More about us...

I forgot to mention that yesterday we pulled out each of their baby books and looked at cute pictures and milestones for each of them.  We also read a story for each of them that had a character with their name in it.  Today we continued our All About Me week by adding two more pages to our books.  We did a page of measurements and facts and a page of Favorites (or opinions).  On the fact page, we measured their height and weight, wrote down their eye color and hair color, put their birthday as well as the age they are right now, and put their clothing size and shoe size.  On the Favorites page we listed their favorite color, toy, book, thing to do, place to visit, and food.  After we filled out our books for today, they went and got the favorite book they had listed and we read those together.  Then we had a fun time playing blocks and building and sorting by color and making tall towers.  We did some puzzles, Rachel did some math, Ford drew a landscape, and Ruby colored.  We made it to story time today with Mr. Jason where we heard two great stories.  One was about a garden and after the story, we planted tomato seeds.  I have no idea if anything will come of those seeds, but we'll see...

Also, I should note that yesterday at Vanessa's house Rachel found a snail which she is so excited about.  She had a pet snail last year which she found on April 30, so she thought it was crazy that she found one on April 29!  I hope this snail lasts as long as Sally.  We eventually let Sally go because we were afraid she had missed her family.  At first Rachel thought this snail could be Sally, but I think she's finally realized it's not.

All About Me

Rachel had a great idea for a project this week.  She wanted to make her own book that we could read.  We decided everybody could make their own book and it would be called All About Me.  So, this weekend we painted a front and back cover and then put the title on it.  Then I stapled some white paper in between the two pieces of construction paper and we have books!  This morning they each did a self-portrait on the first page.  Rachel had already painted herself on the front cover of her book, so it's funny to see a paint version and then a colored pencil version of the same self-portrait.  Such an artist using all different mediums!  Ford got very detailed with eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair, hands, fingers, legs, feet, and clothes.  Ruby basically did a scribble scrabble that I'm assuming is her abstract version of herself running all over the place :)  We had a great time and they are already begging to do the next page.  I think by the end of the week we'll have a nice little snapshot of what they are like at this current point in their lives.

Fun Friday

What a great day we had today.  We started off by just having a fun free time for at least an hour in the play room.  I put paper, stickers, crayons, etc. out on the table and it turned into the best time.  Rachel made pictures of words that she's been reading (fan, dog, cat, and even violin!).  Ford practiced drawing and came up with a new way to write his name (he puts a small version of each letter inside of every letter...pretty cute).  Ruby had the best time just peeling stickers and putting them on different pieces of paper.  She kept saying she was making a ticket.  Then she would say it was her homework.  She and Ford kept going in the other room and then pretending to come home from school.  It was a fun time.
After a snack and some reading, we headed to the park to meet our buddies.  We had a great time swinging, sliding, running, and playing "tennis".  Park time wore Ruby out and she took the longest nap of her whole life today!  Ford and Rachel rested and then Allen came home a little early to prepare for his beach trip with his youth group this weekend.  We dropped him off at the church, headed to pizza night, and now are trying to get settled down for bed.  The kids wanted to have a slumber party and they are all three on the air mattress together (it's big!).  Not much sleeping going on, but they're happy.  Wish us luck on our single mom weekend :)

