Keeping Up With The Jones'

Hair

2012-01-26T08:14:00.000-05:00

Hair has been the focus of my existence for about 2 years now...well, not really the focus, but it comes up a lot! So, the new hair news is...I got it straightened...like professionally. Yeah, I know. I am a curly girl! And really, I still am, I just have straight hair for now.

It's not a permanent thing. 4 months the hairdresser said. It's called a Keratin Complex treatment and it's so nice! I wake up and my hair is normal. I shower, wash my hair, dry it off with a towel and go about my day. My hair dries quickly and looks fine. I have hair like other people!

The only problem is I find it a bit boring (am I never happy?). It just lays there, flat against my head. It is shiny, though, which mine has never been. I hope I don't get too used to it because the treatment is crazy expensive...especially every 4 months!

The long and short of it is I like it, but I'm glad it's temporary:)

R2D2 Cake

2011-12-19T11:33:00.003-05:00

Sam's birthday is today and I stayed up late and made this R2D2 cake (with the help of some very talented friends, Carisa and Brittney). It took us from about 9pm-2am...I gotta learn to start earlier!
Here are the pics:

The cake is made from 4-8in cakes stacked on the bottom, a dome shaped one on the top and rice krispie treat legs. I used the middle of a sugar ice cream cone for the little projector thing, iced and rolled in sparkly sugar, a cinnamon candy for the red eye thing, and lots and lots of icing. I hope it's yummy, but at least it's cute:)

Moving Christmas

2011-12-17T00:41:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, I was telling the kids that if we got any video games or the like for Christmas, we would have to wait until Monday to play them, because we don't do any screen time on Sunday. Levi suggested that we just wait until Monday to have Christmas. He and Natalie are both "in the know" and Sam and Seth don't worry about the calendar too much, so it could work. I thought this was a CRAZY idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I loved it! Spend Christmas day actually focused completely on the Savior? What a great idea! So, I think I will add one more thing to my to-do list and plan a very spiritual Christmas day...and then we will spend our day after Christmas enjoying the "presents" part of Christmas. We'll see how it goes:)

The To-Do List

2011-12-17T00:32:00.001-05:00

Things to do this weekend and this next week:

Make a fabulous R2D2 cake for Sam
Make pool noodle light sabers for Sam's party (can you get pool noodles in December?)
Make Christmas treats
Deliver treats
Zumba party
Clean the church
Go grocery shopping
Plan and do a cub scout meeting
Plan the next unit study (about China)
Make 4 photo books online
Buy some last minute presents
Wrap all presents
Attend 2 Christmas parties
Do visiting teaching
Do more Christmas crafts with the kids

I love this time of year! I am only a little stressed. Making the cake makes me nervous, as that is not a talent I have. Luckily, a few friends are going to help me out:) After the cake is made and Scouts is done, the week will be less stressful and more enjoyable. I hope you all enjoy your 8 days before Christmas!

Turkey Day...not for the faint of heart:)

2011-11-10T16:35:00.001-05:00


Logan, Joseph, and Levi holding a big turkey they caught.

*Note: There are chicken/turkey pictures that might be disturbing, just so you know. But I left out the really gross ones!*

My older two kids plus 4 of their homeschool buddies went to an outside science program that was turkey butchering and anatomy. I was worried that some kids might freak out so I asked Grandma to babysit and took the kids myself and stayed for the program. This was an amazing program. They divided the kids into 3 groups. One group did the catching/butchering first. The next group did bird clean out and organ identification while the third group did bird anatomy and how and why birds are built the way they are.


Tyler proud of his chicken..it's still alive though it looks like it's headless.

First, the kids went out to the pens and caught chickens and turkeys. Natalie caught a chicken on her own and Levi caught the BIG turkey with 2 other boys. They loved this part! They carried the birds upside down and they were so calm. I was amazed. The kids laid their heads on the chopping block and the birds just laid there. It was quick and hopefully painless. The kids were thrilled when the chicken and turkey bodies ran around and flapped with their heads cut off. This may seem disgusting, but I was really impressed on how calmly and almost reverently was done. We said to each bird how thankful we were that they gave us their bodies energy so that we could continue to live. When the bodies calmed down, we then dunked their bodies in boiling water to make it easier to pull out the feathers. This was quite a big job. I think there were about 8 birds in all!

Joe caught a chicken by himself and was oh, SO proud.

Bird clean out going on here. A little bloody, but very interesting.

Second was the bird cleanout. This was actually the first place my group went and I was amazed at how willing all the boys were to stick their hands in, pull things out, and inspect all the organs. I had to chuckle after all the organs had been pulled out and our teacher said it was done, Ty says, "But where's the organ?":) The staff here keep all the birds and organs for eating throughout the year.

The girls just kept saying, "Eww, gross!"

Cute pics of boys before we went outside. Ty's face showed how he felt before he went out. About halfway through the process, he turns to me and says, "I LOVE this!!!!"

Had to have a picture of the girls too. Kailey on the top, Sophie on left and Natalie on the right.

The last part of the butchering day was learning the anatomy. This was done by a lady who knew her stuff and it was fascinating. She talked all about why birds had this and that and what it was all for. The highlight for the kids was when she pulled on the tendons of a foot and made the claws move. Natalie cleaned out the gizzard on her bird. That girl is not grossed out by anything. I believe that she looks for the gross parts! Maybe she gets it from me? I didn't watch the chopping, but I was extremely interested in all the rest. The blood just doesn't bother me.

By the end, I was so impressed with the staff and the facility. This was a great learning experience that the kids really want to do again next year. And I want to go with them:)

Halloween 2011

2011-10-27T22:13:00.001-04:00

Here are my cuties for Halloween this year:

Levi-Darth Vader

Sam-Red Ninja

Natalie (sorry about the red eyes)-angel

Seth-Tigger (again:)

We have already had 2 Halloween parties and will have 2 more and trick or treating on Monday.

Piles of candy, here we come!

Pictures I Love:)

2011-10-18T21:40:00.002-04:00

Brothers, ya gotta love 'em!

Happy 33rd Birthday, Geo!

If anyone understands and tolerates my moody Sam, it's Grandpa.

One HOT superman!

Game night:)

Just pictures...

2011-10-18T21:35:00.003-04:00

These are mostly from the Indy Children's Museum trip. Fun, but tiring! I went with a friend and between us we had 9 kids. We only lost 1 kid once. We thought that was pretty good:)

Kids participating in an Egyptian baby shower.

This is a random summer picture with our friends, Emily and Meghan. I LOVE this picture!

Honey Harvest

2011-10-18T21:23:00.003-04:00

As many of you know, my father-in-law keeps bees. He not only keeps bees, but loves them like he does his grandchildren:) It was so much fun to help out with the bee harvest this year with almost all the family. Aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles and a good family friend were all in attendance. It was wonderful....and extremely hot! I believe it was 100 degrees in the garage we harvested in. My husband and his siblings all helped the entire time and it was so much fun to go into the garage and hear four-part harmony of a variety of songs happening. Cute! I believe they harvested about 20 gallons of honey, when all was said and done. Only 2 last year, so this was AMAZING! Here are some pictures of the awesome event.

More Maryland pictures:)

2011-10-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

Trip to see my sister!

2011-10-14T07:40:00.004-04:00

Kids in front of the Christus at Washington DC temple. The kid in the shirt and tie was with a wedding party and latched onto Levi. I couldn't get him to leave the picture, so I just told him to look at the camera:)

In July, my sister in Baltimore, Maryland calls me and says, "Matt (our brother) and Megan aren't coming to visit me after all (Megan is pregnant and was pretty sick, then). Oh, and I am pregnant and not feeling great, so I think you should come visit me instead." Well, if any of you know me very well, you will know that I LOVE to get together with my family and will plan any trip and am about willing to do anything to see them. Liz (my sister) knew I just needed a little prodding and she would have me out there:) Well, she was right...it was Wednesday and I decided to leave on Sunday, drive out without George (he has work to finance my vacations:) and spend the week with my sister and her family. Awesome!!! It took us 13 hours to get there and it was quite the trip. The kids were SO GOOD! I mean, we had our moments, but overall, they were very helpful, and happy, and wonderful! I loved this trip! It was so much fun to just hang out with my sister and her kids. We went to the beach, we went to the Washington D.C. temple, we went to Chick-fil-a:), and went to a cutie shaved ice shack. The kids had a ball playing all together. I would do it again in a heartbeat!

Chasing seagulls

Liz looks so good! It was hot on the sand...we really enjoyed the umbrella!

Ugh, you will never see me in a swimsuit again!

The beautiful temple...what a wonderful trip!

Local summer fun

2011-10-14T07:33:00.003-04:00

We had the opportunity to swim at a friend's pool this summer. Too fun! I am glad the kids have taken lessons and I am getting more comfortable with them in the water. Natalie and Levi are actually pretty good. Seth? Ah, at least he keeps his life jacket on:)

Sam and our friend, Emily

Kids at the zoo, but that tall boy is not mine. Thought it was Levi in the thumbnail view of the picture, but that's our friend, Nathan.

Not a great picture of me, but I loved Seth's look:)

More swimming at our friend's pool. Yay for summer!

Natalie and Ballet

2011-10-14T07:25:00.002-04:00

Over the summer, each child got to "do" something. Levi went to Lego Robotics camp, Sam went to Farm camp, Seth went to "train" camp (the kids did this at home for him-they built him a train out of chairs and drew pictures of trains for him to hang next to his bed-so cute!), and Natalie took a ballet class with a little friend of hers. She loved it and they got to perform for all the parents at the end. I love these relaxed classes and Natalie always has so much fun!

2 month blogging vacation....

2011-10-14T07:06:00.003-04:00

Yeah, sorry I am so bad at blogging. Really, I WANT to be better, but it just doesn't happen:( I am uploading some pics and hope to post them this morning. Here are some things that have happened lately:

Potty Training finally took. Seth just had to decide it was HIS idea and then, no problem. Seriously. My kids have some iron will. It's gotta come from George! :)
I have had quite the "homeschooling mid-life crisis" lately. This really deserves it's own post, so I will try and do that.
It's 7am and REALLY dark. It must be fall. I am excited, though my life seems to be flying by. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Natalie's birthday, Sam's birthday, Christmas and the year is over! Woa.
We are spending lots of time doing field trips and park groups and other things while the weather holds. I remember what it's like to be cooped up from December-March. It's not pretty. We're getting as much in as we possibly can before that happens!
I am excited to head home tomorrow to see my parents and brother and family. Seems like it's been a while.
Sam's doing preschool with a little friend. That has been fun to do, though he is fairly resistant. Sam is my toys-only boy. He does not want to stop for things like learning! It's fine with me, but I do feel funny doing preschool with just the friend. Luckily, Natalie and Seth both like to join in.
I got my hair cut and highlighted. I like it...I think. I asked George if he liked it about 5 days after I got it cut and he said, "I'm not sure...it's different every day." And it really is. Life of a curly girl:)
I really have a hankering to go on a vacation. I said that to someone, and they said, "Didn't you just go to Taiwan?" I think I got spoiled:)

All right. Pics are done uploading on the computer, so now....off to post some! Yea!

Polaris Press: The Beginning

2011-08-17T23:27:00.003-04:00

We have started! We actually started on August 8th. Our first week was half-days with our Unit Study on Chocolate (from Amanda Bennett). Too fun! The kids slowly got into it and I would say 2 really good, positive school days. The others were a little rough. We topped the week off with a trip to the local chocolate factory where we didn't see any Oompa-Loompas but we did sample many tasty treats! It was yummy though I must say, gourmet chocolate is wasted on me. I like cheap chocolate just as much, or even more!

This week, we are starting in on a regular routine...which will probably change a million times between now and the end:) Here's the daily plan:

10am
Start with Read Aloud (goes with the unit study) and 2 vocab words a day (on index cards on a ring to keep throughout the year)

10:30
Unit Study (Amanda Bennett's Download and Go's) This includes writing, reading comprehension, history, science, art projects, etc....

Noon
Recess and Lunch

1:30
Spelling and Grammer (All About Spelling)

2:00
Math
Natalie-Alpha Omega Life Pac
Levi- Math U See with drills on the computer

2:30
Silent Reading (30 minutes)

*George is teaching Chinese on Wednesday nights
*I would like to fit in copywork using scripture mastery scriptures as soon as get the scriptures prepped and ready to go so that will fit in somewhere

So this is the ideal day. But there are many days when this just doesn't work out. Like Monday, we went to the zoo to kick off our rainforest unit study. Only reading was done at home. Wednesdays, we soon will start gym and swim classes at the YMCA and will have Lego Club and that will fill up the day. Thursdays, twice a month, we meet with our co-op group in the morning and that is in place of our unit study. And Friday is a field trip day, if we have one planned. Can I tell you, I just LOVE homeschooling!

A new post because I am so sick of seeing...

