Adventures in La La Land

Advance edition because we're leaving to go camping for the weekend in an hour. (More on that in my final point!) 1. Last Saturday we went to a surprise 30th birthday party for one of our friends. I can't believe we're moving into our 30s. Oy. Anyway, it was a family affair at a lake, and the girls had a blast. Lucy loves  lakes and makes me so nervous. Haha. For being my nervous child, she seems to have no fear in lakes. Lena freaked out about the sand at first, but was actually walking and playing in it by the end of the day. Progress. 2. On Tuesday, we went to the zoo with my sister and her boys. She had free passes, so we didn't even pay a cent! Lena loved all the animals and people and being outside. Lucy, on the other hand, was a total grump. She just does not do well with being hot, tired, or bored. Haha. I know. Does any kid? But she seems to get hot, tired, and bored faster than most kids her age. Drama. You'll notice the 4 year old is in the stro...

1. We added another activity to our Summer Bucket List in Reverse: a Whitecaps game. Lucy got a free ticket for completing the summer reading program at the library, but there were only 3 dates to choose from. Justin drove by the ballpark Tuesday night and saw that Wednesday was "Princess Night" and it happened to be one of the dates available for Lucy's free ticket. We knew we couldn't pass that up! So Lucy dressed up in her princess garb, we left Lena with my parents, and we headed off to the game. Lucy was quite bored by the game, but she loved spotting all the princesses in the park. And I actually anticipated her boredom and brought a Junie B. Jones book, so we read in the grass while Justin watched the game. :-) Her favorite part was the 10 minute fireworks show at the end. Haha. 2. Thursday was my mom's birthday, and it worked out that all my siblings were available (unheard of!) so we all went out for dinner at Rio Grande. I ordered the Mac n' Cheese...

1. Lucy got her first hair cut last Saturday. She loves  her long hair, but it's getting so scraggly that I've been working on getting her to cut it for a while. Saturday night I gave her a bath and she finally said, "I think I'm ready to get my hair cut." I enlisted my mom and we did it then and there before she could change her mind. In the end, we hardly took anything off. Like seriously an inch. But we didn't want to cut off all the curl and were really just looking to cut off the dead stuff. It definitely looks better and still has the curl! 2. This week has been consumed with homeschool planning and prep. I'm probably making it more involved than I need to, but that's just how I roll. On Wednesday, we spent the day at Kelly's house to share plans/bounce ideas off each other. That night, we left the kids with our husbands and went shopping at 6:30 pm. I didn't get home 'til 11:30 pm! Woohoo! Crazy childless moms out shopping 't...

I have written and re-written these plans like 15 times. But I think this is what I've settled on for our first week of homeschool! It's going to be long. Prepare yourself. (And I did a bunch of copying and pasting from a Word document, so the spacing is kind of messed up. Sorry.) We're going to start the day after Labor Day when all the public schools start, so our first week is actually shortened. I figure that's a good way to ease into it anyway. To see a more detailed layout of our daily schedule, read my entry here . Weekly Themes Letter: Ii (We're just going to focus on the short i sound for now - and we're starting with "i" per Kelly's Abeka curriculum.) Number: 1 Sight Words: the, and, it Verse: "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord." (Luke 2:11 NIRV) We will review all of the above every morning during circle time. Tuesday Alphabet Activity:  Igloo match-up, scavenger hunt ...

Lucy turned 4 in May, and could definitely go to preschool this year. However, I'm not totally ready to send her off yet, and I'd really like to start her at Christian school. It seems silly to pay Christian school prices for preschool, though, so I've decided to try my hand at homeschooling. How much can I screw her up at the preschool level, right? Ha. I'm going to be honest and tell you another one of the big reasons I'm not sending her to preschool is that I didn't go to preschool. My mom never sat down and did school with me, and she certainly didn't write up a ridiculous curriculum like I intend to. I started kindergarten at 4 years old, reading and writing and doing just fine. That's another reason I feel like I can't mess Lucy up too bad. ;-) Anyway, I've been pinning homeschool ideas on pinterest for months and finally decided to buckle down and organize them. At first, I was really overwhelmed and second guessing my decision not to bu...

1. I had a startling realization this week that if I intend to start school with Lucy at the beginning of September, I better start working on my curriculum! I decided not to spend the money on a real curriculum, but it's going to be a lot of work to organize my own. I need to spend a day all by myself to work on it instead of trying to squeeze in a little bit of planning during nap time every day. Gotta make that happen . . . 2. I had another bout with depression on Thursday. I don't know what my deal is. On Monday, I massively cleaned the house after a week of ignoring it during VBS. Tuesday we had a "pool party" with a bunch of Lucy's friends, and Wednesday we were busy going to the library and running errands. On Thursday I crashed. I honestly think it's such a fight with selfishness. I feel like I did my duty cleaning the house and doing fun things for the girls so I should be rewarded with a day to do whatever I want. Well that's just ridiculous an...

1. As I'm sure you've already seen, I volunteered at VBS this week. I was in charge of the preschool room and had a blast with those hilarious little munchkins. I also had a blast writing up the "curriculum." It was very low-key, but totally my kind of thing. I have to share one funny story from the week. On Monday, we talked about Noah. I was trying to make it real for the kids, so I told them that the ark must have been loud with all those animals on it. And stinky! I asked them if the animals pooped on the ark and they all thought that was hilarious. At the end of the day, during the review, I said, "What did God put on the ark?" I expected the response to be "animals!" but instead, one little boy shouted out, "poopy!" Lol. Way to go, Teacher.  2. Last year when I helped in VBS, we only made it two days before quitting. Lena refused to go to nursery, so I had to carry her all day, and Lucy was a wreck and spent those two days attac...

We did it! We survived the much anticipated week of VBS! This year, I was in charge of the preschool room. We only provide preschool for the VBS volunteers' kids, so we had 12-14 kids every day. Let me just say I have renewed respect for preschool teachers. I had these kids for 3.5 hours a day and they totally tired me out! Haha. I loved doing it, though, and we had a really great group of kids - no biters, no rebels, no one too cool to do the crafts. We had a blast all week! Here's my recap. Monday was Noah : We made a fun paper plate craft, sang "Rise and Shine" visited some goats at the animal pen, and learned that it's important to do what is right. Click here to see all activities.  Tuesday was Abraham We did a star sticker craft, learned about God's promises, and sang "Father Abraham" of course! Click here to see all activities.  Wednesday was Moses We were highlighting obedience, so we focused on the burning bush and Moses...

Jesus Can Make My Heart Clean! Lesson Who can tell me what our story was about yesterday? That’s right. Rahab. She hid the spies from the bad guys and trusted God to save her when her city got destroyed. I told you yesterday that God has a plan to save us too. Our city isn’t going to get destroyed, but God is going to save us from something even worse: sin. Does anyone know what sin is? Sin is doing anything that the Bible says not to. The Bible says not to lie, so anytime we lie, that’s sin. The Bible says to be kind. So anytime we’re mean and unkind, we sin. The Bible also says that everyone sins. You sin. I sin. Rahab sinned. Moses sinned. Your moms and dads sin. And sin is very bad. Sin makes our hearts all dirty and gross. Sin has to be punished. But like I told you at the beginning, God has a plan to save us from sin and make our hearts clean again. That plan involves Jesus. You guys have heard of him before, right? Jesus lived in heaven where everything is perfect and ha...