Category: Family (Page 1 of 26)

Now that Chloe is in school again and Josiah is starting PreSchool (and thus bringing home papers too) I decided it was time to have a designated spot for their backpacks, papers, upcoming events, etc.  For the past 2 years Chloe has just been unloading her papers onto the counter and hanging her backpack on a dining room chair.  And while that was fine with one kid… I could only envision chaos with 4 kids hanging their backpacks on the chairs every night!

So, after much pinning on pinterest and dreaming of an organized, beautiful space I had to bring myself back to reality and actually find a space to put this much longed after backpack area.  Not to mention scouring the house to find items that we already own since I didn’t actually want to spend REAL money on the project.  The space that made the most sense was next to our garage door and back closet.  That’s where the shoes and coats go anyway, so it would be a one stop drop.  Unfortunately upon further inspection of the area, there really wasn’t space for 4 hooks.  So, we decided to just put up three for now.  By the time baby #4 is in preschool, who knows if we’ll still be here or if Chloe will be “too old to hang her backpack with the little kids…”  😉  So 3 will work just fine for a number of years.

And here it is!

I’m not overly pleased with my little name tag signs, but the beauty of that is I can change them out whenever I want.  And it has made after school unloading and finding school papers a breeze.  Organization makes me happy!

Oh, and I would also like to give a shout out to my talented husband, who made the beautiful hook board–he took a plain, rectangular piece of wood look fancy.  Using a router on the edges and sanding it and making pretty corners (and then of course paint).  You should have seen my cheaper idea (A.K.A a scrap board I found in the garage).  Tim laughed at me.  Literally.

Here is a choppy & random update on life these days.

• I’m currently 37  (rounding up on 38 on Saturday) weeks pregnant.  I had an extra ultrasound on Monday, since I’m measuring over again, just to make sure there wasn’t any alarming build-up of fluid or something strange.  But there was nothing out of the ordinary.  Except that the tech commented that she thought it would be a sizeable baby.  😉  I had my midwife appointment today and found out that I tested negative for the Group B Strep test, which is great because it means I won’t have to have an extra I.V. of fluids when I go into labor. That was what really slowed me down when I had Josiah.  So, I’m excited about that.
• Chloe is meshing back into her school routine very well.  Getting up on time has been absolutely no problem at all.  In fact the kids are generally up by 6:30 and we don’t have to walk down to the bus until 7:45, so that gives us ample time for all the chores (and piano) at a leisurely pace before school.
• Josiah missed Chloe for the first few days, but has now adjusted to being home without her again.  I remember it usually takes a couple of days for the transition.
• Madison has transitioned really nicely into sleeping in Chloe/Josiah’s room.  She’s been in there for just shy of 2 weeks now and there have only been 3-4 rocky nights.  Which, all-in-all is really surprising.  They all like sleeping in the same room (a lot).  Now I’m working on transitioning Maddie to taking her naps in that room too.  Once the baby comes, the other crib will be occupied!
• This is my week off of teaching.  I start up next week and the following week only teaching every other day.  So next week I’m teaching on M & W & F.   This week I’m getting all my studio stuff in order and doing invoices and cleaning out the studio… it really shouldn’t be taking me all week to do, but I’m not as fast as I normally am right now.
• Josiah is still loving piano.  The other day he practiced at THREE separate times.  I kid you not.  He’s started learning the white keys and when I showed him the next key (which happened to be B) he exclaimed, “This is so awesome!”
• Speaking of Josiah, he had his open house last night.  He was over the moon excited.  He couldn’t wait to see Mrs. Haukoos (his teacher) even though he’s never really met her, he feels like he has since Chloe remembers her.  We kept it a secret that his best friend, Zeke, is also in his class.  So when he saw him there last night he was elated.  🙂  It was adorable.  Plus, I discovered that there are two other kids in the class that are younger siblings of students I currently teach.  Fun times.
• I have been blessed by clothes for the baby (and our other kids too).  I’m choosing to say “I’m blessed” instead of “I’ve been inundated with clothes and I’m drowning in them.”  Because when I think about it, I REALLY AM blessed.  How amazing that I have friends that would willingly share their clothes with us, without hesitation.  I was a bit overwhelmed/scared when we found out it was a boy, knowing that I had given away all of my boy stuff already… but God provides!  This baby boy will definitely not go naked!
• Maddie learned to use her tongue this week when she talks.  So her babble has gone from “ba-ba-ba” to “la-le-glah-blue-glub-ba” It’s fun.  She is also entering a major shoe obsession phase.  She LOVES her shoes.  She’ll walk around the house carrying them while wearing another pair.
• Tim helped complete a new backpack/school area for the kids next to our coat closet.  It’s amazing.  I’ll take a picture of it and post it soon.

