Funny moments in the car

 Yesterday we went to Silver Dollar City! We had a great time. The weather was wonderful and we love when Jason gets to come with us! We have decided to take a year off from going though so we made sure to really enjoy this trip. We had just been getting a little burned out on going so often!

We really enjoyed the rides, but we also loved the Christmas decorations. The huge fontanini nativity set is one of our favorite decorations!

 The drive home had some funny moments. We hopped into the car and started handing out bags of popcorn to Lily and Valerie. Daphne yelled, "I bite! I bite!" I replied, "Daphne stop threatening me! I will get you a bag!" Oh wait, guess she meant that she wanted a bit of food! Aren't little ones cute with their words! :)

Valerie was even cuter on the drive home! She said, "I have to go to the bathroom." I replied, "Can you hold it?" She put her hands on her private and then took her hands off a minute later. She responded, "Mommy, I don't need to hold it because it can hold itself!" Ha Ha! I love how literal a three year old can be! I hadn't even realized what she was doing!

The Birth of a new Christmas Tradition

Most of our family traditions are based around the traditions that I grew up with. However, each family has different dynamics and I have learned that things are just not always the same.

One tradition I took from my parents was to always read the nativity story on Christmas Eve and to have the kids act out the story of Jesus' birth with our nativity. We also have chosen to keep Christmas day as being just our little family. We also take from the example of the three wise men and each child gets three presents on Christmas morning (we started that three years ago and love it).

So one tradition that changed was a part of Christmas Eve. Growing up, we didn't live near any relatives so on Christmas Eve we would open all of the relative presents. On Christmas morning we would open all of the Santa presents. Since, we now live near family, but not close enough to do Christmas Eve, it has left us with no presents on Christmas Eve. I really don't like to have too many presents anyway, but I missed the tradition of it.

So this year, we are starting a new tradition. We are going to do an ornament exchange with our girls each Christmas Eve. On Thanksgiving, we will draw out names and then each work on finding one special ornament for our chosen family member to open on Christmas Eve. This will help teach my girls about giving, but not just by buying little junk for each other. This will be something special to look at on our tree each year and to remember who we got it from. This year will be slightly different since we hadn't thought of this earlier! Jason and I will just buy each girl an ornament to open on Christmas Eve, but we will tell them about the new tradition then! I love this time of the year!

 Daphne is 17 months now and as fun as can be! We are really enjoying this age! She can repeat anything we say. She also has several two word combinations such as "thank you" and "all done". She really does say more words than I can count!  She even has one sentence that I have noticed..."I wan up"! :) If I ask if anyone wants food, she is the first to come running and shouting "me, me, me". She loves food and will sit at a table eating for hours! lol.

She is into everything and that is a challenge. If I walk out of the room, she will get a chair and push it to the kitchen counter. She loves going through the drawers. However, she is also very smart and a good listener. I told her "no" to touching the Christmas tree and after four weeks, she still hasn't bothered it or the presents underneath! Yay for that!

Daphne has such pretty green eyes! I love thema nd hope they stay green! I just had to throw that in there!

She got a new elmo doll. She says "Elmo". It is precious and she gives it kisses with a big "muah" sound! She loves being held. She can say most of her friend's names. My youngest is definitely a blessing to my heart!

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November School Stuff!

 November has been a really fun time for us with homeschooling. We started the month by letting Lily go to pizza hut to get her Book It pizza that she earned by reading 8 chapter books last month. Yesterday she completed this months goal so we will be going to pizza hut again in the next few days! :)

 We went to the library and got some great books on Indians and Christopher Columbus. Those helped us with our history. We did some fun projects at co-op to go with those books, but we are saving them as decorations for our co-op Christmas program!

 Valerie made this lion at mops!

 Valerie's writing is improving. "R" is a hard letter to write!

 Some more of Valerie's writing!

 This month we read three of the American Girl books. They were soo good. A mixture of history and things that Lily could relate to.
I love when you can see those light bulb moments. We were watching the Samantha movie after reading the book. Lily got up independently and started to journal about. Her paragraph was excellent. She wrote about each event that happened in the story and related it to herself. I love that she is starting to write so well on her own!

 Here she wrote about Kaya and did the same thing! Excellent!

Ofcourse, we also had fun in writing by making Thanksgiving cards for family and friends!

I am working on becoming more like this with my shopping!

Christmas 2011 -- Birth of a New Tradition

As the holidays approach, the giant Asian
factories are kicking into high gear to provide Americans with
monstrous piles of cheaply produced goods-- merchandise that has been
produced at the expense of American labor. This year will be
different. This year Americans will give the gift of genuine concern
for other Americans. There is no longer an excuse that, at gift giving
time, nothing can be found that is produced by American hands. Yes
there is!

It's time to think outside the box, people.
Who says a gift needs to fit in a shirt box, wrapped in Chinese
produced wrapping paper? Everyone -- yes EVERYONE-- gets their hair
cut. How about gift certificates from your local American hair salon
or barber?

