2011 Week 43

It's been a fun-filled week with Grandma. The kids got Friday off (teacher prep), which meant even more one on one time. Art projects, making cookies, reading books, getting spoiled when we went shopping... that's what happens when Grandma visits :)

When the kids were in school, Grandma was either sleeping in or working on small projects with me. We had a couple of craft sessions with my neighbors (finally got everyone to finish the wreaths from the craft day!) and devised a project for ourself by "upcycyling" an old Tshirt and pair of jeans for Kaitlyn. We've had some great fall weather here this week. All the leaves are changing colors and it's beatiful. I need to take the camera out for some photos. It must also be time to harvest the cotton around here, which is something we've never experienced. The day they were harvesting the field right next to us we took Tyler for a walk to check them out. I hate walking across the weeds and stuff in the empty lots but Mom and Tyler went right up to the fence to watch for a minute. Four combines and a couple trailors working on one little field - impressive.

2011 Week 42

We waited until Saturday to have Kaitlyn's bithday party with her friends. Possible mistake as we ended up with a really sad turn out (2 showed up. we invited 15!). But the party went really well and everyone had fun. Happy Birthday to Kaitlyn!

After the party we had a couple days' break, in which I came down with a nasty cold. Of course I was in the middle of it and feeling icky when Mom flew in for a visit. That didn't stop her or the kids from having fun. She brought an entire bag full of gifts and surprises with her, starting with some Halloween decorations for the kids to use in their rooms.

2011 Week 41

Birthday week! This is the busiest, most fun week of October every year.

Sam had Friday off, so we took advantage of having the kids in school and worked had a few household projects. We cleaned up the garage and organized it completely (finally!), adding new storage for the balls, pools noodles, and remaking the bike rack. Then we got to work refinishing 3 pieces of furniture - 2 tables Sam brought home from work (they were replacing them and these have a really nice wooden top, after we got all the gun cleaning stuff sanded off of them) and Kaitlyn's old dresser. All three pieces are now looking beautiful in my (now fully functional) craft room.

Saturday was my birthday (33) and I wanted to do something fun as a family. We decided to go to a corn maze, since we didn't do anything like that last year.

We tried to pick a good one, with lots of included activities for the kids like the hay bale play area, bouncy houses, petting zoo

fair-type games, etc.The maze itself was fun. It was set up so that you weren't looking for the way through it, but trying to find 10 different checkpoints inside the maze itself. Not easy, not easy at all. We gave it our best shot but when Tyler was starting to refuse to walk by himself we knew we were done. We walked out of there having found 9 of the 10 checkpoints - not bad.

A quick drink of water and a hay ride turned Tyler into a happy kid again. He chose to sit right up front, directly behind the tractor, of course. After leaving the farm, we all went to dinner at Olive Garden, then came home for cake!

Kaitlyn wanted to do the "icing" by herself. She found it was a little too tricky to do the writing herself, so she had Sam do that, then added a border and some polka dots.

Tyler wanted to be in charge of the sprinkles. It was pretty funny to watch him try to place them one by one.

And here is their combined handiwork. At this point Tyler thought it was funny to try to grab tastes of the frosting and we didn't get a single photo of the cake without tiny fingers in the background reaching for it :)

Happy Birthday to me! It was a great birthday and I felt very well loved by all - not just my little family for spending time with me, but from a weath of phone calls and emails all day as well.

After resting up for most of Sunday I devoted a lot of the rest of the week to getting ready for Kaitlyn's birthday.

And once again there was Ty putting his fingers in where he shouldn't. I made Kate's cakes a few days ahead of time so I could freeze them for easier cutting and decorating. I went on to other things while they cooled and came back to find that Tyler had taken tastes out of 3 of the 4 rounds! Little monkey. I would have been more upset, but I knew I would be cutting pieces out of them in order to shape her cake and figured I could work around the missing pieces. But boy, I'll know to watch him closer from now on!

