So much....

Whew!  It's been busy around here.  I started bible study this week and also work 3 days in a row.  I was asked to take a 6 week position starting in April (or whenever the teacher has her baby).  I'm excited and also a little sad b/c my time at home with Grace is so limited.  I'm taking to make all my time count with her until then.  She is excited to learn her sight words and start reading so we have been working on a reading program and just started this week with a few sight words.  She always finds a novel of mine and asks if she can read it and flips through one page at a time so I knew it was time to get her started.  We have quite a bit of time before kinder starts to get her going.  Of course, with all that she already knows she is way ahead of most kids her age.

Tonight we started a science experiment with the kids to make rock candy.  Andrew has to do an experiment for his monthly family project and of course we put it off until the last weekend to get it done.  If this one doesn't really work in the next few days, I have a back up project that only takes about 5 minutes plus the prep time.....ice cream in a bag.

Andrew had his first basketball game last week but I forgot my camera :(.  I'll be sure to take it tomorrow and get some pictures.  He is doing really well and is aggressive out on the court.  He didn't make any baskets in the first game but made a lot this week in practice so hopefully that will change soon in games.  He doesn't mind though.  He is such a good team player.

I leave you with some pics from our dates that we went on.  Grace invited her daddy to Sizzler and Andrew invited me to Wendy's.  Not sure who got the better deal but they were so excited. 

Checking In (with bullets)

• We are back to school and getting back into our routine.  
• At church we are reading through the Bible in a year and I am already behind.  Actually I've been behind since we began on January 1st.  I working like crazy to catch up because I don't like to skip around.  I'm only a few chapters behind now so I'll be caught up quickly.  
• We had a 3 day weekend and it was nice to just spend time with David and the kids with very few places to go and no expectations.  
• Tomorrow Andrew has basketball practice and Saturday is his first game.  David is coaching again.
• Grace is learning her sight words finally.  By this time, Andrew already knew all of his kindergarten sight words but she has been enjoying math so I didn't push it.  Lately, she has been asking if she can read my novels.  She obviously doesn't know any of the words but loves to pretend that she is reading.  I'm so glad my kids have my love for reading.  I always have a book (and now my Kindle) in my hand reading.  
• Andrew decided to join Sonshine Choir again at church and is loving it.  I'm so glad I let him make the choice to take time off and when to join again. 
• Grace is enjoying her tumbling class and they are working on a new routine for the spring recital and dancing competitions and so far it looks really cute.  She is really opening up and actually talks to her instructors now.  At first she wouldn't even go near the male instructor and now she talks to him.  So thankful for little steps with her.
• Grace can't wait to turn 5 in a few months and thinks she will go to Kindergarten.  Too bad she has to wait 4 months after turning 5.  That is hard to explain to her.
• I think you are caught up.  I have a few things to write about and pictures to show and when I have time (yeah, right) I will get those on here.  I really need to just wake up early a couple days a week and take care of this blog.  Hope you all have a wonderful week. 

Happy New Year....a little late!

Well, we are back home and have been super busy and tired.  To celebrate New Year's Eve I made paper bags of goodies for the kids to open each hour.  I got the idea on Pinterest.com but right now it won't let me search so I can't find the original person to give credit to.  Mine isn't quite as nice and creative but it was a last minute thing that I literally threw together about 30 minutes before they opened the first bag.  I couldn't find colored bags so brown bags had to be good enough and I also didn't have time to print out clocks so I just drew them on.  Maybe next year I can plan a little better!

So to get started, here is a picture of the bags that I made.

Like I said, not a lot of creativity going on here but the kids loved it!  I didn't get pics of the first bag of goodies.  We went to my grandpa's house for a while and they had to open a couple bags out there.  The first one had a can of silly string which they used outside.  I thought they were waiting for Papa Rick to get there but they didn't so no pictures.  The 2nd bag (also opened at Grampy's) was a huge noisemaker on a necklace.  Not nearly as exciting as the first bag.

When we made it back to Grannylou's house the kids got another bag and their party hats.  It was nice to have activities to keep them busy.

Painting a magnet was one of the activities.

Another activity was making a bead key chain with their name. 

They also painted a sun catcher.....but no good pics.

We celebrated at 9pm because the kids had to get up for church the next morning and they were already so exhausted from our trip.  

 Confetti and a toast with sparking grape juice (which the kids really didn't like too much).

Finally, the clean up crew!  There was a LOT of confetti on the floor!  Thankfully they were eager to clean it all up.  Overall, it was a fun night!