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 :-)

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.

First Day of Kindergarten (Better late than never!)

I have been meaning to post about Garrett's first day of Kindergarten for a while. I haven't for two reasons . . . One is time (I never seem to have any). The other is I am still just not sure how *I* feel about Kindergarten. I like his school, overall, and I like his teacher, but I'm not as in love with it all as I thought I would be. Things are going very slow, they are still reviewing letters, and I feel like Garrett is a little bored and definitely not picking up anything new. But whatever, review is necessary. We're just hanging in and hoping it will improve. He still misses his pre-K teacher. He loves his new teacher, though, and she really is great. Its just a little disheartening to me, I wanted him to LOVE school, but I guess its just the way it goes in the public school system. Suffice to say the jury is still out.

Even though this picture isn't that great, I had to include it because Garrett was super proud of the cute fishie he made for his teacher:

Best friends. They aren't in the same class, which is probably a good thing since they are together pretty much the rest of the time.My two favorite Kindergarteners.
Garrett at his desk.
And, like his father, he has limited patience for photographs. How did he learn to role his eyes so effectively at such an early age??? :-)




They did the most darling project associated with "The Kissing Hand". I received the most concise, complete summary ever given by a five year old of the book from Garrett, it was fabulous.



The diorama we did for "Library Lion"
And of course, Summer, who refused to be in the morning pictures, insisted "Take a picture of ME!"

Balance = Found (Sort of)

Coming off Mondays crazy post, this has been a pretty good week. INSANE, but good. The alarm has gone off at Oh-Dark-Hundred on a daily basis, and I, who love my sleep, have been up before Brad every day but one this week. 4am wake up = not fun, but being able to focus on the kids without freaking out about the obscene amount of work on my desk was worth it. I also planned for child care two days this week, just to make my life a little less insane. My friend Shelah's daughter, Rainee, came and hung out with the kids on Monday, and then Summer went to play with Ava on Wednesday while Garrett was at school (leaving me a little time to be productive when I wasn't dealing with the usual produce craziness).
Summer sure does love her "Ray-ray".

Not only did I get work done, but I didn't feel like I was losing my mind a single time all week. Added bonus, we had time for family time at the pool, I managed some quality time with Brad, and I've gotten in some decent enough workouts. So, all in all, not a bad week.

I also made some headway on the school dilemma for next year. I'm 90% sure that homeschool is the back-up plan of choice. Once I realized I could eliminate a lot of the planning stress by getting a curriculum, the stress of that choice seemed to wash away. I would still prefer he get in to one of the schools we applied for. But whatever happens will be exactly the direction we should go in.

Fun things we did this week:
Summer colored a lot, one of her favorite ways to pass the time:


And we broke out the paints Grandma Becky gave Summer for her birthday last year, along with some of our left over stocking stuffers from Christmas:


Friday was a MUCH anticipated movie night . . . we did Pita Pizzas for dinner, which the kids loved because they could each make their own.
And really, does it get any better than this?
The only time they were truly quiet though was when the popcorn was being consumed. You can see how long 7 children between the ages of 7 and 2.5 lasted :-)

I find the pairings in this picture hilarious--Garrett is hanging out with Angela, our neighbor who is 7. He's always wanting her to come play and hang out, she's one of his favorite people these days. Summer is with Xander, of course. She's ALL about Xander. And Logan is chilling with Brady and Gracie. We're pretty sure Logan and Gracie will get married some day, lol :-) I'm so thankful to have such great friends right in the neighborhood, which makes fun events like this a cinch to plan.

Valentines Day Fun

It may be a more or less pointless holiday, but we sure had fun with it this year.

Silly Garrett landed yogurt on his shirt, which had to be cleaned off, thus the huge wet spot. Of course. Because I don't have that many pictures of them together. Going to have to get better about that. Grandma Compton sent the bears, which they LOVE because they make this cute little kissing noise.

We made a LOT of sweet treats in the past week. Cookies, Molded Wilton Chocolates, and cake balls for Garrett's school. Kids had loads of fun.


