Holy terror!

WOW..I thought I wanted a house full of kids...I thought wrong lol... Tonight I was a substitute in a kids kingdom play and praise, and while it technically went really well, I can easily see myself defeated and wrapped in duck tape by four 4 year olds begging for them to let me go.

We had a good time, Tyler and my 2 nephews came with me as well as ms. kecky and they all had a good time...a good enough time that after I put them to bed they didnt make a sound!

Heres some vids from the inside playground of my nephew (blondie) and my son( dark hair), my son comes face first down the slide and of course nephew follows !



And here they are again..just being boys :)

Volunteer day at the Primary School opened my eyes to much more

WOW! What a feeling...Today Kelsey and I joined a few fellow women to read story books provided to the headstart children by local banks. Apparentley they recieve these materials for free, but the school also gets "Credit" for how many volunteer hours they log, so we gladly came to help. We went to 4 different classrooms and I read 3 books in 1 room and 1 in the others. Kelsey had a great time, she was pretty excited to see what all went on at "real school"...and I have to admit I got pretty excited also. The possibility that she might be happy in public school opened my eyes, after all...just because my children ( might) go to public school doesnt mean I cant volunteer several times a week there right?! Apparently volunteers are what the school is desperate for, with all the budget cuts and etc happening, its hard to get enough help at this great little school.

I realized as I was talking to one of the teacher aides about the lunchroom, that there is a REAL need now for extra help and Im sure it will have only grown by the time my children are attending school if something doesnt happen to the economy therefore reflecting budget issues for education...

Anyways, the point for this rambling is because I was surprised to hear that theres a real need for simple help in the lunchroom. Theres just not enough people to help the little ones get their tray and open milk cartons, and etc. So I hope to contact my friend Burda to find out if she already has some kind of organizing for this and if not I can only soliciate the help of my UMW girls, and myself :)

My heart was warmed up to the idea of public school today..maybe it was an opening provided by God in response to my hearts prayers of longing for more opportunites for worship, service, and interaction...

We had been visiting other churches, just because I wasnt feeling full filled at our home church. I just longed for more opportunities to worship and fellowship with my fellow like minded friends....and we prayed and visited and I realized that I didnt have that "home" feeling like I do at my home church, First United Methodist Church, at other churches..... So I decided to take on a new attitude rather than a new Church. I decided that just because there weren't advertised opportunites for fellowship doesnt mean that there arent any. I have a made a promise to myself to attend and fully re-commit to my UMW circle, join Berda in any way that I can if she needs me, and leave my heart open to any opportunity that presents itself with Julie, our childrens ministry director, which so far has been a blast! Brian and I hosted childrens church on Sunday and then did Kelseys Sunday school lesson, we had a great time!

So for now thats all my thoughts in my head out on "paper". So Ill continue to keep my heart open and my mouth shut so I can hear where God is leading me!

Its been a few days since my last post.

Not much has been going on with our schooling the last few days. Kelsey has been using http://www.starfall.com/ to get some phonics learning in, but thats about it other than file folder games. We have been busy doing Spring cleaning in preperation of all the outside activities this spring and summer will hold for us. I hope to continue our schooling throughout this summer with lots of exploration, hopefully in the water as its pretty hot here.

Heres some pictures of Kelsey on the computer for the first time :)




Kelsey has been really interested in the animated move"Prince of Egypt" so I have been making a book list and list of mini book ideas to complete a lapbook for "moses" and let her tell the story in her words, Ive actually learned quite a bit myself by helping her complete these lapbooks. I can tell this will be a thing to be loved for quite a long time.

Snail Lapbook

WE DID IT! Kelsey has completed her first lapbook. We both had a lot of fun, and we both really enjoyed the time together, just one on one. I could tell today as we finished the last 3 or 4 mini books that she was getting tired of the subject and was ready to move on, so I didnt push her to fully color anything, or cut the rest out by herself. I did *most* of the writing naturally, but she did a few of them in her own way, and did do some tracing work. She has learned quite a bit and really surprised me at how much she has retained...this was confirmed the second day we were learning about snails when at dinner she proceeded to ask her brother, Tyler who is 2, "Tyty, did you know that a snails butt is in the FRONT?!?!?, Isnt that WEIRD??!!" LOLOLOL....these are the best days yet!
I got the lapbook from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ under the resources tab. This site is a wealth of resources and the ladies on the forum board have been just AWESOME! I have some new file folder games in the works for the kids thanks to the awesome links found on this board, so look for more pictures and links!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_-zmSgjQpQ

Snails for Valentines Day

Today was boring...again lol..until we decided to go outside for awhile. The weather was gorgeous, about 65 and sunny and no winds at all. The little girl, Holly, from across the street came over to play and of course Kelsey really enjoyed that, and Tyler enjoys anything Kelsey does. The girls road their bikes and Tyler tried to ride his tricycle. They were all in the culdesac we have on our little street, perfect for bike riding...if it wasnt for all the gravles from peoples driveways that have slowly crept into the road from the rain. But still they had a grand time. Tyler got tired of riding, checked the lady neighbors mail for her lol ( I had to make him take it back and put it up!) and then we all sat in front of a little hole I found in the yard that was covered with a rock, sticks in hand, pulling old leaves, worms, snails, slugs, and centipedes from it. We put them all in one of tylers dump truck beds for safe keeping while we did more digging.



