Cranberry Play

I found this great idea for cranberry play here. I decided to give it a go. I've had the cranberries for around a week. I'm not feeling great today (first cold of the season) and I was worried about the cranberries going bad. I figured it would keep them busy for a while. I was right about that. They spent almost an hour playing with the cranberries.

I started out by asking Kaydence if she thought the cranberries would sink or float. She said, "I think they will float." I asked her why she thought that. She said, "because they are sort of little, but sort of big too." That made no sense to me, but whatever. So we got out some grapes, apples, and oranges out to test first. Then we talked about what makes the apples and oranges float.

I set the table up with a pyrex dishes, a muffin tin, measuring spoons, cups, a pie dish, and a bowl. I put some cranberries in each of their dishes. Then they filled their dishes up with water. (If you try this, put LOTS of towels down, or go outside) saw that they floated, and then went about playing. Nolan filled the muffin tins up and then scooped them all out. Kaydence was baking cranberry pies. We listened to music while they played.

Kaydence squished one of them and said, "Oh no! It's bleeding!" I told her it wasn't blood, just red cranberry juice.

Nolan wanted to cut them up. I got out some knives (not sharp...obviously) and cutting boards. The cranberries were too hard for him, so he went to the sink and brought back the grapes we were playing with earlier.

Kaydence did cut her cranberries open. We looked at the different sections and talked about how it helped the cranberry to float. Then she went back to playing.

Once they were both done I found a recipe for cranberry cake here. So we mixed it up and baked it. I had to use bread pans because my other pans were full of soapy water. I'm really not very good at baking. There are only a couple of things that I can bake with generally good results. Hopefully this turns out delicious. I can smell it and it's making me sooo hungry.  We also all learned that we do not like fresh cranberries. I don't like cranberry sauce either, but I do love dried cranberries. 

*I tried the cranberry cake and it's delicious. Neither of the kids will try it because they didn't like the fresh cranberries.

My poor Kaydence just had a heck of a rough day today.

Yesterday a friend called and asked if I could help her friend out babysitting today. So we had a little boy around Nolans age over today. Kaydence started out very excited, but I was noticing her moods going up and down today. She was happy and playful and then very quiet and withdrawn. That is unusual for her. I kept trying to ask her what was bothering her, but I don't think she knew. A few times she asked me if I would come play with her, but I was needing to keep a close eye on the boys. Being boys they play rougher than girls. Reid was actually so sweet and polite. He was sharing and playing well, Nolan was the one who didn't want to share. Plus, since it was my first time watching him I just wanted to make sure things went smoothly. During nap time I promised her that when they boys were asleep I would come down and we could do her reading lesson and spend some time alone together. Nolan woke up pretty much as soon as I left the room though. Around the time Reid left I was reminding Kaydence that I was going to a Mommy's night in for the homeschool group. I asked her if she wanted to do her reading lesson and she said no. Usually I will talk her into it by reminding her of our reading reward, but I've been aware that she hasn't been quite herself lately so I haven't been pushing it. I've promised her a trip to the disney store when she is finished with her reading lessons. She will not get a reward like this for regular schooling, but I want her to be excited about learning and I think that reading is a huge accomplishment for someone so young. Anyways when it was time for me to go she just broke down sobbing. "I love you so much and we didn't get to cuddle at all today!" Then she wanted to know if Uncle Parker would come see her because she was sad. She asked several times if she could come with me and for me to please not leave her. So I left her snuggling with Daddy and on the way I started thinking maybe she wasn't just tired the past couple of weeks. Maybe she was picking up on all the stress from Sam and I. So I'm feeling kinda guilty. I mean, I think I handled the situation as well as I could have. If she has been picking up on all that though I just wish I had addressed it better with her. Does that make sense?

When I was driving home Sam called to ask if I was almost there and I could hear Kaydence sobbing in the back round. My brother had been over and they had a tea party together, but I think she just really felt like she needed me close to her tonight. I came inside and scooped her up and she held me tight and cried. She was saying "I love you so much and I missed you." and a few other things along those lines. By this point it was already much later than they usually stay up, but she wanted to read a story and she wanted me to hold her while we read. She usually prefers to sit next to me and hold my hand these days. I tucked her in bed with my blanket and held her hand while she fell asleep. Nolan was a happy camper and fell asleep pretty much as soon as his head hit the pillow.

I've promised Kaydence that I would take her on a date tomorrow night. We are going to go out for ice cream. I may take her into Target and let her look at the "grown up" clothes with me. I think my little love is just in need of some good quality Mommy Kaydence time. I promised her that we would play games and have a wonderful day tomorrow (although, I think today was pretty fun before all the crying) and she said, "Can we just snuggle for a while?"

I don't know how I didn't pick up on all of her cues that she was feeling like she needed a little extra love until the melt down. I hope that now that I'm aware I can give her the extra attention she's feeling like she needs right now. We spend a lot of time together playing, learning, and snuggling already... sometimes you just need a little extra though.