Exploration

I'm not a nature girl.  As an adult I have learned to enjoy the outdoors and camping, but I just never did much of that as a child.  Allen grew up totally opposite and spent all of his time outdoors.  If you know us, it's obvious who lived a healthier lifestyle (yeah, not me).  I want our kids to really enjoy nature and enjoy being outside and I try really hard to let them just get dirty and explore but sometimes it pushes me over the edge!  I think with our house on the market, it makes it harder for me, too, to let them get so nasty and then track all of that inside.  We've got a pretty good system here at home, though, where everybody just basically gets naked on the front porch before coming back indoors.
I also need to admit that I was much more of a Chemistry fan than a Biology fan and I just don't know much about plants and animals.  For a long time I really didn't care, either, but now I wish I knew more about growing plants and identifying plants and animals.  So, I wanted to do something today to encourage our kids to be outside and to look at animals in nature.  I took them out to Ed and Lisa's even though they weren't there because they called to let us know that the baby geese had hatched last weekend.  We were excited to see three different sets of geese families that were so cute.  There was a family with two babies, a family with three babies, and a family with five babies.  The moms and dads were escorting them around the land to get food and down to the water for what looked like swimming lessons.  We went and explored a nest that was empty and saw the eggs where the babies had hatched.  We also saw another mother goose lying on a nest waiting for her eggs to hatch.  I could have watched them all day, but some of the restless people in our group wanted to move on to other things, so we went to explore and look at plants.  We found some Lady Slippers which I only knew what they were because we had just recently seen them in a book about plants.  Ruby and Ford carried a Lady Slipper around with them for most of the hike but they both eventually lost them, so we don't have any artifacts.  We did have a great time just being outside, but it was getting to Ford who has some bad allergies these days, so we came on back to town.  After Rachel's violin lesson we drew pictures of the geese and of the nest and colored some pictures of flowers.  This morning we had also written some spring words for handwriting.  It was nice to just explore.

Trying something new

We got things started off on another crazy, not going so well kind of day this morning, so I decided to scrap what we were doing and do something new.  We had several errands that we could possibly do and I thought it might be good to get everyone in the car and put on their favorite CD and have some calm down time.  We stopped by our church to drop off a letter with our minister about the possibility of starting a Daisy Girl Scout Troop this fall.  Rachel and I are so excited!  Then we got some gas, mailed a letter, and picked up some supplies for Allen to take on his beach trip this weekend.  We also decided to venture out to the library where we love to get books but haven't ever been to for story time.  I have to say, I felt a little bad about it (especially considering we saw Mr. Jason going into the preschool at our church).  I figured it's not technically cheating, though, right?  We're just trying out a different story time.  We got there about 20 minutes before it started, so we checked out literally 30+ books.  They just really have such a good organization to their books and the kids can find things so easily.  I started noticing that the place was getting pretty crowded and it was very full of grandmothers and very small kids.  There was only one other mother there and I quickly counted 20 kids but even more than that came.  This library is a lot smaller than ours, so 20 kids in a small space compared to the 5 or 6 in our large space was becoming a little overwhelming.  Rachel did a good job introducing herself and helping Ruby find a place to sit.  Ford, no surprise, stuck to me and sat on my lap.  The lady read two books, but we couldn't hear them because she kept having to tell everyone to sit down and the kids around us were not being good listeners.   (FYI:  Grandmothers don't get on the floor with the kids at story time and with the exception of one REALLY LOUD grandmother, no one was telling the kids to be quiet.)  We decided to skip the craft after the story because it was in another room and it was pretty chaotic getting all of those people through a tiny hallway.  We checked out our books and on the way out the door, Rachel said, "I think our library is better than this one."  I totally cringed because the librarian heard her and had no idea that what she really meant was, "I don't think this story time went well."  I talked to her outside about how that was something we needed to share with each other in the car and not make comments when we don't like something in front of the people who are in charge of it.  She honestly had no idea that was not a nice thing to say.  Anyway, as much as we love checking out books, I'm glad to know that our story time is just fine and even when it doesn't go so well, the kids are comfortable there and have made some good friends and best of all, I can take Ruby to the potty without worrying about them while I'm gone.  I also have to mention that the grandmothers at our library go out of their way to be kind and introduce themselves when someone new comes.  Not.one.person spoke to us or introduced themselves to us this morning.  Kind of crazy!

