A Simple Kind of Life

Firsts

First t-ball practice

First hike with camelbacks

First (official) haircut

First time tie dieing my himself

First time swim suit shopping!

Busy

Wow, we’ve been busy lately. Honestly, I always thought people were crazy to claim to be too busy. But we’ve made it!
I’m not going to bore you with all the details of what we’ve been up to. But I do want to put a plug in for google calender! I love that I can add my events to it and so can Paul. We each have our own color so we can easily see what the other is doing! Plus, it stores what I’ve done. So it’s a sort of time capsule as well! If I wonder, when was the last time we went to Farmington library? I can just look it up!

Here is our spring nature table

Egg Hunt at Great Grandma’s

Carter and Skye with their (most of) their cousins (we added another 2nd cousin to the mix this week! plus one more in Flordia. All MY cousins kids)

Kids went skating last week. We had a blast!

We had a visit with my Grandma

Auntie turned 25!

Did some geocaching

Had a great visit with Kazoo Grandmas!

Happy Easter

Finally today, we met some friends up at HFM for more bunny fun!

Sugarbush

We had the great honor of being invited to the Battel families sugarbush in the thumb yesterday. What a wonderful day! It’s such a treasure to have the kids be even more connect to the food we eat and see where it comes from. We’ve done the metroparks sugarbush in the past, but nothing beats going to a real sugarbush farm. They did such a nice job of educating both the homeschool kids AND their parents.
The syrup, is like golden drops of sun. Amazing!

The haircut

Before

After

Skye’s birthday in review….

You only turn 3 once We had a great couple of days!

Skye first woke to a room FULL of balloons with 3’s all over them.

She had a few presents and cards to open.

She choose breakfast and we sang to her. After some time to play with her new things, we found her a very pretty, very big purple dress to wear to church. On the way we listened to all the birthday songs we owned. Skye was so pleased with this At church her Kazoo Grandma’s where there waiting in surprise! There was even cake at church on her birthday!
Then off to the mall, where there were MORE presents and we had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. Skye was a hot fudge ice cream for dessert.

Build a Bear was next. Skye choose a Hello Kitty and a few goodies to go with it.

After we said our goodbye’s to all the Grandma’s and Aunt Monique and Brain, we went home for some rest time. It was a great day!

You’d think the birthday celebrations would be over right? The next day we met her friends at Jungle Java, we played for a bit, then headed home for lunch and birthday cupcakes with our friends!


Happy birthday sweet girl! I hope the day was very special for you!!

Valentine’s Day

I want to start by saying that this is the first year we’ve ever really done anything as a family for Valentines day. It was this blog that inspired it all! And I hope our day’s plans will inspire you!
We started the day with Heart Shaped Pancakes

We made Daddy’s some Valentines and watch a fun Hallmark card Nana had sent.

Then we went off to a LOVELY story time at Farmington Main. All about love and pancakes!

Lunch at home was homemade soup and grilled cheese.

Cleaning and planing for our BIG date in night.
Daddy came home from work and we made Heart Shaped Pizza. While the pizza’s cooked we did some fun Valentine finger plays.

We dined picnic style by candlelight. I read a lovely UU Valentine prayer and a poem about Love.
The kids enjoyed sparkling juice while Paul and I had some wine.

Then it was game time!

I wanted to play the conversation hearts game but I didn’t have any chopsticks. So we played a board game of the kids choice (Money! Money!) then the Catch the smile game from the blog above. It was a bunch of fun!
We finished the night with dessert.

While we ate I told a bit of the history of St. Valentine

It was a fun night and I think we make it an un-Hallmark holiday and hopefully added some new traditions for our family!

Also, this year we went to a homeschool party at Arts and Scraps, check the flickr pics to see the fun we had!!

(I’m pre-releasing this. Skye’s birthday is the 15th)

Looking back at the last year it amazes me just how much Skye has changed and also, how much she hasn’t. She still wears her shoes on the wrong feet, but has recently started to say that hurts. I think she’s figuring it out. Skye still hates her hair ’styled’. Well she likes getting it styled, but won’t keep it that way for long. I’m sure she is just like me. Not a tom-boy, but also not a girly-girl. She has started to seriously love her baby’s. She nurses them, let’s Grandma babysit (um, that’s me.), wheels them around in the stroller, rocks them in their bed, wearing them in a sling… she’s a wonderful mama!
She loves real babies too, maybe too much….
She’s stubborn, which I’m sure she comes by via me. But I recently discovered though her stubborn behavior that you never get what you want when your stubborn
She just learned to wink. She can wink with her left eye. Her finger has to hold down the right eye. Another, just like mama.
She adores Carter and everything he can do. Including the stuff she can’t do….which is difficult but expected.
She’s slightly shy till she gets to know you. She loves her friends, which could be people her age or people my age.
She’s potty trained. Much earlier than Carter was. She does still wear a diaper at night, but most nights it’s dry.
She loves her church class. Most days there are hardly any other kids in there. So it’s almost one on one play time for her!
She’s a great little girl, who knows she’s not a baby, but not a big girl yet.
She’s a snuggler, a bed hog, and a joy to have around!!
Happy 3rd birthday Skye!!