2011-08-17T23:20:00.001-04:00

Potty Failure #2. So I will add potty training failure #3 to the list. This time, I wasn't taking no for an answer! The program was "Potty Training in One Day". It involved the usual rewards and such, but the new thing was a consequence when accidents occured. Potty Practice Runs we called them. 5 times, from different places in the house, the mom and PT-ing child run to the potty and practice. This worked once. From then on, he just collapsed and I had to carry/drag him around the house. Boo. We started Wednesday and on Saturday, I said, "Diapers or Underwear?" He said, "Diapers!" so that's where we stand at the moment. This was a huge power struggle and I wasn't up for it. He started having bad behaviors in other ways, to assert his independence and show his power. It was ugly. We are better now, though I am taking advice for PT round #4:)

Potty Training Failure

2011-07-20T09:49:00.002-04:00

OK, this was time #2 and it didn't take. Granted, I had to prep for a camping vacation on Wednesday, so I put him back in a diaper, but this was after he played outside in poopy underwear for 30 minutes at Grandma's. I mean really. How can I potty train a kid who has no problem sitting in his feces for that long??? So, I think I will wait until he leads. It's just not worth the fight! Plus, with my oldest two, I waited so long that they just potty trained themselves. Maybe I am just lazy? Probably:)

Update on PT

2011-07-12T10:01:00.001-04:00

Seth woke up this morning and said, "Do I potty train?" with a dry diaper!!! Yay!!! Maybe we have turned a corner here. Let's hope so:)

Just a quickie...

2011-07-11T23:43:00.001-04:00

Potty Training this week. Yes, it's the second time for this kid. And hopefully, the last:)

Summertime!

2011-07-11T23:12:00.002-04:00

I know I need to post, really, I do. But, I don't have the motivation to get the pics off the camera and who wants to read a post with no pics??? So, I will give you an update of what we have been doing with our summer and post pics later:)

Our summer will be about 6 weeks long. We plan to start back to school on August 8th. Here are a few things we have had fun doing this summer, in no particular order:

Visiting with my brother and sister in law and their cutie kids last weekend. We always have so much fun getting together with them. My brother just makes me laugh and laugh!

4th of July! We had a packed day. Started with a church breakfast, then a neighborhood bike parade (complete with bounce house, pizza and a ride in the Hostage Recovery police tank thing), cotton candy with our good friends the Hansens (they made it!), on to canoeing in a near-by lake with Grandma and Grandpa Jones, home for dinner and then back out to the in-laws for root beer floats and a kickin' fireworks show. We may have overspent on fireworks this year, but, in my opinion, TOTALLY worth it! I love fireworks! We came home, put the kids to bed and went back out to light the rest of the big stuff. Awesome!

Lego Club. This is our school year activity that we have continued and it has been great for the kids because the group is smaller than usual and nice for me, because I get to spend 2 hours chatting with my Lego mommy buddies! Love it!

Parks. We have met homeschool and church friends at lots of different parks and splash parks. This has been so much fun to do and not have to worry about how we are going to get all of our school work done:)

Went to the local public pool for the first time and the kids seemed to really enjoy that. Seth only had to pulled out of the deep end 2 times (he did have on a life jacket) so I consider that a success!

Library trips. We have gone to a few summer programs they have put on and also have just enjoyed going and finding books. The kids are doing the summer reading program and have earned tickets to see the local minor league baseball team later in the summer. We love doing that as well!

Planning a camping trip. We are going on Thursday and I hope it will be great. My family has camped since I was little, but we always went for 1-2 weeks way up north in Wisconsin. I don't even know what it's like to camp here, where it doesn't cool down at night and surprise thunderstorms in the summer aren't unusual. Plus, getting everything out for only 2 nights? I AM excited, I just hope it's worth it:)

The kids have done lego camp, farm camp, and ballet lessons. Seth didn't get to go to a "camp", so the kids made a "train camp" for him one morning. They lined up all the chairs in the house to make a huge train. Then they all drew really cool train pictures that he got to hang up on the wall by his new big bed (he's on the bottom of bunk beds with Sam now). So cute!

Hot Air Balloon competition. Friday, we went to see these hot air balloons in a city north of us. It was amazing! They stretched the balloons out all over this small airport and then filled them. They were probably 100 feet away from us. It was awesome! We met up with some friends who had saved us front row seats and it was seriously one of the most impressive things I have seen. I loved it! We didn't stay too long, but plan on going next year and staying for the whole evening.

I helped bring a baby into the world. A miracle that I was so blessed to witness! I have to figure out how to become a professional doula, because honestly, this is my calling in life!!! I am so grateful my friend Abbey wanted me there!

Girls nights. Movies, hanging out, eating, parties. Fun, fun, fun!!

So, that's what I can think of so far! I am sure that I have forgotten a bunch of things. My favorite part is being able to hang out with my friends and family. I miss this during the school year! Makes for a fun summer:) Hope you all are enjoying your summers as well!

So, I say...

2011-06-30T22:44:00.002-04:00

"Are you going to start my movie without me (Larkrise to Candleford...a BBC miniseries)?"

George: YOUR movie?

Haha! I love that he loves these movies:)

Dream Vacation

2011-05-30T22:12:00.005-04:00

George and I had the chance of a lifetime! A few years ago, we decided we wanted to go on a trip to visit Taiwan. George had served his mission there and loved it. He hadn't kept in touch with anyone really, so we were just going to see everything we could. Well, this year, George's dad retired and made it sound like he would be happy to keep our kids for some amount of time:), so we decided to do it! My parents watched 2 kids, and George's parents watched 2 kids. Everyone was exhausted by the end...including us!

I am going to attempt to tell about our vacation through the pictures. Nothing will be in order because I can't figure out how to switch pics around on blogger, but you'll get the idea. And if you get tired of all the details, sorry! This is also my only journal entry:)

About halfway through our trip, we visited Taroko Gorge. This was an amazing adventure! It was also a 2 hour train trip to the eastern coast of the island of Taiwan. This was a view outside of our train window...a rice paddy full of scarecrows! And they were needed.

This was another view out of our train window. An island in the Pacific Ocean called Turtle Island. Can you see the turtle? Hard to tell which end was which:)

The food situation was a little bit depressing for me. I had done some research about good restaurants and had a big list of places in Taipei. There were a few problems. #1-We were too tired to "go" anywhere to eat. Once we were at our place to visit, we would go until we were starving and then have to find somewhere really quick. #2-Geo's chinese speaking skills are really good. Vocabulary and reading skills, slow and not as good. Which means, if we went to a restaurant with a sizeable menu (which all of them were), I would want George to read me the whole menu and this was just too hard. So, he could tell me what the main part was, usually pork or chicken, but not much else. #3-Nice sit down restaurants were expensive and we were trying to eat cheap. Anyway, the first night, we ate at a nicer Teppanyaki place, got food we didn't care for and it was even more expensive than we would have paid here in the US! Sad. So, I was a little disappointed, but I did find some things I loved, and that helped:)

The above picture was the "mission" reminiscent meal. We went to the local grocery and Geo picked up a curry package, rice noodles, and frozen dumplings and fresh pineapple. He cooked it all up and it was the only meal we ate in our apartment. Very good!

This was one thing I loved...a sweet bread filled with red beans. Sounds crazy, but oh! So GOOD!
I also had what looked like a huge cinnamon roll that was filled with red beans. Yum! George did not go for these, too weird, I guess. That was ok. More for me!

This picture is a little disgusting, but this was another one of our faves. It was called cong zhua bing. It was like an onion bread in a pancake shape. They fried an egg, put cooked lettuce on top, put that all on the pancake ad folded it like a taco. We liked it best with no egg or lettuce, just the pancake. We ate these 3 times:) Some of the other things we ate: Ba-lah (I loved this...a fruit like an unripe pear covered in a spice that I have no idea what it was...like cinnamon? I could have eaten this all day!) Beef Noodle Soup- we found this on some back road alley (really, it was like walking into somebody's back door into their really small kitchen). Bao-this was a steamed bun with stuff inside. Very tasty. Subway and McDonalds- we couldn't help this..we were starving for familiar food on day #1 so we found a Subway and we met up with George's brother at a McDonalds and were pretty hungry, so we ate there.

This was a picture of a "may-may", the Chinese word for little sister. George has these wonderful memories of little may-mays and how cute they were. This little girl was twirling in the rain, so I took her pic. Her mom gave us permission, but she was not thrilled. This was the reaction we got from most children in Taiwan. But when they smiled, oh, how adorable these children were!
These pictures were of a very touristy Taiwan temple called Longshan. It was interesting to see the worship of this totally foreign-to-me religion. People go here to pray to and worship their ancestors and also some other Gods and Goddesses. This was not a Buddist temple, though we did see some of those. The statues here were of Heavenly Mother and the goddess of the sea, I believe. People would bring food on special plates and put it out on long tables for their ancestors to eat the "spirit" of the food. After a specific amount of time, they could then take it back home and eat it. This was so strange to me. I saw plates of fresh fruit, cookies, and Doritos. I guess you would buy what you would want to eat in the end. They also all were burning incense. This represents prayers going up to the ancestors or gods. When you walked back to where there were many people worshipping, the smell was really intense!

This was a place you would stick your incense sticks in so they would stand upright and continue to smoke.
This is a symbol of good luck. We saw these everywhere...also at our local Chinese restaurant here!

We rode a glass bottomed gondola up and over a few mountains. This was amazing. It was so rainy (EVERYDAY!) and cloudy, but the mist was amazing. We just disappeared into clouds. Really cool!
When we got to the top of the gondola ride, we got out and walked for a very long time on a windy road. We were looking for a temple. Turns out, we were on a loop and had gone the wrong way...we could have gotten there eventually (you know, 8 miles later) but we settled for this Buddist temple pictured above. A man came out and spoke some English to us. He was surprised that we were not from Europe, for some reason.

These two pics are from the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial building. The marble lions are everywhere! They are to protect important buildings, temples, and bridges. We saw a lot of them. They were very cool. This was an interesting plaza. There was some manner of religious ceremony being led here...televised and being performed by many men and women following some guy in a blue suit. They were all in clear ponchos, except the man leading them. He had a guy holding an umbrella over his head. On either side of this very serious service were multiple groups of young teens practicing for a hip-hop dance competition happening on another building on this plaza. Modern meets ancient. It was fun to watch!

So excited!

2011-05-10T09:00:00.002-04:00

I will blog about it in about 10 days. Or maybe you already know:)
Anyway, so excited!

Cincinnati Homeschool Convention

2011-04-12T14:40:00.003-04:00

This year, I had the chance to go to the Cincinnati Homeschool Convention. This convention was so GOOD! Last year, 3 of us went to the Chicago convention, and it was weird. This convention seemed to have a better balance of people. Plus, it was humongous!!!! There were SO MANY people there. Like so many that people had to wait in huge lines just to get on the escalator because too many people were on it at once. Woa.

When I came home, someone asked me what was the one thing that stuck out to me this year. My answer was that we need to have more children after a little break. Don't know how much of that was just emotion and how much was revelation, but that's how I felt! I heard so many stories of multi-level homeschooling with older kids working with/entertaining/teaching younger kids. Our kids are pretty close together...uh, 4 kids in 5 years, so I really think that this would benefit our children. We'll see!

I went to all of Amanda Bennett's classes. She talked about getting ready for college (I know, a bit early, right?) and just general tips for homeschooling. She talked about how to fit unit studies in through high school. The main thing I got there was how important it is to teach my children how to love learning and to seek out information for themselves. And that my kids can do unit studies and go to college, too!

I went to a lot of spelling/grammer classes as this seems to be a problem for us. I actually purchased a curriculum and am hoping to use it to improve spelling as well as teach Sammy how to read. It's called All About Spelling found here. First you teach all the phonograms using a flashcard system. Then, use them to read and learn the rules of spelling. At least, I think that's how it works. We haven't started it yet:) But I am excited...plus the author of the program, Maria Rippel is from Eagle River, WI, our favorite vacation spot of all time! It's such a small world:)

I enjoyed a class about time management, though it wasn't what I expected. I received some great advice, not necessarily from the speaker, though he said many good things as well.

I spent hours in the Expo Hall looking at all the vendors. I didn't spend nearly as much as I did during my very first Convention, but I spent plenty. It was so much fun to see all the things available to homeschoolers there. I also LOVED watching people. Homeschooling brings in the widest variety of people-it was amazing!

My friend and I spent 2 nights with my brother that lives close to Cincy. THAT was a blast! Whenever I am around my siblings, I just laugh and laugh. I love it...though it did make it hard to get to early classes when we all went to be around 2am!

I took pages and pages of notes and hope they will be helpful. But I think the main reason I like to go is to get excited, again! It's easy to get burned out...especially when the weather starts to get nice. I love that the convention helps me to stay on task, but also reassures me that ALL the time I spend with my kids will benefit them in years to come, not just the time where we are sitting down doing school work. It was a fabulous weekend!

This week was supposed to be our week off, but I decided to go ahead and school this week and take next week off. We are doing Easter and it is a sweet topic. I love watching my babies build and share their testimonies.

I switched the weeks of school because my sister and 2 brothers are coming into town next week and I plan to be down at my parents for all the action:) So, no school next week, some cleaning and clearing out, and then family from Thursday on. I CAN NOT WAIT!! :)

Weight Gain

2011-04-06T09:41:00.003-04:00

This past weekend, a friend and I went to a homeschool convention (a different blog post) and we decided to just eat out instead of trying to pack in a cooler and food. Needless to say, it wasn't the healthiest weekend. So, Tuesday morning, I weigh in 2 pounds up from last week. I am, of course, bummed and come downstairs and am telling George about it. Levi hears me and says, "2 pounds? That's hardly anything at all!"

