2013-2014 School Year

Tags

Being A Mommy, Big Sister, Children, Home, Home School

I cannot believe September is here! This has been such a busy summer. We have a few birthdays we celebrate over the summer months as well as vacations, family reunions, and holidays. It seems like we have something to do every weekend, and just when we thought we would get a break and get to relax, the new school year is already here!

So this school year, we have decided to start home-schooling Big Sister. She is a little young, but we are only introducing her to the idea of school. It’s a way for me to get time with her for something that only she can do, since Little Guy does everything else with us. Right now he just scoots around on the floor, so he probably won’t take part for a while. We are going to start working on letters, numbers, colors, and shapes. She knows a little of each already, but we want to spend more time on these to really get to know them. Now we are not going to put a ton of pressure on her to learn these things either, she will learn them all in her own time, we just want to have fun and learn a little too. She already loves art/crafts supplies so we will be using everything crafty we can get our hands on. Luckily stores put most of the supplies on sell for the school year so we got all new markers, crayons, construction paper, pencils, scissors, and preschool puzzles. We also got more pompoms, paint, chalk, popsicle sticks, glitter, and tons of stickers. I have gone crazy the past few weeks researching fun activities for us to do that are fun and having anything to do with what we want her to learn. It is a little overwhelming how many wonderful resources are out there for homeschooling. I will try to start posting again to give you an update on how we are doing. I will also let you know where we have gotten all of our wonderful projects from. Good luck in the new school year!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Review

Tags

books, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander, reading, Stieg Larsson

Wowza! I just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, and wow was this a crazy book! I heard the book was a good read so I put it on my list of books to look for. My first “Me” Day after Little Guy arrived, I want bargain shopping for books, which as you know is my favorite thing to do. I came across The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire for $0.75 each! I was already reading a book, so I gave them to my mom to read. She finished the first two books in record time and could not wait to get the third book, so she ordered it on amazon instead of waiting to find it at Goodwill. She told me the first book was hard to get into, but to keep reading because it gets so much more interesting. Well I finally got to start The Girl… a couple of weeks ago and finished it this morning!

Let me first start by saying, I did not expect what happened in this book, to happen. I don’t want to give anything away, but it was a huge shock and once I got into it, I could not put this book down. I guess I assumed this book would mostly be about the girl since that is the title of this book, but there are so many characters in this book. I had a hard time remembering who’s who and the financial aspect was confusing to me as well, but I know little about finance. When Stieg Larsson finally brings Lisbeth into the story, you want to keep reading because you want to know more about this very mysterious character. I found myself rooting for this awkward girl, and agreeing with the way she decides to punish the man who commits wrong-doings against her. I was, however, disappointed in the ending. I thought it was short and abrupt after the entire book had been so detailed and full of twists and turns. I have to assume he wrote the ending this way because there are two more books, but I thought he could have done a better job of convincing you that you NEED to read the next book. I will still read the next books because my mom says they are even better than the first, but I have decided to take a break from reading now to finish a few crochet projects I’ve had going for months now. As for the movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I am not sure if I am going to watch it. My friend said she couldn’t finish the movie because it was too crazy for her, and as for me, I was ok reading certain parts, but having to see it might give me nightmares. What can I say, I am a wimp. All in all, if you have not read this book, I think you should check it out! I will have to get back to you on the next books in this trilogy soon. Thanks for stopping by, and let me know what you thought about the book too! :)

Big Sister’s Big Blanket

Tags

Blanket, crafts, Crochet, hobbies

I found this great afghan pattern online, so I crocheted one for Big Sister! She is too tiny for it now, but hopefully she will keep it forever and have this cozy blanket as she grows up. I used Red Heart yarn in light pink or baby pink and cream or off white for the small stripes.  This blanket took forever to make because I did make it a little larger than the pattern says, so it would fit a twin size bed. I love the way it turned out! Thanks for having a look!

