For the Grandmas

So, I promised that I'd post some more photos. I took a couple just today, to make good on my promise. Zach wouldn't sit still, so you'll have to take what you get. Can't say I didn't try.

Lookit me!

I'm eating a carrot!

Disclaimer: no babies were harmed in the taking of this photo. The carrot was smooth on the end and acted as a chew toy.

Day with daddy

A week ago I took most of the day off in response to C.'s request to come to school with me. We got stuck in the rain and she asked if she could use her birthday money to get a pink umbrella (which luckily, the ND bookstore actually had).

She loved watching the Shakespearian actors practicing sword fights in a corner of the bookstore.

After C.'s turn, I brought Z. He found Brother Gorche's pool hall, which was empty, and asked if we could play. After that, he came to my office to help me start some simulations.

what the?!?

At our neighborhood hog roast, the South Bend Memorial Medical Foundation brought their Healthworks Hummer. The children thought this was odd, but fun.

shades and bike

She's too young for this!

But she really wanted to ride C.'s bike.

Banana walk

Back in July, Jillian dropped Z., C. and I off at a park. After a while, the children were hungry and restless. So we walked to the nearest 7-11 and bought got ripped of for some bananas, then ate them while walking along the river.

Goofy baby

Here is a fun picture of P. taken back on 18Aug08. This was the day I took my written prelimanary exam, which I passed! Wahoo! Next Wednesday I get to take my oral preliminary exam, and then its off to dissertation land.

Cute, cute, cute

Stephen was snapping candid photos of the kids in the sandbox...we just had to share this one:

Benton Harbor

OK, well, these are out of order, but hopefully you'll get the gist!! Babci (Grandma Browning) sent the kids some birthday money, and I told them they could choose what ever they wanted to do with it. They chose dinner at a food store (their word for restaurant) and to go to the beach. So, here are some photos of them doing just that!!! I promised Babci these photos would be here (here ya go, Mom!) so she and Dad could see them. The kids say thanks times 5,000....so does Stephen, we went right after his comprehensive exams, and he was ready for the break.

Our handsome son, soaking up the sun (note, he's about to get hit in the back of the head with that wave coming in). Look at that smile!!!


On the beach. We never did finish that sand castle, the water was just too fun to be in.

Baby Payge...exploring the camera & the sand.

Hi!

Chayce decided that the soda was too strong, so she double strawed it...one straw in the water glass, one in the soda. Whatever works.

Zach, grinning for the camera, as usual!

Payge watched the ceiling fan almost the whole time. It was like having a mobile during lunch!!

Chayce in the water. See, I told you these were out of order.

Water and Chayce, again. Isn't she cute? She's having so much fun running up & down the shore. Sometimes, she'd go too far, and we'd have to bring her back our way. She was getting lost in the moment, I suppose.

The blessing of taxes

This morning at 12:30 AM I heard sirens, but they stopped making noise and I could see the lights through my window. I got up and saw a fire in the alley behind our house. The neighbors 3 and 4 houses away lost their garages, and at least 3 houses have fire damage.

Fortunately the fire fighters were able to get the fires out before any homes were seriously affected. I hope the local tax situation can be resolved soon, because if it does not, almost half of our firefighters are out of a job. (FYI, Indiana restructured property taxes because they were 'unfair'* leaving most cities with multimillion dollar budget shortfalls).

* The taxes were unfair, but to replace an unfair system with on that doesn't cover basic safety costs is not much of an improvement.

School Days, School Days...

Well, it's official...somehow it always has been, and yet it feels different. We home school. We really always knew we would, but when Zach started participating in family scripture study...by reading the verses, not just listening, we knew we couldn't make him wait to "start school"until the school system deemed him old enough (his birthday is in September, so he misses this arbitrary cut-off date that deems kids ready for school. Chayce will miss it, too.) I think it feels different because we all know that Zach's peers are sitting in a classroom somewhere.

I wasn't really going to set aside time to shove information down his throat at this age, I have just made a list of goals to accomplish by May of 2009. Funny thing is, Chayce is keeping up (not on reading, yet, but she is catching on just by watching Zach learn) so, my list of goals may have to be altered as time goes on. Who knows, maybe my goals won't mean anything soon, we'll have done them and moved on. If not, that's OK, too.

Here's my list, mainly so I can be accountable to those loving grandparents who always ask what the kids are up to. Now, you know!