That boy just totally made my day:)

Busy!

2011-03-21T22:04:00.004-04:00

So, here is what I have been doing lately. I read a post on my friend, Emily's blog, that pointed me to this other blog entry and I decided to do what she was doing (though not for Lent, as we are not Catholic or Lutheran:) But I loved the idea of having a deadline and having a goal. Her idea was 40 days of Lent, 40 bags of clutter. I didn't know if I could do that exactly, but I liked her idea. So I split my house into 38 parts (see above pic) and went to work. It was so much easier to declutter the bill holder than to feel like I had to declutter the whole kitchen all in one big swoop. This has been so great! I have gotten rid of 5 large bins of stuff to sell\give away and tons of trash. Seriously! Trash?!? Where does it all come from?

Anyway, for some reason, dividing up the house like this really did it for me. I could just do a small chunk at a time and have even KEPT IT CLEAN for two weeks now! Yay! It truly is liberating! I LOVE this kind of stuff. And thanks to the girl at the Clover Lane blog-it's been a great run for me. I now have about 15 spots left, but some of them are REALLY big and will take a few days to do ( I am sure this is why they are still left:)

One of the hardest things to do will be decluttering school stuff, which I should do now, before I head down to the Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati. I never want to get rid of any of it! What if a kid needs it later on? But, it does get a bit ridiculous. We'll see if I tackle that one before I head to Cincy.

Other than decluttering, school is going well...we are liking dinosaurs a lot better than States! We bought our plane tickets to Taiwan last week! SO exciting! I did the Pinewood Derby and didn't die. I don't know why Scout stuff causes me SO MUCH STRESS, but it does. And I think that's about it. Oh, we had our first play date of the year at the park last Thursday. C'mon Spring, you can do it! Happy Days!

PS I know why I like to declutter at this time of year so much...it's almost garage sale season. Time to buy other people's clutter!! :)

A child's perspective:)

2011-03-21T22:02:00.003-04:00

Any guesses as to which child took this picture? Your guess is as good as mine!

Here's some fun winter pics!

2011-03-21T21:35:00.004-04:00

The snow tunnel in the backyard:)

Seth on the huge mound of snow from the plow

Sam in his winter get-up. He's just so cute!

The snow was a little much for Nat, I guess:)

Me:)

Back from the flu and pneumonia!

2011-02-28T23:19:00.004-05:00

I think this will be another random blog list of things that are going on. It's quicker than trying to figure out how to pull random things together in a coherent entry:)

We have gone back to diapers. Isn't that HORRIBLE? I bet I am the only parent in the world who would admit this! I think we killed it when we all got sick and couldn't take Seth to the bathroom and he had to go back into diapers. He just hasn't gotten it since then (and perhaps before that!) He always says, "Mom, I have to go potty" right after he has made a big mess. Argh. George and I got tired of it. Plus, every bathroom visit was a huge fight. Fight to get in there, fight to get the pants down, fight to get up on the potty, fight to get off, and fight to get the pants back on! It's been awful and we are all happier now:)
I am having fun pulling together our Taiwan trip. So exciting! We now have a place to stay, passports, and even luggage (thanks to Linda!). The kids are even looking forward to being with Grandmas and Grandpas then. We're all excited!
We are finishing our study about US States this week. It's going much better this week than last. Last week's school was not good. I assume we were recovering from being sick the previous week or something? It was awful! I also had time today to plan a dinosaur unit. I found a fabulous book at the library that has 4 weeks of dino activities and I am going to use almost all of them. They are perfect for my group! I am hoping to find more books by this author to use in later studies.
Kids have missed so much school around here that they are going into the middle of June. Wow! It's kind of nice though, because we will be in school until June 24th. This way, there won't be so much time with the neighbors knocking on the door and us still doing school:)
I'm excited that it's March already...or it will be in about 28 minutes:) I am happy to see February go, but most excited to start lots of fun things that will happen soon. At the end of this month, I am going to a homeschool convention in Cincinnati. Later, my sister comes here from Baltimore as well as my brother from Seattle and the new niece that we haven't met yet. That will be so much fun! Family reunion! Soon after that, we are going on our Taiwan trip:)
I started Weight Watchers again. I quit around April of last year and have slowly gained back most of the weight. I guess this happens to lots of WW people, because I got a mailer right when I was starting to feel really bad about my weight. How did they KNOW?? So, they waived my sign-up fee (aren't they so nice?) and put me back online. I hope it works this time...just kidding. It worked last time, it's just that I don't do a good job of keeping it off. But I would say, of the weight loss programs that are out there, this is a good one. And that fad diet that George and I went on, not so much:)
I got out of doing the Blue and Gold Banquet that I was so worried about. Which I must say, was kind of nice. Except that now, I still have to do it. It would have been nice to have been done with. Ah well, Pinewood Derby this month, B & G in April. The life of a Cubmaster:)

Well, there's some of our happenings. Things are really looking up for us...we are especially grateful to be healthy! Bring on Spring!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T16:33:00.002-05:00

To everyone! I am sick and very tired and have a million things to do, but this is such a great day! And, it's beautiful out! Loving the sunshine and the warmer temps. Spring will come, I just know it!

Here are my random thoughts for the day:

I wish I could get back into school. I was there for a while and then out again. I just need to be better prepared. We did some Valentine's stuff today and watched a History Channel special called "America: The Story of US". Very interesting, but the 2 parts we watched were called "Rebels" and "Revolution" and it may have been a tad violent for my young people. Riveting, yes. But very dramatic!
Wishing I would have gotten sick on any week but this one. Blue and Gold at the end of this week and still much to be done. How do people do this? How do people homeschool, fulfill church assignments (big ones), do family life, and be sick? It's too much for me right now. So, I think I will scrap it all and just blog:)
I also need to prep for Thursday's Enrichment night. I volunteered back in September. Too bad, I didn't remember that and planned the Blue and Gold banquet for the same week. Not smart on my part.
Kids are sick too. Whatever we got is fast and furious. Seth and Sam were both fine this morning, but this afternoon a little like zombies. Plus, I didn't know we were getting sick, so the family that watched my kids while George and I went to Columbus also got infected. SOOOO sorry about that.
George surprised me with a dozen roses on Friday and a yummo box of chocolates. The kids were trying to keep me out of the garage and the kitchen and I thought they were doing something wrong and trying to cover it up. I kept asking all these questions. Finally, they got exasperated at me and said, "Nothing is wrong, mom. Everything is OK!!!" So, I left and came back to a vase of roses on the table next to the chocolates. Mmmm...

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!!!

Riding the Potty Train

2011-02-02T20:33:00.002-05:00

Continuing the saga...

We didn't PT on Sunday, but Seth woke up wanting to "get on the potty train" on Monday morning. We've been doing fairly well ever since. All day today he told me when he had to pee. Yippee! Poo is another story, but we'll get there. We just may run out of underwear first:) And I am sure I am not helping matters any as he off and on wears a diaper (when we are going out). The ride on the potty train may be bumpy, but it will get you to where you want to be!

Potty Training week....

2011-01-31T09:52:00.002-05:00

Or not. We started on Saturday and it was ok...3 in the potty, 3 on the floor at about 3pm. I had thrown away the poopy underwear. Anyway, then I left to get groceries which took me longer than usual because it wasn't my usual store. When I pulled in, George came out to meet me and said he had followed all of my directions and the little guy had still peed on the floor 4 times! Ugh. So we skipped Sunday. He woke up this morning talking about it so we are on the train again. So far, we're 1 and 1 (again with the throwing away poopy underwear). Is this really worth it? Is he even ready? Amazing how this is kid #4 and potty-training still baffles me!

Big Boy Bed

2011-01-26T21:09:00.006-05:00

Today while at Homeschool Gym and Swim, I offered Seth's crib to a friend of mine getting ready to have a baby. We exchanged info and I told her as soon as we got around to switching beds, I would let her know and we would deliver it. So, when George came home I told him that I had given away Seth's crib. He asked if we had another bed for him and I told him we had a toddler bed that was in the attic. Soon after that I left for Scouts.

When I got home, I noticed the garage looked like someone had gotten in the attic. I came in, super impressed that George had gotten up there right after I mentioned it and gotten the bed down. Turns out, he thought that when I said I had given the bed away he thought I meant I had given it away...today! So he had that toddler bed already to go and got up to Seth's room and couldn't understand why there was a crib in there. So, long story short, Seth is now in a big boy bed. And loves it, George says.

This makes me happy and sad. Happy because I am ready for Seth to grow up. The 2's have been really rough. I am ready to move on. I am planning to potty train next week. And now...he's in a big boy bed.

But I am a bit sad. All things baby are leaving our house and you all know...I LOVE babies! I would love to have tons of kids...if my body could handle it, if it could be easy to homeschool with a baby (it is with a baby, just not a toddler), if we had tons of room, if we had unlimited funds, if children were always perfectly obedient and got along:) Now, don't get me wrong, these are not reasons not to have kids. At least, not for me. I am just saying I could have a pile of kids if it were super easy. As it is not, I will pray about my decision and the Lord will let me know what I should do.

Well, back to the big boy bed. Yay for Seth and for watching my wonderful kids become wonderful big kids!!!

Polaris Press in January

2011-01-20T22:03:00.003-05:00

It's been tough to get back on the wagon since Christmas. I have done school, but haven't felt all that motivated about it. I am hoping this improves as we are only half-way done with the year! Right now, we are doing oceans, which is really interesting. Can you name all 5 oceans without looking? I couldn't! But now, I can. And I am not 100% sure that they are the same as they were when I was a kid. Ok, I just Googled it and it wasn't the same! They "created" a new ocean in 2000. Can you DO that?

Anyway, it's been fun. Math has been going well. We're back on Math U See for both kids now and it's going well. Natalie was complaining there for a bit, so I backed her up a little. If she was in public school, she would only be in K and I was pushing her too hard. Now that we have gone to some easier concepts, she enjoys it much more. Levi is flying along with multiplication. I think it's fun for him to learn this new concept.

I am looking for a good (inexpensive) spelling program that I can stick with. I have started a few, but not stuck with them. Dictation has worked well in helping improve spelling, but I am afraid it's not enough. Levi still wants to spell everything phonetically if he is writing it down. He's much better at spelling orally (like spelling bee style). Natalie, on the other hand, can spell just about anything! I think she pictures how she sees it written. It's amazing how different they are in this regard. I hope to find a spelling program at the Midwest Convention in March. Can't wait to go to that!

Levi is reading like crazy and I am trying to keep him interested in some good books. He likes mystery chapter books. He's not into fantasy much, which surprises me. He also loves reading the Fudge books, Magic Treehouse, and Time Warp Trio. Any suggestions on a good series for him?

Today, kids went ice skating with homeschool buddies and the little boys jumped in the bounce houses. Fun! We also got to watch the local Semi-Pro hockey team practice for a while. Seth LOVED that!

A few random things:

George and I started a new diet. If it works, I will give details. If not, we'll just move on and pretend it never happened!
George and I are planning a trip to Taiwan in May. So exciting!
My family will be all together around Easter. My brother and sister will both fly home with their families. Yay!!!!!
Next up on the agenda, Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet. Has anyone done anything fun at one? I have to plan it and haven't a clue!
Feel a craving to doula someone's labor and delivery sometime soon. Lots of my friends are pregnant and babies are on my brain!

Thanks for stopping by!

If you don't hear from me...

2011-01-04T22:07:00.002-05:00

I will be playing Plants vs. Zombies that Levi got for Christmas. Curse you Pop Cap Games! And my brother who works for them! If you have never heard of this game and have lots of time to spend killing zombies with plants, check it out here.

Happy 2011!!

2010-12-29T11:35:00.006-05:00

Things Our Family Did in 2010:

Worked like crazy to put our house on the market, stressed trying to do school and have showings at the same time....and then took it off when our house didn't sell
Finished our 2009-2010 homeschool year with lots of friends, parties, and fun field trips
Vacationed for a week in a cabin in Wisconsin in July
Visited with family at the holidays (Easter, Thanksgiving, Grandma Simpson's Birthday)
Welcomed my parents home from their mission
Welcomed a gorgeous new niece into the world
Celebrated 8 years since the beginning of this wonderful ride:)

Things I did in 2010:

Took a trip to Seattle to surprise my parents after their mission (this picture is in Seattle with my siblings and parents...first time we'd been together for a LONG time!)
Went to the homeschool convention in Chicago. Parts were good...parts were weird. Not one that I will attend again anytime soon.
Went on a Women's Retreat in May with some of my best friends. Fun times!
Stayed home (at least a little:) to homeschool Natalie and Levi
Became the ward Cubmaster for our church and continued to be the choir director

What George did in 2010:

Practiced all his handyman skills to get the house ready to sell (including knocking out the wall in this closet pictured above and drywalling it)
Wrote many computer programs for me to use in our homeschool
Bought a gun and a membership to a shooting range
Continued working at his software engineering job and is still loving it
Taught Levi's primary class at church
Watched the kids while I ran around the country:)

What Levi did in 2010:

Started piano lessons with a teacher that is not Grandma:)
Sharpened his Wii and computer game skills
Attended Lego Club at the library
Made lots of friends in our new homeschool group
Loved studying about robots
Turned 7!

