Weekend Rundown

Good morning!  I hope you had a great weekend filled with all sorts of fun things.  

We started our weekend with Instagram selfies

    

And jumping in rainy puddles.  Thankfully no mud was included this time.  We started this little tradition if you will back when the kids were two and three.  

Leaving the doctor and the speed limit was 3 mph.  I've never seen an actual sign for that slow of speed limit so I had to have a picture.

The highlight of our weekend was going Trunk or Treating in our community.  We have Ray Mysterio and Evie this year.

The fun was complete with spooky juice

Creepy trunks

and candied apples

The not so fun part of weekend was spent cleaning.  As I was finishing up, Sterling took it upon herself to make lunch for us.  There may have been more bread than peanut butter, but it was the sweetest seeing her so excited to serve.  Here's my plate she made.

When she finished my plate she called me down and asked me to make her plate.  ha!  I had asked her what happened to her making the lunches.  She just wanted me to do hers.  Her lunch doesn't change much, but we were told we needed to start adding in grains.  So we added a bar.

I decided to give Lulu a carrot and she had fun playing with it and eventually eating it.

We dressed up this wickedly sweet and adorable puppy.  Her dress is too big, but next year it'll fit her great!

We ended the weekend with swim lessons and more cleaning.  This weeks lesson was swimming strokes with putting your face in and out of the water.

This week is going to be an awesome week.  

Have a great day!

Lately

Good morning.  We're staying busy over here.  I'm still trying to find balance between everything we need to do, and all the things we want to do.

For now, here's a bunch of random photos from the past week.

Every month we get the opportunity to review new and upcoming videos for Amazon and this one was for the kids.  They loved it and we can't wait for it to come out!

Oh Xander.  I love this ham so much!  He's always been "Mr. Serious" in our house and since being homeschooled, I've seen him smiling so much more.  I love it!

As we did a quick shopping trip, I told the kids to calm down because they were being loud and silly as I was checking out.  It's okay for them to be silly, but they were being rude and disruptive as they were "having fun."  So, I told them that I was going to get ice cream and they would not.  They thought I was joking so after the lady handed me my mini blizzard, Sterling got upset because "we always get what we want" and this time they didn't.  Sometimes being tough is necessary to prove a point.  I think I made it loud and clear that day.

We made some cute cats for school one day

This girl loves Bobby Roode.  Also known as "glorious" to her.

She had a filling filled and it was a pretty tragic event, so I dug out glorious from my stash of toys and she was so excited.

My mother-in-law was sweet and sent me flowers

Lulu had a haircut and came out with piggies in her hair with bows.  Sterling was obsessed.

Xander's love for Dog Man books is strong. He has all of the books and he's read them all too.

I took the kids to the fair

They rode all the rides that they wanted

played games, won a prize, and deemed it the best day ever.

 We took our last morning of family clay time and I had to take a picture of my complete opposite kids.  Xander's always cold and Sterling's always hot.  It was in the 50s.  And Sterling was officially recorded as 1/2 inch taller than Xander.  It's always a competition in our house.

Right after clay class, we drove down to Nana's and Papa's.  It was a quick trip, but a fun trip.  The kids made their own news station and it was the cutest!

This week we are getting ready for a big trip coming up.  We are so excited, but first we have a few appointments to do, school work to get done, and getting our house back in order.

Have a great day!

Finding time

Good morning!  First up, lets talk about Lulu.  This four month fur ball slept through the night last night!  Give all the praise hands.  I slept so good.  It was long over due to sleep more than a couple of hours.

We did school over the weekend.  It was fun on the weekend.  With having so many appointments during the week, it's hard finding time to get everything else we need to do in a day.  So doing school on the weekends just seems like the answer right now.  And, we don't do much on the weekend, so it helps keeps us from being bored.  Cleaning gets thrown in at night most times.  So, we're making things work with the time we have.

Last week we started our crazy week of appointments.  Yesterday we continued with a 730 departure for Sterling and I having to get our blood drawn.  Sterling had to fast so I wanted to get her there earlier enough so she wouldn't be starving.  I didn't tell Sterling exactly what would happen, but was telling her things "just in case."  Kind of to warm her up.  I was telling her a story of a time when I had to get my blood drawn and my vein collapsed and the technician moved the needle around to find it again.  Telling her it hurts just a little, but if she can be very still they won't have to poke her more than once.    Well, Sterling did amazing!  When it was my turn, my vessel collapsed and sure enough, she was moving the needle around.  I hate that part!  Then she decided to pull the needle out and start over.  Then, after she was done, my blood kept flowing.  

We headed to Target so brave girl could pick out something.  We then had to head back home, grabbed my paperwork for another appointment, drop the kids off at a play place, and then I headed to my appointment.  We ended up being in the car for four hours yesterday just getting to and from appointments.  When we got back home at 4, I crashed.  

Sterling has been a big help in the kitchen lately and I'm loving it

During clay class, we made toothbrush holders.  The instructor told us they'd be easy, but we all felt they were hard.  Those darn whiskers.  Sterling's cat looks like it just woke up from a nap with the crazy whiskers and Xander's is missing one.  Although they were frustrating to make, we still had a good time working together.

