Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Grass is Always Greener...


Yesterday I received a much needed day time break. The kids and I set a play date for them with their great grandma cha cha (see above image) over google chat. Yep, I have a pretty tech savvy grandmother! She kept them for 4 hours yesterday afternoon. It was so great to be able to get out by myself during the day. I was able to go to run to the grocery store, hit up an antique store, and a couple thrift stores. I spent a whole $4 on my excursion on a few records. Including a couple Chopin records that I was pretty happy to find. Having days a lone like that really make it hard not to entertain ideas of having the kids in school and being a free lady. But, even if the kids were in school I would probably find a job during their school hours, and then, I would dream of just staying home with my kids. The grass is always greener right?

I had a couple of surprise T-shirt orders come in from Bandwagon this week. The past couple evenings were spent seam ripping necklines, and sewing in hem tags. Which has thrown off my personal reading, and my project that I am working on. In just a few minutes I am going to drop Syd off to play with her friend Katia, and then I am going to come back home and work on my little project. If I get enough done on it perhaps I will share in the next couple days!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Sometimes I do a lot of laundry...

I read somewhere a few months back that people who regularly tidy up their houses are usually thinner. Hmmmm...


Saturday morning I left the house around 7:30am to go to the laundromat around the corner from us. While I enjoy my trips to the laundromat, not having a washer and dryer in the apartment is definitely one of the down sides to where we are living right now. The nicest thing about using the laundromat (besides the amazing customer service, no, that wasn't sarcasm) is the ability to get my whole families weekly laundry done in under 2hrs. I just load up the biggest machine they have (whom I have loving deemed "Big Bertha") and read. 24 minutes later I shove it all in the dryer, and head out on foot to Benettis where I sip on tea and read until my load should be done. This is my laundry routine, and this Saturday was no exception.

When I got home, folded laundry in hand, I was surprised to find christian in the boys room. He was running the vacuum, the final step in the daunting task that had been cleaning that room. Now, this was no ordinary room spruce up. This room was trashed. And had been. For weeks. (Now you see where I am connecting my opening thought? I totally prove whomever said this to be correct)Our friends Cory and Vanessa (and their three kids) came in to visit over New Years. We all had a wonderful time! The kids played, and played, and played, having full reign on the boys bedroom. Based on mess to fun ratio...the fun was intense! And yes, I put off and put off cleaning. Meaning the original mess had multiplied to a number I cant even count to. Almost a month later the cleaning finally got done, only, I might add, because my husband took the initiative. We also went ahead and cleaned out Syds room as well collecting a trash bag of stuff to donate, and created a little reading nook for her. In the course of cleaning the kids rooms we had another full basket of dirty laundry.



So...remember that laundry routine? Yep, I repeated that Sat afternoon. Which was actually a good thing. I went ahead and washed all the kids coats and some other random household items that were in need. I was also joined at Benettis by my friend Cassie.

Last night Christian and I started watching The Walking Dead. He sat and worked on some sketches and I started working on a secret project, that I am excited and nervous about. Here is a sneak peak...



Yeah...that really doesn't show you much of anything. Sorry. This project is actually turning out to be a bigger pain that I had originally thought it would be.

You can always check out more of what we are doing in our family flickr stream!

Friday, January 21, 2011

Toys....Simplified.





A few short months ago my children discovered the joy of Legos. And I mean JOY...In an effort to simplify our lives we reevaluated our families toy situation. We had a lot of little stuff that people had either given to them or stuff that had meandered its way to our house in mystical ways that I am still trying to figure out. I was more than thrilled to fill up a couple black trash bags with the majority of the kids toys, and to my surprise, they didn't seem to mind. We left the donation spot (a local thrift store) feeling lighter and pleased with our good dead. So, after the trash bag incident our inventory was as follows: dinosaurs, a dozen or so schleich animals, soft foam building blocks, lincoln logs, and a wooden train set. Knowing that two of my kids had birthdays around the corner, Christian and I decided that we would introduce two new toys in their repertoire. Our objectives were simple 1. Find toys that would grow with them 2. Find toys that can easily be added to. The first choice was rather simple. Legos. I love playing with Legos, Christian loves Legos, what could go wrong?