Ripple Afghan

 

The Garden Boxes 2013

Tags

Flower, Garden, Gardening, Home, Plant

the Garden Boxes

A full year has gone by since we first put our garden boxes in, and boy have they changed! Our herbs lasted over the cold winter, as well as a few of our flowering plants. We were also surprised to see our cilantro came back this year. When we planted the cilantro last year, it burned in the sun right away and died. I never took the plants out because they wilted and other plants grew around them. Now the cilantro has spread all over the place and flowers like crazy. Our lily also bloomed this year which it did not do last year although we checked that we had it planted in time for it to bloom. We did remove a few things and added a few other plants. We will probably end up changing the boxes again at the end of the year to try growing new plants, but we are pleased with what we do have this year.

In the box to the left we have: the lily, chives, two kinds of aloe(only one is pictured, but my neighbor gave me some after I took the picture), a cherry tomato plant, basil, parsley, and rosemary. In the box to the right we have: spearmint, peppermint, chives, lavender, cilantro, and a three flowering plants that I cannot remember their names. The three flowering plants have grown tremendously this year and one is especially taking over. I did buy a citronella plant, but that will stay in a separate pot since it has almost doubled in size in the last few weeks.

I plan on saving my herbs by drying them and using them in our meals, but I have to learn how to do that first. I also would love to grow garlic or large onions next year. For now my Garden Boxes bring me great joy with my flowers blooming and all our butterfly visitors. If you have and tips or comments for me, feel free to give your advice. Thank you for checking out my plants!

It’s Almost Summertime

Tags

Being A Mommy, Children, family, Home, husband

I cannot believe how long it has been since I was last on here.

To update everyone, The Little Guy is here! After many false alarms, he arrived in January, four days late and almost nine and a half pounds! I think he is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen, besides Big Sister. Getting used to having two kids in the house, working out a routine and having some sort of norm around our house has been a huge task, but we are getting better everyday.

Big Sister has been so wonderful with Little Guy. We were not sure how she would react to not having our full attention, but we tried to tell her how much fun she was going to have when her brother finally arrived and to tell her what she might expect. She absolutely adores him! She loves to kiss him and touch his little hands and toes. She lets me know he is crying(although we can all hear him, he is a screamer!) and likes to talk to him to calm him down. We did have a little hiccup with potty training after he got here, but only a few small battles and we were back on track. We were also worried about how she would react with Little Guy having a pacifier because she was such a “binky” baby. We didn’t wean her from pacifiers until she was almost two (oops), so we were really hoping she wouldn’t remember them and want them back. Well, she did not remember them! The only other problem we have had is her touching him constantly. She wants to touch his hair, his ears, touch his eyelashes, his mouth, she boops his nose all the time. She really has done better than I expected, and I love to see them together!

Husband has been pretty busy this year as well. He built us a covered patio with a tin roof which I love! We put our old couch out there and have been outside everyday since. He put a gravel pathway in the backyard from our patio to our gate which was about 2 weeks worth of work with it raining every other day this spring. We both had a few problems with our cars, which Husband likes to fix himself so he did tons of auto work before Little Guy got here. He also just fixed my drivers-side window on my car a few weeks ago, which has not worked in four years! You have no idea how nice it is to have a working window until the dumb thing stops working and you have to go to the atm in the rain. On top of the yard/house work, Husband will be graduating this June which is very exciting! We will be glad to have him home every evening instead of him being in school twice a week, and the pay raise is great too!

We are super excited for the warm weather again, and plan on being outside all spring and summer long. I have tons of craft ideas, that hopefully I can get to little by little and update you on as well. We will be exploring teaching ideas for Big Sister to start learning and preparing for school (it is early, but with Little Guy here now, we don’t want to get behind). Also, I hope to share some of the new recipes I have tried out to have a little variety for our dinner menu. I hope all is well with you and if you have any questions or cool things you have found, let me know! :)