• Reading fluently
• Writing each letter correctly (upper & lower case)
• Writing numbers 1-10 (and then understanding that this ability allows them to write larger numbers)
• Counting by 2's
• Counting by 5's
• Counting by 10's
• Tell time
• Identify currency (dollar, quarter, nickel, dime, penny)
• Use cooking to introduce fractions, so they are familiar and not a scary math topic later on.

Here's how we're doing:
Zach has the reading down. Like I said, he's taking his turn reading in the scriptures & discussions. He also gave a talk in church and read his notes when necessary. We're not too worried about keeping him interested in books. We have to clean books off his bed in order for him to sleep at night. Chayce has started recognizing sounds when we talk, she'll say m-m-m Mommy. M. Sometimes she gets confused and says t-t-t Mommy. T. But, gentle correction sets her back on the path. It's cute.

Zach can write, but not as neat and tidy (size consistency would be nice in a sentence! Although some fonts seem to think variation looks cool.) We'll work on that. Chayce LOVES to write. Once she gets spelling down, we'll be lucky to keep a pen out of her hand. We already can't keep a pen out of her hand. She can copy very well, so she has the motor control, but not the understanding.

Zach can count to 40 on his own, to 100 with help. He understands the concept of counting by 10's, but not the other skip counting methods. Chayce enjoys counting to about ten...especially if she's dividing a treat (I get 4 pieces! You get 2. ha ha)

Zach can sometimes tell time digitally, and can explain a clock to you, but doesn't seem to use it... Chayce asks if it's time to eat yet, and she'll look at the clock but doesn't know what time to eat really is. (besides hunger). I think I'm going to put up a sign with times on it that say, we eat at: 12:00, we bathe at: 7:00 so they can match the clock to the sign & know if it's time yet.

Zach knows what money is, but the different values don't make sense to him...why not use a penny to pay for the grocery bill...money is money, right? We're working on that. Chayce wants pennies for the horse at Meijer. Yes, the rides are still 1 cent! So, she knows she has to earn her penny by being on her best behavior while mommy gets the groceries (work for a 3 year old, right?)
Fractions...cooking yay! Messes, aaarrrggh! But, it's all in the name of school, right?

Payge is working on learning to crawl, imitate sounds and overall just being cute. We all love to spend our free time with her giggliness.

As for curriculum, we have decided to follow Saxon math. Their lessons build on each other well & both children seem to understand what is being asked of them (even though Chayce is only 3, if she shows interest in a lesson, I ask her to participate with us, if she'd rather color or dance or whatever, that's fine, too). The first part of the book is teaching counting, so it only takes us 5 minutes to do a lesson. I'm torn between combining lessons so we cover more, or letting the first week or two be review as they get into a sort of routine. I think I'm voting for the latter. Plus, I'm letting this be very easy going, like I said, no information shoving and/or overload. I want the kids to learn, not to just pass tests. If we get to a topic that takes more time to really grasp, then we will take that time, maybe approach it from different angles.

The library is our reading curriculum. We go, we read, we go again! We are slowly learning the parts of speech (noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, conjuction, preposition & interjection, if you were wondering). We do this in our conversations (because I'm an English freak, OK?), for example, on the way home from the library (we were walking) I said, "Look a squirrel! What part of speech is squirrel?" Z: " A noun!" Me: "Yup! Oh, he's running. Running is a..." Z: "Verb!" Me: "Yes! So, see, no pounding of info.

We're also studying maps. This is fun. Right now just learning what the parts of a map are, but then we'll move on to "A Child's History of the World" and map the happenings. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from this part. It all started when Zach found a state map of Indiana & wanted me to explain it. Then later (coincidence? I dunno.) Chayce & I were goofing on the web & found a game called Stateris...like Tetris, but with states & then other countries once you ace the USA. Fun. Try it!

FIVE MONTHS!?!?

Well, it's here, Payge is five months old. As of Tuesday. So, less than a month from now, I'll only have six months til her first birthday. Why? Can't we pause this? Waaahhhhh!

This morning Chayce and I woke before everyone else and took a ride on the bus to downtown South Bend. From there we road the trolly that goes around the downtown area. We were the only ones on the trolley and received a local history lesson from the driver. The we saw the smoke from a small grocery store that was burning down a few blocks from our house. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt though two fire fighters were taken to the hospital with minor injuries from a burning wall that fell on them (their protective gear is really good this days).