Breaking the TV habit

The past couple of weeks we've really gotten bad about our amount of TV time. During normal circumstances we spend most of our time playing together, reading books, or exploring some fun sensory thing. Or we do unit studies. Recently I've been stressed. Really really stressed, with a whole bunch of anxiety mixed in there. The government shutdown isn't the worst thing that's happened to us, and it's not the hardest thing we've done so far either, but it still sucks. Worrying about if Sam's paycheck will come on time, and if it doesn't come how will we pay our bill? Or how will we feed our family? Luckily we've actually been managing well with lots of prayers, and hopefully it's almost over. But when the shut down first started I was just so overwhelmed with un-answered questions and worry. The kids were tired from our week in McAllen, and then our week with my mom here and my grandma visiting. So I let them watch a lot of TV. That's basically we did last week. Kaydence didn't want to read, she didn't want to play, she didn't want to color ect. And I didn't feel like doing anything besides sitting in a pool of worry. All things considered that was the worst thing I could have done. I was SO bored. Bored and worried are just a terrible combination all around.

I keep telling myself that the kids really seemed like they needed that break. And that letting them watch TV is not the end of the world. This week I've pulled it together (not that I was ever terribly un-together) and decided to get back to normal. It's turned out harder than I anticipated. We've had bursts of really good play time. We've read books together and Kaydence has been excited for her reading lessons again. But there is still lots of times when I need to get something done and they ask to watch a show, but then they don't want to stop watching. We spent most of yesterday afternoon outside, but today it's raining. I think I need to re-organize my play room. There is no real rhyme or reason to where the toys are. I'd like to really organize it so their toys are easy to find and easy to put away. And I really need some help thinking of good ways to limit TV time. I don't want it to feel like a punishment. It's not their fault that I let them watch so much TV last week. But now I need to find a better way to fix it. Any suggestions? I've been looking for ideas on pinterest. But if anyone reading this has tried something that really worked for them I want to hear about it!

The other thing that I have been busy with.. I am really excited about this one. I've been thinking about it for a while, and to keep my mind busy decided to go for it. I am starting my own handmade perfume business. I will be making oil perfumes and selling them on Etsy.com. Depending on how things go I'd like to maybe get a booth at a farmers market or something next year. Oil perfume contains no alcohol or chemicals. It is mixture of a carrier oil and essential oils. The result is a perfume that will last longer than your typical spray on perfume. Plus, it's all natural. I've been doing a lot of research. How much I should sell each bottle for, finding bottles and boxes. I've got all my ducks in a row (well, mostly. I still need to come up with a company name). Now I'm just waiting for the government to re-open and pay us so I can start buying the things I will need to make my perfumes. I'm going to be looking for perfume testers and giving out tons and tons of samples soon. I think it's going to be great. I'll have a facebook page for my company and other such things, so probably this will be the only perfume related blurb on this blog. I'm hoping to start mixing perfumes ASAP and to have samples available sometime next month.

Human body

Last night while we were reading our bedtime story Kaydence interrupted asking what the bump in her knee was. It was her knee bone. She then had several more questions about bones. So we stopped reading and I googled skeletons. We looked and the pictures and talked for about 30 minutes. I asked her if she wanted to learn more about bodies in the morning. After that there was a crazy loud storm. We ended up staying up pretty late watching care bears in my bedroom.

So this morning rolled around and after breakfast Kaydence wanted to repeat an art project we did the day before. Its out of my montessori art book Let Out the Sunshine. These pictures are from the other day when we did it. **on the original day** Nolan spent a little bit trying to cut with scissors, and then asked for help. I cut his paper into strips after that. It's the first book in the activity. Again, we didn't follow the instructions exactly, but basically you have them cut long strips of paper and then glue them to a white paper. Kaydence asked me if I would do it too. So I sat down and cut strips and glued them to my own paper. Kaydence watched me very carefully and started to try to do hers like mine.

This morning Nolan was not interested in cutting or gluing. He played with his trucks and ninja turtles. While they were both busy I pulled out my montessori book to see if it had any helpful lessons. Turns out my book is great. I already knew that though. There was a suggestion to use a stethoscope to help them hear their breathing and heartbeats. We have several play stethoscopes, but no real one. So I thought I would post on the local homeschool facebook page to see if someone had one they would be willing to let us borrow. Not only did a lady respond pretty quickly that she had one, but she lives down the street from me. Crazy right? We went to pick it up and then we spent some time at the library checking out new books.

