Peace Love and Playdough

My Baby Boy

2009-08-19T14:55:00.000-05:00

The other night, I was thinking about my baby boy, Luke. He turned 5 a few weeks ago and it just hit me how quickly he is growing up. I think sometimes I push him too much to grow up. I hear myself say things like, "Come on, you're five now, you should be able to do this yourself." I have to remind myself that even though he is acting so much older, he is still a little boy. I breaks my heart to think in a few years, he will think playing Legos with his mommy is so lame. I want to do everything I can to keep him little. I decided to write a note to help me remember all the ways he is still my baby boy.

1. His feet don't reach the floor at the kitchen table.

2. He still covers his ears in public bathrooms because the toilet is too loud.

3. He still says "pscketti" instead of "spaghetti"

4. He still asks every morning if he needs to change his underwear.

5. He still believes he can be Superman when he grows up.

6. He still comes to sleep with us when it's storming outside.

7. He still thinks driving through a car wash is the coolest thing ever.

8. He still thinks he'll go blind if he doesn't eat his carrots. (Not that he really cares, though!)

9. He pulls out his light saber ready to fight the bad guys if he hears a strange noise in the house.

10. He still wants to marry his mommy and live with us forever.

Making dirt pudding

2009-06-02T21:37:00.005-05:00

Sorting letters

2009-06-02T21:29:00.002-05:00

This is something new I've been working on with Princess. I have taught her all the letters of her name. I want to make sure she is really secure with these letters before we go on to others. We did a sorting activity in which she did sorted all the letters of her name. I did them in all uppercase this time. I'll start adding lowercase soon. She did awesome and really had fun!

Hot Street Party

2009-06-02T21:14:00.005-05:00

The Young Professionals of our town host a couple of street parties downtown every summer. They are a lot of fun for the kids and for parents to hang out. I was talking so much, I only got pics of the horseback riding when we first got there. We really had fun just hanging out and talking while the kids were playing. Our worship leader from our church is in an 80's cover band that played, too.

She just looks so little on that great big horse!

The Letter E

2009-05-21T10:53:00.002-05:00

For the letter E, we decorated with Easter eggs.

2009-05-07T14:47:00.003-05:00

Mommy had some things to get done this morning, so Princess got to play with stickers and watch Little Einsteins in her pjs!

We have been working on the letter C, so we made a caterpillar with her name on it. We worked on matching the letters of her name. I was so proud of her. She loved doing this!

After Princess put her caterpillar together, we decided to paint for a while.

Her finished creation. Of course mommy had to get in on the fun!

Since she had so much fun matching the letters of her name, we made a game she could play all the time. She calls it her "homework".
This is why you never leave a 3 year old alone! We never even buy Mt. Dew. Her older sister won it at a school fun night, so she had to sneak a sip!

What Little (and big) Boys are made of

2009-05-07T14:30:00.003-05:00

Daddy found a frog outside last night and of course the first thing Superboy wanted it do was hold it!

Spring Program

2009-05-07T14:19:00.003-05:00

Fashionita's school had a Spring Program for the whole school on Tuesday. She is in the light purple right in the middle. She did a great job!!!
They also had an elementary art show. Her's is the 2nd one down with the green frame.

The Letter C

2009-05-07T14:06:00.003-05:00

Our C page for our wall. Don't even think about making fun of my crab!

For the Letter C, we sprinkled coca all over the C. Unfortunately, I think Princess got more on her shirt than on the letter.

Her finished product!

We read The Hungry Caterpillar to go along with Letter C. My friend let us borrow this felt set to help retell the story. I let my felt board at school, so we just played on the floor. Princess is shirtless, because it is soaking, trying to get all the coca off!

School work at home

2009-04-30T21:26:00.005-05:00

This is Fashionista working on homework. She looks pretty happy here, but that's because she likes to pose for the camera.

Here is how she really feels about homework. This is one of the many reasons I would like to homeschool. I hate that she is gone all day, then has to come home and do homework for a long time. It drives me crazy!

This is a new math game I got at Mardell's for Superboy. He loves it! We've played it as a whole family, too. There are 4 different ways of playing. We have really enjoyed it. I like it because it doesn't take hours and hours like Candy Land seems to at our house!

We enjoy playing Uno together, too. It helps with number recgonition and reasoning skills. It is also turning Superboy quite evil - you should hear the laugh he gets when he throws out a draw four on me!

Water Day in the Family Room

2009-04-30T21:02:00.005-05:00

Our family has been very busy this week, which is one reason I haven't had a chance to post for a whole week! Today is the first day Princess and I will be home ALL DAY!!! This morning I had a lot of catching up to do - cleaning, laundry, all that exciting stuff. I needed Princess to occupy herself while I worked. I remembered seeing a pouring activity on one of the Montessori blogs I follow (sorry, I can't remember which one). I just filled a big container with water and gave her a few utensils thinking maybe she would play for a while. She played all the way until lunch! It was amazing! She loved just pouring things back and forth. She really like the medicine dropper.

