Claire in Kindergarten

Claire is rolling right along in her homeschool program. We are well into the second 6 weeks and she is going great. I love that her program has Bible each day and she is learning lots of Old Testament history and learning many memory verses (They will learn 26 memory verses over the course of the year along with the Lord's Prayer among other longer passages of scripture.) We have even had a few tests and graded a few papers, which is a hard concept to teach to a 5-year-old. She has done well though.

Here are a few pics from our first 6 weeks.

Claire hard at work on some extra writing practice. The cursive writing has been interesting.




Our first field trip to the zoo. Claire wrote down the name of every animal that she saw in her notebook. I was worn out from all the spelling afterwards.


Finger puppets to go along with "Jesus Loves the Little Children".


David did a fall tree project with her. It's fun doing things together.


Claire is very helpful and will make a great little teacher someday.


Claire putting the fingerprint leaves on her tree.


David's art.


Hat Day for the letter H. We had been to Chick-Fil-A kids' night the night before and had this amazing butterfly hat.


A clown puppet. Not sure what this had to do with her lesson, but I do know that I need to invest in some paper plates to make it through her art classes this year.


That's it for the first 6 weeks!

Fun in the Mud

Will and I ran in the Warrior Dash a few weeks ago. It's website called it 3.17 hellish miles. I wouldn't exactly call it "hellish" but it was pretty muddy. Obstacles on the course included jumping over fire, crawling through a muddy pit, walking across a car graveyard and scaling several walls. Fortunately, the mud pit was the very last obstacle and was about 20 feet before we crossed the finish line, so we weren't muddy the entire time.

We had to sign a release to participate and my absolute favorite thing on the release was "I agree not to dive into or enter the mud pit head first." You know that is on there because someone has done it before. Yikes!



We started the race with two of Will's buddies. I say started because we ran about half a mile with them and then they took off and left us. They finished the race about 10 minutes before Will and I did. My clothes were so plastered to me after I stood up from the mud pit that I actually had to check and make sure my shorts were still on. Firetrucks were present to hose people off after they finished the race.



The best part of the Warrior Dash was these cool Viking hats we got after the race was over. The kids really seemed to like them. They had fun staying with a babysitter all day while we ran the race (an hour away from our house). This was the most expensive race I ran in for sure!

This event is not scheduled to take place near us next year, so I'm not sure we'll do it again or not. We sure had fun and it was way more fun than running a plain old regular 5K.

Menu Plan Monday

I skipped the menu plan last week because my mother-in-law sent me home with a ton of leftovers from last weekend that we ate on all week long. We ate something different every night. I am not joking when I say she sent home a whole Rubbermaid bin full of food.

Even though we still have a few leftovers, I'm going to have to make a plan for this week so I won't be floundering around in the kitchen at dinner time. (I have several meals in the freezer that I will need to pull out to thaw that morning.)

There are also a lot of repeats from the previous weeks' meal plan (that I prepared and stuck in the freezer) because we just didn't get around to eating them for one reason or another.

I really liked the new meal plan (5 meals, 1 hour) as I did prepare the meals in about an hour and then stuck most of them in the freezer. The one night I did cook one of the meals I simply poured it in a pan and cooked it and prepared the sides. It was "easy-peasy" as Claire would say.

Monday: Leftover roast with potatoes & carrots, lima beans, rolls

Tuesday: Steak, baked sweet potatoes, salad

Wednesday: BBQ chicken cups, green beans (or salad)

Thursday: Slow-cooked Asian Beef & Broccoli, brown rice, egg rolls

Friday: Spaghetti & Meatball casserole, salad, garlic bread

Saturday: Wheeler Mountain Chili

Sunday: pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (breakfast), eat out (lunch), leftovers (dinner)

Check out Laura's blog for more Menu Plan Monday.

Romper Redo

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know I love a good monogram. Once we found out Luke was a boy, I finally started putting Claire's name on her stuff instead of just a "C" since I knew we wouldn't have any little girls to hand down to. (I do have a younger Claire and C-name girls of friends that get her hand-me-downs.)