2011 Week 40

Monday was our busiest day of the week. It was half-day at school for parent/teacher conferences. Without thinking, I had scheduled our parent/teacher earlier than Kaitlyn would actually be making it off the bus so I went to pick her up early. We purposely didn't pack her a lunch because I was going to pick her up before lunchtime, but it being a short day they bumped lunches an hour earlier which not only meant that Kaitlyn had to eat (or rather, get it then not eat most of it) hot lunch, but because they were finished with lunch but not in their classroom yet, it took a while for the school secretary to find Kaitlyn so I could take her home. We picked up Ty, had lunch, then went back up to the school.
I love parent/teacher conferences! :) I'm sure if my kids were struggling it wouldn't be as fun, but whenever I go, it's basically an excuse to listen to someone tell me how smart and wonderful my child is - what parent doesn't love that? Kaitlyn's teacher said she is doing great. Testing above and beyond where she needs to be in fact, especially on reading. She tested at the highest level they test for in second grade - the place where they are trying to get all the kids by the end of the year. (who knows if she is reading above that level, though I suspect she probably is. That girl LOVES reading) She got a 100% on all the sight words for the year. Math is great, writing is great. Go Kate!
Next on the list for the day was an appointment with the dr for Kaitlyn. She has been in the middle of another one of her coughing spells - the ones where she coughs so much at night it wakes me up and I have to stumble in there with her inhaler and where we have a hard time letting her do anything active because we know it leads to a coughing fit. She was also low on allergy medication. Our doctor is at the clinic on base (new doc this time that I like MUCH better, yay! happy that I don't have to go through the red tape of switching to a civilian doc at this point) and Sam was almost done with work so Tyler got to hang out at his office while Kaitlyn and I went to the appointment. We now have a second daily allergy medication for Miss Kate and are going to try to be more pro-active with the inhaler, treating symptoms before they happen (right before bed and a few minutes before activity), at least until she is no longer coughing at the drop of a hat. I hate the thought of all these meds so often but we'll do it for now while we try to target what is causing the spells.
The day wasn't over there. It was home for dinner, homework, then off to dance class for myself and Kate. A very, very long (but productive!) Monday.

Tyler is now getting homework at preschool! So far it's a novelty and he likes working on it. It was so cute to have both my kids sitting at the kitchen counter working on their homework togther.

Kaitlyn has started participating with a school activity called Kids on the Run once a week. Every Thursday they gather after school and run around the track. Kaitlyn loves running and thinks it's great fun. Her competitive nature kicks in too. The first week she did 6 laps on the track. This week she pushed herself to 10 laps and is hoping for more.
During one of their conversations, Sam and Kaitlyn decided she would be his running buddy. She hounded him for 2 days straight until he got out there with her. They did the mile around the neighborhood without slowing down - in fact, I'm pretty sure she was ahead of him the whole time. Haha! if Sam was looking for motivation, he now has it. That child will push him to get out there every day if we let her)

2011 Week 39

Typical morning at the bus stop. All the kids hang out on the porch/driveway of the model home while we wait (and wait and wait - the bus never comes at the same time every day so we just plan on getting there early and waiting as long as it takes). Sometimes it's complete and absolute chaos.

It was a fun weekend. Kaitlyn went to a really long birthday party extravaganza on Saturday for her friend Ally. They got their nails done, went out to dinner, and went to a movie. I had plans to have a girls night of my own with some of the neighbors (so fun!) so Tyler and Sam went out and had some fun of their own. They went to the Lion King in 3D and out to dinner.

Sunday morning I went with a couple of friends to check out the flea market. Turns out it's not a good place to sell crafts, which is why we were checking it out, but as an outing it was a lot of fun. And none of us came home empty-handed (I found a Hello Kitty necklace/watch for Kaitlyn's bday) :)

Once I got home and put the house and the kids back in shape (so not fun to walk into the house and find Ty crying in his room with a frustrated husband on the couch), we decided to go bowling. This is something the kids LOVE to do and they get better and better every time. Neither one of them used the ball ramp thing and both got really good scores. In fact, Kaitlyn beat my score! (I purposelly threw a gutter ball after I got a spare on the last frame just to make sure of that, but mostly she did the winning on her own)

I've been making a lot of hats this week, and Tyler is my designated model. He loves this long-tailed one and wants me to make one for him in red. I had to laugh though because when I was trying to take a photo of another hat (it's a fall striped one that he has on UNDER this one) he told me "is this really mess-is-ary?" (necessary)

School photos were also this week, which usually I don't mind purchasing. But it seems like the prices have doubled since last year (and they were overpriced already) and I just couldn't justify paying that price for a photo that was never all that great. So I took a few minutes and snapped some of my own.