When we got home it was lunch time and Nolan was so grumpy from our late night. We had lunch and took an early rest. We watched the Magic School Bus inside our bodies while we ate. Once we got up I got the stethoscope out and I let them both listen to my heart. Nolan loved it, he wanted to listen to his heart too. For some reason it freaked Kaydence out. She listened for a few seconds and said, "I don't like that. It scares me." I have no clue why that scared her, but I didn't push it. She watched Nolan listen for a while. The book also suggests that you do a google search for heart drawings and photos so they can see what a real heart looks like. It includes (in the book, it's an e-book that I have printed out) links for cool videos you can watch. I went to youtube and looked for human heart beating. There are a few videos of chests open during surgery where it shows the heart beating. There is also a computer generated hear showing it beating, it was pretty cool. I was thinking that the surgery video would scare Kaydence since she didn't like the sound of her own heart. She asked to turn it on, so we did and she LOVED it. We watched that video about 15 times. She was asking why the person needed surgery and all sorts of questions. I'm not sure I answered all of her questions accurately, but I tried. We also turned on a clip of Bill Nye the Science guy I also found on youtube, but by that point she was tired and ready to play.

We had our dog trainer come over for our last lesson after that. One of our dogs is a crazy puppy and our other dog has this weird obsession with light. She's been helping us with both. Anyways after she left we had a snack and then Kaydence was ready to learn about skeletons.

We sat down and I googled an image of a skeleton and we looked at all of the bones. My montessori book suggests bringing out a pad of paper and having the child feel the bones in their body and make a list of the bones they could feel. I meant to do that, but I didn't. We felt our bones and we talked about what they did. She was mainly interested in her rib cage and we spent a long time talking about how the ribs protect our lungs and heart and why they are so important.

The other activity in my book that I wanted to try today was letting them feel and explore chicken bones. Lucky for me I already had some leftover drumsticks. I cleaned the chicken off the bones and gave them a really good washing. I put them on a piece of white paper and gave them magnifying glasses. We talked about how hard the bones were, and how light they are. I had them try to break the bones, they couldn't of course. One of the bones in my left overs actually was broken so I brought that one out and let them look at the bone marrow. We talked about blood cells being made there. The book suggested taking a fork to get the bone marrow out, but I decided not to do that. Kaydence asked for some crayons because she wanted to trace the bones and color them. She asked to paint the bones too, but I decided against that.

There is Bella hoping the magnifying glass with make a reflection.

There you go! Another day in our life :) we haven't done her reading lesson yet. It's been a busy day. The other day I ordered a book called Explode the Code. They are phonics lessons. I'm going to be using it along with her reading lessons. We will be starting a handwriting program once I can decide which one to use. 

Sensory Balloons

We're up and running again! For some crazy reason last week I decided it would be a good idea to potty train Nolan. So we did it. He is finished now, aside from the occasional accident. We spent most of last week downstairs in our TV room because we had to run to the potty every few minutes. It's also easier to clean off of the hard floors than the carpets. But it's done now! No more diapers!

So here is what a general idea of our days are looking like so far.

7-8am we're waking up. I give it a larger timeframe because sometimes I have the kids play together in Kaydences room while I get a few more minutes of sleep. Generally this doesn't last more than 5 minutes at a time, but can't blame me for trying. We're usually up by 7:30, but today they both slept until 8. I was happy.

8-8:30 (or earlier, depending on wake up time) I let them watch some TV while I make breakfast. I'm not my best in the mornings. Takes me a few minutes to get up and moving, and once we start our school day the TV goes off.

9am. This isn't an exact start time, we just start whenever breakfast is finished and I've cleaned up. You get the idea. We start off with some sort of montessori style learning activity. Nolan can be involved and we do it as long as they are interested. I'm using an at home montessori curriculum as a guide. I haven't set up the proper Montessori environment (according to the book) and I'm not planning to do everything 100% Montessori. (it's crazy expensive, even at home) We pick a "practical life" activity. Right now I am just going through the pages. Once we have done a few I will give them the options and let them pick what they would like to do. Yesterday the activity was sweeping. I've done that with them before and they got bored very quickly. This time we started out by making sensory balloons. We took a package of balloons, some funnels, and some kitchen ingredients. We used flour, lentils, dried kidney beans, and rice. Mostly because that's what we had. They scooped the ingredients into the funnels until they were full and then I tied the balloons shut.

Kaydence was interested in tying the balloons herself. So I let her try as long as she wanted and only stepped in to help when she asked me to. 

Scooping the ingredients was harder for Nolan. He tried for a while and then he used his hands. He switched back and forth from using his hands to trying to scoop. He would stay very still and watch Kaydence as she scooped and then he would try to scoop again. He got bored filling the balloons before Kaydence did, so he went to play with his toys and we finished up. Now I brought in the sweeping. (We made a huge mess) I don't have a kid sized broom. I thought about buying one, but when my kids get a hold of a broom they generally wave them around in the air. I decided it was better all around not to give them access to brooms on a regular basis. Instead I bought them a little (as in smaller than the one I use) brush and dust pan. I used the broom to sweep into a big pile and then Kaydence helped me sweep it into her dustpan. Most of what she swept went all over the floor, but hey, that's what learning is about. Nolan didn't want to sweep. He was fighting a battle with his superman. 

Then we brought the balloons over to the coffee table. We made 4 of each type of ingredient balloon. 2 for each of them. I mixed them up and the game is to squeeze them and match them together based on how they feel. Kaydence finished pretty quickly and was done, but Nolan spent a long time squeezing them.