Notice her Superman pjs. She has really been into wearing her brother's clothes lately. Even his underwear! She is a mess!

When Superboy got home from Pre-K, I tried the same activity with him. It lasted about 2 minutes.

Everything was still laying out when Princess got up from her nap. She got right back to work.

When big sister got home from school, I left them alone to play. This is what I found when I came back into the room. Leave it to Fashionista to turn a simple activity into a huge production! Every towel stood for something different - home, office, doctor, etc.

Of course, now Superboy had to get back in on the action. They played until supper. Then guess where they went? The bathtub!!! It was raining outside all day and we were wet inside, too!

2009-04-22T23:56:00.003-05:00

For Earth Day, we made a bird feeder out of a milk jug. Princess was much more into it than Superboy.

Lego Math

2009-04-22T23:49:00.003-05:00

We sorted the Legos by color and then graphed how many there were of each color. I got this sorting tray from Homeland, a local grocery store. It was filled with Easter cookies.

Sorting letter sounds

2009-04-21T14:50:00.002-05:00

Today Superboy worked on sorting pictures into the correct beginning sound. He did an awesome job with this! These cards came from our Hooked on Phonics set, but I've seen some like them at Walmart before.

Letter R

2009-04-21T14:44:00.003-05:00

Today we are working on the letter R. We made an R with red ribbon. Princess wasn't too interested. We are taking big sis to the doctor today, so she just kept wanting to leave.

Our walk on the pathfinder

2009-04-21T14:26:00.003-05:00

I have been trying to go on a lot of walks now that the weather is nice. On Saturday, I was walking on a part of the Pathfinder (a really cool 10 mile trail through town) I had never been on before. It was really pretty with flowers and a huge bridge. Mark and I took the kids on a walk afterschool and they loved it. Well, except Eve and the snakes!

What we've been up to

2009-04-16T13:27:00.006-05:00

This week, we are focusing on the letter G. We made a G covered with green grass and a giraffe puppet.

Princess Pout was working very hard putting just enough glue on each spot of the giraffe's neck. She likes to put glue on both sides to make sure it sticks. She even made up her on sticky song while gluing.

Our G words poster.

Princess Pout covering her G with green grass and showing off her fruit roll up that she refuses to unroll and just sticks the whole thing in her mouth every time!

I found Batman on our kitchen floor while I was getting supper ready. I have no idea why I found this so funny. He was the only toy out and he looks like he is so passionately protecting our kitchen.

Batman all by himself taking on the evil doers of our kitchen.

I have been trying to lose weight lately and have started to work out quite a bit. Princess usually watches me. Today she decided to get in on the action. Not sure how many calories she consumed today though, since it looks like most of her lunch ended up on her dress!

Superboy brought this beautiful piece of artwork home from Pre-k sometime this week. I love all the colors of the sunrise.

My crazy kids

2009-04-13T19:53:00.004-05:00

This is what happened when I told my kids to put on their pjs after their shower. Yes, that is what you think it is on their heads!

Easter 2009

2009-04-12T14:10:00.005-05:00

Daddy and the kiddos after service at church.

Mommy is trying to be in more pictures so my kids actually remember what I look like when they grow up.

Our beautiful babies. Superboy thinks he is so cool.

Sweet sisters.
Our pancake breakfast.

They love to find their full baskets in the morning!

2009-04-10T15:06:00.003-05:00

I am trying to start tackling organizational projects at home. I have a closet in our guest room I call my teaching closet. I basically have thrown everything in there for the past four years that I wanted to save, but didn't feel like going through. Now we are going to turn our guest room into a school room, so I thought it would be a good idea to clean it so things didn't fall on my children's heads when they tried to find things. I was amazing at the things I found. There was a key to the school I used to teach at (opps!) and even a whole file bin full of things from when I sold "At Home America" things. That was before we even lived in Oklahoma! Which means I moved all the way across the country with it! I can't wait to organize more things. This is the after picture by the way. I couldn't take a before picture because everything kept falling out when I opened the door.

This is part of our guest room we are turning into a school room. We took our most recent projects from the kitchen and Fashionista hung them up for us in here. I realize how controling I am sometimes. I was planning to take everything from the kitchen and do it all myself. Fashionista really wanted to move everything. I gave it and handed her the tape and let her do it all by herself. She did a great job!

These are some crosses we made today to help remember the real reason behind Easter. They turned out really pretty, but weren't really worth the trouble. Contact paper and 3 year olds don't really go well together. I loved to see how Fashionista took over and really helped her brother and sister. She even cleaned up everything when we were done.

