March In Review (and February too I suppose)

I can not seem to get caught up this year. Maybe its just the craziness of getting Garrett to and from school, getting workouts in, feeding everyone, keeping summer occupied, working, and just generally surviving from one day to the next. Our days have been filled with lots of fun, but I haven't really taken that many pictures. Trying to be in the moment with the kids, but I KNOW I'm going to miss having this to look back on down the line.

Let's see . . .
We had a cold snap. Haylee must be getting old (which she really is, she turned 10 in March, which is CRAZY to me) because all she did was bury under the blankets and refuse to move.

Aspen, on the other hand, chose to attempt to swim in the lake during one of our coldest days. Rotten dog.

Nana and Papa came for a visit. I'm sad to say this is the ONLY picture I took with my camera while they were here. Garrett and Summer loved having them here to play with.


Valentines day.
We made darling super hero valentines. Garrett got a kick out of making them.

He also made lots of sweet little art work. This was my favorite though, made with the bottom of a celery stalk as a stamp.

My dad came for a visit. We hit the beach and went to the Everglades. Its been a while since he's seen the kids. Everyone had a blast of course.

We did fun things like make robots out of toilet paper roles. Don't ask about Garrett's face here . . . .I think he was acting like the robot.

I ran my first half marathon on March 4th. I'm so annoyed that I haven't managed to post about THAT in the past month. It was an epic weekend, my friend Amanda from TooTallFritz came for the race. As I mentioned before, we've been online friends forever but have never met in person, and she was one of the people I could always ask for help when I got stuck on my running journey. It was so fabulous to meet her and her mom--they were kind enough to let me hang out with them the night before the race to save on some serious pre-race jitters!
Not to mention a beautiful evening on the beach:

Brad stayed home with the kids so I'm sadly lacking in pictures of the actual race. But we had so very much fun! I finished in 2:49, which was under the goal I had set for myself. Next time I hope to run the whole thing, I ran faster than I should have in the beginning and had to do intervals the last half. It was so incredible though.
And I can't forget the sweet good luck flowers Brad got me before the race :-)

Spring Break was fabulously busy . . .

We used the awesome pop bottle science kit Leanne got Garrett over Christmas to do some fun experiments over spring break. We made a volcano.

We also blew up balloons using the reaction of baking soda and vinegar. We have a long standing tradition of making faces on our balloons--Summer did such an awesome job on hers (with NO help) that I had to take a picture.

We went to the Childrens Museum with the Falconer clan. The kids had a blast--Summer and Ava hadn't played together in a while. The Pirate Island Exhibit there is amazing and the kids loved it. Garrett had also been wanting to try the rock climbing wall there for a while, but we always kept forgetting socks and close-toed shoes. He had an AWESOME time climbing the wall. If there is one thing I love more than anything else about the way we live our lives, its that living an active lifestyle has given this boy the idea that he can conquer anything. I love that he doesn't blink at physical challenges that would have made me, as an adult, cringe in the past.

Silly girls!

We played in the mud on the last day of spring break, just because getting dirty is so much fun.

Somewhere in there was Dr. Seuss's Birthday. We had tears on this day, ACTUAL TEARS, because Garrett's school told them they could wear Dr. Seuss shirts and I could not find one. As he's crying because he is worried he will be the only one without a Dr. Seuss shirt, I decided to be creative. The result turned out pretty darn cute, and he loved it. Saved by the Sharpie Markers and the stash of plain shirts sent to us by Grandma Sherry.




St. Patricks Day cuteness:
At the end of March we received news that Garrett was admitted into the charter school down the road from our house. I struggled for the entire week (we had to decide by March 31st if we wanted to enroll him) with what we should do. I really like the school we are currently at--the principal and staff are amazing, and it is such a small school that you can't help but feel at home. But in the end, an established Math/Science program and the ability to bike/walk to school won out over everything else, and we'll be switching schools at the end of the year. Hoping that it will make our lives simpler and that it will be a good fit for my crazy boy.

And, last but not least . . . a picture of Summer at the beginning of April 2011. I can't get over how much she has grown. She has been driving me bonkers lately--she is truly not an easy child and STILL isn't fully potty trained (we've been to the Dr. more times than I care to count in the past couple months, trying to sort her out). But she is growing up so fast and really becoming a big girl.

Artwork

I have a big November wrap-up post planned--I've even gotten around to writing half of it but blogger did not cooperate with the picture uploads. I'll save that for another day, but for now I wanted to share some recent artwork Garrett has done.

We bought an awesome 130 piece art set for him at Michaels for $5. I remember receiving a similar art set from my Grandma and Grandpa when I was in second or 3rd grade and loving it. So when I saw this on special I wanted him to have it. We already have plenty of things under the Christmas tree and he has done so well at school, we decided to give it as a just-because gift. We hardly ever buy random things just because, and its actually nice because when we do, they are very much appreciated.