For David, I still put his name and initials on a lot of stuff, with plans to either not reuse it or "fix" the monogram so Luke can wear it. I could do that by (1) picking out the old monogram or (2) covering the monogram with a patch. The first option is tedious and sometimes doesn't look all that good after the monogram has been picked out depending on the type of fabric. The second option is much easier and there are lots of cute options.

These two rompers were handed down plain to me from a friend. I put David's monogram on them.

Here is the blue romper with a cute sailboat fabric patch and Luke's monogram.

Here is the seersucker romper with a cute tractor patch. (Luke wears this outfit all the time. I love it.)

If you're keeping score, that's 3 kids who have worn these outfits. Hope this helps keep nice monogrammed items in the clothing rotation!

A is for Apple ...

I won't bore you with a lot of homeschool stuff, but I do want to keep track of what we are doing so I'll throw some homeschool posts in every now and then.

We started David's first week of preschool with the Letter A. Shocking!

Actually, the first day, we read his most favorite (and mine) alphabet book. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We watched this video based on the book on YouTube and made a tot book that covered shapes, letters, colors, numbers, etc. (We watched the video and reviewed the tot book daily.)



We sampled 4 different kinds of apples for a snack. Claire still remembers the names of all the apples 2 months later.


We made handprint coconut trees and stamped the alphabet. (Claire participated in many of our crafts this week after she finished her school for the day.) My dormant scrapbooking supplies have come in handy for our homeschooling projects!


Making "A" with playdough.


Apple pie. It looked a lot prettier than it tasted or I would share the recipe. If you have a great apple pie recipe, please share!


This was a favorite ... apple stamping.




David loved these foam crafts from Totally Tots.


A little handwriting practice. Actually, we need a lot of practice.


Egg-carton ants.


Our "A" week on the board. Our "A" verse was "A soft answer turns away wrath." And, he actually memorized it by Day 3. I was super-impressed.


David's bible curriculum came from RRSP and most of our other curriculum is from LOTW.

Random Summer Wrap-Up

Okay ... these are just some random pics from this summer that I thought were cute and wanted to "preserve" for memory's sake.

Luke chillin' with his bottle at a Chick-Fil-A playdate.



Claire with her two best buddies from preschool. K and A.


A has a little sister (also A) who is one of David's church buddies. Truth be told, she really has a thing for baby Luke. I love how David is looking over at her in this picture.


The big kids went to gymnastics camp for a week this summer. They had a blast, but I was a little apprehensive about dropping David off. The camp had kids from 3-10 together and who was going to help him with his lunch? Big sister took really good care of him though (she even took him to the bathroom) and they both had a really fun time. I really liked it because most of the time, Luke napped the entire time they were there (10-1) so I had a little mommy stay-cation of sorts.


Here are the only pictures I have from camp. (It's hard to take photos when the kids are all the way across the gym and you are carrying a baby.) This is a craft the kids made the last day of camp.

David on the pommel horse.


Claire on the beam.


Will and they kids love to watch Looney Tunes after dinner. You know, that awkward 30 minutes or so between dinner and bedtime (on nights when the kids don't need a bath). I caught all 4 of them snuggled up in the recliner one night.



BTW, David has named his "baby" Porky Pig (it's this plastic pig toy from a happy meal that he pushes around in a doll stroller all the time). Thanks Looney Tunes!

Luke: 12 months old

This will be the last monthly post I will do on the little guy for a while. I'll probably switch to doing an update every 3 months for the next year.

A few bullet points from the 12th month:

-weight: 20 lbs., 8 oz. (20th percentile)
-height: 29-1/4 inches (35th percentile)
-standing alone, but still not taking any steps
-pushes his bottle away when he is finished
-pushes the spoon out of his mouth with his tongue when he is finished eating
-he "yells" when he is ready for another bite (like "bite, bite, bite")
-clap hands and waves bye-bye
-drinks from a sippy cut at meals (but he still gets a bottle at morning and night)

Here's a cute picture of Luke on his actual birthday. We had a little impromptu birthday hat photo shoot in the backyard.



Here's to a great 1st year!