Learning our Lessons and Following the Rules

Today was just a "normal" school day (reading, math, writing, play time, etc.) plus story time.  I don't have much to report about what we wrote, read, and played, but I do want to write about the craziness that ensues when kids don't follow the rules and don't get enough sleep.  We try not to have too many rules in this house or for school time, but two very important rules we do have are "Keep your hands to yourself." and "Don't put things around your neck or anybody else's."  It truly is hard for a 5, 3, and 2 year old to keep their hands to themselves, especially when they're being sweet and want to hug each other, but it turns into a wrestling match.  I feel like I am constantly remind them not to touch, though, because it always ends up with someone whining, crying, or getting hurt.  I'm really struggling with coming up with some immediate consequences for this other than just plain old time out.  Let's face it, Rachel probably prefers having quiet time to herself with no one bothering her.  I would like a Time Out myself sometimes!  Sometimes I think they are learning more by being the person who ends up getting hurt and then we talk about why it's not a good idea to touch.  I really don't like learning lessons the hard way, but I am seeing that it makes more of an impact then just having your mother repeat over and over what not to do.  I'm hoping Ford learned the rule about not putting things around your neck today, but it sure was scary to watch.  I know it probably sounds like a crazy rule to have, but somehow every jump rope, scarf, and blanket turns into a puppy leash around someone's neck or a way for pretend trains to couple up.  After yelling and screaming and doing things that I'd never want to see myself in person do, I could not get this through to them today that it is not a good idea to put something around your neck or anyone else's.  The jump rope had been put away, the blankets were banned to their beds, and there was not a scarf in sight.  However, when we finally made it outside to play (thank God for sunshine!), Ford made a big mistake.  He went up in the fort while the girls and I were swinging and playing in the sand box.  Everyone was having fun and getting along and in a good mood at the same time for what felt like the first time today when suddenly I heard Ford yell, "Mama!" in a panic and stumble on the slide.  I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but when I ran the two feet to the slide he was trying his best to climb back up the slide with a rope around his neck and head that was attached to a hook on the fort.  This rope was part of the pulley system that Allen had put together when they changed the playhouse to a fort and had a bucket attached to it at one time.  I have no idea why Ford wanted it around his head and I think he was just going toward the slide and either tried to reach for something or slipped, but talk about being scared out of my mind!  Poor guy has a rope burn on the side of his face and definitely scared himself.  We sat together once I got the rope off his head and thrown to the front yard and talked about the importance of not putting anything around or necks.  I went so far as to explain to him that he could have died.  I know he doesn't fully grasp what that means, but I really want it to sink in to him to stop doing this.  The look in his eyes told me he got it, but we'll see.  I can't stop thinking about how badly that situation could have gone.  I hope it was just a lesson learned and an end to it all.  After that craziness everything finally seemed to calm down and go back to a normal day.  I was really starting to feel like I had lost it today and was in a crazy alter-universe where my kids were not themselves, but Allen promised me it was them, not me.  We put them to bed about 45 minutes early tonight with the hope that they'll catch up on some sleep (did I mention no one napped today longer than 30 minutes???).  Here's hoping tomorrow is better.

Happy Earth Day

Thanks to their Science Teacher (Papa), the kids knew today what I meant when I asked them about being good stewards of the Earth.  We read two cute little books about Earth Day...Eco Babies and Fancy Nancy:  Every Day is Earth Day.   It's amazing how much anyone could learn from two simple children's books about being better to the Earth!  We colored a few pictures of animals and trees and such and talked about what exactly "nature" is.  I'm sure in the years to come, we will get more and more in depth with Earth day, but I was pretty proud of what we already do around here to be good to the environment.  Of course, everyone can always be better, but we're doing pretty good so far.  We also did a little handwriting with Earth Day and April and talked about capitalizing the first letter in holidays and months.  Rachel did some math and read a Biscuit book out loud to Ruby.  Pretty good day to return to school after an incredible weekend.  We hung out with almost all of our most favorite people from Friday at the zoo with Dr. Ed and Ms. Lisa to pizza night down the street, fun times on a dirt pile and dinner with the Fultons on Saturday, and a day of 5 year old cuteness with Mac and Rachel plus crazy train and bike time with Char Char.  I love ending the weekend exhausted and happy that we have such awesome people right here near us!

No School Day

Regular old schools have teacher workdays and holidays and things like that and every now and then we just have to take care of life around here.  So...it was just a fun day here at Ingram House instead of Ingram School.  Allen was able to be home for the morning today and the kids got a lot of Papa play time in which they love!!  They built forts and went on walks and searched for treasure.  I was able to get some things taken care of.  At one point I looked at him and said, "If you could stay home every day then doing laundry and making lunch would be so much easier!"  Unfortunately, the bills might suffer a tad....
We've just been having a fun day!