Here are some of the little works of art Garrett has created. He gave some as Christmas gifts and gave one to his teacher for her birthday. Always a thoughtful boy :-) He mostly did little abstract bits here. But he has also been drawing and making stories like crazy, which was the motivation for his Christmas gift (to be shared later) .. . .





More to come (hopefully).

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween here. Things were a little crazy--Brad and Garrett went to Oklahoma for a mini-family reunion of sorts, and to go to Oklahoma State's homecoming game. They didn't get home till late Sunday night. Garrett's school had a dance and "Character day"--each student was supposed to be dressed as a character from a book. Garrett took his "Meet the Autobots" book from Grandma Sherry's summer reading program a few years ago.


Of course he was Optimus Prime. Grandma sent us an awesome mask, and I made the shirt with some duct tape and permanent markers. Since I hate sewing, this was a nice compromise and it turned out cute. Summer dressed as a lady bug. Its been rainy here, but the clouds broke long enough for us to go to the local Trunk or Treat event. There weren't many trunks to treat from because of the weather,

Garrett's action shots. This kid is so full of character. :-)

Summer was just all cute sweetness. But she did keep "Expecto Patronus"-ing her brother with the wand. Too much HP!!

The Great Pumpkin Fairy made her annual visit to the house and left the kids goodies. Garrett got a seek and find picture book and Summer got playdough. And Brad got LOTS AND LOTS of candy to take to work :-)

Hispanic Heritage Day

This past Friday was Hispanic Heritage Day at Garrett's school. His classroom did Cuba, and it turned out to be quite a fun day. Leanne was awesome enough to take Summer for the day so that I could help out in his class. This was the first time I have been able to volunteer in his class, so it was nice to get to know some of his classmates.

(PS-family, please go support Leanne as she does Team In Training in support of the LSS. Great charity, great cause, and as a mom of two I know exactly how hard it is to do what she's doing. Please pop in and support her as she has helped me SO MUCH with the kiddos through the course of our friendship)

The parents and his teachers did a great job making decorations for the class.



And thanks to my friend Shelah, we even had some real sugar cane to display on our table!

The kids danced to Cuban music. It was HILARIOUS. They did a conga line too, but somehow I missed getting a shot of Garrett in it. Not at all sure how that happened.
They did portraits in "traditional' Cuban caricatures.

I learned quite a bit about Cuba in the process of gathering things for Garrett's class. PBS has a really amazing special available online about it that I would recommend watching, it was fascinating!

Why I love the Marble Jar

A long while back, I read an article in family fun about using a marble jar to encourage your child to become involved in household chores. We've been using it for well over a year, and its STILL paying off. Not only because Garrett (and now Summer) get involved in the housekeeping, but also because they have SUCH fun with their rewards.

When Garrett filled up his jar last week, he got a bug collecting kit from the dollar store. Quite possibly the best dollar I've ever spent. We have spent COUNTLESS hours outside ever since hunting for (and occasionally catching) lizards, bugs and other creepy crawlies. Lizards are by far the favored critter to catch.

You can't beat a "special surprise" that gets you outside in the beautiful weather. Garrett loves to create a habitat, observe his catches and look at them through the magnifying glass on top of the container before we let them go.

The other reason I love this jar is because Garrett truly takes initiative to help at time. It gives him a tangible reward for helping me. Last night Brad had a meeting and Summer is to a point where she is very hard to put to bed (we just switched her to a Full Size bed). While I was putting her to bed, Garrett asked if he could do something to earn some marbles. I told him to clean whatever he wanted and then tell me how many marbles he thought he deserved. He decided he would earn 20 marbles. He wrote the numbers 1-20 and then would go find something to clean. As he did an item, he would cross off a number. By the time Summer was in bed, the horrendous amount of toys were put away, the dogs were fed, and the floors were vacuumed. He worked very hard for those 20 marbles, and I didn't have to stress about getting the house clean. It was great.

Other than that, we've been busy, but not doing anything terribly special. Football, school, family time. We switched the beds around this weekend are in the midst of a massive declutter. That will (eventually? hopefully?) get its own post. Summer did sign up for a tumbling class, but that only lasted a week before she got a nasty cold. We haven't been back since. Or rather, we have tried to go back, but she refused to participate. Maybe because she is still sick, but who knows. It was a fun (but apparently expensive) week.
She's very much into letters right now, so we're going slow and introducing a letter whenever the opportunity arises. She can identify O, L, and S so far and likes to find them WHEREVER we go. Potty training has been successful (knock on wood) and we've been slowly getting more adventurous in our outings. It even cooled down enough for a family trip to the zoo this past weekend.

Other than that, we've played with our food.

We've gotten the occasional sweet treat for working/playing hard.

Garrett has FINALLY started doing what I consider REAL school work--first spelling test is this week. Now that they have finally started doing sight and spelling words, Garrett is reading and writing even in his free time. He's also having tons of fun drawing too. Here are a few of his fun little "just because" projects.



Every day is crazy and chaotic and absurdly wonderful.