What Natalie did in 2010:

Tried out ballet lessons and watched the ballet of "Snow White"
Met lots of friends at homeschool gym and swim
Enjoyed playing outside, watching and handling bugs, climbing trees, and riding her bike
Turned 6 on Thanksgiving!

What Sam did in 2010:

Got potty trained:)
Loved playing with toys, building with blocks and legoes, and loved playing with the neighbors
Attended Bugs and Butterflies camp during the summer
Spent his school time tracing letters and doing connect the dots and learning to spell his name
Turned 4 two weeks ago!

What Seth did in 2010:

Became a very rambunctious 2 year old in March
Wanted to "do school" every day
Loved singing, playing, destroying, chasing, and yelling and generally adding to the raucus
Learned to climb out of his crib and changed our lives forever:)

I want to say how grateful I am for my Savior, Jesus Christ. His atonement makes my life and happiness possible. Without Him, there would be no hope. I cannot live in a world without Him. I am thankful that He loves me enough to include me in His wonderful plan. Merry late Christmas to all of you and your families, and have a fantastic 2011!

Mom and Dad do Gingerbread

2010-12-15T16:28:00.002-05:00

Kids Gingerbread Decorating

2010-12-15T16:23:00.002-05:00

Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!

2010-12-10T21:28:00.000-05:00

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

2010-12-06T22:26:00.002-05:00

George here. Levi's piano teacher has a contest for her students, the "1 minute club", which is to be able to name the notes on both the treble and bass clefs, from shuffled flash cards, in less than one minute. Since putting something on the computer always makes it more fun... I made a program for him to practice. If you or your kids want to try it out, just download it to your PC, unzip it, double click on the "musiquiz.exe", and it will start. Hopefully. I haven't tried this on anybody else's computer yet :) Then it will show a note on the staff, and if you type the correct note name, it will move to the next one.

Download musiquiz

Cleaning off the camera

2010-12-06T21:25:00.007-05:00

Can you tell that my floor is heated due to my hot water heating pipes? LOVE IT!

These next pics are from playing "Just Dance" on the Wii at Thanksgiving. This is Natalie and Sam.

Here's one of Grandma getting in the fun:)

Nat's bday fell on Thanksgiving this year, so we celebrated the Wednesday night before. She loved the castle cake...even though it was a bit crooked.

Here she is making a wish. Isn't that a great face?

A picture of the done cake. I really should have waited until I had the right tool to make the cuts flat, but I trimmed them myself and it didn't quite work. Also, those dumb ice cream cones are harder than than they should be to make them look nice. Boo. Natalie LOVED that it said "Princess Natalie" and she loved the hearts and the princesses. She didn't care that it was lopsided. It was a fun cake to do:)

My kids always want their picture taken with their creations, so here is Sam. He has made an ancient Egyptian pyramid:) Gotta love homeschooling!

Here's Nat's block creation.

A few weeks ago, we had some excitement in our neighborhood. A house fire started across the way in the cul-de-sac. It ended up being a 6 truck fire! The boys were glued to the front window for at least an hour and a half.

On top of the fire trucks, it was also trash and recycling day. My 2 youngest were so thrilled at all the trucks. I am sure that my neighbor was not too thrilled when to get around all the trucks, people had to drive up in his yard!

Straight vs. Curly

2010-12-06T20:59:00.002-05:00

Yes, this is a hair post. So, as you all know, I have been a "curly girl" since March. I have not straightened my hair ONCE since then. I started this crazy hair routine and have stuck to it. But lately, I have been losing my curl and wishing I could go straight...just once!

So, I did. I decided to just try it and see if it was as easy as I remembered (compared to the curly routine). It took FOREVER! My hair has grown quite a bit since March and it was a process to blow-dry and straighten it. And it was straight. And boring. No mystery! No suspense in waiting to see what the hair would look like after it was completely dry! Just boring.

I believe that I am now officially a "curly girl" :) A convert. But I am glad that I did straighten it, because now I can stop wondering and wishing it was straight. I can just be thankful for the curls.

Ready for the Holidays!

2010-11-15T15:18:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I am not physically READY, but I am ready to have a good time with family and food for the next 6 weeks! We are finishing up our "4 weeks on" this week and I am ready to be done. We decorated our Egypt notebooks today and we're moving on to fire safety (just a one day unit). I think we will make a fire plan, a meeting point, and check our smoke alarms tonight for FHE. We will also practice getting out of our beds and crawling out of the house. It should be fun!

If I can get to the library tonight, then we will start our Thanksgiving unit tomorrow. I did get Amanda B's Thanksgiving unit and it has tons of good stuff. I always like the picture books to go along with the lessons. I should just scour my bookshelves...I am sure I have some Thanksgiving books somewhere. There are just so many to go through.

I sorted toys today and just have this huge urge to just get rid of most of them. You know the reason I hold on to most of them? Because of other people's kids. I don't want kids to come to my house and say, "Don't you have any toys?" or "I'm bored!" Isn't that SUCH a silly reason? All my kids need are books, furniture, and blankets for capes and they are good! Maybe I will just box them up...not get ride of them, and see if anyone even notices.

The next couple of weeks are filled with fun things....Harry Potter midnight showing, Enrichment, crafting with homeschool buddies, Stake Conference for church, Natalie's birthday, and my brother and his family and my parents here for Thanksgiving! YAY! The Saturday after is the Jones family Thanksgiving and that is always so much fun and quite crazy with 30 of us:) Good times!

Food Storage in the Garage a.k.a. Answers to Past Post Musings

2010-11-09T17:08:00.004-05:00

As I was reading past posts, I thought I should put in a post about this. Back in the spring, I wondered if our food storage was ok in the garage. It wasn't. Or at least some of it wasn't. Our big problems were moths and heat. The moths got into everything that was bagged (rice, powdered sugar) or bagged and in a cardboard box (baking mix, cake mix, hard taco shells). This last weekend, I opened a can of evaporated milk and it was solid-I think it got cooked!

So, my advice is be careful of what you put in the garage. If it's all in big tubs with lids, less of a problem. But watch things in cans because they get so hot. I'm just sayin.

Polaris Press

2010-11-09T16:13:00.002-05:00

Wow, it's been a while with no news from our schoolroom, so here it is!

We started the year learning about Veterinarians, and then moved on to Robots. It was fun and informative. Levi really got into it. And if nothing else came from it, Seth learned to say "robot" instead of "bobot."

From there, we have started our Ancient Egypt unit. This one has been so interesting! There is so much information that it gets hard to sort out what should be taught. It's hard to not want to teach them everything! But the eyes eventually do glaze over, so I try to stop before that point. We have been doing a read-aloud (The Curse of King Tut's Mummy) which is a fun, true story of Howard Carter discovering King Tut's tomb. In addition to this, each day we try to do some Egypt related activity. We have built pyramids out of cardboard, made papyrus, written in hieroglyphs, and done geography worksheets, to name a few. This schedule seems to work well for us. Through the day, we also fit in vocabulary, spelling, math and reading.

We still do lots of extra activities. I think we will close up our Egypt study by going to the Indpls Children's Museum. They have an Egyptian room there that will be fun to visit now that we know lots more about Egypt.

We will take the week of Thanksgiving off and then back on for 3 weeks and then off for 2. I am thinking of doing a Thanksgiving/Christmas Holiday unit. I bought Amanda Bennett's Holiday Unit Study and am hoping there will be lots in there we can use. Her Unit Studies are SO full of info that I get a bit overwhelmed. But hopefully, I can go through and pick and choose what I want to use.

I can't believe that we are already to the holiday season! I am really excited to have my family here for Thanksgiving. It's always fun for me to be hostess! Except for the cleaning the house part:) Hoping to do some decluttering in my time off school the beginning of Thanksgiving week. That means I will need to have school planned for the 3 weeks before Christmas before Thanksgiving week. So, I have until the end of next week? Time just goes by SO fast, these days!

Well, if I don't post before Thanksgiving, now you all know why! Enjoy your holiday!

PS Does anyone have any "to die for" Thanksgiving recipes that they want to share? :)

Homemade Wheat Bread

2010-11-02T08:26:00.004-04:00

I have decided that I really want to be an awesome bread maker. I want to find a yummy recipe and perfect it. I want to grind my own wheat, use honey from Harry and Linda and feel like I am really doing my part to provide for my family. I had this same thought last year, but then began to diet and bread was pretty much a no-no so I put bread-making on the back burner.

I have decided I have a bit more self-control with my eating and that I could practice making bread. I have made quite a few loaves and found a recipe I really like. It takes a long time, but as long as I am home and doing school, it works really well.

Except for the above batch. This batch was VERY depressing. I forgot the salt. A seemingly small omission, only 1 TB for 4 loaves, but the bread was no good. And I had decided at the beginning that I wasn't going to feel bad about throwing away practice loaves, so they went to the compost. But they looked good. And had the best texture so far. So sad.

I am not deterred, though. I will continue my bread-making practice. And from now on, I will not forget the salt.

Halloween Pics

2010-11-02T08:00:00.003-04:00

Red Power Ranger, Ballerina, and Buzz Lightyear (with no wings or helmet, so he was only the toy Buzz...when he saw another kid in full get-up, he said,"There's the REAL Buzz Lightyear!")

Here's Seth as Tigger. The kids don't have much choice in the way of costumes. Whatever we have got in that size. Maybe someday, I will be creative, but it was not this year!

We enjoyed 4 Halloween parties and a Trunk or Treat at church. We didn't trick or treat on Sunday, so we ended up with lots less candy than last year, which is a good thing! I have eaten my fair share, though. Good times!

Happy Halloween!!!

Indianapolis Temple

2010-10-13T17:21:00.002-04:00

I was so excited to read this announcement:

New Indianapolis Temple Information: "It will be located in Carmel. The property has been identified, the purchase price agreed but the sale has not yet closed, so they will not disclose the exact location at this time. It is anticipated to be 50% larger than the Louisville Temple…. It takes about three years from property purchase to temple dedication, so this might be anticipated in the Fall of 2013. Groundbreaking ceremonies typically occur one year from property purchase, so anticipate this in Fall of 2011. There are anticipated to be only three dedicatory sessions, with attendance by special invitation. All members will be invited to attend a closed-circuit broadcast in their meetinghouses. This will be for all baptized members 8 years and older who receive a special recommend from their bishop or branch president."

Carmel is a great spot and on the north side of Indy....closer to us! Google maps says 2 hours and 10 minutes:):):) Plus, my parents (and a wonderful brother-in-law and sister-in-law:)are on the way so I can drop off the kids and visit the temple! So exciting! I can remember this temple being promised to us in a regional conference when I was young. What a great thing to see happen!

I love Mondays!

2010-09-27T22:45:00.003-04:00

This school year has become crazy for me! We have so many scheduled activities happening that I feel like I am always running somewhere. I know, it's probably not nearly as bad as most people, but coming from this summer, when my friends made fun of me when I said "I have to check my schedule"and it was always blank, to this. It's quite a change. This brings me to loving Mondays.

Most people do not love Mondays...dread them, even. But to me, Monday is the day where I have nothing scheduled. It's the day where I get a good start on my weekly laundry pile. It's the day where the weekend dishes get cleaned up. It's the day when the house gets straightened from it's weekend "tornado" state. It's the day when no one calls. It's the day we have a good, productive school day. Yippee! Today was a good Monday.

After Monday, I shift into survival mode. Any laundry not done may take the rest of the week to finish. Dishes get done late at night or early in the morning, if I am lucky. We run to swim lessons, ballet classes, gym and swim class, Lego club, Cub Scouts, science classes, field trips on Fridays, and piano lessons. I teach a music class and switch off babysitting once a month as well. I am sure that this doesn't seem like too much to the average American family, but it is crazy busy to me:)

The hardest thing about the schedule is motivating the kids to do school late in the afternoon. My group is still young and they are tired by early afternoon. I really like to be done by 3 and sometimes, that's when we are starting! Ah, it all works out! Today was a good day and will hopefully lead to a good week. Thanks for reading:)

Unschoolers and Socialization

2010-09-14T22:54:00.003-04:00

I am trying to decide if I am an "unschooler". Maybe some of you are wondering what that may be? Well, it's a term from a man named John Holt that describes a child driven education, where the child learns what he needs to know from life experiences not curriculum. I make my own curriculum, using the interests of the children as my guide. Do I fit in? I can't decide. Not that it really matters, I suppose. I have met many new homeschooling families lately, many of them declaring that they are "unschoolers." So, I was just wondering:)

This week I had to stop and laugh at a worry that many people have about homeschoolers. How do they get socialized with other kids? Here's our week:

Monday-library day. The kids spent time in the Discovery Room and easily found kids to play with and had a great time.
Tuesday-play date at the park where we met many new friends and spent a good hour playing with 20 kids of all ages and also, swim lessons/Childwatch where there was much interaction with many different kids.
Wednesday-attend a homeschool Gym and Swim class at the YMCA with many other homeschool kids
Thursday-kids go to Lutherhaven which is an outdoor science day for homeschooled kids that is as long as a public school day
Friday-zoo day with Grandma and Grandpa-the best kind of socialization you can get!!
Plus, everyday many hours are spent outside with the neighbors!

I just love it! Because we are trying out a year round schedule (4 weeks on, 1 week off), this isn't even one of our school weeks though it seemed busy enough to be!