Gym membership? It's appropriate for all
ages who are thinking about some health improvement.

Who wouldn't appreciate getting their car
detailed? Small, American owned detail shops and car washes would love
to sell you a gift certificate or a book of gift certificates.

Are you one of those extravagant givers who
think nothing of plunking down the Benjimans on a Chinese made
flat-screen? Perhaps that grateful gift receiver would like his
driveway sealed, or lawn mowed for the summer, or driveway plowed all
winter, or games at the local golf course.

There are a bazillion owner-run restaurants
-- all offering gift certificates. And, if your intended isn't the
fancy eatery sort, what about a half dozen breakfasts at the local
breakfast joint. Remember, folk,s this isn't about big national chains
-- this is about supporting your home town--Americans with their
financial lives on the line to keep their doors open.

How many people couldn't use an oil change
for their car, truck or motorcycle, done at a shop run by the American
working guy?

Thinking about a heartfelt gift for mom? Mom
would LOVE the services of a local cleaning lady for a day.

My computer could use a tune-up, and I KNOW
I can find some young guy who is struggling to get his repair business
up and running.

OK, you were looking for something more
personal. Local crafts people spin their own wool and knit them into
scarves. They make jewelry, and pottery and beautiful wooden boxes.

Plan your holiday outings at local, owner
operated restaurants and leave your server a nice tip. And, how about
going out to see a play at your hometown theatre.

Musicians need love too, so find a venue
showcasing local bands.

Honestly, people, do you REALLY need to buy
another ten thousand Chinese lights for the house? When you buy a five
dollar string of light, about fifty cents stays in the community. If
you have those kinds of bucks to burn, leave the mailman, trash guy or
babysitter a nice BIG tip.

You see, Christmas is no longer about
draining American pockets so that China can build another glittering
city. Christmas is now about caring about US, encouraging American
small businesses to keep plugging away to follow their dreams. And,
when we care about other Americans, we care about our communities, and
the benefits come back to us in ways we couldn't imagine. THIS should
be the new American Christmas tradition.

Forward this to everyone on your mailing list -- post it to
discussion groups -- throw up a post on Craigslist in the Rants and
Raves section in your city -- send it to the editor of your local
paper and radio stations, and TV news departments. This is a
revolution of caring about each other, and isn't that what Christmas
is about?

Cuteness!

Way too often, I forget to write down the cute things that my girls say. So here are a few recent ones!

Valerie as we are driving in the car: "Mommy, I saw Daddy's car!"
Me as I also see his car: "How do you know that is Daddy's car?"
Valerie: "Look, it says 'Jason' on it!"
Me laughing as I realize that she think the Oxifresh sign on his car is his name! How cute!

Jason and I cuddling on the couch as we watch a movie. Valerie come up to us.
Valerie: "Can I marry you Mommy and Daddy?"
Us: laughing
Valerie: "You may now kiss the bride Daddy!"
I love that she sees us cuddling and relates it to being married and that being a wonderful thing! :)

Lily was watching Nester the Long Eared Donkey. I look over at her and she was crying. She looked so pretty as she delicately cried and tried to hold back the tears. I turned to her and said, "why are you crying?" She said, "I'm crying because I am happy. This is the part where he carried Mary to the stable so Jesus could be born! " It was such a beautiful moment to see her sweet heart!

October

 I am a little unorganized with my blog about October homeschooling. Valerie's lessons were pretty much the same as last month. We are just focusing on letters, numbers, drawing, tracing, etc.

 Lily worked on a social studies unit about Kansas and farming! She wrote a paper about it. She needs to still edit her work and then do a final copy!  Above is a picture she drew of herself! She does not really like art, but she is getting better and better at it!

 Valerie loves to draw and color. She always has. This is a picture she drew of herself! She also wrote her whole first name! She thought the letter "e" was pretty hard, but otherwise did great!

Lily also has been doing great at math. We started doing fractions this month and addition with carrying. I have been very impressed with her work!

Valerie at school

Valerie had her first day in class at New Life Co-op. She learned about the letter A and she learned the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper. She did crafts and sang The Ants Go Marching! She can't wait until next week!

Second grade and preschool

Yay! I love the beginning of a new school year! I love the structure in our routine! I have just a few pictures from their first week back to school. Valerie is ready for preschool so I am going to tell you what she is working on right now. She loves her ABC chart that is in her room. We sing the abc's, we practice recognizing letters, and we work on the letter sounds!

We are also working on journal writing with Valerie. She is only 3 1/2 so she can write Val independently, but she is tracing all of her other words or we are doing hand over hand! After a week and a half, I am already seeing improvement!

Valerie also has a number chart that she works on for counting to 20 and recognizing numbers!

So onto Lily! At six years old, she is ready for second grade and doing so great!! We love our new lifepack social studies curriculum. It is actually suppose to be 3rd grade level, but has been very good for Lily. We are learning about different states and then what is unique about it. Right now we are studying Maine and lobster fishing! It has been so engaging and Lily is learning new words. She really struggled on her first test, but we corrected and learned from it. Hopefully she will do better on the next test!