2011 Week 38

Random bits and pieces this week: Little boys and their pockets! :) Obviously, I'm going to have to start checking pockets when I do the laundry.

Practically every day when I pick him up at preschool, Tyler proudly shows me a "treasure" (or two or ten) he has found at recess. A couple of times it was a leaf, which he carefully stuck in his binder for later. Lately it has been rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. He would hop in the car and stick them in the cup holder of his car seat. Or bring them in and "wash" them. We now have a bucket by the door of the garage for his "collection."

I should have snapped a photo of the weather at some point because it's been the same every day - overcast and dark. I'm starting to miss the sun! The rain is always threatening but hasn't amounted to much most of the time. And once again I realize just how much the weather affects moods. One or two days of it and it's fun to enjoy being inside all warm and cozy. The cooler temperatures were a welcome break. Too many days of it and you start to feel tired for no reason and motivation and productivity go down the drain. Seriously. For the first time in a long time we had a weekend with all of us home and no plans and no intention to make plans. The only thing we had the energy or ambition to do was run to the grocery store, just for an excuse to get out of the house.

2011 Week 37

Just realized that the only photos I took this week are of crafts for the Etsy store and blog posts - nothing else! Note to self: pull out that camera more often! Though I am not going to beat myself up for just going ahead and living life and enjoying whatever we are doing. Not everything needs to be documented.

Oh wait, I take that back. Just remembered that Friday we took the kids to the fair. I really didn't go an entire week without pics of the kiddos!
It was a fun little outing for us. We chose to go Friday night because it was one of the few nights the Monster Trucks were going to be there and of course we just had to let Tyler see them. (He is completely obsessed with Monster Trucks. Says when he gets his driver's license he's gonna buy a monster truck :) ) The first thing we did when we got there was track down the monster trucks for Ty to see some in person. They were giving rides in the back of one so we shelled out the cash for Tyler to take his turn. He loved it!

Kaitlyn was trying to be patient but truly she was only excited about the rides. She's getting more daring than she used to be and wanted to go on pretty much every single one of them.

Our chatty little girl made a friend in about 2 seconds flat while waiting to get on this ride. I thought she must have known the girl from school with as quickly as they climbed on the ride together but according to Kate they were just friends right away.
We rode the rides with the kids for about an hour then it was time for the Monster Truck show. Tyler was so excited and so into it. It was so much fun to watch him cheering them on. Kaitlyn wasn't quite impressed and was only entertained for the first 20 min (of the hour it lasted). Eventually I gave her my phone to play with so she would quit pestering us to get back to the rides.

The finale was this guy attempting to do a back flip. Obviously he didn't succeed this time.
Kaitlyn was happy to drag us all back to the rides and we stayed as late as we dared (with Sam having an early morning at work the next day) and had a lot of fun. Sam even managed to find deep fried candy bar! (something he saw on the Food Network and has been scouring fairs for for at least a year)

Quick recap of the rest of the week:
-Sam had drill weekend - that always makes for a very long two weeks for all of us when he doesn't get a day off.
-the kids and I attended a neighborhood child's birthday party at the pool. The first of what I'm sure will be many functions like that. The kids had an absolute blast and because I had threatened Ty that we would leave if he took off his life jacket, I could enjoy visiting with the other parents while keeping an eye on him.

-personally it's been a really low key week. With the kids in school and Sam at work I feel like I have more time on my hands to do with what I will. That means a few fun outings with friends for errands and lunch and lots of extra craft time on my own. If I forget the parts of the week where I was trying desperately to stay out of the neighborhood drama then I'd have to say it was a pretty good, very normal week!