After we were finished with that I gave them a few options of what to do next. We ended up playing with our felt There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly set. I bought it used and then found it was missing a few pieces, which was annoying. (My fault for not asking first) We used some other animal toys for the ones that were missing, and the kids don't know the difference. I've also set up a rewards system for Kaydence. Every time she reads me a book she gets one gummy bear. So she read me three books, and then I took a turn reading to her. 

11am we decided to take a trip to the library. I like to go on Mondays because Sam is usually off work and I can look for books without the kids wanting me to hurry. However, I forgot it was labor day so the library was closed. Instead we drove around and enjoyed the pretty Texas landscape. 

12am- lunch. We usually eat earlier than this. Otherwise they beg for snacks and are then too full to eat lunch. While I fix lunch I generally give them the option to color or play with other things. They wanted to watch X-Men cartoons, and I was okay with that. I love X-Men. 

1pm- rest time. Nolan takes a nap. He's usually out for 1 1/2- 2 hours. Kaydence rests quietly on the couch. She has the option to play on the ipad or watch a show. I am going to make her some quiet boxes to play with during rest time, I just haven't gotten there yet. I usually only have her rest for an hour. It's pushing it to get her to lay still for that long anyways. We get up and do her reading lesson. We're on lesson 50! Oh yeah! She loves her reading lessons. Nolan woke up screaming that bears were going to get him. That's relatively new. He will go upstairs alone to play, and then realize he is alone and start screaming that bears are going to eat him. Sam put him to sleep, but wasn't in the room when he woke up so he freaked out. I had planned to do an art project from my Montessori art book, but he just wanted to be held. So we read books and colored instead. Kaydence read me a few more books. Usually around 4 we're done with any official learning that I have for us to do. Sometimes it's earlier than that, sometimes later. Most of this is just a general idea of what our day looks like. Starting soon we'll have dance classes and things like that. We'll adjust our day around those things. Some days (like toady) Kaydence decides she wants to wait to do her reading lesson until Daddy comes home. We're flexible. 

We're going to start a kindergarten level math program soon, as well as handwriting without tears. Or something similar. I'm leaning towards singapore math, but I'm not sure just yet. 

Here are some afternoon silly pictures from me and Bubba. It's one of his favorite games. I make a silly face and he tries to copy it.

To Montessori or not?

I thought I had my whole plan for the next few months worked out. Not on paper (I really need to sit down and do that) but it's all in my head.

I think I posted a little bit before about how I decided we would worth through my Montessori books before we moved on to a curriculum set. (Right now I'm looking at Sonlight, it's been my favorite for a while) I want time to do lots of hands on learning and really focus on finishing Kaydences reading lessons. (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons) Then when we're finished I'd like to move Kaydence on to Sonlight (or a different one possibly) and keep Nolan working on Montessori type things until he is older. I was really comfortable with my plan and excited to get started. We went to church this morning and my mind was wandering a bit to homeschooling and I felt so at peace. Then this evening I started questioning everything. My whole carefully thought out plan! I thought, "Oh my gosh, what am I doing?! This is all wrong, I need to buy a curriculum set NOW." Luckily some part of my rational brain was still functioning and telling me not to rush to anything.

Maybe it was the back to school buzz? I'm so excited for all the kids getting back to school. Public and homeschool, and I'm excited for all the teachers. Kaydence and I have been talking a lot about how we're so glad we can learn together at home. She is ready to go! I wanted to sit down and plan out at least this months lessons over the weekend. It ended up being kind of a busy one, so I didn't get there. I think I need to remember that I planned to give myself a week to get organized, re-arrange some things in the house. I want to set up a "school room" where our play room currently is and turn my sons room (which he doesn't sleep in anymore) into their play room. My mom suggested using Nolans room as our school room, but I like the play room better. It's more open and we can spread out a lot more. Maybe it's just the stress/anticipation building? I don't know. I don't feel stressed. I'm not even worried about not having our school room set up. I've got to find some more book shelves and a table for us to use, but that will take time. Eventually it will be set up the way I want, but in the meantime I'm not worried.

I'm just really second guessing myself. Not the decision to homeschool, I know without a doubt that right now it's the best thing for us. Will that change later? I don't know, I try not to think too far in advance when homeschool is concerned. (just the thought of high school makes me cringe) Just what if I'm approaching it the wrong way? I don't exactly have a ton of family support. It's kind of a weird feeling. On one hand they support me, but they are also quick to make comments about why I need to send them to school, but all in a positive we want the best for you sort of way. It's not anything negative. My husband is supporting me, but he's really not nuts about it. So sometimes I end up feeling like I'm doing this alone. That isn't the case because I've been trying to make some more homeschooling friends. The homeschooling community is really great, everyone is so quick and willing to help.