Skye turns 3. A year in review.

Skye turns 2.

Skye turns 1.

Unmotivated

Unmotivated to do any homeschooling. I think we are turning into unschoolers. It really feels like we are doing double when I plan something. Last week unplanned we did, science, math, phys ed, literature, and more. We truly are learning all the time. I guess I’m in a transition time. Trying to figure out just what we are doing….
Unmotivated to take pictures. I think my pictures look like crap. Seriously. I need a class or something.
Unmotivated to blog. Just feel like we are so busy, but nothing worth note worthy.
Plus, facebooks is eating my time and energy.

I put my flickr photos back public. I think my blog will be password free again soon.

Skye dresses herself one day. Leggings, dress and fluffly tutu

Carter set the dollhouse up by himself. Love the family bed and the unique way he thought about the space.

Photobook 2008

is complete! I haven’t actually purchased it yet. How much do you want to bet that Shutterfly will stop sending me all those great 50% off coupons now that I have a finished project? I’ll wait them out. In the meantime anyone who would like can look at it here.
share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AasWbls2ZNmbo (be sure to leave me some feedback if you do look, I can still edit it!)
I really like shutterfly. Can you choose from so many types of books, fonts, sizes, pages, number of pictures on a page. For a scrapbook novice like myself, digital is the way to go!!

Christmas 2008

Wow, so much has happened in the last month!

I taught the K-1 class in RE this month. We studied The Posada and Christianity. I loved working with the kids and I loved having the Christian influence in our UU church. Carter and Skye loved hearing about Jesus’ birth and how and why we celebrate Christmas.

A few good ideas new to this year; I wrapped all of our Christmas books and let the kids alternate opening one a day. Usually in the morning. (we are a two car family now, so we were able to have pj mornings!) and we read them all. It really worked out great. I look forward to doing it again next year!

I put the ‘kid’s ornaments’ in a special box last year and put them right up top. So when we were decorating they were able to just have an entire box of stuff that was good for them to put up right away. Worked out really well!

Also, in true UU fashion, we celebrated the Winter Solstice. We had dinner with friends them a small celebration where we talked about the solstice and what it meant.  It was quite lovely!

We got our tree from Greenfield Village. If ever the opportunity presents it’s self, I recommend you go! It was a lovely, picturesque lot with cute little Balsam Firs from Nova Scotia. The best Christmas tree we’ve ever had. Not the biggest, or the fullest, just the best!

Also, we went to HFM for their Christmas fun! We saw Santa there. Made crafts, played with trains and had lots of fun! Another ‘must do’ annually, if possible!

We spent Christmas eve day in PJ’s. Baking, playing, and enjoying the calm before the storm! The kids and I made peppermint bark and chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

Christmas Day was what it should be. Not over done. Simple, fun, happiness! Carter received a knight shield and sword, a klean kanteen, a bouncy ball (thanks for the great idea Nicki!) and a few books he’s been wanting. His stocking was full with a Turbo twist math game, small bilbo, gum and candy and a few other goodies!

Skye received a Webkinz Horse, a klean kanteen, Plan people for her dollhouse, and a book about a homeschooling family. She also had a hugely full stocking with all kinds of goodies!

They both received a few games and a train set from mom and dad.

The kids really enjoyed Christmas crafting this year! We did mostly homemade gifts for family. Rolling beeswax candle and making lavender dryer bags. The kids wanted to help and did help with the entire process this year!

Also this month, Carter traveled by train to Kalamazoo (with Grandmas of course). He had a great time! What wonderful memories for him!

Wow, we had a busy month in retrospective! The mall hosted a Polar Express exhibit. The kids really enjoyed. Thank goodness for homeschooling. We were able to go early one weekday morning and explore the area with no lines. Carter is Polar Express’ #1 fan. We also caught a free showing of it at a local theater. After they had a drawing and Carter won, the book, the cd and THE BELL. He was so pleased!

December also brought one of the biggest snow days we’ve seen in awhile! The kids had fun playing in it!

With everything seeming to be recessed, down turned, closing and bad lately, it’s sometimes hard to look for the everyday positive. But we do, because if we focused on the negative we would only bring more negative to our lives. I am so happy for the lovely children I have to remind me that everyday is good, even the bad ones.

Wishes for 2009. Well, while I wish for stability. I have a feeling it’s a year of change. Even more than last. So, I wish for myself the patience with change. Knowing that it can be unsettling and that things will get better. Hopefully it will be the kind of stuff that makes us all grow stronger without breaking us in the process.

Sorry this post has been sort of spazy and wordy. Still trying to figure out what I want out of this vs what should be out there. Trying to hold back a bit, but I have so much to share!

Pictures are on flickr. You need to by my ‘friend’ to see them LMK if you want an invite or need any help with that!