We have finally settled in, stopped whining:) and are gearing up for our Robot/Simple Machine unit study coming up (any ideas for a good field trip for this topic?). We just finished our Vet study which was a lot of fun. The kids' spelling has improved dramatically since we started back up and we are finally getting into a math groove. We have read 3 read-alouds that have challenged their vocabulary skills. We made notebooks that showed some of our work. All in all, a successful first month. Yay!!

Polaris Press: Fun and productive school time

2010-08-31T22:03:00.003-04:00

Had a great time today at the park with some new homeschool friends. Yay for friends! Also had a great time at the Animal Shelter. We were really wanting to bring home a four legged friend, though. I didn't think that it would be so hard for me. I am not that much of an animal person. I think I could do cats though, if George wasn't allergic to them. The kids loved seeing the animals and learned about bite safety, which I think was very good for my kids. They don't have much fear around strange animals.

Monday, I learned that the key to a good homeschool day/week is staying at home and NO phone calls. We had a fabulous Monday! On top of getting lots of good schooling in, I also got 3 loads of laundry washed, dried AND put away!! Unheard of! I got some things planned that needed to be planned and my bookshelves mostly organized. Well, at least as of now, all the books we have can fit on some shelf. Whether they will stay there or ever get there again is an entirely different story!

Day 1...the kids are excited!!!

2010-08-24T22:58:00.003-04:00

It was a wonderful, relaxed summer, and now, we are back! Polaris Academy is in session. Year-round this year, I think. I hope it will keep us from getting stressed and burned out. We actually started on August 12th. I really love my new room set up and am trying to get into the swing of the schedule. This year, we are starting at 10am and I like it! Last year, we only did the afternoon, but now I have more I want to fit in.

Our schedule:

10 am Read Aloud and Vocab words
10:45 Instruction on Unit Study (this could be reading, lecture, or an activity)
Noonish Lunch
1:30pm and on: Nap time and we start doing math, dictation, Time 4 Learning, Silent Reading, and some other individual activity

It was rough at the beginning, but we are slowly settling in and getting reminded of the schedule. I had some serious whining issues. You know, the "this is too hard!!" line? So, Geo came up with a great idea. Give the kids 2 "It's too hard for me right now" cards and they can use them through the week. If the don't use them, they get a reward (donuts on Saturday). They can also earn stickers on their own for not using them. It's been good so far...a kid gets grumpy and I say, "No grumping, just give me your card." They stop and think about it, and then finish the assignment! It's much better! Mostly, this comes with math, but also some writing. Math is a struggle for us. The Math-U-See that saved us last year, is not doing so well this year. Argh. Gotta find something that works for them. I am reviewing lots to see what we have just forgotten and what we really just don't understand. We'll get there. Hope you all are enjoying your free time this school year. If you get lonely, come on over:)

Pictures of our vacation!

2010-08-24T22:29:00.004-04:00

We always go camping Up North and have since I was little. This year we changed it up a bit and got a cabin not to far from the old campground and really enjoyed being inside. When you have a 2 year old, it just nice to have a building to be inside. We really enjoyed our week and especially being with my brother and sister-in-law and their adorable kids, which for some reason I don't have any pics of on here. We DID camp out for one night on the lawn of the cabin. We got a taste of roughing it. Ha! It was a great week!

This was the end of the trip, stopping at the Chicago cousins. So fun!

Gaming with cousins

This was the hike from "you know where". I thought it would be a great idea to go on this 2 mile hike with our group at the end of an exhausting vacation week. Ha. Seth fell asleep in the backpack and gave George a crick in his neck. I ended up carrying Sam the last half mile or so. Funny story: My absolute favorite spot in the world is on this hike. It's a grove of pine trees that sounds so peaceful is just gorgeous. Anyway, we get to this spot...a little further than half-way and George says, "This is mom's very favorite spot." By this time, the kids are whining and begging to be done and Seth is screaming his head off. Levi asks why, so, through the screaming, I lamely explain that I love it because it's so peaceful and calming:) At this point, we begin to run away because the mosquitos and biting flies are so bad. Sigh.

These pics are from a petting zoo that we rode a train out to. I am not sure which was the favorite, the train or the petting zoo. Depends on which kid you ask.

At just about any point of the week, you could find some member of my family with Smores on their face:) It was a camping staple! No wonder I noticed an 8 pound weight gain:)

This was the one beach picture I got. Our cabin was only about 8 minutes from Silver Lake and it was a really nice beach. George and I got pretty sunburned (I have NEVER itched so bad in my life!!!) but the kids loved it and swam out pretty far to a diving pontoon. I was impressed. They were pretty tired after that!

The fire pit really "made" the cabin. It was so nice to be able to cook everything in the kitchen and then make smores or just sit out and watch the fire all night. Definitely one of the best parts of the vacation!

Off the market and under construction!

2010-07-12T21:16:00.003-04:00

At this moment, George has cut a huge hole in a wall in our home. I loved it when we called our friend Carol (the home improvement guru) for some advice and she said in a cutsy little kid voice, "You two are becoming such handymen!" She's allowed to say that because she and I go way back and she has helped us do MANY home improvement projects. So we borrowed her "saws-all" and now there is a hole. Hopefully, it will become an enlarged storage closet for buckets of wheat and other food storage.

Also this weekend, we moved all of our stuff back in from JB's garage (she was letting us use it as a storage unit). We now have our comfy seating back in our family room! Yay! We have also rearranged the room. Now, it's more like 2 rooms. Very functional. One side is 2 couches "L" shaped facing the TV and the other side is a school room! Funny how the "school room" has changed every year:) I am sure that someday, I will find a set up I like! So now, our family room isn't pretty, but oh, SO functional! I am thrilled! Becca helped me organize it today. I still have some things that need homes, but we will get there!

Here's a question for you: Where is your food storage? Currently, ours is in the garage and I like having it out of the house, but...is it too hot? And is it only too hot for the long term stuff? What if I will use it within a year or two? Then is it ok to be out there? That would be super handy if I didn't have to move it all again and got to keep a whole room of my house.

Alright, should be doing laundry, prepping school units, or moving all the junk that came out of the closet that now has a huge hole in it, somewhere else. Fun times!!

Oops!

2010-07-08T00:01:00.001-04:00

As I read through my last few blog entries, I noticed that the last 3 are pretty much the same. I guess you can tell where my thoughts and interests are at the moment:) I guess I shouldn't blog so late at night when my brain is off. Oh well.

Loving summertime!

2010-07-07T23:47:00.002-04:00

We are busy doing a bunch of whatever! It's so great. The kids have had lots of fun just spending hours outside. We had a great 4th of July party at Harry and Linda's (see their blog for pics...I don't know what my problem is:) and a water party for Levi's birthday. I am now gearing up for a week of camping/cabin-ing up in Wisconsin. Can't wait for that! Also prepping for a homeschool convention in Chicago! Yay!

Time is flying. School is starting on August 9th and I am hoping to be really ready by then. Today, I went through all the school stuff I have to organize it and see what I have and if I can use it this year. I am prepping for Unit Studies based on this fabulous book by Jennifer Steward called Everything You Need to Know about Homeschool Unit Studies that I picked up at a garage sale a few months back. It has been extremely helpful and I am hoping this will help us not to get burned out. I am also hoping to do school year round. I think I will do 4 weeks on/1week off. This will give us about 6 weeks in the summer. I think it will be good for all of us. We will see.

We took our house off the market today. :( But, I am ready to move on and excited to move things around a bit. We are going to try schooling in the family room this year. It's out of the way and there are plenty of surfaces to pile things on:) ALso, lots of wall space to hang up maps and white boards and such. I hope it works! We have lots of things that we want to do to the house now that it's off the market. It's too bad there's no money tree in our yard, that would be so helpful:)

Hope you all are enjoying your summer! Thanks for reading:)

Strangeness

2010-06-22T14:51:00.002-04:00

What a strange couple of days. Levi is going to science camp all week so he is gone from 9-4. The baby naps in the afternoon and the other 2 play very quietly together, inside or out. I can't believe how peaceful it is and how unmotivated I am to do anything. I wonder why this is? It reminds me of the Depeche Mode song "Enjoy the Silence", because that is exactly what I am doing! I can see how moms could really get used to having their kids in school all day! :)

I am in the midst of planning my Unit Studies and have my Veterinarian one almost completed. I am looking forward to trying this "new" method of homeschooling.

I web-cammed (is that really a word?) with my sister today. It's her birthday! I usually just chat on the phone, but with the webcam, it was like we hung out for an hour or so. Loved it! I have really missed her lately. I love being with my family! I wish we all lived close together still. :(

I am a bit tired today. It's too bad that going to bed at 1am and getting up at 7am just isn't enough sleep for my old body anymore. But, I am married to a night owl, and I am sure that our current trend will continue on. Ah well, sleep is overrated!

Well, this post is pretty random. Hope nobody minds:)

Just a quickie!

2010-06-17T14:11:00.002-04:00

I don't have much to say, except that I am LOVING summertime! It's fun to do summer things and have friends around to do things with (except this week:) It's fun to plan big things like camping trips and road trips. It's great to get together with family. I just LOVE it all!

I looked back a few posts ago and saw my summer "To Do" list. Hmmm. I am loving this lazy Summer. The kids love it, too. So I am not crazy to do all of those things...though some will happen anyway. I thought we would hit that "I'm bored" phase, but it's not here. I think this is a blessing of homeschooling. The kids have lots of time to themselves and enjoy filling it how they want. So when summer is here, they know how to entertain themselves. Now, don't get me wrong, I still hear the occasional, "I'm bored" but it's not that often.

On another note, George and I have decided that if our house doesn't sell, we are going to use our TV/family room for the school room. It's perfect with built in bookshelves and lots of wall space for maps and our white board. We will use a collapsible table that we have in the garage. That way, we can move our food storage back in the house...I am sure that it is too hot in the garage, really. Also, George wants to knock out the back wall of the closet under the stairs and make more storage room in that closet. It should be a substantial amount of storage.

We're off this weekend, first to Chicago and then south to visit my parents. Yay for parents being home on Mother's/Father's Day! It's nice to be able to just "run down" and visit them. I have really missed that!

DONE!

2010-06-04T20:43:00.003-04:00

It's been a long year...well, at least May was long. I think it wasn't so bad until then. It's amazing how homeschool days are so different. It all depends on the kids moods and what they are excited about. We had some good and some bad things go on this year, but all in all, the kids learned a lot. I think we just really got burned out at the end. Does this happen to public school kids too? When the weather starts to get nice, it's just hard to sit through school work.

Hopefully, that will ALL change next year! We are going to do actual Unit Studies-meaning I include all subjects (except math and phonics) in our topical study. I picked up this wonderful book for $4 at a garage sale entitled "Everything You Need to Know About Homeschool Unit Studies". I have read it once and am ready to read it again. I started last night planning a Veterinary Unit and it was so simple! I am excited! I just need to get to the library and write my final plan. I hope this method will help us to get lots more done with less complaining. It should just streamline the whole process and have lots more reading time. The kids will be begging to "do school" :)

I am also going to get rid of morning TV, which may perhaps, cause mutiny. More field trips. More projects...because I will be better prepared. For each subject, we will keep a notebook so the kids will have something to show all the people that say "What did you learn in school today? while my kids look at them blankly. :)

I think it will go well. Luckily, homeschool is pretty forgiving. If something doesn't work, you throw it out and try something else. Good times!

7 Days Left

2010-05-25T21:30:00.002-04:00

We have only 7 days left of school. Yay! I am ready for summer! I have some things that I would really like to do this summer. Here's my list:

Find 10 (free or cheap) places to explore in our city with the kids
Camp
Read whatever I want
Prep an entire school year's worth of unit studies
Go to the zoo and Y often, and some museums around here
Do a 5K both at the beginning and end of the summer
Do a little gardening with the kids (hopefully with Gma's help)
Continue my Curly Girl routine and try new products
Vacation with the family
See "Eclipse" at midnight on June 29th
Take the kids to kid's fests and free movies and splash parks with friends
Grill
Move! (if only our house would sell)

What a funny list. Quite random, really! The summer is just not really that long, is it? When I was a kid, the summer was endless, it seemed. But now? We have a little over 2 months before needing to start school again. 2 months! Not long enough, if you ask me. But we certainly will enjoy it!

Hair Obsession

2010-05-20T13:42:00.003-04:00

Ok, so here's why I haven't been on the blog for a while. I have a new obsession...HAIR!! It started when I went to Seattle and saw my SIL's beautiful hair and she says, "I never use shampoo!" What?? Who has ever heard of this?? So, I got the book. Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey (sp?) It has changed my life...or taken over my life. I haven't decided which. I know which one Geo would say:) The book led me to the Naturallycurly.com website and that was it. I was hooked! Now, every day I read blogs and forums about curly hair. I read about products and find the best prices on them. I talk to complete strangers (curly-haired ones, of course!) about their hair care regimen. Too funny!