I just wanted to write this down, because homeschooling isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Some days are amazing, and somedays I know I'll be second guessing every thing. Next time I go into panic mode I'll have to remember this and remind myself that it will be ok. Also, since I originally started this with the hope that maybe other people getting started would read it and feel like they weren't the only ones having a hard time. Tomorrow I'm going to spend some time getting organized and hopefully the next post will be filled with our great "back to school" week. I'm going to ride out my insecurities tonight, and hopefully tomorrow with a fresh perspective I'll be ready to roll.

Sorry it's been so long! I hit a serious block this summer and switched into survival mode.

That makes it sound a lot worse than it was. Basically the kids and I were going stir crazy being stuck in the house all day. Except for the pool, and they were getting bored with the toys in the house. My mom came during that time so we got to get out of the house a bit. I had to get creative and change things up. Also my computer broke. So for a while I was just hoping it would magically work again. It's still broken, but we do have more than one laptop. We've been busy bees. I'm not going to do a long post right now. This is just basically to say we're still here and I'll be posting what our new "school" year will look like.

I spent a lot of time looking at different curriculums, but I decided for this year I'm going to work through the montessori book that I already have. I also got a montessori art book that we were going to do this summer, but it took forever for the book to come. We're going to focus on reading and getting used to being on a more formal schedule. (with lots of wiggle room of course) I decided it would be a good transition year. We're going to go check out a co-op next week too!

Look for another (better) post soon :)

Weather Week- clouds

I decided we would learn about the weather this week. I found this great website HERE all about weather for kids. I thought clouds would be a good place to start. It even has some lesson plans and activity ideas.

I had them start out by coloring a picture of the sky for me. They both decided that they wanted stormy skies. This is kind of silly, but I was so surprised by how awesome Ashley's clouds were! Since she is older than Kaydence you can usually have an easier time telling what Ashley has drawn. Sometimes Kaydence has to tell you what hers are ;) Ashley made fluffy storm clouds with lightning and rain.

Kaydence is getting the hang of clouds too, hers are kind of spiky, but I was really proud of her. I am pretty sure that's the first time she tried to make a cloud. 

Afterwards I pulled up the lesson plan for clouds (See the link at the beginning of this post) We talked mostly about what clouds are made of. The lesson goes into types of clouds, but they weren't interested in that. It has you put some shaving cream down and you ask them if clouds are made of shaving cream. They thought this was very funny. They played with the shaving cream for a while and then wiped up their spaces. After that I got out some spoons. They felt that the spoon was cool. I had them breath into their hands to feel it was warm. Then they breathed onto the spoons and I told them they made a tiny cloud. That was all in the lesson plan, but they thought it was awesome. 

Next we made rain clouds in cups. I've seen it all over pinterest, but the links I tried didn't work. So I just guessed. Take a cup and fill it 1/2 way with water, top with a fluffy shaving cream cloud and with a dropper have them drop in water mixed with food coloring. They watched it rain in their cups.

About this time Nolan started getting really sick. He spiked a fever so I put him on the couch to rest. Unfortunately for our cloud day he got worse through the afternoon. After nap time I sat holding him while the girls played. I told them I couldn't do their reading lessons today because Nolan cried every time I put him down. Sam was home though and Kaydence said, "DADDY CAN DO MY READING LESSON! I love to to reading with Daddy!" And he said he would love to help them both with their reading lessons. Then he helped the girls make feel better cards for Nolan. They were both being very sweet to Nolan bringing him things to cuddle and kissing his forehead.

This doesn't have anything to do with clouds, I just wanted to share how amazing dinner was last night. 

I made spaghetti sauce with zucchini noodles. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical, I loves me some spaghetti. I tried making a spaghetti squash but it was crunchy and weird (any one want to teach me?) but I love zucchini noodles in stir frys. It was AMAZING. I seriously couldn't taste a difference between this and regular spaghetti. It looks different obviously, but oh goodness it was good. I want to buy one of those things that makes spiral noodles out of veggies, it will make the whole process a lot faster. I used a veggie peeler and then sliced them with a knife to make them thinner. YUMMY. I'm going to make it again for lunch today. We had leftover sauce but no extra noodles. 

Curriculum

For a while I've been stressing myself out thinking I needed to choose a curriculum right away. I've been thinking that what I'm doing isn't enough and negative thoughts along that line. I had a curriculum picked out and I've been looking around for a while to find a good used set. (I love to save a little money!) Then the other day I was exploring a website with a kindergarten readiness check list. I realized that while Kaydence doesn't have every thing on that list, she's got the majority of it already learned. We have been working through a learn to read program. (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons) I started getting really frustrated because she is a hard time putting the sounds together. I wasn't frustrated with her, I was frustrated because I didn't know how to explain it to her. She can easily identify the sounds and tells me each one, it's just hard for her to put them together. So after asking for some advice I decided that since she is only 4 there is no need to rush it. I decided to take a break for a while and pick it up again when she is ready. The very day I decided not to do it anymore she started asking me for reading lessons. Every day she asks all day if it's time for her reading lesson yet. This weekend I wasn't going to do them, (hey, it's the weekend!) but she was begging for it. So we sat down and worked on it, and then she asked for ANOTHER reading lesson. This time Daddy did it. I've been making an effort not to get frustrated with myself and to give her serious praise when she sounds out a word right. I mean like over the top cheering and high fives and gut squeezing hugs. I think that's what made the difference, she loves the praise. 

