Photo Recap

Nothing perks up a blog like a bunch of pictures, am I right? If I didn’t already take a bunch of pictures with my awesome Canon camera, now I take a BUNCH of pictures since I have a smart phone with a nice camera. But, phone pictures have a tendency to just sit on the phone and never have anything done with them. So I emailed myself a bunch that I thought I would post. Let’s call this Spring 2014, shall we?

I feel like Thad is always hovering in the background of these pictures…way to include both your kids Mom, geesh.

Justin built Thad this magnetic castle and left it for him to find one morning with a note, so Thad then added some embellishments and wrote a note back to him. Precious.

Thad’s first trip to the dentist. He and I went for appointments together. I thought that I was scheduled first so that he could watch me and then know what was coming for his turn, but when we got there they told me we were going at the same time. So they took him by himself to the room next to me and he had his teeth cleaned like a champ. He got lots of praise for both his good behavior and his clean teeth. Afterword, we went to the donut shop and got donuts to bring to Aunt Jody and Brother Bear who were home waiting for us.

Anyone remember Perler beads? They are tiny plastic beads that you put onto a plastic board and then melt into a pattern. You know, something a 10 year old girl would probably do. A 10 year old girl and our 3 year old son. We got some at Christmas and he was obsessed for a solid couple of months. There are probably 400 beads that he carefully placed onto the tray to make the thing in the photo. Hours of work. He has made probably 12-15 smaller items as well.

 

I am in my pajamas and Thad is wearing his favorite shirt, cowboy hat, and his sweet gold watch is a color for kitty. Clearly we are going somewhere fancy.

Bear toast! Couldn’t be easier, and they got a big kick out of it.

Snow day!

I try to encourage the boys to help me with chores. Thad absolutely loves vacuuming, but of course he is terrible at it. I would imagine that about the time he learns to vacuum properly is going the be right about the same time he wants nothing to do with it.

A picture I drew and painted for my sweet new niece Clara’s French-inspired bedroom. Her room is AMAZING.

Here is my “never want to try anything scary” son leaping into a foam pit. Obviously, he had a blast, but I was proud of him for doing it, I could see him refusing and then missing out on all the fun.

My two reasons why it takes me 10 times longer to run an errand than it needs to.

 

A spur of the moment donut stop. This was a week or so after Thad’s lip injury. We had been running some errands and when we got back into the car he was crying and very sad that his lip was hurting him. I asked him if a donut would make it feel better and he replied, “A donut won’t make my lip feel better, but it will make me happier”. Can’t argue with that logic.

And then there was the time that I got Shingles. You know, the disease of young healthy people. Oh wait, only older people or people with weak immune systems are supposed to be susceptible to this. Luckily my physician’s assistant friend was able to examine me in the church nursery, confirm that it was shingles and call in a rx for me. Saved me an expensive trip to urgent care.

We continue to go for walks along the river path close to our house. It’s so convenient and beautiful.

A rare treat holding a sleeping, snuggling Thatcher.

Ok, I better stop there for now. I often have a hard time posting when there are a lot of pictures. We’ll see if I can get this to work and will finish up with a Part 2.

2014 - update

So at the beginning of the year (okay, maybe a couple weeks into it), I posted some thoughts on some goals we had for 2014 for our family. I thought this would be a good time to update on where we are at, as well as keep myself accountable for what our original goals were. Here goes:

Running

True to form, I have not followed through on the running plan as well as I wanted to. If I had stuck with it 100%, I would be at the 10K marker at this point. I definitely am not. I am not even quite maintaining the 5k level. I have some various excuses, the top probably being the weather (we DID have 2 solid weeks of the world being iced over, and of course LOTS of rain), and second from the top being laziness. Okay, maybe those need to be listed in the other order. But, I’m not giving up, I’m still running, I just need to up my game again. I really do enjoy it, and it is definitely great exercise. Perhaps a sweet new pair of shoes would help encourage me (hint hint, birthday in a few weeks Justin Lee…)

Homeschooling

This is still likely in the works for us. Since our kids are so young, and no decision really has to be made for at least a full year, I feel comfortable just fact-finding and seeking information at this point. I have accumulated a LOT of info on how different families actually DO homeschooling. As in, how their days look, how they work with more than one age, what materials they use, etc. Bottom line is that it can be done, but I just want to prayerfully consider the options and the timing and the actual plan and make sure that I am following God’s intent for our family. In the meantime, we have officially completed our Preschool Alphabet curriculum as of last week. We finished strong and I am really pleased that we went from beginning to end and put in a good effort for a solid 8+ months. It was really fun and rewarding and I think the kids learned a LOT. Admittedly, it is probably more of a benefit to Thad than Thatcher, but I don’t feel like Thatcher is suffering by participating in things slightly above his level. Among other things, Thad’s handwriting has hugely improved. He is comfortable writing all his upper and lowercase letters. Here is an example of his writing on day one (Ant Day, back in September) and during Z week last week:

Friday Nights

What is now known as “Friday night family movie night” in our house has been super fun and awesome. We all look forward to it, and it feels like a great way to go into our weekend. We always have pizza, which doesn’t feel like it has gotten old yet. We have had some super yummy combinations, like salami, feta and pepperocinis, or my personal fave; bbq sauce, mozzarella, grilled chicken, pineapple, red onion and cilantro. YUM.

