I blame Rachel!

...for making my nails so cute.  And for making me enjoy jamberry so much.  I totally blame Rachel.

P.S.  I apologize to Josh that this post made it on here.... Sorry not sorry.

Lizzy the Singer

One of the goals that we set for Lizzy for this school year was to learn to sing 10 new songs.  She helped choose which songs she was going to learn and did a good job learning them.  When starting to learn a new song, she would take a couple of days just listening to me sing it.  After listening she would start singing and sometimes ask me to say the words before we would sing a phrase together.

After seeing Matthias finishing his first goal chart and get a prize, she became very motivated to learn her last song because she knew what she wanted.

Now she is excited to finish up her next goal chart.  After her first choice for a prize, can you guess what she wants for her next prize?

I think it looks something like this:

Matthias the Reader

At the beginning of the school year we helped our kids set goals for themselves.  One of Matthias' goals was to read 50 books.  This started out pretty slowly as he was just starting to read.  His reading really took off and so the books got longer and he got more stickers for reading through a whole book.

He wrote passed offffff on the bottom of the page.

Because he filled up 50 stickers on his chart, he got to choose some rewards.  He chose a Lego Star Wars Microfighter and the Meltdown from the Lego Movie.  For the last two days he's carried them around repeating how much he loves them and how proud he is with all his reading.  So awesome.

Matthias is done with Speech!

Two years ago Matthias was in preschool and his teacher couldn't understand anything that he said.  So, we had him tested and he was diagnosed with a speech delay.  For the past two years he's been lucky to receive speech therapy from some excellent therapists.  On March 19 we met with his current speech therapist and said that he no longer needs speech therapy.  She said that she will check in on him monthly for the rest of the school year, but that he is done and no longer needs an IEP for school.  We are so proud of our Matthias and all of the hard work he has done!

Lizzy chose to sit by her brother during community circle (assembly) the next day.

Such a cute, great boy! (Christmas 2014)

Silly kid (Christmas 2013)

Love this boy! (May 2013)

Playing in the Mud

So, it's started to warm up here already.  And I may have let this happen... a couple of times.  They are fully dressed and wearing shoes (I don't know what's down there).  We'd seen other kids playing in the mud a couple of days earlier and the kids had begged a couple of times to play in the water to.  So, I decided we'd try it out and see how we felt about it.  The kids LOVED it.

Looking into it....

Both kids are soaking wet here.  They had tons of fun splashing in the dirty water.

Don't worry, they were washed thoroughly immediately after playing in the mud.

St. Paddy's day

We started out St. Patrick's day with green pancakes.  I've been having fun trying to make various shapes with pancake batter, so we tried to make shamrocks (among other things).  It's pretty simple for me, but the kids think it's the most amazing thing ever.  So, totally worth it.

I can remember some years feeling stressed as a kid that I would get pinched if my green wasn't obvious enough.  I warned the kids that they needed to wear green and they came up with their own outfits.  Matthias, instead of choosing a shirt that was all green, found an awesome shirt that had lots of green throughout.  He was super excited about it and no pinching happened.

The Most Amazing Pi(e) Day! 3-14-15

We were excited to celebrate an amazing pi(e) day, because it was 3-14-15.  It was also amazing because we were invited to two pie parties.  It was fun to celebrate with so many friends and eat a lot of pie, including pizza pie! I ended up making two pies in celebration: blueberry cream and strawberry.  My mom taught me to make both of these delicious pies, so I had fun feeling connected to her while making them!

The kids also enjoyed being outside on a beautiful day running around.  They got a couple of scrapes, but they know that just means that they were having a great time.  :)