vacation

Not a real vacation, that won't happen until much later in the summer. A vacation from school. I had planned to homeschool straight through the summer but decided we needed a break last week, that week has now spilled into a second week. It's just so nice outside that we've been spending our days playing outside all day, well into the evening. The kids have made several new friends in the neighborhood and love to spend time playing with them.

So in the time since our break we have accomplished quite a bit around here (and still have lots more to do.)

• Both John and Bella have learned to ride their bikes without training wheels
• Phoebe has moved into a toddler bed
• Hazel has moved into the crib and is no longer swaddled at night, which makes me sad because she doesn't sleep quite as well but she had just gotten too big for the miracle blanket
• We moved John and Bella out of the basement and back upstairs as Bella is now sleeping on the top bunk of the bunk bed. This works well as Bella didn't want to share a bed with him anymore but he didn't want to sleep in a room by himself.
• Put the computer in our master bedroom (as the kids are now in what was the computer room) and got a working copy of Windows on it finally.
• Cleaned and organized the garage
• Got the basement halfway clean, including throwing away WAY more happy meal toys than two kids should ever own.
• Got Bella's hair cut

We still have lots more to do, including getting a new family picture taken and me doing some new portraits of the kids. That should be much easier now that I'll have Photoshop on the big computer in our room.

John rides a bike too!

John can do it now too. He actually started out with better balance than Bella did, difference is he's a bit of a weenie and she's extremely determined. He would put his feet down the second we let go, and then even after he'd do it for a second he would stop. He finally gave up and just kept going. He's very very proud of himself, and we are too.

Chalk Paint

Yesterday the kids wanted something fun to do (we took last week off of school and just had fun.) So I decided to make some chalk paint, which I'd never done before but the concept seemed simple enough. So we ground up some sidewalk chalk, added water and instant fun paint. It was great and clean up super easy. Phoebe of course painted herself again so I took advantage of her sitting still and took pictures. She's cute, paint and all.

Haircut

Bella got a haircut last week. Her hair is so thick, it was already thinned out before and still super thick. And since she's now outside all day (usually with a bike helmet on) she was constantly sweaty so we went with something shorter. It turned out really cute and she seems much more comfortable now. Here she is playing in the sprinkler and being silly

Toddler Bed

I finally got Phoebe out of her crib and into the toddler bed. I'd tried several times in the past and she absolutely freaked out. I was finally just going to fork out the money to buy another crib which I didn't want to do, since we already had a nice toddler bed and she is well past the age at which Bella and John switched. So finally yesterday as it became apparent that Hazel had to move out of the pack-n-play bassinet I tried one last time to switch Phoebe. This time as her crib was gone out of her room she realized she had no other choice and it went amazingly well. She cried just a tiny bit at naptime but slept great. We're very happy to have saved the money not buying another crib.

We also took a bunch of old kids clothes and some baby items we no longer need to a consignment store and got about $150 for it all. Bella's old bike went with that stuff and we put some of the money we got to get her a new bigger bike.

Dinosaur

Last time we went to Thanksgiving Point I got a new picture of Bella on the dinosaur. She sure has grown since our first trip there.

Age 1 1/2



Age 3 1/2



Age 5 1/2

Bella Rides a Bike

Bella is riding a bike without training wheels now. She saw all the other kids in the neighborhood riding their bikes and decided she wanted to learn too. So after looking into several methods of teaching it I decided to go with the taking the pedals off method. On Tuesday I took off her pedals and she practiced pushing off with her feet and balancing. Then on Thursday night we put them back on and let her try it out. It went very well. As of today she can ride her bike all the way down the street. The best thing that this method taught her was how to not fall, she was able to put her feet down and catch herself everytime and never got a single scrape. She is so proud of herself and so are we.

Week 4

This week we learned about fossils in science so we took a trip to Thanksgiving Point again (I love my membership.) You can do casting and molding there and with our membership it's only a dollar. We'd never done it before and since we were talking about fossils I figured it would be fun. And of course there were tons of examples of the different types of fossils in the museum for them to see. And I noticed some that I had never paid attention to before (and we've been like a hundred times before.)









We also did some more painting, it was a little cleaner this time too. I found some cute kids aprons on sale at the craft store and put the kids names on them. Other than that it was nothing special, just fun.











And on Friday we went to a star gazing party at one of Corey's co-worker's house. It was lots of fun. We got a really good view of the moon and a pretty cool view of Saturn. Bella really loved it. Corey managed to get a couple pictures with his i-phone through the telescope. If I had thought about it I would have taken my good Nikon, maybe next year.





And lastly I found these pictures on the dry-erase board. The first is by Bella, it's Daddy, Mommy (holding Hazel), Bella, Phoebe and John.



And then John's picture, Mommy, his flower blanket (made by Grandma), his car blanket (also made by Grandma), him and Daddy. I absolutely LOVE the way he draws people.

Hazel Update

So Hazel has been on the erythromycin for almost two weeks now and it's still working. I hope that means we're out of the "honeymoon" period and it's going to keep working. Today was a little worse than the last few but I'm hoping it's nothing. We've had lots of smiles these past two weeks and I love it. She even laughed once (best sound ever!)

Oh and she slept for 10 hours straight last night.





And she loves to suck on her hands

Quote of the Week

Bella: Daddy, what's married?

Corey: Mommy and Daddy are married.

Bella: So if you kiss for a long time then you're married?

Quote of the Week

From Bella:

"Daddy are we gay people?"

My Father's Dragon

We had to read this book for school. I had absolutely no idea what it was about when we started. I must say this book is adorable and I truly enjoyed it. According to our school schedule we're supposed to read one chapter a day (it's 10 chapters long) and we finished it in two days. When I tried to put it down Bella begged for more. I'd recommend it to people with young kids (or without.) There's two more books in the series and I definitely think we'll be getting them soon.

Bugs

I believe in letting kids get dirty, play in the mud and such, but in general I'm not a fan of bugs. In fact I'm down right terrified of spiders. Yesterday however the kids found a roly poly and these little guys in my opinion are the exception. I like them and have fond memories of playing with them as a kid. Anyway Bella wanted to know if it would bite her so we picked it up and played with it for a bit, they really enjoyed it. They're now on the lookout for more.

Quote of the Week

We were at Thanksgiving Point today looking at the dinosaur bones and Bella saw some fish in a fish tank...

Bella: Look Mommy those are real, they didn't get pretend yet.

Week 3

Week 3 completed. We focused more on phonics this week. We're using Hooked on Phonics and I actually like it so far. It's laid out nicely and both kids are doing well with it. John's actually catching on a lot faster than I expected. He does much better when reading in a story format than just practicing words.

We rearranged the living room this weekend (we got a new bookcase and had to make room for it) so now there's more space. I also picked up a poster at Barnes & Noble to teach the kids the days of the week. They've been constantly asking what day so it's time to learn them.

And the weather here has been really nice lately (except for this past weekend of rain) so we've been doing school outside which is really nice. I'm so glad winter is over with. The kids spend all day outside now.

We were reading about snowflakes last week in science so we made some out of paper. The kids really liked them. But they call them tree stars or something (they say it's from Land Before Time, I'll just take their word for it.)