I got Lily a new dictionary this year and it has already been getting lots of use.

This was just a little update on what the girls are doing in school. They go to their back to school co-op picnic on the 30th so I will post more pictures then!

Starting to log hours!

Homeschooling is so much fun!

We are starting out the homeschool year. Technically we don't need to log hours for another year, but I really want to practice at it before we are mandated to do it. So this year, I will be trying to manage how many hours Lily does in each subject.

July already started out with a science camp at the Orion Science Center and Dinospace Adventure Fun Park. Lily was there for three hours and did 20 hours of instructional time. On the first day, they learned about archaeologists, paleontologists, and dinosaurs. They worked on digging for bones in a dig pit, working on getting bones out of a hard block, making molds to send off to museums, dissecting owl pellets to study the bones, and much more.

On the second day, she learned about space. She made a sun with space facts in it, shot off water rockets and paper rockets to learn about arodynamics, played with a hot air balloon, and much more.

On the third day, they learned about erosion and volcanoes. They also did lots of fun science experiments and talked about the scientific process! What a great time of learning!

Also as a part of social studies/geography, Lily has been sending Flat Lily to other areas. My friend Lori and her kids took Flat Lily around Monroe, Louisiana! We just love learning about different areas of our country!

Lily's first book report

This week we started our summer school program. We are doing the library reading program through the library and it has wonderful incentives to keep Lily interested in reading! Lily also just completed her first ever book report. She did it all by herself and turned it in to me!

Valerie has also been doing school work. Here she is tracing her numbers and counting and coloring the objects!
I love the face she made! Oh and I helped her with making the twos. Those were hard!
Lily is also learning spanish as a part of her summer school and she is picking up on it quickly. After the first two days, she is easily counting to 10 in spanish. Now we are working on numbers 11-20!

We love doing school together!

What we have been up to!

The last month has been crazy busy so I thought I would write an update. In May we were busy with Lily's kindergarten graduation ceremony with her co-op friends. We were also finishing up the school work. Lily was very ready for a break so we took three weeks off from school work!

The weather has been beautiful so we have been at the pool everyday for the past three weeks. Lily even took swim lessons at the community center! She fell in love with jumping off of the diving board and improved greatly on her swimming. We might have her back in lessons at the end of July if we can find time!

We have also been swimming in the river and going to the Jordan Valley Fountains. We love this busy time of the year.

An extra challenge we have had is foster care. Lately we have had a bunch of calls. I think there are more this time of the year due to vacations and the fact that neighbors pick up on what their neighbors are doing. In the winter we all get a little closed off by staying inside.

We had two little girls who stayed with us for a week. They were similar ages to Lily and Valerie so it was great fun! Right now we have had a little baby girl for 2 weeks and it is a definite challenge. Sometimes I am so impressed with myself that I can take four kids, with two of those being babies, out and about everywhere. Other times, I am tired...especially waking up all through the night again. I must admit that although we want to adopt at some point, right now is probably not the right time for another baby!

Something else exciting is that Jason is finally done with his newspaper route! YAY! We learned a lot through that experience. Jason was delivering papers in the middle of the night and then trying to work his regular job so that we could make extra money. We learned that sometimes you need to know when God is opening the door to an opportunity and that you have to listen to God when it is the right time to close the opportunity. Jason kept that job longer than was beneficial to us and caused our family so much stress. Him being tired all the time was not worth it at all. God has always provided for our needs so we don't need to worry so much and keeping a job that hurts the family is not a good idea!

Flat Lily!!!

Today was so exciting!!! The mail came and Lily saw that she had received a package! She opened it and inside was Flat Lily! She started jumping up and down! She had mailed it off about a month ago! She opened the book to see where Flat Lily has been and it is better than we could have even expected!

First Flat Lily went to Charlotte, N.C. to visit Jason's cousin, Kelly and her two kids, Parker and Payton! Here they are with Flat Lily on the Light Rail Train in downtown Charlotte!

It takes too long for me to post all of the pictures and I couldn't work my scanner so these are just pictures of the pages of Lily's book! They also went to the Duke Energy Building where their Nana works and it is 48 stories tall!

Here is a picture of them with the Charlotte signt that shows how far it is to all of the other Charlottes in the U.S.

They also went to the Isanart Sculpture called Lacabeza at the park.

Then they went to one of my favorite places....Myrtle Beach for Spring Break!

They did such a great job! So fun to read and look at the pictures! We felt almost like we were on vacation there! :)

Next, they mailed it to my friend Rachel and her son Lewis in Hawaii! We are very jealous of Flat Lily for making it there before we will!

They went to the North Shore on Oahu on an overcast day! They stopped in front of the Hale'iwa iconic white bridge.

Here they are at the popular shrimp trucks for lunch!

They went to the Aokis' shaved ice shop for a rainbow treat! So fun!

So thankful to our friends!

Also I love making learning fun! What a fun project! Oh and I am sure we will be sending Flat Lily out to more friends!