Anyways, I started to see that I don't need to push a full curriculum on her right now. She is learning at such a fast pace and what we do is very easy and fun for her. I wish someone had told me to take a breath and calm down. But since I didn't actually tell anyone how much I was stressing that would have been pretty hard to do. 

So I just wanted to write this in case someone else out there is stressing over all the curriculum options. It's easy to do. Being responsible for your child's education is a big deal. I for one am constantly worried that I'm messing it up. Take a breath and remember that it will be okay! Especially at this young age. 

Real fruit snacks

Our Paleo diet is still going strong. Sam has been left to his own devices. He has absolutely no desire to stick to it, and I don't want to force it. I pack him breakfast and lunch. He eats dinner at home, but otherwise he is on his own. The kids have been doing really well. I let them have hot dogs with buns on the 4th of July and they had a couple of cookies. I'm not making them do it 100% like I am. My main goal is to cut out as much junk as possible, with the occasional treat. We've been running through fruit and veg at a huge rate! I'm going to have to re-think my grocery system. I used to buy groceries for a two week span, but I think I'll have to start going once a week. Anyways one of the things my kids are crazy for is fruit snacks. I decided that I don't want them to have fruit snacks, even as a special treat. The other day I came home with some dried mango and kiwis and they were gone in a matter of hours.

I've tried several versions of home made fruit snacks, and they were good, but the kids didn't really like them. So then I decided just to get a bunch of dried fruit and cut it up into little pieces. That way it would last longer. I filled 6 little baggies with a mix of kiwi, mango, pineapple, and papaya. All of which are delicious. I got some of it from the bulk bins for a much better price. The mango I got today was on sale, but H-E-B brand is way way better. Lesson learned there.  Since they are in the little snack baggies I've been calling them fruit snacks. They are plenty sweet and the kids absolutely gobble them up.

Yay real food!! I only put a few bags down within their reach. Otherwise they would be gone in the blink of an eye. I also didn't pre-chop up all of the fruit. I decided it would be better to do it as needed. 

I'm pretty happy with how our healthy changes are going. It does surprise me how many people are trying to pressure me into eating breads though. I'm amused, not upset by it. I really didn't think people would have a such an issue with it, but hey, that's what happens when you go against the norm. 

Chore Box

I don't know about you, but I am almost always behind on my chores. I spend my days cleaning, cooking, and playing with the kids. Most days when it's bed time I look around and think, "what exactly did I do today?" I like the house to be clean, I get stressed out faster when the house is dirty. Which lately is pretty much every day. So I've decided to get my chore box out. My mom told me about how she used this system way back when. I've used it before and it works so well. I just got out of the habit of using it. Now that I've got 3 kiddos making a mess during the week it's been near impossible to keep up. It's simple, and I promise that your house will stay cleaner doing just a little bit every day. No need to try to clean the house from top to bottom every day (which is what I have been doing lately). For one thing that's a lot of work, especially with kids around. With this system everything will get cleaned. You won't need to stress about it because you know it's in the box. Here is how it works:

I got his box at office depot, it's for index cards. Then I bought some calendar tabs, I couldn't find any index card sized ones, so I bought ones for a binder and cut them to the size I need. Next you need a stack of multi colored index cards. You're going to use 3 colors. Pick one color for the things you do every day. Here is my every day list:

-dishes
- wipe down counters
- wipe down appliances
- wipe off table
- sweep floor

Next make a list of the things you generally do in a week. Bathroom mirrors, toilets, sweeping bathrooms, laundry days, and so on. I like to spread my bathroom cleaning over two days. One day I'll do the counters and the mirrors, and the next I do the toilets and the floors. I don't know why, but for me it's way less over whelming when I spread it over two days. I also have a different load of laundry to do every day. One day for whites, darks, towels, Kaydences clothes, Nolans clothes, and sheets. I am always always behind on laundry. I hate laundry with a passion. Actually washing it doesn't bother me, just folding them and putting them away. And we all know laundry is NEVER done. Ever. It's hard to remember, but back when I was using my box I actually managed to stay on top of it. No more late nights folding piles and piles of laundry!

Okay, so for the third color pick things that only need to be done once or twice a month. For this one I have things like

-blinds
- light fixtures
-cleaning out the fridge
-cleaning the oven

You get the point. Some of these I do twice a month. Now let's put it together. Arrange your box by month and date. I keep the current month in front of the box, all of the others go at the back. Put your every day chores behind the tab for the first day you want to start, and then spread out your chores for the rest of the week. This way instead of a never ending list of things you have to do you have maybe 5 things to do. I don't do my chores all at once either. Usually I do all of my daily chores at one time, and the rest of the tings I need to do I pick a card when I have a few minutes. The kids are busy painting a picture? Wipe down the back door. They're playing with toys, I clean the mirrors. Now for your once or twice a month chores. Space them out through the entire month. Give yourself one or two a week. The best part about the once a month chores is that if you're having a bad day. Kids screaming, throwing up, grumpy, or whatever pick up the once a month card and move it to the next day. Don't move it more than once or you'll never do it. The point of this box is to make things easier so if moving your once a month chore is better for you than do it!

