Category: Uncategorized (Page 49 of 201)

Since we’ve lived here (coming up on 4 years in October) we have had a TON of people move in and out of our neighborhood.  If you count just our side of the street there are 10 houses–and since we’ve lived here 6 of those houses have been sold.  And our immediate neighbors (to the north of us) have moved TWICE.  That means in four years, we’re on our third set of neighbors.

Maybe it’s us?

…

Nah.  We’re awesome.  😉

Our newest neighbors moved in the weekend that we were in South Dakota for Grandma Patsy’s wedding so when we came home we discovered this in their backyard…

It confirmed our suspicions that they had 5 kids.  🙂  And they do.  We did finally meet them and they have two older kids (15 and 14 years old) and then three younger kids (7, 3 and 6 months old).  The older two don’t seem to be there all the time, but I haven’t been too nosey about it.

We walk to the bus in the morning with the 7 year old (a girl who is in 1st grade) and she is so sweet.  She and Chloe get along really well, even though she is a little bit younger.  And the 3 year old appears to be non-verbal at this time.  I’m pretty sure they mentioned him being Autistic, but I’m not sure what all that encompasses.  And of course, the 6 month is just tiny yet.  It’s definitely strange living next to someone with kids finally.  If you can believe it, we’ve been married for 14 years and never lived next door to anyone with kids.  Our kids are loving having someone to talk over the fence to and play with.  We’re slowly learning what boundaries we need to have with playing together and limits and all that.  But it’s nice to see someone else in the same stage of life that I’m in!

Oh, and as a fun tidbit of information:  It turns out that the husband is a realtor. That means we live smack dab in between two real estate agents.  Ha!

Look at this crazy cute hair braid I put in Chloe’s hair this morning.  It was actually quite easy and stayed in all day.  And as an added bonus it’s not a really painful braid (I tend to pull really hard when I braid… ask anyone).

September is only 8 days in and I feel like my head is already spinning.  I’ve taken many of the quiet times this week (during nap time which is actually TOTALLY quiet since the older two are now off in school) to just sit and veg out and enjoy the silence.  But that ends next week as I start teaching again.

Here’s what has happened in September so far:

• Visit to South Dakota for Patsy and Earl’s Wedding
• School started on Tuesday
• True to form, I used my 2nd older-kid-free-day to rent a carpet cleaner and clean every carpet in the house.  🙂  It was a bit much to try and do in one day, but the carpets are so nice and clean now!
• Chloe’s Birthday on Thursday
• Picture day for both kids on Thursday as well
• Entrance interviews for new students on Thursday and Friday
• Piano tuner coming tomorrow

When I write it all out, it really doesn’t seem as chaotic as it felt in my head… but such is life.  A simple thing like “cleaned carpets” sounds little but in reality is a really huge task.  Oh, well.  We have the weekend to rejuvenate and get ready for next week!

Today was Chloe’s official birthday.  Nothing big planned, since it was a school day, but we made it special nonetheless.

Fresh baked cinnamon rolls (with sprinkles!), a new necklace to wear with her beautiful dress, answering birthday questions, added her height to the “ruler” on the wall, brought suckers for everyone in class, cheese pizza and a movie for supper, ice cream for dessert, and to top it all off, it was picture day today at school!

Josiah was very excited to help pick out a gift for her (a little box of legos and a small coloring book) and wrap it up.  All, in all she said it was a great day.  🙂  9 suites her well.

Today Josiah bounded off happily for his very first day of Kindergarten and Chloe to 3rd grade.  He has been so excited I wasn’t worried about him getting too nervous–and I was right.  He’s much more bold than Chloe was at his age.  It also helps that he has an older sister who can tell him exactly what to expect, and will sit with him on the bus and help him find his class when they get to school…

So we were all up nice and early getting ready and working on their before school list.  They were so excited that we finished everything quite early and had enough time to take a few pictures, walk to the bus stop leisurely and we STILL ended up about 12 min. early.  

Maddie really wanted to be a part of the pictures too, even though she doesn’t understand.  She kept asking “Where Chloe go?”  for about an hour after they got on the bus.

Tim was able to come home a little early and pick up the kids from the bus stop to walk them home.  They both seemed to have a spectacular day.  Josiah has Mrs. Connell, which is the same Kindergarten teacher that Chloe had and LOVED.  She’s really awesome.  However, she has also been battling breast cancer this past year and is just finishing up treatment (I think she’s to the radiation part now) so she’ll be missing a little bit of school in the first couple weeks of class.  It will make for a slightly disjointed start to Josiah’s school year, but Josiah is over the moon about being able to have Mrs. Connell (as are we) that it’s totally worth it.