The girls were uniterested after about 10 mintues so they went to the swing set/club house in the back yard and played. Tyler and I however went to the fence line where all the leaves from the fall had been pushed up against by the wind, and we went discovering again. He had fun flicking the leaves out of the way with his stick, but we didnt find much but more worms, still he had a pretty good vocabulary lesson from it. He managed to say "worms", "snails", "slugs", or something pretty close, but at least he now has a new word and knows what that word means! After mine and Tylers last exploration at the fence, he went to join the girls in play. Well, really he grabbed a rope and started to chase them as if he had a snake in his hands, it was really quite funny to see him so tiny chasing these two girls all the while making a hissing noise :)

While the chasing was happening I decided to pick up all the sticks that had fallen from the trees in the last few weeks...then I had a lightbulb moment...BRIBE the kids to help, lol! I told them if they would help me pick up the sticks we could have a ice cream bar! So of course they did...except Kelsey. She is toooo smart for my "tricks", she simply told me she didnt want any icecream, lol, and proceeded to play by herself! What a Smarty Pants she is! But of course she got an ice cream anyways, she did play really nicely with her brother today!


All in all it was a good fun day that ended with the kids getting to go to Papa and Mimi's house to spend the night while Me and Brian went to dinner in Huntsville for Valentines day and did a little shopping at Walmart late in the night while there were no crowds( I hate walmart when ppl are there, love it late at night L;) )

Update on Tylers Stuttering problem...or lack there of

I was at Walmart today and ran into Tyler's former speech therapist that use to come to our house thru early intervention. I explained to her what was going on with him, and she said since I think it mainly happens when he processing a thought and trying to utter the words at the same time, its normal...if it happened ALL the time when he was talking, we could be concerned. She says to give it a few more months and if it doesnt improve by the end of the summer, give EI a call...so that made me feel better :)

Fine motor skills

Today was short, simple, and fun. I have found it is easier for me and my children to do activities in the afternoon...I guess it comes from my head being cleared of "I need to do today" list and they aren't so amped up to go outside or get to playing..at this point in the day they are literally begging for things to do. So today, Kelsey and I made Valentine mice out of all heart shapes, she painted a heart with watercolors, did a lacing project with yarn as did Tyler, and she did a basketweave type art thingy with a heart....so yes, today's theme was hearts lol. We didnt accomplish alot of vocabulary or math, but lots of fine motor skilss, painting, lacing, lots a scissor work!

I think Tyler has a Ststststuttering problem..

Tyler who is now 2.5 years old, and use to be in speech therapy due to delayed speech( we stopped speech therapy around last November), has now developed a stutter. It only happens about 1/2 the time, and it seems like when he is processing the thought at the same time as trying to utter the words is when it happens the most. If he was repeating something that you ask him too such as a short sentence, then he doesnt have any trouble. I asked DH if he had noticed it, and he said that he indeed has, and we both didnt think too much of it. Well now its getting worse, and Im not sure if we think its getting worse because we now know he does it and we are trying to "monitor" the situation to see if its getting worse, or if it really is...Ill probably call Early Intervention just in case. Technically Tyler was a premie born at 35 weeks 6 days, so just shy of 36 weeks , but he weighed in at over 7 lbs! He didnt have any trouble at birth, although shortly after he was born I noticed something was wrong while nursing him. It started to feel like he was pinching me when he nursed, so we met with his nurse practioner and she diagnosed him with a short frenulum, the thingy that connects your tongue to the mouth( the little tendon under your tongue). He didnt have a long enough frenulum to be able to stick his tongue out far enough to nurse correctly...in fact it was so short he had a clefted tongue, it formed a deep "V" when he did try to stick it out. So Ill update on that and try to get him on camera so you all can see and maybe give me some advice :(

Other than that, today was a good day. Its been stormy on and off here, really windy so no outside play even though the temperature was nice. We did finish up our Cards we did last night by Kelsey telling me what she wanted the message to say on each one and she finished tracing the dot letters, other than that we just kinda slummed around. I did however make a great trade with a mama for some really nice bamboo diapers for Tyler, shes gonna send me a ton of great dipes, in exchange for me to knit some of her yarn into pants for her little boy... My hopes are to put him back into cloth diapers to save us the $75 a month it costs! Not to mention all that crap, literally, that is going into the land fills....what kind of Earth would my great grand kids have if it continues at this pace? Plus they are so darn cute on him, I just love to pick him up and pat his fluffy butt! Ill definately post pictures of those when they come!

Our first post!

Well today was pretty normal. We ended up going to Story time today, and Brian and Tyler wondered around the library together for a few while Kelsey was doing a valentine project with Cassie, the story time lady( shes probably my age, but I dont dare refer to her as "girl" as I myself would be offended if someone called me a "girl" at this age!). Came home, did a quick cleanup, lunch, nap, snack, and did some Valentines of our own while dinner was cooking ( we had baked ziti and cheddar garlic drop biscuits!YUM!)I did all of the use of scissors, although both kids used the glue(Note to self: get glue sticks, Elmers glue+kelsey& tyler=BIG mess!) and they did all the rest. Kelsey asked me to write dot words for her to trace over, so we managed to work in some practice there!