After work, Zachary and I road our bikes around the block; he lead and I followed. He is getting quite good. Then we took his training wheels off and gave it a try. He is doing goo so far. I hope we can try some more tonight if it isn't raining.

Tornadoes!

Yup, we live where the wild tornadoes roam. As odd as we are, we took photos of the family camping out in the basement while the sirens were going off. Oddly, being all together, we weren't scared, we enjoyed each others' company...hence the smiles.

Zach & Chayce, sleeping on sacks of wheat.


Same.


Daddy.

Where am I? Holding the baby & the camera. At midnight, do you really think I'd relinquish control of the camera?

Please make sure and cut your fingers

Oh! The joys of learning English (and butchering it on the way...no pun intended). Today I was cutting onions to dehydrate, and Chayce came up to me with a sincere look in her eye and said "daddy, please make sure and cut your fingers." I know she meant to NOT cut my fingers, but it was still a bit comical. Proper syntactic (and semantic) use of negatives is still coming along for her.

Most AMAZING Husband Ever!

For our wedding anniversary (7 years, wow!), Stephen surprised me.
First, he gave me this:


It's a long story, but has something to do with my bishop saying I should attend BYU to find a spouse instead of following my career, because I wouldn't "shop for shoes at McDonald's, so why go to an inferior place for a husband?" Anyhow, we all know how that turned out...I got the world's best husband, and he wasn't hanging out at BYU. Anyhow, Stephen even went to the length of going into the McDonald's to get a BicMac box to wrap my print in. Too sweet!

Then, he took me out to lunch to Red Lobster (yay for cash back bonus awards on Discover!!), my favorite place, then we went to Prince Caspian (Narnia) at the theatre (we actually still have a dollar theatre in South Bend that charges $1. It rocks!)

But then, my biggest surprise (I was kind of in on the middle two...) was that he had set up an appointment for me at Salon Rouge, an awesome salon in town (the owner studied with Vidal Sassoon), which is such a treat because I usually cut my own hair. Here are the results:
Can I say that I love it?

Now, my problem is that we still have a few days til our anniversary, and I'm lacking amazing ideas for him. Any thoughts?

Chayce's Birthday

Chayce got some "play make-up" that is supposed to wash with soap and water. Ironically, only the play nail polish washes off. The play lipstick is harder to get off than the real thing. Zach is showing off his cow, who he gave a make over to. I always thought Baby Cow was cute before. Now she's amazing. Ha ha.


Here's Payge & Mommy on a swing...we took all of the children to the park per Chayce's request on her birthday.


Here's the fun Garden Party Chayce had the day before her birthday. We kept it small, and really enjoyed ourselves!


Birthday girl! Munching a cupcake. Note the short hair? That was due to her playing with scizzors, although, I must say, it fixed up quite well, and didn't look like a disaster.


Grandma Tueller knitted a fall sweater for Chayce. Chayce was so excited that it had every shade of pink imaginable (her favorite color). She put it on immediately. We had to convince her that 90 degress and sweaters don't mix, and that she'll have to wait to wear it out.


Chayce also got her long begged for trike.


Those sunglasses aren't as big as they used to be... compare here


The cake was cupcakes. It's supposed to be a big flower, can you tell? Chayce could, and that's really all that matters.


Cookies to match the cake...these were strawberry lemon. Mmmmm. They went fast.

AAAACK!

I posted the wrong link earlier.... what I meant to post from my friend Bec's blog was this:
http://microbesofunusualsizes.blogspot.com/2008/04/hooded-bath-towel-tutorial-unedited.html

Everyone who read this last post was probably thinking I'd lost my mind, it wasn't funny at all, and it only talked about making a towel. Grrrr. So, now, try again, and read the funny one, about the kids, and the faucet breaking, and the water, and ... yeah, it's a good one. Sorry about the oops.

Some days....

Jill says she can relate...I'm sure many of you can too.

If You Are a Parent, or Want to Be a Parent, Read This

OK, I must say, I adore how my friend Bec writes. Her post, on how trying to sew a hooded towel (should take 30 minutes) took hours and hours due to life happening, is awesome. I had to share it!!!

http://microbesofunusualsizes.blogspot.com/2008/04/edited-bath-towel-for-baby-or-toddler.html

Happy 3rd Birthday, Chayce!

Chayce turns three on August 3rd. Can you believe it? I cannot. It went by so fast. Happy birthday, baby!