And so it begins....again

I'm not organized. My house is a mess. My baby won't sleep anymore. But we're doing it anyway, so help us God! 

We are home schooling Emma again this year. We switched home school programs and hope to have more accountability and support this year... but I'll have to do more work so we'll see how that goes ;) One thing for sure is that we are going to miss our former adviser SO much. Hopefully our new one is just as awesome! We are looking forward to lots of fun things like art and science classes, gymnastics classes and a two-week road trip to visit Aunt Joy in New Mexico.

Grady is going to do home school pre-kindergarten this year. Although he loved his teachers at preschool last year, he didn't really care if he went or not, so I decided to save hundreds of dollars per month, not to mention hours and hours of driving time, and teach him at home. He will also most likely be going to speech classes at our neighborhood school a few times per week to get some extra practice with his L's, R's, and a few other consonant blends.

Here we go!!!!!

Random Thoughts from August

• Emma started soccer again. She has WONDERFUL coaches this year and will hopefully begin to enjoy the sport. Her team colors are navy with red and white accents so they named themselves the USA All-Stars. She's not into that name- she would have much preferred something along the lines of the Striped Unicorns or American Flag Princesses. I guess the other 2nd graders don't feel the same way. I'm pretty sure she won't play again after this year, but hopefully some of my other kids want to play because I drive a minivan so it's pretty much expected of me.

•  Stella had her 9 month check up this week. She's 20lbs 10ozs. I'm not really sure what the other kids were at that age, but I'm pretty sure no one was over 20 lbs at 1 year. Emma now weighs 44lbs. She'll be in a booster seat until she's 13.

•  We start school NEXT week! Does that seem crazy to anyone else but me? School is supposed to start in September and end in June. I'm not ready for the summer to be over already.... mostly because I'm totally disorganized and without the slightest hope that I'll become organized by next week.

• Stella is really into hair. When she's tired or upset, she wants to bury her hands in my hair. On more than one occasion when she has woken up in the middle of the night, the only thing that I can do to soothe her is to lean over her crib with my hair and let her stroke it until she falls back asleep. Last week I chopped my hair off and she's not too happy about it. 

•   Emma and Grady have been working on their Christmas lists aaaall day. It's August 17th. Maybe it's because every time they ask for something, I tell them that I'm not gonna buy it but they can ask for it for Christmas. Grady is dictating his list to Emma and she's writing it down for him. I guess it's good handwriting practice so I shouldn't complain. FYI, Grady wants a real gun.

•  A bunch of girls from my family are doing a Mud Run in October. My sister-in-law who will be 7 months pregnant, my mother, and my aunt are all doing it, so really, I have no valid excuse to not do it... other than that I don't like mud and I pretty much don't like running. It's supposed to be a team building experience so, um, that's good, I guess.

• I  made some homemade laundry detergent this month. It's still in it's trial period but it seems to be working great and it was pretty easy to throw together. And cheap. If I keep liking it, I'll share the recipe with you soon. Lucky you!

• We have lots of tomatoes in are garden this year. Last year we hardly had any so I'm VERY happy about this. We also have a bean plant that produces about 2 green beans per week, a hot pepper plant, and zucchini and cucumbers that are  producing just enough to not be considered duds. And we have a GIANT pumpkin growing. Dylan bought seeds for the pumpkins that win awards and, while we won't win any awards, it is pretty cool so see how big one could grow in not ideal conditions and without TLC.

 Well, that's all I have for you today. Stella's upset so I gotta go give her some hair....

What. The. Heck. Raccoons.

Around here, we used to really really dislike raccoons. They tear up our lawns and frighten our children and keep us awake at night with their chattering and dig through our trash and make big messes in our yard. We used to  dislike them, now we hate them....

Last night while Dylan and I were watching some two-day-old dvr-ed Olympics, we heard someone walking around in our kitchen (God bless our noisy kitchen floor!). Of course our first thought was that one of the children must have snuck out of their rooms, but they would have had to walk right past us to do this so it wasn't likely. When we stood up and turned around, we saw a RACCOON running out of our kitchen. WHAT. THE. HECK! It ran back through the family room, over several nerf guns and bows and arrows, and paused at our broken screen door, then went outside. Dylan ran to find his pellet gun (that he bought soely for this purpose) and I scrambled to find my camera. The little stinker popped it's head back through the screen just as I was taking the lens cap off my camera, but ran away before I could take a picture. We went out back with a flashlight and the pellet gun but saw no sign of it except for some piles of dirt from where it was digging up our lawn.

As I was trying to sleep last night, I kept thinking about how many times I've come out in the middle of the night for one reason or another and realized that as we were locking up, we left the slider open and just had the broken (as in ripped off the frame on two sides so that it blows in the wind and the kids can just walk through it without bothering to open it) screen door closed. In fact, just the night before I was laying on the couch all night trying to console my screaming, teething, stuffy-nosed baby. Maybe the door was open then? What if I came out in the middle of the night for a drink of water and was attacked by a hungry raccoon? What if this raccoon has been coming in every night? What if it tried to eat my children? What if it was having babies in my house?

Basically, I think it's time that we get the screen door fixed. Or at least remember to close our doors at night.

 

So what does an ear tube look like anyway?

Remember when Landon got ear tubes put in?

(December 2010)

 And then he looked like this when he would take a bath?

 (go ahead and laugh, we won't be offended)

Well, today he went to the ENT for a check-up and his right tube is still in place, but his left tube had fallen out and was just sitting in his ear canal. The doctor used some super long tweezers and pulled it out, wrapped it up in a piece of gauze and sent it home with us for show and tell....

So there you have it, something new you learned today :)