Here's pics of my naturally curly locks and then I will tell you the secrets:)

Here is my regimen (does that word mean what I think it means?):

Shampoo-I only shampoo once a week and use a Burt's Bee's shampoo that is sulfate-free.
Conditioner-I do something called "co-wash" all the other days. I wash only using conditioner (my choice is Suave Naturals Coconut b/c it's cheap and it seems to work). I put it on my wet head and scrub my scalp trying not to disturb my hair. I comb my hair with a VERY wide-toothed comb and try to collect the ENORMOUS amount of hair that comes out of my head. After I rinse this out with cold water( if I can stand it), I put a tiny bit of conditioner on and leave it in.
Styling-I haven't really figured it out yet, but right now, I scrunch water out of my hair with an old T-shirt and scrunch in Biolage gel while my head is upside down. I use 3 small dollops that I rub in my hands first. The rubbing does something...uh, the word escapes me:) At this point, your hair should feel and squish like wet seaweed :P
Plopping- this is BY FAR the best part! After the gel, I lay the old t-shirt on the toilet seat so it looks upside down to me. The hair plops straight down into the t-shirt, I grab the arms, sausage roll them, and then tie them behind my head. Voila! My curls are nicely plopped on top of my head and will stay there, undisturbed, for 20-30 minutes...or until someone comes to the door!
After plopping (some call it plunking), turn upside down, untie the shirt, and shake out my curls. And that's it. It does take a long time to air-dry, though, and today I used my hair dryer with a diffuser and I liked it a lot!

Now, I have only been doing this for 2 weeks and I don't really have any idea about all of this. Seriously, it's a religion for some of these people! Real "Curly Girls" NEVER brush their hair, use shampoo, or use a towel. They NEVER would DREAM of blow-drying hair straight or *gasp* flat-ironing it! I must say that I am not sure that I am really there, but it's been a fun journey and I like the results.

Woment's Retreat

2010-05-20T13:25:00.002-04:00

Food, friends, and Fun!! What more can you ask for???
These are some highlights from our Women's Retreat this weekend:

Me, Becca and Cynthia preparing to sleep outside on the deck. It was a GORGEOUS night, so clear and starry and not terribly cold. A tradition has started!!

JB and Kate jumped in the VERY cold lake. Hilarious to watch, but I wasn't about to get in.

Me, Jess, and Maryirene in front of the rustic cabin. This was their first time up.

Me and Lisa in front, Jana and JB in the back. This was on our way to a bulk food store where I made purchases like chocolate-covered almonds, cinnamon bears, and gummy teeth:)

Here's Becca and I in front of the cabin and the lake.

It's so beautiful up there and we all had a blast. We played some games, talked mostly, and ate SO MUCH good food. We did the Blue Gate (an Amish yummy pie restaurant) and watched "New Moon"...that was kind of funny! Becca and I were up early...it was cold and dewey out there on the deck so we went in for hot chocolate. Becca went in to cook her quiche. It spilled over and REALLY stunk up the cabin and everyone woke up to that smell. It was kind of funny:) We ate some more and talked some more and then went back into town. We headed home in the evening and a few of us met to do dinner...our last fling before going back to reality.

I loved being in the company of these wonderful women. I love talking to them and learning from them. They are amazing. I hope that we can do this every year!!! I don't know what will happen when word gets out that it's so much fun, and then everyone wants to come. It's going to be crowded:)

Happy Birthday to me!!

2010-05-20T13:20:00.002-04:00

This is not the best picture of me, but that's how it goes these days. I turned 32 and it was a nice day. The kids got along well (I told them that's what I wanted for my bday). The only part I was sad about was I had to make dinner. Plus, the food didn't sound good because I had "tasted" the birthday cake all day. The cake didn't taste great either...I mean it did the first few times, but by the time I ate it for my bday dessert, I was sooo caked out. Silly, eh?

Polaris Press and Garage Sales

2010-04-30T21:31:00.003-04:00

Wow, I haven't done a school post in a long time! We have been doing a lot of time4learning.com (LOVE IT!) and reading. Today, we also did a science-y project. Levi scored this Hot Wheels car maker at a garage sale for $2 and we used it for science. It demonstrated how, when we apply heat to a solid, it changes states. And we melted plastic into Hot Wheels cars. Cool. We also combined baking soda and vinegar to blow up a balloon and cooked eggs for our snack. It was fun for the kids and I was glad that our morning spent garage sale-ing turned educational!

Speaking of garage sales, I do believe that I am addicted. If I see a sign, I have to turn in! What I really want to do is get a babysitter for my kids so I can go for a few hours alone. Paying a babysitter would kind of cancel out the savings by going to garage sales...but I would be happy:) Plus, I probably would save money. It's amazing what I will buy to keep the kids happy so we can hit one more sale. But it's only $.25! I also keep thinking to myself, "Our house is on the market, I can't be bringing stuff home" but yet, it comes. I can't help it!!! I need to do another toy weed out as the kids spend their money at garage sales. So, any moms want to swap babysitting on Friday mornings with me? :)

Guitar

2010-04-28T22:16:00.002-04:00

George here. I know you're all wondering, "while Anna was gone on her trip, what ever did George do to occupy his evenings?" Well, allow me to satisfy your politely silent curiosity. I worked up an arrangement of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on the guitar and recorded it on my PC. Here it is:

Such a thing could be done in about 5 minutes by a virtuoso guitarist. Considering that it took me 10 hours gives you an idea how far away from virtuoso I am currently.

My Surprise Trip to Seattle!

2010-04-20T16:06:00.004-04:00

Gotta have a Space Needle picture:)

Sometime in January, I was feeling the winter blahs and got this great idea that me and my siblings should fly out and surprise my parents while they were visiting my brother in Seattle. I called my sister and she thought it maybe could work and then called my SIL (with whom we would be staying) and she was super excited. My younger brother got on board and we all started looking at flights and planning the dates.

I was really worried about getting it all together because Mom and Dad would be just getting off of their mission on Temple Square and in January, they weren't wanting to nail down dates when they would be visiting in Seattle. Luckily, it all worked out and they still didn't know a thing!

The whole Lyon family at Gasworks looking over Union Lake at the Seattle skyline

Liz and I met in Cincinnati and flew to Seattle on Thursday night. I loved being able to spend more time with Liz (though I know it cost her a bit...thanks Calvin!) I also LOVED being able to help with her adorable and angelic 4 month old, Eli. My wonderful SIL, Shanon came to pick us up. When we first saw my parents, they didn't recognize me! I have lost 30 pounds and my hair is quite a bit darker than it used to be. The looks on their faces were priceless! I was so glad that we were all able to keep this trip a secret for so long. I wished I had thought to have a camera:)

Eli, an unbelievably good baby

We spent the first day outside in the beautiful sunshine. We ate fish and chips and walked down to the Locks and watched boats and looked for fish in the Fish Ladder. That thing is pretty cool:) It would have made a great biology lesson for the kids. Matt came in late Friday night, so we all stayed up late talking.

Here's the family at Pike Place Market

On Saturday, we went down to Pike Place Market. So interesting! So many neat things to see and taste. Lots of street performers, tons of trinkets to buy, fish being thrown around, wedding parties walking through the rain, etc... It was really amazing and packed! My personal favorite, the hoola-hooping guitar player/singer. We had lots of fun looking around and seeing everything.

This group was called Slimpickins and they were VERY good

Sunday, we went to church and then to Gasworks park to see the skyline. It was a really nice afternoon. Throughout the weekend, we spent lots of time eating, talking, playing games, talking music and movies, playing with Eli and even watched "What's Up, Doc?" an old family favorite.

I really enjoyed this whole trip. It was relaxing and easy (which was really good for my back that I hurt a week before I left) . I do wish I had left the conjunctivitis in Indiana and pray that no one else gets it! It was fun to have no responsibility. To be able to be the one sleeping on the couch because I didn't need to share a room with any of my babies behind a closed door. I could get up to go potty and not worrying about waking up any little kids. It just was nice. Now, don't get me wrong, I missed George and the kids A LOT!! But I am just saying, it was nice to not have to be responsible for anyone else for 4.5 days.

When I flew in Monday night, I expected Becca to come get me and was so excited when George walked out from behind a post with a rose. What a cutie! It was so nice to see him. He would have had a lot of fun in Seattle. Next time, we will all take our spouses:) And I LOVED on Tuesday morning that the kids all came in and laid next to my bed while I was sleeping (jet lag:) It brought me so much joy to see them all!

It was an awesome trip and so much fun to surprise my parents. I hope they adjust back to normal life well and come visit us as much as they can stand:) And I hope that if George ever has to look for a new job out of this state, he might think of doing it in Seattle.

Hi Grandma and Grandpa Lyon!!!!

2010-04-15T13:34:00.002-04:00

Back pain and perhaps a midlife crisis?

2010-04-13T22:17:00.003-04:00

It's been an interesting week. I hurt my back last Thursday and have been thrown off this week. Also, I have something big happening this week and have been prepping for it, so the back pain has not helped.

When I hit 30, my body began to break down. Or maybe it started with the 4 pregnancies in 5 years? Yeah, that must have done it! I also started to notice gray hairs, wrinkles, saggy parts, etc. I grew up not really caring much about my appearance. I was perfectly happy with my own "style" and really haven't cared much. But now, something has changed. I am not sure why. Maybe the weight loss has triggered it? 6 months of intense "image" change?

Anyway, yesterday, I went shopping for a few new things for the "something big" (shhh, it's a surprise!) and bought things that I thought weren't me...definitely not my age and I LOVED them. I think I am in the midst of a midlife crisis. I also bought TWO new pairs of shoes, which is surprising for me. And I spent A LOT of money on my hair...that I don't love:( And I got a massage (that was due to the back pain, not the midlife crisis:) Oh, AND I had the Amish cleaning fairies come to my house in the morning:) Yeah, my life is good! Except for the hair...

When I made the hair appt, I said, "I would like to also get highlights with my hair cut" but I guess I never told the stylist that I wanted highlights, I used the word "color". So, I walked out with a head of really dark brown hair (black to anybody that saw me). I guess I wasn't paying enough attention...like none:) It was too dark...especially going into spring and summer. Since I wasn't happy, they did highlights for free, and I am liking it much better now. Putting color on hair is so expensive and superfluous, and it makes me happy. What is up with me??

This post is very "wander-y". Sorry. I will have my brain back sometime next week, or not:)

A Cutie Hair Blog

2010-04-09T22:45:00.002-04:00

I found a little girl hair blog that is so fun. It is here. I only wish Natalie would sit still long enough for me to try something like this. I am a bit obsessed with hair today. I am getting mine cut and hopefully colored tomorrow. Fun!! Always love that me time. I just wish George would appreciate a dramatic change...sigh. It's just hair!

House Pictures!

2010-03-31T10:44:00.006-04:00

Seth's Room

I tried to put these in order, but whatever. Here's all of our new updates and paint jobs:) Enjoy!
I tried to get kid-less pics, but I realized I don't have one of the family room without kids. Ah, well.

Nat and Sam's Room

Levi's Room

Our Room

School Room

Our bathroom

Kid's Bathroom

Main Floor Bathroom

Family Room

Kitchen

Dining Room

Front Room

One of those moms:)

2010-03-16T22:33:00.002-04:00

Sam was MUCH better this time. And I did tell him about the shots...well, the other kids did, because they all were asking, "Do I have to get shots?" so that led him to ask and I answered honestly...and then totally bribed him:) "Yes, you'll get a shot...but then a sticker and you can come home and pick something out of the candy bucket!!!" He was ok at "sticker". I love 3 year olds:) He screamed pretty good (but at least not until after the first shot, unlike the last time) and as soon as we walked out of the room, the nurse gave him a sucker and he immediately turned off. Nice.

After we got to the office, I was patting myself on the back for not being late AND having happy kids at the moment (we had had a couple of meltdowns right before we left). As I looked around, I noticed that Natalie's hair was still in Sunday's pigtails...well, mostly. Her clothes didn't match. Levi's shirt was too small and on backwards. This is his favorite way to wear them, but I try not to let him out of the house that way. And then I thought, "What is Sam wearing? I didn't get him dressed this morning!" Luckily, Natalie had and he was in Sunday pants and a nice long sleeve shirt. Go Natalie! Seth had remnants of breakfast + lunch on his shirt. Sigh. But, we were early!

Before I had children, I thought I would never be that parent that takes their kids out looking disheveled, with dirty faces and mismatched clothes. Ha! Now I realize that the important part is that the kids have clothes and can pick what they want, that they have food to eat 3 meals a day, and that they have siblings that care about them and are helpful. Don't get me wrong...I would really like to have a nice looking brood, but sometimes it's just important that they all get to the doctor's office with me! And somedays, that's ALL I can do. Somedays, I sit and imagine what it might be like to have children that can independently get dressed, get breakfast, and get buckled. What in the world will I do with my life at that point? I really just can't imagine it!

Trying to Revamp School

2010-03-16T10:39:00.002-04:00

Well, Geo and I have come up with a bit of a new method for school. I will post pics and tell more about it when we get it finished. I plan on using the site Time4Learning.com. We have used it before and Levi really enjoys it. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I hope to be spending more school time outside, too. Yay for spring and sunshine! I am excited and feel very happy and motivated today.

Now, we'll see if that changes after the 3 year check up that Sam has to have today. He is HORRIBLE at the doctor. I am gearing up for that. Here's a question: Do you prep your kids for getting shots? Sam requires 2 people to hold him down while one gives the shot and screams bloody murder the entire time. I haven't told him that this appt will require shots. The last one did not (ear infection) so he seems to be a little more at ease at the thought of going to the doctor. I don't want to ruin that. We'll see if this method works. Hope you all have a great day!