Swimming went great again

We had fun playing tennis.  But it's not as fun without Nick.

Xander is my "I hate reading, it's so boring" kid.  Before one of my appointments yesterday, I headed to Barnes and Noble and picked up a Dog Man book for Xander.  He was hooked and read the 243 pages in less than four hours!

I received my van title in the mail yesterday, woohoo!!  So excited to have it paid off early and not have the payment anymore.

Two more appointments this week, one next week and then I think we'll be done for a bit.  Let's hope!

Have a great day!

Lately

Good morning!  We survived our first week without our main man around.  

I've been drinking a lot of coffee lately and I'm hoping I won't have to stop anytime soon.  My stomach can't always handle coffee, but for the past 2 months or so, I've been able to drink it everyday without issues.  

We started our morning at the gym, and then headed to Trader Joe's.  It was my first time and I expected the prices to be really high and a lot of options.  I was wrong on both!  I found the prices to be really reasonable (and most times cheaper than Harris Teeter).  The store was smaller than I expected, so there wasn't many options.  Which was fine.

The freezer stash we selected.

And everything else.

So far, we've liked everything.  The chicken lo mein I thought I was grabbing kung pao chicken, but Xander loved this.  I didn't actually eat it.  I haven't been eating dinner much lately.

Honestly...

Monday night I felt the stress of it all and I had a breakdown.  #noshame  I know it's only been a week, and Nick was gone for 2.5 months prior to this.  But, it's different now.  I can't just call him when I'm having a hard time or just want to talk/vent.  I also don't want to burden him with our silly issues here while he's gone.  He has to worry about much bigger things.  Like an attack.  So, I bottle it up.  He's not coming home on the weekends to help with whatever I need help with.  I have a 70 lb bag he left that I need to lug up 16 (steep) steps and it's giving me anxiety.  So it sits in front of the bathroom by the step.  Sterling tripped on it and hurt her hiney.  I slept only an hour that night.  We skipped tennis on Tuesday because I was afraid I'd fall asleep driving.  I was tired, but just couldn't sleep.  I apologized to the kids for crying all day Tuesday (I was tired and everything made me cry).  It was rough.  But, we'll be fine.

We've been rocking school and I think we finally have all our kinks worked out.  I plan to make a post at the end of this month about what we're doing.

I ordered my favorite lattes.  #iwillsurvive

Lulu had her last training session and afterwards, Xander wanted to hold a ferret.  Gross!

I also made a new cleaning schedule.  Which involves the kids more.  I usually make one day a cleaning day, but now with homeschooling and no breaks alone, they will be helping.  I broke it down into sections so it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes.  If they just do what they need to do and not dink around.

Xander's good with doing his chores.  He knows that after his chores, he'll get an hour towards electronics.  He always chooses the xbox.

Sterling's not so good.  She complains and makes a stink about it.  But, she does the best job when she does follow through.

I'm hoping the changes that we're trying out will stick around and make life a little more simple for us.  More time to enjoy other things.  

That's a little of our life lately.  Have a great day!

Activities

Good morning!  I hope you had a great weekend.  We stayed busy and productive.  In addition to our activities, I was able to get the kids' closets and drawers ready for fall/winter.  We're not actually temperature ready here (maybe in another month), but I wanted to be ahead of the game.  We went shopping for warmer clothes to prepare for an upcoming trip to cold country, which is what prompted the early organization.

This week will be the kids' last tennis lesson.  Which we are sad about because they love it.  Especially Xander!  We'll just have to continue at the clubhouse on our own until spring.

While they were at lessons, I planned our school lessons.

We did a lot of school on the go during the past two weeks (which is a nice perk of homeschooling), so it was nice to be back at our desks.

Sterling loves to "butter" her words whenever she can.  So this Find and Highlight worksheet was perfect for her.

Lulu the crazy.  She's four months now and she hates sleeping through the night.  Sigh.  I'm going to love my week break from her, ha!

Sterling started back at ballet and also added hip-hop.  I'm so excited for her to be back in dance (she is too!).  She LOVES dance and is always dancing.  Our night ends up being really late, but we make it work.

We are taking a clay class as well.

So much fun!

The kids started swim lessons also.  Our goal this time around is to get them ready to join the swim team.

At the end of Xander's lessons, he was able to swim (doing front strokes) the entire length of the pool on his own!

After lessons was family swim, so they stayed in for another hour and played.  The made "cars" to drive up and down the lane, ha!

After the busy week, Sterling had to wear her boots to Subway.  This girl has a style of her own.  When we went shopping, I told her to pick out outfits.  I found her in the shoe area, over the top excited for these boots she's wearing.  We ended up getting her outfits from Justice this year.

It's going to be another busy week.  We're supposed to have hurricane weather at the end of the week, which I'm hoping will not happen.  We have appointments about an hour away and I'd really like to make it to them.  Just trying to get them done!

Have a great day!