Our Life Right Now- October

Hi!  Yeah, things have been a little crazy here.  We have just been taking turns being sick. NOT fun!  In between those times that we are sick? I am trying to catch up on cleaning my house.  I already said it, but I will say it again, NOT fun! Here is a little of what we are up to these days though.

Well, I have been doing from couch to 5k.  This is my 3rd time starting this program and my least favorite time.  I love the girls that I am running with, but it is so hard this time.  I keep having shin splints, which are the absolute worst.  It’s just hard.  But, I am doing it.  I “jogged” for 25 minutes the other night.  No stopping.  That is seriously a big deal for me.  I had trouble running 1 minute!! I remember thinking there was no way that I would be able to run 5 minutes!!!! So 25 minutes? Yeah, that is huge. 

We are still doing preschool…yay! It has been hard with all of our sickness and honestly, it has been hard to do it everyday that we are sick. We are having to go slower than I expected we would, but there really  isn’t a reason that we should be rushing at this point. It is easy for me to get discouraged with how slow we are going, but they are learning.  That is what is important.  They do still get excited when I say that it is time for school.  I am really glad that they are enjoying it:)

Averie is just growing too fast.  I know I have said this 1,000 times on here, but we LOVE her!!! She makes us laugh every day.  She is saying SO many words now.  One of my favorites? bweeeese! (please!)  It is seriously almost impossible to turn her down if she says please.  Almost. I also love when she says “o-tay” (okay) or “o-tay ma-ma” (okay mama).  She is obsessed with her baby right now.  She insists on being rocked before bed time even though we do NOT rock our babies to sleep.  Where did this come from?? haha “rock” she says.  Annnnnnd we rock.  And we sing. And we sing. And we sing.  And she says “again” and we do it again:)

Ty and Micah are really into Mario stuff right now.  They still love super hero stuff as well. In fact, Ty wants to be batman for Halloween and Micah wants to be flash. I honestly don’t know how I am going to make a flash costume, but I refuse to spend $20 on one.  At this age, I am sure he will be happy with what ever I come up with.  I LOVE this age that they are at.  I love the conversations.  I love their kindness.  I just love, love, love them.

Blessed!!

Preschool Homeschool

My baby boys just turned 4. FOUR! I am really amazed at how fast this is going. It makes me a lot sad!

We have made the choice at this time to home school our kids. We don't know what our future holds, but right now, this is what we have decided. That being said, I have decided to start a preschool program with them. Being a whole 4 years old, they now need more structure to our day. I have chosen a VERY simple program online that I am going to use. It's very basic in learning animals, letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and nursery rhymes. I can't figure out how to add a link from my phone, but it's from the preschool homeschool blog. They even provide images to print for your kids to color. I have also chosen a book called My ABC Bible Verses: hiding God's Word In Little Hearts. It is a book that has a bible verse for every letter. We will go through the book as we go through the alphabet.

I was pretty pleased with how today went, it being our first day. We started with prayer. Mostly me asking for patience. We then went over our verse a few times. A soft answer turns away wrath. Proverbs 15:1. Then we colored A and talked about that a little. We discussed that Averie starts with A. It was very simple and we were done in 30 minutes. They are even excited to say their verse for daddy and show him their art work when he comes home.

Please pray for us as we do this! I am excited about it today, but I know every day won't go so smoothly. I know every lesson won't end with Ty saying "thank you mama for doing school".

Summer fun

I haven't blogged in a while, partially out of being busy and partially because I have had nothing to say. I don't want to let my blog go completely because I do enjoy writing occasionally.
We have just been enjoying summer. Nothing too exciting has happened or is happening. We are doing another tiny garden this year. This is our 2nd year. It's only tomato plants with a pepper plant. I am too excited to start getting tomatoes!!!

We also set up our kiddie pool again his year. We got a bigger one this time so I could join in the fun. It's hard to fit in to one of those tiny pools!!! Averie isn't very fond of the pool. She gets in for 2 minutes, walks around, then gets out. She prefers to just walk aimlessly around the pool.

As for crafts, I haven't done much lately. I have a huge list as always, but can't seem to find time to do anything!! I plan to do Santa's workshop this year with Rebekah so I really need to get to work!!

Here are a few pictures!

Gardening

I am so excited that it is time to plant our garden! Saturday was perfect weather to shop for our plants. We are having a very hard time deciding what to grow this year. Last year we grew things that we didn't really use. This year I don't want to be so wasteful! Our beds are tiny so we are limited to about 6 plants. So far we have settled on 2 different tomato plants. Hopefully we can decide on the rest soon!