PS No showings since the ones 3 weeks ago. Sad:(

Caffeine

2010-03-04T10:28:00.003-05:00

Last week was very interesting for me. I didn't eat or sleep as much as usual, and I assumed it was because I was excited about the house and getting everything done and the house on the market. Well, last week, I also started taking a weight loss supplement. Only at the end of the week did I realize that it was full of caffeine! It was all herbal, so I hadn't even thought twice about it. I realized that I was taking approximately 2 cups worth of coffee amount of caffeine every day. And going from no caffeine to that, it really...well, it really boosted my productivity and weight loss:)

Now, when I realized this, I stopped taking it because taking an addictive substance is against my personal religious convictions. And after stopping it, then I had to deal with the "withdrawl" symptoms. Pounding headaches, SO tired all the time, and weight gain. Boo. Kind of funny though...I just wish I could find that energy again:)

3 Showings!

2010-03-02T21:26:00.003-05:00

We had 3 showings for Saturday and 2 of them left feedback....bad feedback:( They said the house looks rough. And I agree! But for the square footage and the location, we can comfortably ask what we are asking. The problem is that all the other houses around here with our sq footage and 4 bedrooms are priced $20,000 higher and are quite a bit nicer than ours. So, if you are looking at a place like ours around here and then come to ours, yeah, it's going to look like a dump.

I wish that people could look at before and after pictures. THEN, they would want to buy my house! We have done a lot, but it was fixing problems that should have already been taken care of, so now it just looks like a normal house instead of one with an ancient air conditioner built into the wall, or a door busted off it's hinges, etc...

Many of my friends have come to help me and I am taking all their advice to heart and doing some serious shopping and making our house look more finished. Hopefully, we will get it all done and it will be a people pleaser!

Back to Normal Life

2010-02-22T21:36:00.002-05:00

I thought we were back to life as we know it, but Sam started complaining of ear pain so we headed to the doctor this afternoon...another no school day! Argh. We have been reading James and the Giant Peach, though. That has been so much fun! I love Roald Dahl. He is an amazing author. The kids are spellbound. I love to read books like this!

The house looks good...you all should come see it! And then buy it:) It was a fun week getting everything ready, but I am ready to go back to normal life. The kids did not like being pretty much ignored or put to work for an entire week and I didn't like the results of that either! We were much happier today. The most fun transformation was our "food storage" room is now the school room and the dining room is now.....(fanfare please) a dining room!! :) The kids spend lots of time in the school room doing their art projects and it seems to contain the mess a bit better.

Life is good...I am happy.

PS Hit my 25 pound mark today...YAY!!!!!!!!!!

Change is good:)

2010-02-18T23:23:00.003-05:00

Not much to say, but I can't stand that humongous font every time I go to our blog. We are in the process of clearing our house to make it nice and open. I am beginning to really like the feeling. Tomorrow, we start on the last BIG project, Monday afternoon my cleaning fairies come, we get the carpets cleaned, and then we list. :)

I have this feeling that whatever happens, it will be quick. I wonder if this is true. I don't usually have big intuition kinds of things, so I will be interested to see what happens. I really hope it's our house that will sell quickly, not the other one:) I will hate to "unpack" everything that has been put away...maybe I will just leave everything, check back in a year and see if we missed anything . Oh, except all the stuff in JB's garage...I promise I won't leave all that stuff there, Jenn!

I can't sleep, don't want to eat, and feel like I am just waiting on the edge of something. It's a great way to beat the winter blahs!

Big news!

2010-02-15T22:50:00.005-05:00

NO, I AM NOT PREGNANT!!!
Why does everyone always think that?? :):) Just kidding.

So, here's the news....we are putting our house on the market, so we can buy a house that is exactly .75 miles from this house. Isn't that fun?

The reason is that I want a basement. That house is very similar to ours but on a huge finished basement with a huge storage room. And it's not just any basement, it's a daylight basement. Lots of big windows.

We won't move unless we can get THIS house. And we won't move until this one is SOLD. Thought I would LOVE to move out and sell this one empty, it didn't seem smart in this economy. Especially just because we WANT to move, we don't NEED to move.

We are working like crazy to fix all the little things that are ugly, but have never bothered us. And some of the bigger problems that we have just lived with. And de-personalizing our home. It's fun to declutter once again! We hope to be show ready by the end of the week.

PS I have not idea why this entry's print is ginormous...

Crisis Averted

2010-02-08T12:10:00.002-05:00

A few minutes ago, Seth was in the high chair, happily for quite a long time. He was enjoying some Raisin Bran Crunch...actually, just the raisins. He kept messing with his nose and sticking his finger in it (typical for most of my kids, not for him:). I got a sinking feeling that there might be something up there, and sure enough, there was a little raisin up there.

This has happened before, but this time, it was so far up I wasn't going to be able to get it. I tried to make him blow his nose, but to no avail. So, I began to freak out. I have no desire to go to the ER, especially with 2 kids who were up with the flu all night. I called George, and he Googled it for me to see what I should do:) I was out in the car first aid kit digging for tweezers when George finds the answer.

"Plug the unobstructed nostril, and cover baby's mouth with yours and blow." Sounded pretty gross to me, but it also sounded lots cheaper and less scary for baby than the ER, so I headed inside to enlist kids to help me with this endeavor. Natalie and Levi are running around the house yelling my name (isn't it amazing how unobservant kids are sometimes? I am sure both of them watched me walk into the garage). I was a little worried, and then Natalie said, "I got it out!" She had! She had somehow gotten Seth to blow his nose and out came the raisin. Then, she had found her gloves, put them on, and carefully carried that nasty raisin to the trash. :P
The past 12 hours have been a little TOO eventful for me!

The YMCA Child Watch

2010-01-27T16:34:00.003-05:00

I must start by saying I LOVE the childwatch!!! It saves my sanity:) There are many very nice ladies who spend a whole lot of time with a whole lot of kids that are not theirs and there is something to be said for that!!!

Lately, they have become very strict about checking tags and my id and such and the Y front desk has become more strict as well. I have no problems with that...it's a good thing!

That's why I thought it was funny today. They came to find me in the pool (I couldn't hear the announcement in there) and they asked for my name. I said it was me and they said Sam had an accident and wouldn't let them change him (very typical for Sam). The part that I thought was funny is that they didn't check my card orID or anything. Is it because no one in their right mind would voluntarily go to a child with a huge load in his pants unless that child belonged to them? For some reason, it made me laugh. They won't let me just grab the child that is screaming "Mommy" at the top of his lungs when he sees me (obviously mine), but they will freely let me go in and take the kid whose pants are full of poo, who could have cared less about whether I was there or not:)

Winter blahs.

2010-01-26T23:06:00.002-05:00

It's been such a good month. I thought to myself, "Winter blahs? Not me. I am floating through it all this winter. None of that depressing stuff." And then it set in. Yesterday, I think. Not motivated. Wanting to eat everything in sight. Mood swings. Wanting to sleep. Not wanting to do the "to-do" list. Asking George to pick up something for dinner. You know these feelings, right? It's not bad enough to do anything about it except push through it. I am pretty sure this was brought on by Sunday's almost 50 degree weather and the melting of the snow. That wasn't the depressing part...the depressing part was the snow that was on the ground the next morning and the single digits that are promised for the next 5 days or so. Blah.

A great day!

2010-01-23T23:34:00.002-05:00

Last week, the kids spent too many hours in front of screens on Saturday, so this week we did things differently and it was much better. We got the house clean, the kids had a reasonable amount of screen time, we refilled our 3 month storage (quite the project when you only do it once every 6 months or so), got to see Grandma and Grandpa, ironed (another thing I do only every 6 months or so:), kids got baths (thanks to George), choir phone calls got made, extra hangers went to Goodwill finally, and we got an adapter for a toy Levi got LAST Christmas and some batteries for our phones (3 out of the 4 handsets are dead). It was just a great day of getting little and not so little things done and out of the way. I LOVED IT!!! And I must say, ironing is a million times better when you are rocking out to your MP3 player:)

Potty Training, Polaris News, and Pure Indulgence

2010-01-19T23:06:00.003-05:00

Thanks for the potty-training comments. Much better this last couple of days. He is deciding when to go... no more 1 hour timer and run to the potty. That was tiring! Two days of no accidents! Yippee!

On a different note, school is going. I don't know if it's going well, but it's going. We started a new math program called Math U See before Christmas and it's good. We watch a DVD of the teacher actually teaching the lesson and then go back to the table to practice. It seems to be working well. I will be glad to start my next child from the beginning as it is a little confusing to be learning concepts we already know and have done differently up until now. Levi is doing well. The concepts are a bit too abstract for Nat, so we went back to her Singapore math book and she is doing well.

We have been working on writing sentences (Levi) and words (Nat) and also dictating stories. That was so much fun! Even Sam wanted to do one and I was impressed! It had a beginning, middle and an end:) I think we will keep this up!

We have a poetry unit in the works as well as Australia, plants, and simple machines/magnetism. We are going to 2 Valentine parties and are still participating in the gym and swim class for Levi. Can't wait until Nat's old enough for that one.

It was fun to teach about Martin Luther King, Jr. yesterday. It's always interesting to teach big concepts to little kids and see what they will say and how they will react. I think they understood it on their level...don't judge a kid if they look different than you. We are all children of God. We should always "judge people by the content of their character" said MLK. I like it!

On a completely different and fairly vain note, I bought a coat today. I went to Kohls with my 30% off coupon. Today was the last day and I went in for 3 things ONLY!!! As I slowly walked through the women's coats on my way upstairs, I noticed the coat that I have always wanted! Well, maybe not always, but....

It's a black wool coat that hits at the hips and is kind of fitted around the waist. I have always wanted to wear something like this, but have always felt (well, at least for the last 5 years) too fat! Because of my new weight loss:) I feel much more confident about how clothes might fit. This is why I tried on the coat. I wouldn't not have done this otherwise. Once it was on, the coat whispered, "I'm only on sale 60% off plus your 30% off for 20 more minutes. Buy me!" So I did. And I was so happy, I put it on when I got home (to show George, of course) and left it on for a bit, smiling all the while.

Did I need a new coat? No. My old one is fine, but I bought it when I was pregnant with my first child 6 1/2 years ago! It is quite a bit like a warm, waterproof TENT!!

But...did buying the coat make me happy? Oh yes!! There is something to be said about "retail therapy"! :):):)

Potty Update...

2010-01-16T11:08:00.002-05:00

After 5 whole days, Sam said this morning, "It's time for me to go potty?" and went in the toilet! I won't mention yesterday night while brushing his teeth, he peed his pants while he was 1 foot away from the toilet. Arg.

I do have to say, I've always thought, "If I am changing one diaper, I might as well change two." Not the case. I am loving having only one to change. And Sam doesn't like to be wet and dirty, so if an accident happens, I know right away and he won't sit in it or anything so that helps A LOT! Unlike one of my other children...her name I won't mention:)

It will get better, right??? There is an end...most adults are completely potty trained. Right????

New Year's Resolution...

2010-01-12T22:54:00.004-05:00

To change less diapers! Sam is potty training. And it's horrible. Or maybe not. I have nothing to compare it to! I waited so long that both Levi and Natalie potty trained themselves. No accidents, no pull-ups, no help needed. Now, it's quite the process. Every hour the timer goes off and we head to the tiny bathroom, that we really don't both fit in. He can't efficiently get his pants down by himself...or up for that matter! Standing was way too messy for him...he's just not tall enough so he is sitting now and it's better.

Levi has a homeschool YMCA class tomorrow, so Sam will be in the child watch for close to 2 hours. Ha! That ought to be fun:) I will give them warning and see if they will even take him. I would just put a diaper on him for the time, but I read somewhere that can really confuse him and I don't want to waste the 2 days of horrible-ness that I have already gone through! Becca promised in 2 weeks, it will better. 2 WEEKS!!!! I hope I make it that long.

Poor Seth...he's gonna feel the brunt of this. I am not even mentioning the word "potty" until he is 5! :)

Our Family in 2009

2009-12-28T21:15:00.003-05:00

George

going on his 8th year at MIE and still loves it
worked with 11 year old Scouts at church
spends many hours on hobby projects...many can be seen right here on this blog!

Anna

spends many hours homeschooling kids and wondering how her house gets so dirty and will it EVER be clean again
joined Weight Watchers to lose that last 15 baby pounds (or maybe 30:)
directs the choir at Church

Levi

turned 6 and is in 1st grade
loves taking piano lessons from Grandma and building things like Legoes and robots
loves his homeschool gym and swim class and learning computer programming with Daddy

Natalie

just turned 5, is in Kindergarten and is a great reader
loves playing with her brothers (most of the time) and takes care of the younger boys
loves to play the piano and to play with her neighbor friends

Sam

just turned 3 and wants to do what the older kids are doing or he wants to do it "by himself"
loves to have his 'puter time where he plays games on the computer
is NOT interested in growing up...he often mentions his old crib and pacifier and says, "I not big, I little!"