More tragedies

I don't even know what to say about the bombing at the Boston Marathon, other than, it reiterates to me how important being home with my family is.  I know that might sound crazy to connect a tragic attack with being a stay-at-home homeschooling mom, but I'm just getting tired of other people in the world.  Other people who can end an innocent life or lives so tragically.  When did it become unsafe to go to the movies or visit a mall or even run in a race?  Why are people out to destroy innocent, helpless victims?  The tragedy in Newton, CT happened the day of Ruby's 2nd birthday and it was just so heartbreaking.  Why did that man feel the need to end the lives of innocent children whom he had never even met?  I'm not saying that by homeschooling I will be sheltering my kids from this kind of violence because it might happen in a public school.  What I want to say is that by being with them more, if something tragic were to happen in our lives I would feel good knowing that I spent as much time as I possibly could with them and helped them to become whoever they are going to be and didn't leave it up to other people.  I don't want to waste a minute of seeing their smiles and helping them get through their frustrations.  I know we can't keep tragedy from striking, but we can do the best we can with what we've been given.  To me that means to take my skills as an educator and a mother and enjoy the time I'm given with my children.
We were fortunate enough today to spend time with Ms. Lisa and Dr. Ed, two people who inspire me as well as Allen to be the best parents we can possibly be.  They love our children so much and are basically a third set of grandparents to our children (though they would prefer "aunt" and "uncle").  I love the fact that we were able to just go out to their house and take a nature walk and enjoy seeing a Mama Goose laying on eggs in her nest while a Papa Goose stood watch.  We were able to walk the labyrinth and watch butterflies.  We played trains and Legos and dolls and had a picnic.  The best part about it all was that we had no agenda, we weren't rushed, and we didn't feel like we needed to be anywhere else in the world.  I think about the fact that my kids will learn so much more from these two special people about how to be good people and be kind to others and have a great character and I wouldn't trade that for one second of desperately hoping that my kids get the "right" teacher and are around the "right" kids in school.  I want to choose the role models for my kids at this age so that I can, in turn, hopefully steer them toward finding their own role models who are also of good character and sound mind.  I am tired of everyone trying to fit into what is normal in the world these days and I'm definitely tired of tragedy being the normal.  It's time to do something in this country to make it more important to teach kids right from wrong and to teach them to be kind to others.  That's the most important education my kids need.

Somebody buy this house already!!

We tentatively had an open house scheduled for tomorrow for realtors to come see our house and hopefully want to show it to their clients.  I knew that it wasn't 100% for sure so I didn't get too involved in cleaning, but we did do some things around the house this weekend to try to get ready.  This morning we got through our school work (more about that later) and then I started decluttering and straightening up places that I knew wouldn't get messed up if the open house got rescheduled for another day this week.  The problem with all of this is that certain two year-olds in this house can't handle it if they don't have your full attention.  We also are in that mode of two kids can play together just fine, but three's a crowd.  So as I was packing some toys up to put out in the car for now I had to intervene what felt like a million times for biting, scratching, and just about anything Ruby could do to get Rachel and Ford to play with her.  Rachel didn't quite get the concept I gave her that if she would make Ruby happy for 10 minutes, I'd be done.  Instead, Rachel kept arguing with her and taking things away from her and Ruby just had enough.  So now Rachel has a scratch on her face and her neck.  Thank goodness she got away from her before Ruby bit her!  Oh, and of course, we had a potty accident in the middle of all of that.  Well, the realtor called and rescheduled for another day this week so I just stopped cleaning and packing and started playing and fixing lunch.  Everyone was also tired, so we did an early lunch and they're all settled down for a nap now.  AAAHHH!!! This afternaptime will be better!
As far as school goes, this morning was great!  Rachel finished up some review for math, then wrote some animal names (we're preparing for the zoo), and finished up her Kindergarten handwriting book today.  She's so proud of herself!  Ford wrote out a couple of animal names and then while Ruby and I were doing zoo animal stickers, Ford kept writing random letters and asking me if they spelled something.  It was hilarious!  He'd write something like U-L-P-A and say, "What do those letters make?"  We all kept laughing at his funny words.  Then we read four books together about the zoo and talked about what a zoo is and the types of things that we'll see this Friday.  Now, if the thunderstorms will just stay away!!!