Included are pictures from our day out!

Happy Birthday Averie

I can't believe my baby is 1. Didn't I just have her a few months ago??
We had Averie a little party on Saturday. We had family over to celebrate. It was pretty exciting to do a girly party this time! We didn't do a theme, I just wanted to keep it "soft". I decorated with pinks, creams, and browns. I did all the decorating myself (with the help of friends). Thanks to Robin for help with the banners! Thanks to Elizabeth for help baking the cakes after I sliced my finger with a knife! I love, love party planning and decorating!!
I am pretty sure Averie enjoyed her party. I know she enjoyed attention from grandparents, aunts, and uncles. It was her first official time eating dessert and she seemed to like it. She has had a few bites of cookie in the past and she swiped my brownie off my plate a few weeks ago and ate it before I realized it was missing. She didn't disappoint when it came time to smash the cake. She dug right in and rubbed it all over her face, hair, and clothes.
She got very lovely gifts. I am more excited about them at this point than she is. She was excited to get baby dolls though. She knew immediately what they were and was very excited. I have been happy to see that she has been actually playing with all of her new things. She is usually more interested in her brothers toys than her own.
This has been an exciting year. She has for sure grown faster and progressed faster than I had hoped! At 6 months she got her first tooth, sat up on her own, and started belly crawling. At 7 months she started pulling up to a standing position. At 9 months she took her first steps with out holding on. By 10 months she was walking. She has kept me busy for sure!
We have loved hearing her sweet voice try to say words. She says dada, mama, bye bye, nite nite, ball, bottle, more, all done. She has said dog, cat, bird, bat man, thank you, baby. I am pretty sure that she has tried to say Ty and Micah but it was not clear enough to count.
We thank God daily for this sweet girl. We are so thankful for this year that we have had her. We pray that God gives us many more!

Yay for spring!!!

I am so over the cold weather! This week we have had several warm days and it has been wonderful!!! I went to several yard sales on Saturday and yesterday we went to the park.

I was so ready for yard sales! I love going! Especially now that I have kids. I only bought things for them this trip. Averie got a few larger dresses, brown shoes for later, and a bright pink pair of shorts. The boys got 2 shirts each. I also got a organizer box for Averie's shoes. I have needed something to store under her bed. I can count 8 things I bought and spent right at 10 dollars. Much better than consignment prices!

As for the park, it was so nice to get outside! Averie got to swing for the first time. She loved it and I loved watching her. It made her sleepy very fast though. She's precious! It was much easier taking the boys to the park this year too. One year really makes a difference!!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

Superman! Our house is super hero crazy at the moment. That's all Ty and Micah talk about. It's all they play right now! I have never known so much information on super heroes in my life. I will be the first to admit, I am really enjoying it! I am constantly laughing at the things they come up with. One minute Spider-Man is at my house shooting webs, the next wolverine has his claws out fighting, the next minute someone has one of my headbands stretched over his eyes playing cyclops. Love. It.
A friend came over the other day with a cape. I had toyed with the idea before about making them a cape, but quickly decided that they would have no idea what a cape was. They knew. Immediately. I guess that knowledge comes in the little boy handbook, who knows. Anyways, I was making a trip to hobby lobby that very day and decided to pick up fabric to make capes. Superman capes as requested. I guess they knew that superman has cape. I was prepared to do a Spider-Man or venom or hulk cape if requested. *eye rolls* a cool mom would KNOW hulk, Spider-Man, or venom does not have a cape.
These were so, so easy to make. I actually just cut out around the borrowed cape (thanks Mary!) but you can do any shape. I used Velcro as the fastener. I copied Ty's superman Tshirt logo on to paper as my stencil.
My boys were excited. So excited! I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. It makes me excited to try more things for them!

Loving The Little Years

I have wanted to read this book, possibly since I had my boys. I got it as a gift from my church during my baby shower with Averie. 10 months ago. I got sick recently and wasn't able to leave bed. It kind of paid off, I was able to read this book. In 1 day! Yay for me!
Such a good book. It's 102 pages. 20 chapters of short stories. I highly recommend any mother with little ones read this. It's so encouraging!!

Snow Days and Sleds

I honestly can't even remember if this is our first snow or not but we were so excited to have enough snow to sled. Barely, but we did it. My dad bought the kids a sled and we pretty much prayed for snow so we could use it. So fun!!