Picture update

Prepare yourself. I'm about to update you guys with pictures.

Lets see. Ethan got his tonsils and adenoids out. It was a really rough recovery, but Ethan was a trooper and seemed to be normal again after 8 days. He however spent several weeks trying to convince us that he had still had to eat cold things (ie. ice cream).

Much of his recovery was spent like this. One unexpected result of surgery was his EXTREMELY squeaky voice. I was a little afraid it was going to be his new normal. I even had a dream of him as an adult with one of those squeaky voices.

Belle turned the big 6. Mimi came to visit on her birthday and took her to Toys R Us to pick out a toy. Belle was ever so nice to share her money and let her brother pick something out as well. Cake #1 was a ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery.

We made it to Ohio for a little party with the Richmond side. Belle was reunited with Molly. Molly had been sent to the doll hospital for a new head. Molly was my doll as a kid and didn't have the nice brushable hair they come with nowadays.

Belle had her last recital for awhile. We decided to do something different for next year and it is not going to be dance. Belle enjoyed her cheer class and she always loves getting up on stage.

Lets see, there was also a trip to the Children's Museum in there. They have a pretty cool Hot Wheels exhibit right now.

And I was amazed that Ethan sat for this Wilbur Wright presentation (or was it Orville).

On the way out we walked into a Pacers Reading event at the Library branch in the museum. The kids got their picture with Boomer. 

My June was spent preparing for our VBS. I was in charge of decorations and I think it came out pretty cool. Ethan was able to attend his first VBS as well.

At the end of the week we had a family fun night complete with Ella's Ice Cream and a real helicopter.

We lost our beloved cat Remy. But a few weeks later our neighbor asked us to take this little guy. Welcome Charlie. He's been fun and has a lot of the qualities Remy had that we loved.

And the rest, well we've just been hanging out.

Chicago

All Belle wanted for her birthday was an American Girl doll. I had thought a trip to Chicago's American Girl store would be fun some day and Nic thought we should go ahead and do it.

We headed up to Chicago on Sunday morning after church. The trip went surprisingly quick and we found our hotel pretty easily. We settled in and then head to the AG store because we had 5:30 reservations at the AG cafe. Our hotel was pretty centrally located and we didn't have to walk to far. The kids loved looking at everything, but I do NOT understand why they kept insisting on picking up trash out of the street. They were finding all sorts of things and picking them up. Super gross.

The second day we walked down to Navy Pier and rode on the ferris wheel. Ethan is quite the daredevil but he was not crazy for heights. He just said "I don't like this" and sat on Nic's lap. Afterwards we took a water taxi to the museum campus. We decided to wait an hour to get into Shedd Aquarium. And luckily we only paid for the cheap admission because both kids were getting cranky.

We walked SO much that day. We then walked from the museum to Millennium Park and then back to the hotel. The kids had fun playing in the fountain at Millennium Park, but it was swarming with people. Belle got in trouble because she kept running out of my view. Belle was upset because she had made friends and didn't understand why the other parents just let their kids run all around and she couldn't. Me and my sarcastic self responded by telling her that "their parents didn't love them as much". She then kept asking me the next week why some parents don't love their kids. ha ha.

We were all pretty wiped out after that second day. There is just so much to see and do in Chicago, we barely scratched the surface. Belle keeps saying that she'd love to go back although I'm pretty sure once was enough for Nic.

The kids first hotel experience. They were so excited!

Belle with Rosey

Belle making friends wherever she goes.

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American Girl Cafe. It was a fun experience but it was pretty expensive.

Ethan enjoyed just being there for the ride. Never complained that he wasn't getting anything since Belle was.

Navy Pier

Navy Pier Ferris Wheel

Water Taxi - This may have been their favorite part of the whole trip.

the bean

2012-2013 Curriculum

I need to blog our trip to Chicago as well as Belle's birthday, but in the meantime I am going to update our curriculum choices for next year. This post is mostly for me. I'd like to look back at the end of our school year and see what we actually ended up using versus what I had planned.

Ethan - Preschool !!!!
Heart of Dakota - Little Hands to Heaven (this includes Bible, Letters, Math, Art, and Science)

The Reading Lesson - Ethan has known his letters and their sounds since before he turned 3. We may (big emphasis on may) try to teach Ethan to read.

All About Reading Pre-level 1 - This is a pre reading curriculum. Mostly Letters, sounds, rhyming, and crafts. Got this because I love their All About Spelling and was curious to try their reading curriculum.

Handwriting - Need to find something or atleast buy a workbook

Belle - 1st Grade
Heart of Dakota - Beyond Little Hands to Heaven - a complete curriculum but we'll only use history, bible, science, and language.We'll slowly work our way through their suggested readers as well.


Progressive Phonics - free online phonic curriculum

Math-U-See Alpha - maybe supplement with Horizons only because I have it

All About Spelling - We'll finish up level 1 and start level 2

Zaner Bloser - Handwriting that she'll do along with her copywork that goes along with HOD.

Sleep Study

Ethan has always been a loud sleeper. Well I was getting it from both sides of the family to take him into the Dr. to see if his tonsils and adenoids need to come out. I just never did, I'd either forget or I didn't think it was bad enough. Well I think it finally got bad enough and I could tell that something was going on. Ethan would gasp for air during his sleep, but his chest would still be moving up and down like he was breathing.