Baking Bread

We didn't have any bread today.  Well, technically, we had the two end pieces to our loaf, but I know three kids who aren't going for that!  I really didn't want to go to the grocery store this morning but I knew we needed something to smear our peanut butter and/or egg salad on.  I'm trying my best to buy groceries once a week and finish those groceries.  I spend a lot less money when I only go one time and don't go back for more.  Let's face, "I just need bread." turns into "I could also use this and this and this while I'm here." So, instead of packing everyone in the car and heading to the grocery store where we would all fight over touching things and who gets to ride where, I decided it would just be a whole lot easier to make my own loaf of bread.  (And did I mention that today makes the second day this week I haven't taken the car anywhere which really adds up on saving on gas!)
The recipe I have for bread is simple and most people have the ingredients handy in their pantries, so here it is if you're stuck without bread at home:

1 1/2 cups hot water
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 TBSP sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 TBSP butter
1 package yeast
3 cups flour (our family actually prefers wheat flour for this recipe)

-Dissolve yeast in hot water and let sit for a few minutes
-Melt butter, add it with milk, sugar, and salt to the yeast
-Add 2 cups of flour and mix
-Add the rest of the flour a little at a time until it's sticky but doesn't stick to your hands
-Knead for 10 minutes (I do this in the Kitchen Aid)
-Shape into a ball, put back in bowl, cover and let sit for an hour
-Roll into rectangle shape, roll up and put in buttered loaf pan (seam side down), cover and let sit for an hour
-Bake at 400 for 30 minutes

Weather makes a difference

The weather was so great yesterday that in the afternoon we actually opened up a small section of Ingram Water Park.  The kids spent an hour just running around and around the sprinkler and playing in the mud and chasing each other and laughing.  The time between nap time and when Papa gets home is usually the hardest part of our day, but having great weather took care of that.  This morning we got through all of our work and weren't real sure what to do with ourselves today.  So, we headed to a local park and played for over an hour.  We played on the playground, took a lap around the park, played on the swings, played in the gazebo, and even made a new friend.  It's just so nice to have the option of getting outside and not feeling like we have to always come up with something to do indoors (especially when I know that the minute we make a disaster of a mess someone will want to come look at our house!).  Rachel is finishing up with her 100 counting, Ruby continues to be excited by stickers, and Ford constantly wants to write his numbers.  We figured out a great way yesterday to help him write his numbers by dividing the paper into 10 sections so that he has a box for each number.  He did so well with that today, that he asked to turn it over and continue going to 20.  Such an overachiever!  He's really doing well and I'm excited about going through the beginning handwriting book with him now that he has a much better grasp on what he's doing.  These kids never cease to amaze me.  One thing that kept coming up at the park, though, was how they wish more kids had been there because they really want to make friends.  Sometimes I do feel bad for them that they aren't interacting every day with kids their own age, but they truly are becoming each other's best friends.  I think in the coming year they will be involved more with activities that enable them to make new friends, but I just don't want to over-do it.  They have the rest of their lives to be influenced by other people and be affected by peer pressure and I don't want to stress them out with that at such a young age.  I think this summer Rachel will try some tennis lessons with kids her own age.  I always wanted to stick to the rule that we wouldn't do extra-curricular activities until they were in First Grade just because I've seen how worn out kids get after being in school all day, but after deciding to homeschool, maybe we could do just one thing.  I guess technically art and violin are already extra-curricular, but I consider music and art important to what they need to know and experience.  I have a feeling we may be sucked into the life of a couple of ballerinas before too long and sometimes that does make me a little excited because ballet was my favorite activity growing up.  I just want them to focus on how fun ballet is and not whether their leotards are the right color!