The collection started small and has grown, and grown, and grown. All
All the kids asked for for Christmas was Legos. All they asked for for their birthdays
were Legos. And, I kid you not, they play Legos every free moment they get.
Ira, our in house artist has even started drawing Lego Minifigures. Its a sickness.
But I love it. I have noticed, that in using the Legos very frequently their number skills
have developed more. They constantly ask to be passed a "6 headed" or "4 headed" block. And the person
doing the passing can pick the desired number out very quickly. Uri's color skills have really taken off.
We sort our Legos by color for building ease, and that little boy can sort them right a long with the "big kids."
I also love to watch them work together to follow building instructions, or even better, build something
straight from their imaginations. All in all I feel like Legos have really been a great addition to our lives.



Did I mention they are great for school? Sydney is studying ancient Egypt now,
and had fun building pyramids all afternoon.

The second new toy to add was a little harder to decide on. After a few
talks with my friend at our weekly coffee date it seemed like a no brainer. We decided to move forward
on Playmobils. I remember playing with Playmobils, probably into my tween at least...maybe longer? There are endless
amounts of sets available and seem to stand the test of time. We have used our Playmobil people to act out Bible lessons (Sydney got the nativity set for Christmas), and I love
that really, all of the toys we own now can play together. Playmobil people (in our house at least) are friends with the Lego people,
and they all ride the train, and sometimes log cabins are built for them. There are endless possibilities.

The only down side I have encountered with these toys in the price point. It is expensive to start a Lego or Playmobil collection.
Especially one that can cater to 4 kids. One thing I did (after my coffee friend told me about it) was to sign up for a Borders Rewards card. Its free, and they send out 40-50% off coupons
that can be used on any one item in the store. And guess what they sell there....yep, Legos AND Playmobils. Between Christians and my rewards accounts we were able to
get the kids one set each (either Legos or Playmobils) for Christmas. And we paid right under $50 total for ALL of the kids christmas presents.

So, this was the tale of how we got rid of all of our kids toys, and got cooler ones that we wanted to play with.
errrr. I mean. This is how we simplified our toy situation.

The kids even came up with having a monthly building club. They want to invite friends over to build together.
How fun is that? I am hoping that we can start doing it in the spring, once all this horrible snow is past.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Accountability...

I am human. And in such, have many flaws. One of my main flaws would be the inability to have any form of consistency in my life. Now, as a single young teenager, or even as a teenage newly wed this was not an issue. My inconsistent behaviors affects only me, and later only myself and Christian. The problems I am running into now are these 4 children I have been blessed with. I want to show them consistency, and more importantly, teach them to carry it over into their own lives.

So the first section of life I am tackling is school/education/learning whatever you want to call it. I am not really sure what type of teaching style you could say we are going with. One thing I have learned through the process of trying to homeschool and being homeschooled myself is that you cant always pick one style and stick with it. We do some things in a very unschooling type manner, use some text books, and push heavily on home economic type subjects. This is what works for us. Another thing I have learned: No two families are a like, different things work for different people. The later realization crosses over into basically every aspect of life. So embrace it.

Anything that I write/share about schooling is not be held in a bragging/look at how great i am manner. I am using this blog as accountability. I will report back here with what we are doing. In the right hand margin I have added a Goodreads widget to keep track of our reading. I have the goal set at 750 for this year. Thats sitting down with my kids and reading a little over two books per day. I would love to hear suggestions for kids books to read. Also, please friend us on goodreads if you have one for your kids.

I know that, through practice I can be the teacher that my kids need. I know it will be hard work. But, this is my job. So I need to learn to do it well.

Life Changes...




In September of 2010 Christian and I made the hard decision to bid our house (and yard) farewell.
It was a necessary step for our families survival. Luckily we were able to find an apartment in Raytown, a mere 3 miles
from our house. The move was quick and rather painless. Although, I will say that I feared for my fathers life
as he tried to maneuver our couch up our full flight of outdoor steps that lead to our apartment.

Though the move itself was more or less painless, the transition from house to apartment, with 4 kids has been
more of a process. I will eventually share these transitions in this blog. I will also use it as an emotional outlet when
one is needed. I am sure that projects, school talk, and recipes will find their way here too. So, this is my ice breaking post.
Hope you will stick around.