I have also decided on and dialed in my favorite pizza crust. No more switching back and forth between different recipes. Sometimes it takes making things frequently to really figure out how you like it best.

I try to have dinner ready pretty promptly at 5:30, so we can be done and have popcorn made by a 6:00 movie start time. That way a typical 90 min kids movie still gets done around bed time. The popcorn has been another fun part of the night. We made the recipe that I had posted (for Salted Honey Butter Popcorn) and have loved it so much that we make it every time. It’s the perfect mix of sweet and salty. We decided to invest in an air popper (and by invest, I do mean $17 on Amazon…but still, it’s a commitment for sake of cabinet space if nothing else), and of course that’s always exciting for them to watch.

Another reason for a prompt movie start time is that it doesn’t prolong bed time so much that Justin and I can’t still watch a movie after they go to bed. Historically, we have not been huge movie watchers, especially since having kids (sleep is precious, people!). However; now that Friday’s are set aside as movie nights, we have started to watch much more frequently. Our current mission is to catch up on all of the Marvel movies that we have missed over the last several years.

Date Nights

This is also happening. And it’s quite nice. I think we have both had 2 date nights at this point. The kids all do great, and it goes without saying that we enjoy going out by ourselves every 2 months. Hopefully it’s worthwhile to all involved and it continues on for a while. Like, forever.

Master Update

Currently in the works! Bedspread has been purchased, carpet has been measured for, paint has been chosen and purchased, floor molding is in the garage. I will wait till the project is complete before I post pictures, but it is going to look SO NICE. We decided against navy blue walls, but I love the color we are going with. Hopefully the project will be all done by the end of the month. Justin is so busy, working a lot of overtime, it’s hard for him to fit everything in. He works really hard. He has put a huge amount of work into refinishing our bathrooms this last month. They turned out beautiful, I will post more on that later.

Downsizing Bills

I think this process will always be changing over time for us. Justin is constantly re-evaluating how we allocate our money, how we are paying off our (ie MY) school debt. He does a great job handling a big task. I will say it has been surprising easy to give up cable TV. I honestly would say the effect on our life has been minimal. We still get local stations, so they boys watch Sesame Street most mornings. That plus our Friday night movie is basically all the TV they watch, which I feel good about. It makes me feel comfortable with letting Thad have computer time and playing with Thatcher either on the computer of on my Kindle, without feeling like they have too much screen time. I don’t think either Justin or I miss TV in the evenings. We still watch some TV at night, but probably half of what we used to at most, and I don’t miss it.

We have also been really happy with our cell phones through a wireless company. We are literally paying $20 a month combined for our cell service. We are considering cancelling our home phone, but for some reason it’s a little hard to give up the security of an actual phone. We’ll see.

Donesies

That about sums up our current state of progress in 2014. Next on the agenda for me and the boys is a new summer schedule for “school” stuff. I’m still sorting out exactly what that plan will be. And hopefully, our house projects will be all done by the end of this month. Our month of June is pretty open besides a long weekend to Seattle to visit my brother and his family that we are REALLY looking forward to. The Zoo, a Mariners game, the Sound….should be fun. As I told Justin recently, we are finally at a point where I feel like we can go places without me totally stressing out. Not that my history of stressing out has been warranted, but I get really tense and nervous about how the boys will handle car rides, over night trips, sleeping other places, etc. Their track record is good enough now, and they are old enough now, that I am expecting a stress free trip. Time will tell :)

So, Seattle trip, and then just a little matter of a wedding taking place at Justin’s parent’s house in August…that should be no biggie. No biggie at all…..

Worst. Blog. Ever.

Who doesn’t love a blog that is updated every 2 months? So interesting. If only nothing had been happening these last 2 months, then I wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed about catching up. Yikes. So I suppose I will go in little chunks. Let’s start with the boys’ birthdays:

In our family we have babies in clumps (seriously…not on purpose, but clumps), so our boys’ birthdays are 10 days apart. So far, we have just had shared family birthdays, and with Thad just now turning 4, haven’t really felt the need to do a friend birthday yet. I suppose that will be necessary by next year.

Each boy got a special birthday breakfast of sprinkle-filled pancakes the morning of their birthday. Only Thatcher got his picture taken somehow.

I had been planning (AKA pinning) ideas for a pirate-themed birthday party. Then Thad told me that they wanted a “super-hero-cowboy” party. What does that even mean? I don’t know, but here is what it looked like:

Those there are superhero cowboys.

And that’s what superhero cowboy cakes look like (???) Or at least my best attempt. The cakes were not actually very good. Not my best effort. But they were perfectly happy.

Yesterday

A little photo montage of our day yesterday. Thad had an accident at the playground. 2 hours at urgent care and the doc said no stitches, thank goodness. He was putting on a brave face but kept telling me that "Thatcher was probably sad that I might have to get shots". We didn't get home until 9:30, his late night and rough day earned him some ice cream...all is well today.