This is a puzzle I borrowed from my school for the kids to play with this weekend. It turned out to be a really good multiage project. The two little ones put the picture part of the puzzle together and Fashionista matched the words to the pictures of Jesus' life. They want to keep it set up all weekend, but I'm not sure how that's going to work.

Fun with Princess Pout!

2009-04-09T21:55:00.002-05:00

Princess sorted the colors of fruit loops and glued them on the rainbow shape. This took her a good 30 mins. but she was really concentrating. It helped that she got to eat the broken ones. We used cotton balls for the clouds. She looked so sweet when she said, "I did it!" Unfortunately, our infamous dog ate some of them while it was drying. Princess was so sad and said, "Callie ate my rainbow!" Good thing we were able to fix it up.

Our letter for this week is "A". We used alphabet stickers to cover the letter. You can see she is still snacking on the leftover rainbow!

Do you need to flush the toilet?

2009-04-08T19:11:00.002-05:00

For those of you that don't know me, I teach 4 year old pre-k three mornings a week. Along with my own children's hilarious antics, these kids crack me up every day. I have one student, we'll call him "The Janitor", who is completely obsessed with toilets. Remember, he's 4! This strange obsession started about 3 months ago. He is one of only 3 boys in my class (I have 10 girls!) I started noticing during our potty breaks, he would wait until everyone was done then go into all the stalls and come back to report that everything was okay. I didn't really think about it for a few days, but when I noticed it happening more often, I mentioned it to his mom. That was an interesting conversation . . .

"So, have you noticed anything different about your son lately? Does he seem to be interested in bathrooms?"

"Yes! Lately everytime we go out to eat, he has to go look at the bathroom. I'm not sure what's going on with him."

"I've noticed he likes to spend time in there checking things out. We'll watch him and see where this goes."

So, over the next 3 months, his fasination grew! Everyday he checks to see that everyone flushed and there is toilet paper for the next person to use. After Spring Break, he told us all about all the bathrooms he saw on his trip down south. He was very descriptive of the hotel bathroom and all the wonderful things he saw. He mentioned Six Flags and Sea World, but only to let us know about the dirty bathrooms.

On Monday, during our journal writing time, he drew a picture of a plugged up toilet. He told us a wonderfuly imaginative story about how it got plugged up, who came to fix it, and how it got fixed. He was having a great day because he had earlier found a toilet someone had forgotten to flush.

In a staff meeting this morning, our director was telling us she is finding unflushed toilets around the school and would like us to make sure when we leave for the day we make sure all the toilets are flushed. What a perfect job for my little janitor!

I'm not telling you this story to make fun of my wonderful little guy. Although, I do hope you get a chuckle from it. He is such an amazing little boy with so many talents. To me, I just look at him and think about how God gave us each our own passions. I have found mine is children who need some learnin' and lovin'. I try to pour out God's love through in this area of my life. What's your passion? God gave us all something to pursue and help in His work. I wish we could all be as passionate about our service as The Janitor is about toilets. Figure out what toilet God is asking you to check out and start flushing!

2009-04-07T11:08:00.003-05:00

We've been working on Princess' cutting skills. She loves to cut and glue!

2009-04-07T11:02:00.001-05:00

Princess Pout is learning to sort and name a few shapes. I don't have her glue them on so we can reuse this activity for more practice.

2009-04-07T10:49:00.003-05:00

We made Easter Eggs out of coffee filters and markers. It looks really cool when they spray it and the colors all run together. Their favorite part was using the spray bottle themselves. Fashionista helped when she got home from school, but I didn't get any pics of her.

2009-04-07T10:40:00.003-05:00

I made an uppercase/lower case letter recognition game for Superboy. Princess played too just matching colors.

My First Day!

2009-04-07T10:27:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I'm feeling the full mommy vibe now, so I'm going to try to do this blog thing. Hopefully it doesn't take too much of my time. I really want someway to easily document my family's life and have a way for friends and family far away to keep up with us. I also am completely obsessed with reading other mommy blogs and have found a lot of good ideas. Maybe someone will get an idea from this site, even though I really just steal ideas from other people.

So I'm a mommy with 3 kiddos - Fashionista (age 8), Superboy (age 4), and Princess Pout (age 3). I have taught full time for 6 years, but I finally get to stay home with my babies now. I teach 4 year old pre-k three mornings a week, so I'm still out some, but my two older ones are in school and Princess comes with me. My husband is a pastor, so our lives revolve around church and family. It's crazy, but amazing.

I've been thinking lately about how I really need to take advantage of the time I have home with my kids. We're sacrificing a lot for me to be home, so I need to make the most of every mintue. I worked really hard in my classroom and was totally a perfectionist. I am realizing now that's what I need to give my family.

So hope you enjoy! I'm excited to see what the adventure of our life brings! Here are a few things we have been doing lately.