Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Brooks is walking!

It started about a week ago. He's getting braver! His favorite time to show us his tricks is at night... he paces back and forth between furniture. Here he is showing off his skills... as well as his rolls!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Caleb's first day of Pre-School

Caleb is excited about going to school... next year he will start Kindergarten and ride the bus... but in the meantime, I am doing a little co-op with some other kids his age. Yesterday was our first day, and it was at our house, and I had to teach. Caleb is still a little leery of going to school at home (trust me, I am feeling the same hesitation)... but it was fun. Very busy... but fun.
Here are a couple highlights from our day!


We were learning about the letter "A", so we pretended to be "artists" and painted a still-life of "apples".
I thought it was appropriate that Caleb wear Josh's old painting shirt.



We also went outside and found objects around the yard that had the letter "A" in the word and sorted them into buckets. The kids found "leAves, brAnches, Acorns and grAss".



Another good first day!

Back to School

Back to the "grindstone"! This summer has been very relaxing and easy-going and wonderful for our family! And as much as I hated for the summer to come to an end, as of Labor Day (the day before school started), we were ready to get the school year underway! Josh wasn't nervous about school at all. He got Mr. Shieber this year for 2nd grade, and he knows most of the kids in his class including one of his best buds! So Josh headed off to school on the bus, and had a good first day!

Caleb, Brooks and I also had a good first day! Me and Caleb made chocolate covered pretzels... we had good little chats... and he practiced writing his name, letters and numbers.

We did experience a few bumps as the afternoon wore on... I'll spare you all the details... but overall, it was a good day!




Wednesday, September 02, 2009

I'm no Ty Pennington... but...




I don't like to do this... but I've had several requests to post my latest creations! The first one is a $10 dresser from a yard sale that I refinished! I use it in my kitchen as storage for all the kids' art, craft supplies and other odds and ends. It has revolutionized my kitchen area and now I can't imagine my life without it.

The second pic is a storage bench that I made to not only hold blankets, our Rock Band equipment, and other random stuff... but to also provide extra seating in our family room. I've never done any wood-working... not even a shop class... so this has been a fun learning experience for me! This beast is 72 inches long, and 18 inches deep... we joke that it's the size of a coffin and that I will someday be buried in that thing because I'm so proud of it! I also made smaller benches for the boys to put in their room. They are helping me by painting them all by themselves, so it has been a fun mother/son project!

The only bad thing about doing all these little projects is that Mike now thinks that I can fix anything and everything... so he's slow to do things around here now. What was I thinking? I can't play clueless anymore!