I've got my box organized again and I'm ready to roll come Monday. One of the biggest things for me is having the toys picked up, which I did NOT put in my box. I've been getting the kids to be more responsible with their toys, I usually have them pick up before rest time and before Ashley goes home. I didn't do a great job enforcing that this week and as a result my house is a serious mess. It's my fault for being lazy though.

I hope this helps some of you! I promise it works if you stick to it. Do a little every day and you will be surprised by the chance in your house after just a week.

*****I've just realized as I was using my chore box that I forgot to add how to keep the system going. Every day when you've done your daily chores take those cards and move them to the next days slot. As you finish your weekly chores move those to the correct slot for the next week. I take Sundays off chores, so if you give yourself a day off as well make sure you leave that spot empty!

Dinosaur Eggs

An update on how our Paleo transformation is going so far this week:

It's been seriously incredible. Kaydence and Nolan are both eating WAY more than they ever have before (like bottom-less pits) but also the requests for junk food have all but stopped. Even better they're finally drinking plain old water. I have always watered down their juice so it was mostly water and a little juice, but the other day Nolan had a (TMI) really nasty poop that consisted mostly of the juice he was guzzling all day. So I said Ok, no juice tomorrow. He asked for juice a few times and then that was it. That was yesterday, today he asked for water. For dinner tonight we had sausages and chicken cut up and cooked in my skillet. I added some bell peppers and an onion and we ate them wrapped up in lettuce sort of like a fajita. We had cantaloupe to go with it. At first the kiddos mostly ate the meat, but then towards the end of dinner Nolan started taking huge bites out of his plain old lettuce. No dressing or anything. I showed Sam and Kaydence looked too and decided that she wanted a few bites of lettuce as well. I feel great, better than I have in a while and it's only been a few days. Sam isn't loving it so much haha. He is not convinced about the whole "paleo thing" in his words. But he's trying!

We also made banana ice cream, which I've made (And loved) before. Today seemed like a good day to re-introduce the kids to it. They are currently on a banana kick. If you haven't made banana ice cream before you should try it! Slice and freeze a few bananas. We used 3 1/2. One for each kiddo to slice by themselves and the 1/2 because it was left over from lunch. Freeze them and then pop them into the blender. It's easier if you have a food processor, but I don't have one. I had to fiddle around with the settings for a while. Turns out that stir is the best option. It was creamy and oh so yummy. You can add strawberry, mangos, nut butter, or chocolate chips to it. I like mine plain though.

The girlies cutting their bananas. Nolan was cutting too, but he managed to be blurry in every picture I took during the ice cream party today. They were both focusing on cutting.

Doesn't that look amazing? Creamy and delicious! And you don't have to feel guilty about eating it hah!

We also made dinosaur eggs today. I made a batch before that were kind of hard, but I found a new recipe here. Basically it's just baking soda, water, and food coloring. In our case glitter too. I don't know if you're aware, but glitter makes pretty much anything more awesome. Unfortunately I didn't measure out how much I used of either. Add the water very gradually, you don't want it to be liquid. Just mushy and damp. Like so

The recipe also calls for black food coloring, which I don't have. I thought about adding all of the colors I do have, but I decided just to let the girls pick one each. They chose green and blue. 

Make a little pancake in your hand, and pop the dinosaurs inside. I used little ones I got from walgreens, I think you can find them at the dollar store too. Then put some more on top and mold it into an egg-ish shape. Ours looked mostly like blobs. I popped them in the oven for a while on the lowest temperature setting just until they dried out a bit. While they were in the oven we read our cool new National Geographic Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs. It was really fun, there is a question on each page like, "Would you rather be a meat eater or a plant eater?" Ashley said she wanted to be a meat eater because she likes meat. Kaydence gave me a "I would be a princess." So I said, "Well, what if you were a dinosaur?" and she said, "I would be a dinosaur princess. T-Rex, and I would eat the other princesses."

When they got bored with the book I filled up three spray bottles with vinegar and took them outside with the eggs. They were warm still so I picked them up and gave them each one. Playing with baking soda and vinegar is one of our favorite things to do. We also love spray bottles. It was a huge hit.

Our puppy Lady was very curious to see what was happening. She tried to eat the bubbles a few times, but she figured out they were nasty pretty quickly.

Nolan also tried several times to eat his. Apparently he doesn't mind the horrible taste of baking soda and vinegar. 