Valentine’s Day

Third post of the day…why stop now?? Just wanted to post a few pictures of the sweet Valentine’s I got from the boys:

Thanks, Justin, for taking the time to help them make those for me. Quite precious.

And…the grapevine heart wreath that I found in the street on garbage day. That’s a true story. And a layered cardboard heart craft that the boys made. You may also notice in the background the lovely roses my wonderful husband got me for our 7th anniversary on the 10th. We were supposed to leave on Saturday for a night away at a resort with our good friends, unfortunately, our plans came to a crashing halt by this ridiculousness:

Seriously, Oregon? I don’t think I have had a night away with my husband since our anniversary LAST year. Thankfully, all parties involved (including grandma and grandpa who are watching the boys, our friends, and their babysitters), were able to reschedule for another two weeks from our original date. The fun is still going down, ya’ll!

M-I-C-K-E-Y…..

I happened to be on-call the weekend of my nephew’s 2nd birthday last month, so we hosted his party at our house. I pressured my slow-to-make-decisions sister to choose his theme so I could start planning some decor. She decided on Mickey Mouse…can’t go wrong, he’s always a classic.

We kept the decor pretty simple, I cut out a bunch of big circles to make a pathway from the front door to the family room (think “Mickey Mouse Playhouse”, if you’re familiar, yay for you if you’re not). Streamers on the entry to the family room, the family room filled with polka dot balloons, a huge Mickey balloon, a birthday banner out of Mickey Mouse shapes that I cut out, and Mickey Mouse ears for all the kids (goodbye all of my black headbands :( ) It all turned out cute. My mom and my sister’s family drove down this way and met us at an indoor kid-gym place where the kids played for an hour or so before coming back to our house. All of the granola Eugene people and their hippie kids made me deicide that our kids were promptly getting haircuts. But that’s another story.

 

Here’s what happened when the boys found me in the early morning, hiding in the guest room blowing up balloons. Please note how Thad is squeezing his brothers cheek as he jumps by….the little turkey!

Fun at the gym. Who knows what kind of diseases they caught. There were a LOT of kids there.

Back at the Par-tay. Mickey Mouse there to greet the birthday boy. Slightly terrifying. Please don’t make fun of our 1972 bar stools. I realize they are horrendous, but they were free, and they do not tip over no matter what kind of ridiculous behavior is taking place on them. They stay until my children are old enough to behave like human beings. Which may be a while.

The birthday boy seeing his tower of cupcakes for the first time (made by my sister)

And finally, the party people who made it all happen. Next up, all the other 3 non-birthday kids have a birthday within 10 days of each other (my California nephew brings that birthday group up to 4…yikes). We will likely have a local party here, and also go up to my parents to celebrate with our niece. We had decided on a pirate theme for the party here. At least until Thad announced that he thinks it should be a cowboysuperhero birthday…not sure how to decorate for that one…

School Days

Usually when I sit down to write a post, I have nice orderly thoughts in my head that I want to get out. For some reason this time, I’m all jumbled up, and keep getting stuck. So, I’m just going to dump everything out, even though it may not be organized or coherent. Here goes.

We continue to work through the alphabet using the format from Preschool Alphabet. I did decide to alter things a bit at the first of the year, and rather than going through all her ideas for each topic and picking my favorites, I’m really sticking to her calendars and doing the things she did that time. It has simplified things quite a bit, and takes less time for me to prep. I also have starting doing just one or two books per day from the library, rather than several. Having a lot of books per day is great because they boys are always willing to read, but it was taking me a LOT of time to search for our topics, and to find the books at the library. Realistically, a lot of time was being wasted with so much prep because some days, we skipped topic all together, or just didn’t make it through much for whatever reason. (For example, if I have to go to Winco with the boys by myself, that’s pretty much all I can handle). (For an unrelated example, being waist-deep in Winco is not a great time to realize you haven’t put on deodorant). 

Some recent fun days:

Nose Day:

We read Ferdinand (one of my all time favs), made cow noses out of cut-up egg cartons, and made smelly flowers using foam paper flowers with cotton balls with various scents dripped on them (maple extract, vanilla extract, lemon juice, peppermint extract, etc)

Orange Day:

 

We painted toilet roll “binoculars” orange to search for orange items around the house, make fresh-sqeezed orange juice, and ate orange jello.

Other Fun:

Making due with rainy weather, playing in the garage (don’t ask me why he is wearing jams…really don’t remember, but he does love his jams, he tries to pull them back together any time I unzip them to get dressed), and playing with the super cool Stomp Rocket my brother got them for Christmas (a worthwhile $15 investment if you have boys!)

Pizza Day:

We used leftover pizza boxes from my nephew’s birthday party to make a pizza, and to put the pizza in. The first box I cut up to make the circle for the pizza, the boys painted on red “sauce”, then we sprinkled it with cut up yard “cheese”, paper pepperoni, green peppers and mushrooms, and “olives” made out of buttons. I slathered it in Modge Podge and let it “bake” in the oven until it was dry.