Well the pediatrician wanted a sleep study done. I was pretty apprehensive, I mean just take the tonsils and adenoids out if that's the end result anyway. You don't need those, right? Well we went ahead and did it. And it happened a lot sooner than we thought. The same day I called, they had a cancellation.

So I tried to talk it up to Ethan, that we were going to go sleep at a new place. That he'd get stuff stuck all over him and how silly it all was. Yada, yada. I think I knew full well that getting a 3 yr old to sleep with all that garb was going to be NO fun.

We got there and Ethan was so concerned that I made him wear his pjs to the office. He thought everyone would think he was silly. He made friends with a little girl in the waiting room, who looked to be about 7 or 8 years old. (Again, my kid's great ability to make friends wherever they go. ) We got our room and the time came to get a million wires stuck to his body. It was all well and good at first.

Ethan thought it was so fun to see his toe light up. 

Ugh, mom, this is getting a little weird. This lady is sticking toothpaste to my head.

Mom goes for the deflect with Ethan's favorite book, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. He's starting to think twice.

Still doing good, but getting unsure.

And this was when it started going downhill.

Actually I was able to get him to go to sleep pretty fast. It was about 9:30 and he was exhausted. Although he never slept very well. I was sure that they got no results since the nurse said he had to get into REM sleep to really see any results. But results came back moderate to severe sleep apnea. So now we are off to the ENT for probably adenoid and maybe tonsils out.

Easter

We spent Easter at the Freshours for an easter egg hunt and to celebrate Waren's birthday. The kids had a blast. We then came home in time for us to work in the kid's sunday school room for Easter Sunday. Unfortunately we got horrible pictures for Easter sunday and no Easter outfit pic. =(

Riding around in Waren's birthday present.

Molly and Emily (the American Girl dolls) had a playdate. Poor Molly needs a makeover with her 1990s hair. I think we'll send Molly to the doll hospital for some nice looking hair.

I had a little project of my own going on. Our coffee table was in horrible, disgusting shape. There was a ledge all the way around that just collected crumbs and junk. So I got the idea from something someone had pinned on Pinterest, and created the penny table. I super glued all the pennies down and Nic cut some for the edges and then covered it all with bartop epoxy. Wah lah! Cool table top and no nasty cracks for crumbs to get stuck in.

Milestones

In my last post Belle learned to ride a bike. Well about a week later Belle lost her first tooth. It had gotten to the point where I was getting nauseous watching her wiggle that thing so far back and forth. It took so coaxing, but finally we got her pumped up for Nic to pull it. He kept her pretty distracted during the process and got it on the second pull. And with only a little blood, she was worried about the blood.

So Belle got to put her tooth in her cute little tooth box and wait for the tooth fairy to come. She got $2 for the first tooth.

The before shot.

And the after.

Really wishing we had bought Ethan one of these.

Two Wheel Ridin'

The training wheels on Belle's bike have been broken for some time. We just took them off and told her that she'd just have to learn to ride without them. She's been apprehensive, so she's only been riding the scooter and Ethan's balance bike. We'd try to have her ride down the driveway without dragging her feet sometimes to work on balance, but not really pushing it.

Well today Nic got the bike out and told her that she was going to learn to ride. Of course she didn't want to do it, but we finally coaxed her. It really didn't take her long to get it. And truthfully she was almost riding last fall. We didn't want to push it since the season for riding bikes was almost over. The only thing she needs to learn now is how to get started. Then she'll truly be off and running.

She's pretty proud of herself. When she was done and putting her bike away she said "I'm amazed!". We are too honey! Good job!!

 

Kite Flying

We've had some unusually warm days this March. And I'm not complaining. We've also had some very windy days as well. Belle has been begging for the longest time to fly a kite. She'll say "remember when I was 3 and I flew a kite with Papaw?". Here is evidence. Well on a particularly windy day I finally gave in. We headed to Walmart and picked up some cheapy $1 kites. Belle got a Barbie kite and Ethan got Spiderman.

They really are best friends!

We waited til Nic got home and headed to the cross country track over by the high school. We wondered if it would be too windy. But we were able to get the kites up and Ethan did a pretty good job of flying his kite. Much better than Belle in fact. Although come to find out, Belle's kite may have not been working all that good to begin with.

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Catching up

Here I am again trying to catch the blog up. A couple weeks ago we celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday with a few activities and reading all the Dr. Seuss books we own. Some of which I wasn't good at documenting. Nic brought home some huge paper from work and we outlined the kids bodies and drew a "Cat in the Hat" Hat on their head for them to paint. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the final product.

Later in the week Belle asked for a craft like she often does, and I'm often left scrambling for something. This time I had a fairly good idea. We had never made a collage. So I got a bunch of magazines and we started cutting. First I decided we were going to do a "One Fish" "Two Fish" "Red Fish" "Blue Fish" collage, like the Dr. Seuss book. So we started cutting one of something, two of something, things that were red and things that were blue. We then glued them onto cardstock and I later cut them into fish. Ethan cut maybe too things before he gave up and played computer games.

I apologize for the sideways photos, but I have limited time to figure out how to turn them in Blogger.

 

Belle with her favorite fish

Oh and to cap off our Dr Suess week, we made green eggs and ham (and cheese). I should've taken a picture. The eggs looked absolutely disgusting, but the kids ate it.