Paleo and Dinosaurs

We've decided to go Paleo for a while. If you're new to the term (I finally decided to figure out what all the fuss was about a few weeks ago) it means we're going grain/processed food free. We're going to do it for 30 days and see how we feel. After that we'll add some grains back in slowly. Sam has stated firmly that he can't do this for the rest of his life because he would miss cereal too much. I told him I would make him some Paleo approved granola. That didn't make him feel much better haha! Around the time that I had decided I wanted Sam and I to do it I started thinking about all the tummy aches Kaydence gets. And lately it seemed like they wouldn't eat anything but goldfish, animal crackers, and fruit snacks. I don't want my kids to grow up like that, I know I did and there isn't anything wrong with that. I want them to learn how to eat healthy at a young age with things like fruit snacks being a treat, not a snack. I guess I just want them to have a taste for healthy foods, and not chips. Like my awesome brother in law Jason. At first I thought it was crazy (in a good way) that he didn't eat a lot of the things I love to eat. I guess I am crazy now too.

Honestly I thought making this change was going to be really hard on the kids. You wouldn't believe how easy it was. I got a book on my iPad called Eat like a Dinosaur: Recipe & Guidebook for Gluten-free Kids written by The Paleo Parents.  It includes over 100 kid-approved recipes & projects free of grains, dairy & legumes. It includes cookies and things like that for occasional treats. Healthy cookies. There is a chapter for the parents, and then there is one for the kids. We read it for bedtime. Before we started I told them how excited I was about this cool book. If I am excited they usually are too. Happiness is infectious :) We read the book together and I asked Kaydence if she would help us to be better eaters. I told her that it was her job to make sure Mommy and Daddy didn't drink sodas anymore. (I'm still in mourning over the loss of my Diet Coke) Surprisingly the only thing she was sad about not having anymore are her soft crackers. Ritz crackers to the rest of the world. So I told her that we could still have things like that, but only as a very special treat. After that it was smooth sailing.

I also suggested that we learn about dinosaurs (again) this week since we are now going to eat like dinosaurs. Kaydence and Nolan both LOVED the times we have learned about dinosaurs in the past. When Ashley came over Monday morning we talked to her about the changes we have made too. She's having a little harder of a time about the lack of fruit snacks and animal crackers that I used to have. But  she has been happy to have apples and strawberries as snacks, so it's all good. Yesterday when we went to the pool instead of bringing bags of goldfish I packed strawberries, oranges, and cucumbers. We didn't last very long at the pool (the water was freezing and it was windy) but all of the snacks were gone before we left.


We went to grandma and grandpas new house this weekend. There is a spot with access to this little river right by them so we hiked down and played in the water. We found lots of frogs, a crawfish, and best of all these shell fossils! Kaydence helped me collect some of the ones we saw. (there was a ton)
I got them out on Monday and we looked at them and talked about where fossils come from. We read some dinosaur books and I gave them a magnifying glass to look at the fossils with.

Then we colored pictures from Nolan's dinosaur coloring book. I found a picture of a carnivore and herbivore and we talked about what they eat. They colored them and we talked about what a paleontologist is. I told them we are going to be paleontologists this week. I asked if that sounded fun and they all said yes! Ashley wasn't too sure about it though, she said dinosaurs are for boys. Once she saw that Kaydence was excited she decided it was okay to think dinosaurs are cool too. 

Doesn't that look delicious? I wish I had more, but I destroyed it. For lunch yesterday I told them I was making special noodles and meat for them. Ashley was very curious and came into the kitchen to watch me. I browned the steak bits and used a vegetable peeler to cut thin strips from carrots and zucchini. That was the "noodle"in my stir fry. I sliced an onion too. I tossed in some garlic, pepper, red pepper flakes, and ginger. I drizzled a little bit of soy sauce. (I realize that is not "paleo" but I still have a lot left and I hate to waste it.) It was SO good. Ashley ate two helping plus the fruit I gave them as a side. Kaydence and Nolan didn't eat as much, but they still ate their fair share. I ate all of the left overs for a snack in the afternoon.

Sleeping beauties. Completely worn out. This was a rare day when Kaydence actually took a nap. It was magical.

I hid some "dinosaur bones" on this page for them. I drew dinosaur bones with a white crayon and they painted over it to discover them. Not the best dinosaur bones you will ever see drawn, but they don't care. We gave them their own dinosaur names. Ashley wanted hers to be called the Ashley-o-saurus. Nolan was the Bubba-saurus-rex and Kaydence just wanted hers to be a T-Rex. 

I also got this awesome game for the iPad, the dinosaur zoo. It's cool just because of all the dinosaurs. Each one is different and when you touch it they do different things. The T-Rex growls and eventually roars at you. But there is one dinosaur that takes the cake, I won't spoil the surprise in case you get it, but one of the dinosaurs farts and poops when you touch it. You might be reading this and think, "Well, that's stupid." In fact its the greatest farting dinosaur ever! My kids think it's hilarious. Okay, so do I. Right about the time they were ready to stop playing the pooping dinosaur came along. Nolan walks around the house asking for dinosaur poop now. 

"I see saursaur poop?"