January 27, 2014

Whoa - dinner's in the crock pot...the laundry is folded....groceries are put away...both boys are asleep!!!!....

Do I really have a chance to blog??!!

Gonna blow through a January blitz because I have totally dropped the ball here at keeping up on this. 

 A few weekends ago we made an impromptu visit to my parents' house on a rare sunny day.  We brought the sleds and snow suits and the boys had a riot totally dismantling their house (my mom's an avid fancy teddy bear collector, and to the boys I'm sure it just looked like one big toy store with all these bears everywhere).  Thankfully they are gracious and didn't mind the disarray.

We even sent Levi down the icy driveway on his sled.

Trekking through the back yard with Grandpa.

I took this picture on January 14th. This, my friends, is what the natives call "grass."  It is green and fluffy and can be cut with machines.  Evidently this is what it looked like before Canada violently threw up all over the Midwest.

(note that not surprisingly, Luke is having a cow about something in the background)

We inherited a trampoline, and it has saved everyone's sanity.  We received ours for free, but if you have an extra $30 and small children, do not delay in obtaining one.  Now, yours will not be nearly as special as ours.  You see, the elderly woman who originally bought this trampoline has a thick Dutch brogue and a penchant for TV preachers.  Late one night, Jimmy Baker convinced her that THIS trampoline would not only save her joints but her soul as well.  She bought it immediately.  Her daughter about died when she found out and said, MOM - he's a swindler.  "Oh, no!" said her mudder in her thick, thick brogue.  "He is a good, VONDERFUL Chrrrristian (rolllll that R) man."  When her daughter (who is a dear friend of mine) sold it shortly thereafter, this precious/hilarious woman wanted to make CERTAIN that she got a good price because, vell, this IS a Jimmy Baker CHRRRRISTIAN trampoline.  As it turns out, the person who bought it didn't use it, and, praise Jesus, passed it on to me.  Perhaps one could say that this trampoline is now sanctified: it is being used exactly the way it was created to be.

So here's Levi on the holy, Christian, sanctified trampoline.

As if anyone in the Great Lakes needs to see more snow, but for memory's sake I need to put up some pictures of it.  I honestly love it but I honestly am going nuts with this cold and the inability to just. get. out. I don't want to talk about it because I'll burst into tears, like I started to do when our pastor's wife asked how I was REALLY doing yesterday.  If you're a mom I know you're giving me a resounding amen.

Don't see this much: a pickup hauling a wheel loader with a tow strap.  Caught that at lunch today.

My attempt to be a really fun mom: I used painter's tape to make roads all over the living room and built a 'city' with the boys' stuff. I think I got more into it than they did. Levi was being obtuse that day and wasn't interested in playing with it, but Luke really got into it. :)  So did Molly.

Levi forked the table the other day and as a consequence I told him he needs to learn exactly what it means to take good care of our home.  So he's doing house work with me every morning, and funny enough, he loves it and does it really well.  I'm teaching him to do laundry (he loads it in, and then I sit him on the washer and hand him the soap and show him what buttons to push), he wipes down the table, cleans the windows, wipes down the bathroom (not the toilet, though), and helps me put away laundry.  Here he's stacking cloth wipes.  It's been such a success that now instead of heading to watch his truck video after breakfast, he has to help me and earn his video time.  Next week I think I'll start paying him a small allowance and we can start teaching about tithing and saving.  So overall, the forked table was worth it. I suppose you could call that serendipity.

My breakfast buddy. Luke was sacking it in one morning.

Sorry for the food face, but this is CLASSIC Luke: the sign of a meal enjoyed is his scrunchy smile at the end.

Again, sorry for the food face but he had such a nice smile today.  Poor kiddo's running a temp but otherwise seems fine...just his normal, dramatic self. :)

My dad came down last week and painted our little school room area!!!  I have a ways to go to set it up the way I'd love it to be, but the walls were by the far the WORST part.  Now I'd like to get a nice piece of carpet to cover the whole floor, some nice storage/shelving, a project/craft table, maybe an art easel, bean bags, and some great stuff to put on the walls...but man, are we glad those walls are scraped and painted!!!!  The boys LOVED having "Papa Mark" around!

Before (particularly atrocious because it was becoming a dumping ground)

After!  Yes, that is an unused training potty just sitting there on the shelf.

I let Levi borrow my head lamp.  In return he had to listen to me regale him with my stories of cross country skiing at night with aunt Renee and the time I hiked into a lava tube near Flagstaff, AZ with my friends on my 26th birthday, and they surprised me by pulling out a box of Hostess cupcakes and we had a little impromptu birthday party there in the darkest dark that ever darked.

Our loosely structured school plan is working well so far...we're working a lot on numbers and shapes, listening to our Questions with Answers song every morning, and doing lots of puzzles.  He LOVES puzzles.

A shape matching project he totally enjoyed - he had to match the shapes on the clothespins to the shapes on the wheel.  A few months ago he couldn't grasp how to pinch the clothespin, and now he does.

Typical morning scene: working on his I Spy puzzle, listening to his catechism song, coloring a picture (we're talking about the fruit of peace this week, and he wanted to color a picture of Jesus, so I printed off a picture of Jesus calming the storm)...and eating breakfast, of course.

I bought an app called Monkey Math School Sunshine that he really enjoys - it totally frustrated him at first because he didn't recognize any numbers, and it IS a little more advanced, but he kept choosing to play it during tablet time - at first with a lot of help from me, and now he does it on his own pretty well.  It's really helping him learn his shapes and numbers, so I'd recommend it!!