Yesterday was my Birthday.  Unfortunately it was a less than glorious day because I had to teach all afternoon/evening and I had my lesson sign-up that morning starting at 7:00.  Lesson sign-up day is super stressful for me.  Trying to work around everyone’s schedules and trying to be fair as I input the times on a first-come-first-serve basis… and then agonizing over the families who I can tell have clearly forgotten that it was sign-up day.

I had something happen that’s never happened before:  I was left with more students needing slots than I had slots for!  It was awful!  I was so careful to double check my numbers before accepting new students over the summer and I had everything down to an exact number.  Then, out of the blue I had 2 families that had previously told me they would take during school times (homeschooled families) switch and say they would now like after school times.  Normally that’s not a problem, but this time I knew it would be extremely tight…

In the end I did have one student decide to stop taking (but I’m not entirely sure that’s because of the slots… I think she was on the fence to begin with) and I had another family put their 2 kids together on a rotating slot instead of having their own slots.  And I’m just waiting to hear back from one last family, so we’ll see if I’m able to find them a time that works.  I slept terribly the night before b/c I was stressed about it and then my stress level just kept going up as the morning progressed.

But it’s done now and it looks like everything will actually work out.  🙂

On a happy note though, I did get a free coffee from Caribou b/c it was my birthday, so that was delightful.  And we still had all sorts of goodies left over from the day before… and my AWESOME SURPRISE PARTY!!!!  But more on that tomorrow.  😉

It has been almost 8 1/2  years since I first started this blog.  Can you believe that?  I started writing when I was pregnant with Chloe to keep my family in the loop of what was going on in our life, since everyone had moved various places across the country.  It has been wonderful in helping keep everyone connected–especially being able to share pictures along the way.  Even though we don’t get to see each other in person much these day (hopefully once a year) it’s great to be able to stay connected.

The other day it occurred to me that my blog has sort of become a diary, documenting the big and little things from my life since we started having kids.  There have been many times when I’ve asked Tim a question about “when Chloe/Josiah was little” or “do you remember when such-and-such happened?”  and we’ve looked back through old posts to find those events.

So, when I realized that I don’t have any of my posts saved or backed up anywhere I started to worry about losing all of those memories that I’ve come to cherish.  I happened to mention this to one of my friends and she suggested that I look into making my blog into a book.  Genius! So, I started looking and sure enough, there are places designed just for that.  So, I’ve started the process of putting my website into books.  Apparently I have a lot to say and post a lot of pictures so the books are ending up being HUGE, so I’m trying to do them year by year.  Even with narrowing down the books by a year at a time most books are between 150 – 200 pages, and the year of 2010 was 350 pages long!!!   So, I’ve gone with a much more affordable option… instead of printing the books out (for over $100 a book) I’m ordering the PDF files of the books.  I still get the information I can peruse but at a fraction of the cost ($8 per book!).  And yesterday I was able to use a coupon code so I was able to save $2 per book.   And if, in the future, I want to have them actually printed I still can.  So far I’ve done 4 of the 8 years.  It’s a nice start.

And now I have the peace of mind that all those stories, pictures, random thoughts and memories are saved somewhere.

I’m trying to make a point to get out with the kids this summer in spite of having a 1 year old who still naps 3 times a day and being hugely pregnant.  I don’t want Chloe and Josiah to have to be cooped up in the house all summer just because I’m tired.  So, we made a trip out to the beach near the Baker’s house last week to enjoy some fun in the water and sand.

It ended up being a little bit on the chilly side that morning, but my kids didn’t mind at all.  They were splashing and having a grand old time even though I was wishing I had brought a sweatshirt!  🙂  The Bakers, who frequent the beach much more often than we do, we a little less enthusiastic about going in the water at first.

However, timing-wise it ended up being over Maddie’s first nap, so she was not particularly delightful… don’t let the picture fool you.  She was happiest in the wagon as we were leaving the beach… See?

But the rest of the time she was mostly like this…  haha!

I’m hoping to make it out to that beach again quite a few more times this summer, so Maddie is just going to have to tough it out.  I think if I can get her into the water next time she’ll have a better time.

Woah.  13 years.

That’s right.  How time flies when you’re busy living life.  So much has happened in 13 years, it’s crazy.  We look back on our life as newlyweds and it’s hard to remember life before kids or even before Dende… I wonder what I did in all my free time without kids or constant laundry.  Then I remember that when we first got married I was keeping 4 jobs!  I guess before kids I just worked a lot!

Jen came over on Sunday to watch the kids so we could go out for a nice lunch.  However, when we got to the restaurant (we had a gift card) it was closed… didn’t open until 4:00.  Ha!  So after driving around for a bit we decided to go to Sonic instead.  I’ve never gone to Sonic up here–only on vacation down south–so it was fun.  It’s always fun to go out alone no matter where we get to go.  🙂

I was going to post a picture… but apparently we haven’t taken any pictures of just the two of us in quite some time!  I guess we’ll have to remedy that soon.