Growing Everyday

Beka’s small group at church all went together to go bowling. Here are a few pictures of my daughter on her first bowling trip. She didn’t break 100, but a good time was had by all.

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My little man is sick with a fever, cough and stuffy nose. Doesn’t he look pathetic.

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I have been trying to do a craft type thing every Saturday with the kids. Last Saturday, we made art with contact paper. We started by dyeing some coffee filters with leftover Easter egg dye. The plan was to let those dry and then put them in the contact paper and cut them out. Well, they were taking too long to dry so we used whatever papers, drawing the kids wanted. I have learned it is not about the product they produce, but about the process of spending time together doing something. Jared and Beka just put their artwork on the contact paper and then folded it over. With the coffee filters it would have made a suncatcher type thing. With the other artwork, it just looked cool. So Jared made a dinosaur and Beka made a puppy and abstract art. We had a blast doing it too.

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Beka received her report card last week. She is doing really well, but she is getting bored with it. Both kids have also been getting bored in the mornings before school. So I have started giving them worksheets and other things to do in the morning to help relieve the boredom.

The things these kids can do is simply amazing. Beka can complete on her own a worksheet filled with simple addition problems. Jared recognizes most of his letters and all numbers up to 10 most of them up to 20. Apparently 11 is a confusing number. We are still working on him writing his name really well. He can write it and if you know what you are looking for you can recognize it.

I am just thankful that they love to learn. Beka wants to do a science project for school this year. Jared is consistently trying to do whatever Beka has to do for school.

A funny story about Beka. Last week she comes running off the bus full of excitement "Mommy, guess what I have homework!" She was so excited. We sat down to do her homework which was one addition word problem. I read it to her, she filled out the equation, and solved it. "Mom, I am ready for the next one." I had to then tell her that was the only problem. She was so disappointed. I just think it is cute that she wants homework.

Jared’s letter a school this week was W. He got to play with my favorite thing…worms. He thought it was great.

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Here are some random pictures of the kids over the last few weeks. Things were crazy around here at Christmastime, but our schedule is finally back to normal.

Mommy apparently doesn’t keep the house clean enough.

Beka and Jared just love to play in shaving cream. And if you get out water too they can amuse themselves for an hour.

This is the "swamp" that Jared and Beka built. It also doubles as an obstacle course.

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Okay, winter is here…snow is on the ground and I hate it. But I am trying to make the best of it by doing some fun indoor things with the kids.

A couple of weeks ago, the kids were bored so we got out Jared’s hot wheels cars to play with. Well, then it was decided that they were dirty. And you can’t have dirty cars! We had a car wash. Those cars are now clean.

We have also played in a tent.

And just the other night Jared had his preschool Christmas sing. These pictures are not the best because I had to zoom in so close. The kids are singing Rudolf hence the red nose.

Lastly, today we went out and built a snowman. It has snowed twice so far here; about 3 inches both times. So there was plenty of snow. We also tried to build a fort but all Jared wanted to do was knock it down. Oh, and we had lots of snowball hits. The kids also discovered that the ponds have a thin layer of ice over them. It can be broken with a snowball. I hate the snow, but at least Beka and Jared have fun in it.

Our snowman that is part alien.

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Halloween was wonderful, but very busy around here. Both kids had parties at school, Beka had a birthday party to go to, and then we had trick-or-treating. We managed to fit all that in and binge on candy. It was great. About a week ago we carved pumpkins. Well, Andrew carved the pumpkins and the kids and I cleaned them out and supervised. We are good at supervising.

We, will start with the finished products

Jared’s pumpkin was the headless horseman and took alot of time to carve. So while Andrew worked on that one, we sorted the seeds from the slime.

Beka cut the top off of her own pumpkin which she wanted carved as a cat. Daddy did a great job carving both pumpkins.

And lastly, both kids in their costumes. Beka was a Japanese princess and Jared went as batman.

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Those are just a few of the activites we have been doing to keep the family busy. We have also been swimming and playing at friends houses. It is nice to be busy and still have times when all you do is play pretend at home.

Andrew traveled to France in June and was gone for about a week. I either became delirious from all the time alone with the kids or just wanted to do something special. I let Beka and Jared stay up way past their bedtime so we could look for lightning bugs. They had a blast.

Next on the list was the paratroopers. When Andrew had gone on another trip somewhere, he had brought back these paratrooper guys for the kids. You know the ones that you throw up in the air and then they float down. Well, these will keep the kids entertained for about 15-20 minutes especially Jared.

Unfortunately one lone paratrooper got caught in the tree…..

Luckily, Daddy was there to save the day!

These last couple of pictures are of the kids trying to shoot baskets with Daddy.

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The last day of preschool was an all school field trip to the farm park here. They have lots of animals that you can feed and look at. It is also nice because they have a couple of playgrounds and a huge slide for the kids. The first thing they do is give you directions on how to behave at the park and give you an ice cream cone full of food for the animals.

The kids and I went around feeding the animals and then it was time to play. They have many hands on activites like gatherin fake eggs from fake chickens and practicing to milk a cow

They also have a maypole that everyone wanted to run around. And they had two-week old goslings that were just adorable to watch. By the end of two hours, Beka and Jared were exhausted and ready to go home. It was a very nice way to end the year.

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We are very busy around here. The school year is coming to an end. Our last actual school day is May 10th a week from tomorrow. After that, we have an all school picnic and then the 4′s graduate Monday night. I feel like a majority of our time at school is spent practicing the songs over and over again. I really am beginning to think that doing away with these programs would be the best thing. The kids don’t get anything out of it. It is really only the parents that enjoy them.

Anyway, we have been playing outside and riding bikes. Jared seems to be allergic to the pollen in the air, but he is on allergy medicine now. The medicine has at least allowed him to sleep through the night; for that I am grateful.

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