisper

Zion is totally cracking up here :)

Make each day count!

Let's do this thing!

I'm so behind! I missed a lot because I've been lazy about uploading photos. I haven't even posted most of these to facebook, so they will be new to you! So here's what you missed :P

Way back on April 9th, my little girl earned her Junior Bronze award in Girl Scouts. This is the highest honor you can earn as a Junior Girl Scout and Jenna's troop earned their's by doing a big literacy project with the local library, schools, and community charity groups. There are many things you have to do to earn this award and it is no small feat. I am so proud of Jenna and her troop and I feel so blessed to have her involved in this troop that has been run by several wonderful women who give their time and love to these girls so that they may grow into amazing women themselves.

In May we attended Marah's end of the year performance- "The Kindergarten That Could." It was a cute little thing they put together where the kids showed what they learned during the course of the year.

Marah really loved her Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. McDonald, and her teacher loved her, too! :)

With summer here we decided to put some flowers out in the front yard in our little garden area. We live in a rented duplex that is set up a bit strange. It is a house that was transformed into a duplex with the bottom level being one home and the top level a second home. Because we aren't in a side by side set up the yard situation is a bit tricky. We had a neighbor in the past that was very difficult and we did not care for her at all. We are lucky to have neighbors that we get along with now and we have shared the yard in our own way.

So we have a small space to decorate as our own and since we can't dig a garden we made it look cute by setting out planters with flowers. Last year I could not afford planters so I just used the pots that the plants came in but it didn't look very cute. This year, again, I could not afford planters but I found this cute idea on Pinterest.com and decided to go with it. I think it's very cute and I like the color it adds to the front of the house.

I had the girls help out. We started by spray painting empty soup cans.

Hammer some holes in the bottom of the cans for drainage.

Add some rocks to the bottom of the can, place your flower in the can and add soil around the edges of the flower's roots.

Stand back and admire your handiwork.

I should really take a new picture. The flowers are doing very well, with many more blooms, and there are vines growing all over our bamboo vine arches you see in the back there. I like it a lot!

June 1st was the last day of school for Marah. She won't be returning in the fall because she will be home schooled with Jenna so it was a big day for us. I am amazed at how much she has changed over the last year and I can't wait to see how much she learns here at home this coming year!

My niece, Zion, came for a visit while her mom (my wonderful sister-in-law) attended a conference in Fargo. The girls had so much fun together and I enjoyed having her here. My kids only have one cousin, which is so weird for me because I grew up with a LOT of cousins and I loved them all so much, so it is really nice when they are able to spend time with each other. They are moments I know they treasure.

Let's see, what else... well, we have a complete LOVE/HATE relationship with our pug, Penny. I mean it is seriously that extreme. One moment we love her and then, suddenly, she poops or pees on our floor or our bed and, oh man, we hate her guts. Like, let's list her on Craigslist right this second because I'm about to lose my freaking mind kind of hate. Please, please, somebody tell me this will get better because we are at our wits end. I had a dream about murdering her. Okay, well it was really more like involuntary dog slaughter by wooden spoon, but it was bad.

She's hilarious.

More to come. I'm done for today :)

Make each day count!