It was quite chilly this morning so we had to wear coats.  September weather can be so funny.  Sometimes it’s crazy hot and sometimes you need to dig out the fall coats… at least for the morning.

One more random tidbit of information… It took Chloe weeks to gain the courage to take hot lunch at school and go through the lunch line.  And even now, she really dislikes going through the lunch line.  She takes cold lunch every day, which is actually fine since I would prefer her to do that.  But just to show you how different Chloe and Josiah are… he forgot to bring home his lunchbox today, so I told him he might need to take a hot lunch tomorrow and he instantly said yes!  No hesitation.  No worries.  No drama. That boy sometimes just cracks me up.

I was worried when we found out that we were having our second girl so many years after our first girl, that there would be too much of an age gap between them to really get along.  I’m sure they will have their ups and downs through life, and at some point the gap will seem enormous.

But not yet.

Right now Maddie adores Chloe.  And Chloe loves being needed.  So, it’s a good combination.

And on the days they get along so wonderfully, it completely melts my heart.

Chloe had her Trolls Birthday party this weekend, and it was a smashing success.  All the crafts and cute foods turned out just as great as I hoped, and the girls seemed to have a really fun time.  Chloe was extra proud of how everything turned out because she had a larger hand in making so many things this year.  It was fun.

So, onto the food!

And then we had a variety of decorations…. (cloud guy was my favorite, hands down)

The girls decorated their own letter (complete with troll hair!).  They had a really fun time styling their gems and flowers just the way they wanted them.  And then they played “Pin the hair on Poppy” and even had a dancing/singing session in the basement before watching the movie Trolls and eating pizza.  Then, like the good parents we are we gave them a huge slice of cake right at bedtime and then made them run up and down the street to work out some of the sugar.  🙂  Good memories.  😉

Well, I didn’t post yesterday.  Although I did think about it.  But I decided based on the state of my house and the state of my frustration that posting would be unwise.  Here are a few things that went through my mind yesterday and today:

•  1. When you see “Glitter” tulle, and think “oooh, that will be so pretty!“–DON’T BUY IT!

That was my first mistake.  It’s like a glitter tornado went off here.  Glitter.  Everywhere.  As I was getting ready for bed I actually found glitter in my hair.  I don’t even know how it got there, but there was a lot of it.  I eventually got smart and moved my activity outside but so much damage had already been done.  I went to bed without cleaning anything up, since I was so fed up with it.  Which seemed like such a good idea… until this morning when I still had to clean it up.

• 2. No project takes the amount of time they say it will.

I found this adorable troll village origami set thingy that you cut out and glue together.  How perfect!  And best yet–how affordable!  I’ve been making a conscious effort this year to spend as little money as possible on these parties.  You can get out of control with party spending so fast.  I’m flabbergasted when I see the amount people spend on parties.  So, a project I could do with just printing a couple pages sounded perfect.  Well, I can say that it was cheap, but incredibly frustrating and time consuming.  The pieces were tiny and had to be glued in weird spots where my fingers couldn’t actually reach… argh!  There was a point in the middle where I told the kids that I was done.  I didn’t want to make any more.  But we powered through.

• 3.  Chloe is a good cheerleader.

In the midst of the troll village fiasco, I threw up my arms in frustration and said “I’m done!”  And Chloe jumped right in without skipping a beat and started to cheer me on and showed me that I was actually over half way done.  It was adorable.  She even said she would keep cheering me on until I finished.  And she did.  I’ve noticed her doing it for Josiah too, when things get hard for him.

• 4. My eyes are definitely bigger than my stomach.

Isn’t that the saying?  Or maybe I should more accurately say: my perception of how much I can accomplish is not equal to the amount of time and energy I actually have.  Either way, I have more projects still sitting in a basket waiting to be completed before tomorrow.  When I’m planning everything out I feel like I just don’t have enough things to make it a really cool party, so I just keep adding things to the list.  Then when it comes to the party day I feel like I have soooo much!  I suppose the things that don’t get finished aren’t crucial, right?

• 5. I love that the kids can help now that they are older.

It’s wonderful that we have passed that line of the kids actually being helpful.  For a long time there was a lot of interest in helping, but not too much that they could do (without me having to redo it later when they weren’t looking) for the parties.  But not anymore!  And I get to use the line, “Well, it’s your party, so you have to help!”  Today they helped me prep all the fruit for tomorrow and even cut tulle and helped make the cake.  It was lovely.