100 Day Celebration

Today is the 100th day of the year!!!  Rachel skip counted by 2s to 100 this morning.  Ford wrote the number 100 several times.  Ruby helped me count out 100 almonds to share for a snack.  When we got to Vanessa's we also counted out 100 M&Ms and had those for a little snack.  We made a 100 sign with tiny pieces of paper (WAY more than 100 pieces!!) and we made hats that had the number 100 on them.  We also randomly read a story this morning about sea turtles and Ford noticed that they lived to be at least 100 years old.  Rachel practiced writing the words "one hundred" for handwriting today.  By far, the biggest hit of all was the hats (and maybe the M&Ms...)  It's been a great day.  This morning as we were doing our work, I realized that no one was whining or complaining or arguing and I had one of those moments of this is what we're supposed to be doing.  It was an awesome day!!

More fun for 100 days

We are really getting into the spirit of the 100th day of the year around here.  We're going to have a celebration tomorrow with Vanessa and the boys.  If I get my act together, there may even be pictures! (don't hold your breath!)  Today I wrote out "100" in marker on pieces of paper for the kids and they created the cutest sticker sheets.  Ford and Ruby just simply put stickers on the lines of the numbers.  We had so many stickers from Easter that Rachel was able to actually count out 100 stickers and put them on her paper.  She was a little upset that she finished making a really great 100 out of stickers but still had so many more to go.  Once she started getting silly, though, she had a blast.  She made faces with the stickers and put stickers on top of stickers to make them tall.  We must have had sticker time for a good 30-45 minutes!!  Then Rachel practiced reading some words with similar sounds like words ending in -at, -ag, and -an.  For handwriting I had her write some the words she learned to read yesterday.  Ford and I practiced his numbers together today for handwriting.  It started out as a day of Handwriting WITH tears, but once we got smaller paper and focused on one number at a time, he did a much better job.
We went to story time this morning and had a blast with Mr. Jason.  He sprinkled confetti on everyone after they planted pretend seeds and then they made their own flowers out of tissue paper and pipe cleaners.  Ruby and Ford took a great nap today and I even fell asleep for a little while...still catching up on spring break sleep!  Rachel and I practiced her violin together and read some more together while the younger two were still sleeping.  Then we played outside, went on a walk, grilled out for dinner and enjoyed the sunshine!

Also, worth nothing, we had an incredibly simple but delicious dinner tonight.  We grilled pork chops, steamed broccoli, and had cut up strawberries.  I realized as we were eating that our kids ate almost every single bite and our dinner cost less than $10 to make.  It was also extremely healthy and yummy.

Back from Break

We had an amazing Spring Break and spent lots of good time with family playing and now we're back to school this morning.  It is really hard to back to normal after such a long time away, but we're slowly getting our act together.  We started our morning off with tons of chores.  I pulled out some spring/summer clothes for the girls yesterday, so we had lot of laundry to put away this morning.  We also had dishes and toys to put away.  We finally got around to doing some school work around 9:00 this morning.  Rachel and Ford practiced writing the number 7.  Ruby did some coloring while they were writing.  Rachel then practiced writing from 0 to 100 in her math book.  It worked out very well for her to be working on this concept this week because Wednesday is the 100th day of the year.  Vanessa and I are trying to come up with some 100 day activities.  Most schools do this on the 100th day of school, but I thought it would be cool to do it on the  100th day of the year since we've talked so much about the calendar.  Since we did number 7 today for handwriting, we talked about the seven days of the week and sang a song about the days of the week.  We looked at the calendar and pointed out that today was Monday, April 8.  They're getting pretty good at talking about the calendar and knowing which day it is as well as which month.  Then we talked some about Wednesday being the 100th day of the year and for snack time we counted out 100 almonds.  We're going to try to find 100 pennies by Wednesday (most of them will come from their banks, I'm sure!).  We read some stories and then we decided to head outside since the weather is so nice.  I am so thankful for nice weather that allows us to get outside and be creative on our newly renovated fort in the backyard (I guess it was a playhouse until Papa took off the roof yesterday!).  We had a great time playing and Vanessa and her crew came up to play and then we ate some lunch and got everybody down for a nap.  I think we'll play outside some more after nap time before we go to music class.  Maybe we can find 100 flowers or 100 blades of grass while we're outside?