With the Wilton molds, I got a kit for $4.99 on clearance. At first I tried to actually do them as pictured (painting the details into the mold) but apparently I'm not that talented, so I let Garrett go to town and do them himself. He had fun, and they turned out looking cooler than the ones I did myself.


Cake Balls and goody bags for Garrett's school

The goody bags were fun to do--I tore out pages from our old coloring books and managed to both declutter a bit AND re-up some things that would otherwise have headed to the recycle bin.

We worked on our valentines for school all week. Garrett insisted on writing his name on about half of them before it got old (and he got tired of trying to fit his name on all of them-not enough space for his crazy handwriting). He also wrote half of his friends names too. He did insist on assembling EVERY SINGLE ONE all by himself though (tearing it, taping in the tattoo, folding and putting on the heart sticker.

I took a canvas, covered it in some cork board, Oklahoma State fabric, and ribbon to make Brad a fun little place to stick notes/pictures/etc at work. The kids made little cards for him that then got tacked to it. Garrett's was too cute for words-he wrote everything (Happy V-day and his name) all by himself, and made a picture of himself with daddy. He's getting SO BIG! Summer had to pose with the board, of course, because she's silly.



Brad wouldn't clue me in on our plans for Valentines day evening. Turns out he bought a fondue pot. So we spent 2 hours eating cheese fondue, a main course, and then dessert. YUM. Very good, but WAY too much food. He got super creative with the dessert though:

Garrett ended up with tons of candy (of course) from school, so we're reusing the Pumpkin Fairy idea from Halloween. Garrett selected 10 pieces to keep, and the rest went in a bag to give to the Valentines Fairy. In exchange, she is leaving him a book and an awesome Bumble Bee track I bought super cheap at Christmas time.

On top of the V-day prep this past weekend, we had a crazy busy weekend. Brad took Garrett to see Monster Jam along with a bunch of our neighbors. Garrett had a blast, but Brad got a parenting FAIL for not taking a single picture for me. I took one for the team and missed out to stay home with Summer and the neighbor's infant since her hubby was out of town. The best part was apparently not the actual monster trucks, however, but the remote control ones they saw during the "Party In the Pits". Silly boys!

Brad and I also went rock climbing this weekend for the first time in forever, as an "active" date day. The kids went and hung out with the Shumans while we went and climbed 30 foot walls for a few hours. Thanks to my mom for the awesome birthday present of rock climbing club for the semester! We followed it up with burgers from 5 Guys, so I get a healthy eating FAIL, but you know what, I don't even care. It was so yummy, and on the rare occasion we go there as a family, Summer and I split a burger. So I enjoyed having one all to myself :-)

More fun planned for this very short week. Brad is taking Thursday and Friday off. Thursday after school he and Garrett are going to the boat show. On Friday Garrett is off school and Brad's grandparents are coming for a short visit, which of course Garrett stoked about. Fun, fun, fun.

Multicultural Day at Garrett's School (1.31.11)

Garrett's school did a Multi-cultural day at the end of January. The kids had a ton of fun with it. Garrett's fabulous teacher let me help dig up materials and activities, which made me feel like I was contributing a little. It turned out great. Its fitting that Garrett's class did Australia. I have always been obsessed with that country since I was a little kid.
Garrett's is the 2nd one down, left hand side, under the word Australia
They got their cute little faces painted like aborigines . . .
and did aboriginal cave paintings . . .
and made boomerangs . . .
and made didgeridoos. It was pretty funny when Garrett came home and explained what they were to Brad--he didn't have a clue about what a didgeridoo was.


Yes, Garrett is the one with his pointing STRAIGHT in the air. He was also the loudest. By far. No surprise there.

And they said "Gooday, Mate" when their friends came to visit. They even made cute little passports that they got stamped.

Weekly lesson plan (fun to have to look back so we can remember what they were doing)

MLK day coloring (G's is 2nd row, 2nd from the right)

And last, but not least, Summer made herself right at home. She built a tower with the duplos and then said "Mommy, take a picture!" She's also saying CHEESE, of course. Clearly I take too many pictures.