Seth

turned 1 in March and started to climb on everything!
finally old enough to go in to the Nursery at church and loves the Child Watch at the YMCA
calls Sam "Mamo", Nat "Wa-wee", and Levi "By-by" and is a cutie:)

It has been a good year around here. Feel free to read the blog for all of our activities:) I am so thankful for this time to look back and appreciate what we have and resolve to do better next year. I am thankful for our Savior and the ultimate Sacrifice that he gave. What a blessing to us all! To all of you, my dear friends and family, a late Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!

Christmas Eve Movie Making

2009-12-25T23:59:00.002-05:00

George here. Fun being home with the kids the past couple days. We made some movies of us pretending to be city-destroying-monsters. Tonight I added background music and sound effects to Levi's. Can't wait for the kids to see it tomorrow! You can see it to:

Snow!

2009-12-20T00:30:00.002-05:00

We got about 2 inches or more today and everyone went outside to play while I stayed in and made cupcakes for Sam's birthday. I do believe that it took me, from beginning to end, 45 minutes to get everyone out the door into the snow. Luckily, George is pretty good at getting ready himself so that helped. :) I was just glad that it wasn't too cold and the kids could stay out for a while before getting too cold and coming in.

George initiated some snowman building. I was watching out the window and it was a cutie little snowman. Then, after a bit, I looked out again and the kids (and George) were all taking turns clobbering the snowman with a whiffle ball bat! It was really loud and the snow was flying and everyone was loving it! I had to laugh, though I am not sure that it was the typical snowy day activity:) That's my group...not very typical!

Comfort in the Night

2009-12-15T23:17:00.003-05:00

Last night, I was putting the kids to bed and it was rough. Sam and Natalie are together in a room and I had put them down and was heading to Levi's room. Sam was pretty upset and crying loudly.

As I finished with Levi, I stood outside Sam's room, trying to decide if I should go in and I hear Natalie. First, she tried to shush him, like a mom would shush a newborn. That wasn't working so she started to ask him questions like, "How far away is your birthday, Sam? It's not very far away! What kind of cake are you going to have, chocolate or vanilla? Are you going to have a choo-choo cake?" It was so sweet! He was distracted for a bit, but then back to crying, so she said, "What's the matter Sam?" When he said he was sad because I left the room, she said, "Well, Mommy has to sleep in her bed, just like we have to sleep in ours!" When that didn't work, she went to bribery:) She said, "Sam, how about right when we wake up, we can go downstairs and play "Doggy". Do you want to do that?" He mumbled that he wanted to play "Race" and so she said, "Ok, Sam. Right when we get up, we are going right downstairs to play "Race" ok? So we better go to sleep!"

It was so sweet! Don't you think many kids would just yell at the crying sibling and go to the parents and tell on them? In fact, that is EXACTLY how I thought Natalie would have handled the situation. So I was thrilled that I got to hear this sweet exchange. It made me smile:)

Thanksgiving to Christmas

2009-12-05T23:09:00.002-05:00

I cannot decide if this year went by fast or slow. Time is so relative, you know? The days drag and the weeks fly. I also wonder when it is I will get my life in order. A better schedule, more planned activities, things going exactly the way that I want them to. On the other hand, I love it that I can just do what I want. I can be so flexible and I REALLY enjoy that! I guess it's time for my year end review...to see how I have done this year, so I am in a pondering mood:)

Here's some things that we have done lately.

We had Thanksgiving with the Jones side of the family. What an awesome thing. There were 30 of us...30! What a great thing to have all that family so close together. I LOVE all of my in-laws and the kids always have SO MUCH FUN with the cousins. What a treat for us. And of course, the food was fabulous. I only gained a pound that week..it could have been worse:)
We toured the local food bank last week for school. What a cool thing. The kids enjoyed it, but I think I always get WAY more out of field trips then they do. I could ask a million questions and stay for hours...but then the kids' eyes glaze over and someone eventually starts screaming and we have to go:) But it was cool.
I took all 4 kids to the Fabulous Friday homeschool book club this week. The book club was great. Taking all 4 kids was not. Seth managed to color all over himself, the floor and another young child with marker. He and Sam opened and closed every cabinet door repeatedly while taking things out and mouthing them. The kids made this cool snow (to go with the book) and Levi accidently dumped his all over the floor. As I was cleaning that up, Seth escaped out of the room and headed for the dreaded aisles of books...the place where you cannot ever find a 3 foot child. *sigh* Someday, all of my children will sit quietly and listen and obey and....*sigh*
After that, I decided to take advantage of the free babysitting at the YMCA and work off some of my stress. That was GREAT! I do love the Y these days. Especially the free babysitting:)
I went after Thanksgiving Day shopping. I went alone (which is fairly lame) but it was fun anyway. Fun to watch people and to laugh at all of us that are up at 4am for sales. Good times! I didn't get everything I wanted, but I got a lot!
The Terminix guy has become a household name around here. He (they, really) have taken care of us and for that I am SO grateful. I would rather not share my house with anyone, uh...anything else!
George and I have watched a few fun movies lately. We watched Monsters vs. Aliens with the kids (so I didn't really see that one), The Proposal (which had a yucky scene that we skipped), Star Trek (I really liked it!), The Notebook ( not as good as the book), and tonight, it was Passengers (this was a cool movie!!). We also saw this movie called Primer. After we watched it, we had no idea what we had just seen, so we got online to find out what it was all about and pretty much no one had any idea. It was about time-travel but as to how the storyline went, I got nothing. It was fun anyway!
On the topic of movies, I went to see New Moon with a group of my Twihard friends. That was a blast. Don't know if I loved the movie or not, but had a great time!

This has been my life lately. We, of course, are doing school and have some fun things planned for the next couple of weeks. And then I plan to get a good chunk of the rest of the year planned:)

I feel very relaxed this Christmas season. It's a nice feeling, but I wonder if I am forgetting something...or if Christmas is really just closer than I think it is. I always feel such a let-down after Christmas, so I really want this time to go slow. The less busy I am, the more I can enjoy it, right? I don't think I will do piles of baking this year because of my losing weight goals. Presents are almost done. No big family get-togethers until New Years for the Jones' and I don't know about the Lyon side yet...only one brother close enough to get together with. I hope we can work something out to see them! I hope all of you enjoy this time to be with family and celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Rock Climbing with the Cousins

2009-11-28T23:24:00.003-05:00

George here. I'm going to try to attach videos I took w/ my cell phone of our rock climbing today. I can send you the AVI files if you are interested in having them. We had a great time and were glad to see everybody.

Courtney

Hal

Cole

Allison

Other climbers Levi, Kinsey, and Natalie are not included here yet because I'm having trouble getting the files uploaded.

Thanksgiving Dinner

2009-11-26T16:32:00.002-05:00

Our Thanksgiving Dinner menu:

Treat (a family recipe chex mix)
Crackers and cheese and summer sausage
Chips and dip
Veggies and dip
Leftover Ladybug cupcakes (from Nat's bday) for dessert

Loving this PJ day at home! We'll have the real stuff on Saturday with the Jones'. Good times, good times! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

An interesting "First" for mom today...

2009-11-20T23:29:00.002-05:00

Levi was upset about something today and turns out it was something a friend had said to him. He started to talk and all my therapy "skillz" kicked in...well, as well as they could while cooking dinner and dealing with Sam and Seth crying! I started asking questions and trying to tell him what I understood he was saying. It took me FOREVER just to get the story straight, but finally figured out that Levi didn't want to play a game and his friend said "you need to play the game or I won't play with you anymore". Levi adores this boy and the friend is a good boy, so I was talking to Levi about how he could talk to the boy, make his feelings known and not hurt the boy's feelings.

Anyway, I was calm and loving on the outside. On the inside, I wanted to throttle the friend and confront the parents for causing my baby to be sad. I have not dealt with this before! Is this how this goes? Do other moms feel like this or do I have some *serious* control issues? Levi is a sweet boy and a follower. He is not the one to lead or to come up with the ideas of things to do. He is a people-pleaser!

Another point is that I am SO GLAD that Levi felt like he could talk to me. That is one of the things that I really want with my kids. Open-ness and acceptance. After it was all said and done, about 10 minutes later, Levi came up, put his arms around my waist, and said, "Thanks for the good advice, mom." What a sweetie!

Quick Post

2009-11-02T23:43:00.002-05:00

It was a good weigh in today....5 pounds down from last Monday. Kind of quick, but as long as I can keep it of, it works for me. I am glad it kind of kick-started...much more motivating that way! I "budgeted" candy intake this weekend and did very well, I think. I finally feel in control of eating/food instead of it controlling me! It's a VERY good thing!

Today for school, we worked with Halloween candy. We sorted it, counted it, grouped it, graphed it, wrote about it, and of course we had a taste test! We also read a book called Flat Stanley. We are going to send our our own Flat Stanley so if you might be willing to help us out, let me know. You just have to send us a picture with you and Stanley (a paper doll we will send to you) in your area or a postcard of your area. Then write a little something that is unique to your area and mail it back to us. We will follow Stanley's travels on our map. Fun!

I need to post pics of Halloween. What a fun weekend! It was really nice to have George as I believe I have taken 3 kids out by myself the last two years because of sickness. We got to go trick or treating with our very fun neighbors as well, so the kids had a blast! Good times!

Hi baby!

2009-10-28T23:32:00.003-04:00

I have given up on keeping our kids names straight and so I just call everyone, "baby". As evidenced yesterday:

Seth walks into the TV room. He sees Sam on the green loveseat. "Hi baby" he says. Nonchalantly, Sam replies, "Hi baby."

And for some reason, I thought this was hilarious! Guess you had to be there.

More weight loss

2009-10-28T22:51:00.002-04:00

WW is having a free trial week, so I am officially online with WW! It seems good so far, except that yesterday was only day 2 and I got pretty sick. This resulted in some super-fast weight loss (method not recommended:). Today, I haven't felt like eating too much, so that kept my points down and I had plenty left to eat my lite ice cream tonight. Yummo!

I love the "recipe builder" on the site, which lets you plug in your recipe and it tells you the points for each serving. So cool!

I am happy to have such good friends that are supportive and helpful and inspiring. Anyone that wants to join me, please do! Sara, I can't wait to hear about your efforts!

Weight Loss

2009-10-26T11:12:00.003-04:00

I believe the wasps are coming in from attic through the ducts. Thanks, Candi! Now I am calling the Terminix guy again and having him go up there. Ugh.

Changing the subject, I think I want to join Weight Watchers. Too many unwanted pounds. I went clothes shopping on Saturday and didn't like how anything fit. I realized that I didn't like my body. I have felt very out of control with eating these days and it will only get worse as Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas get closer!

Some of my friends are losing lots of weight with WW and I think being accountable to someone else is really good for me. I have done this before, but always got pregnant and gained it all back and then some. As we are taking a break from pregnancies:), I think it's time to reclaim my body. I understand it will be slow going, but I think I can do it. I am ready to commit! The overall goal is losing 21 pounds and staying there.

Wasps

2009-10-22T15:34:00.001-04:00

About this time in the year, most people don't have to worry about wasps, right? Well, some of us do. They are IN our house!!!! I keep finding them on our sliding glass doors in our family room. They are totally lethargic, which is good but we have found SO MANY! And we cannot figure out where they are coming from. Has anyone had this problem? The Terminix guy was no help. I hope we can figure this out. It's fairly creepy!

Polaris Press: Pickle Day and some Family Randomness

2009-10-19T23:38:00.002-04:00

Today we went on a tour of our local Pickle Factory. The kids enjoyed seeing the workers fish pickles out of tubs with a big net but they didn't like the smell. They did like the treats they got to pick out at the end:) They picked candy, I picked a jar of Cinnamon Apple Pickle Chunks. Yummo!!

The weather is so beautiful and I am hoping it sticks around tomorrow. I just remembered a hiking trail that Grandpa was telling us about and thought this would be the perfect time of year to enjoy it. So tomorrow, that will be part of our school day.

Linda is giving the kids piano lessons and I LOVE it! I LOVE that Levi is excited to play the piano and that he can now play duets with me and George. It is so much fun!

I am thankful that I am homeschooling. Today is was BEAUTIFUL outside and I just let kids play all afternoon. We finished our schooling in the morning and enjoyed the outdoors. Yay for homeschool!

Makeover

2009-10-14T20:20:00.003-04:00

I am thirty-one and I feel like it. Lately I have been noticing wrinkles and gray hairs. So, a couple of weeks ago I got a trendy haircut (of course, it was more trendy when she styled it) and last week, at a business kickoff meeting for Becca and Brock, I won a gift of my choice, which was an assortment of makeup.

So, this morning, I decided it was time to put it all to use. I did my hair and makeup! I took this picture, but you can't really tell that I am all decked out. Oh well. The whole process was pretty funny. Throughout the time of "beautification", I had to

hold one foot on the toilet seat so the baby couldn't open it and play in the water
pull toilet paper repeatedly off of my bare foot because, since the baby couldn't play in the poo water, he went for the next best thing, the toilet paper
unwrap the straight iron cord from around baby's neck ( I was right there...I still don't know how he did that!)
take the tube of toothpaste and hide it
repeatedly tell Sam not to lock his brother out of any rooms in the house

I guess my point is, "Was it worth it?" The only person I want to get "dolled up" for is George, and he was gone for that next eight hours. By the time he got home, I am sure I looked the same as I always do...a bit frazzled! I just hope the homeschool moms at the Y were impressed by the fact that I am not ALWAYS frumpy:)