4 Year Old Family Party

The day after the kid's real birthday, they spent the entire day with grandparents. I dropped them off at my mom's house in the morning, where they went to the library and playground. I went home and WORKED. I was sooooooooooooo exhausted at the end of the day from cleaning. But the house looked really good when I was done, and I told myself that it probably wouldn't get such a thorough cleaning like that again for another month.

Steve's parents picked the kids up at 1:00, took them to yet another park, bought them an ice cream sundae and took them to their house for more playing. They made dinner for us, and when Steve took the kids to the store to buy stuff for the family party, I went to my monthly book discussion group with a group of homeschool moms.

On May 1st, everyone came over at 1:00. Steve used his smoker for the first time, so we had smoked sausages and brauts, and he cooked chicken, hamburgers, and hot dogs. I had made a broccoli salad, Steve's mom brought a bean salad and we had corn on the cob. Simple, but I couldn't work up the energy to do anything else.

The rain held out until right before everyone started heading home, so I breathed a prayer of thanks. Our house is really tiny, so there was no way everyone would have fit inside. The kids all played well together in the sandbox, on the swings and slide. I think they played catch for a while. Actually, I feel like I was running around most the time and don't really know what everyone was doing.

The kids were so excited about opening up presents this year. Some things they received: Jared- bike, books, games, G.I.Joe dress-up, squirt guns, Lego sets, a Slinky and new P.J.s. Alexa received a lot of the same, plus a big bubble wand, and other dress-up things.

Of course, the huge present for Jared was his long awaited drum set. He actually said he wanted Steve to set up his drum set before he'd eat any cake. That is just unhead of around here.

My friend stopped by with her kids. I snapped a sweet picture of her and her new baby girl.

I hardly took pictures throughout the day. It was just too hard with all the running around. After most people left, Steve's parents stayed and we had leftover BBQ. I read to Jared while everyone else played a round of Alexa's new game, Mouse Trap. It was a tiring but fulfilling day. I've added a few pictures here of Jared playing his drum set for the first time.

Happy 4 Year Old Birthday!

The kids woke up on the 29th, their first day of being 4, to chocolate donuts. The kids, especially Jared, LOVE donuts so it was a wonderful first birthday present.

Steve went into work for a half day, so I threw in one load of laundry and spent the rest of the day just playing with the kids.

Jared put together one of his many creations, including using the tongs to be the highest tower in Gotham City.

Then we had lots of fun taking silly pictures of ourselves with the camera. 

Alexa has spent many, many hours over the past few weeks writing letters and words. She was so proud of herself for writing the word hot on her own.

When Steve came home, we went to a close playground for a little while. Actually, this is a place we've gone to for two years but Steve had yet to go.

When we had visited Toots Grill in Downers Grove in December with my mom, she registered them for the kid's club birthday. So, we headed there for a burgers and fries birthday dinner.

Jared's favorite part of the evening? When the train brought by a cupcake with candles while the Happy Birthday song played over the speakers.

Then there was the horse ride before heading home to open presents.

They LOVED opening their presents this year. Let's see; Jared received a Batman, Batmobile, knight's costume and Star Wars Lego set. Alexa's presents were a baby doll set with high chair, car carrier, play pen and sling, Monkeys Jumping on the Bed game, and cash register.

We also sang Happy Birthday and actually almost didn't eat any of the cake, but right before heading to bed, they remembered the cake. 

Happy Birthday my little man and lady.

Things We've Read and Watched in April 2010

                                                                       BOOKS

Batman: Race Against Crime
Batman: the Story of Batman
Going Bananas
The Giraffe the Pelly and Me
The Butter Battle Book
Gerald McBoing Boing
Hunches in Bunches
Batman: the Mad Hatter
The Supreme Souvenir Factory
Wiggling Worms at Work
The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig
The Tale of Thomas Mead
Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch
I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today: and other stories
The Dark Knight: Batman VS. the Joker
Harely Quinn's Shocking Surprise
Flying High
Batman: Double Trouble
Batman: the Birthday Bash
Cool Cat
Houndsley and Catina and the Birthday Surprise
Arthur's Camp Out
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Man Behind the Mask
Harry's Pony


                                                                                CD's or Books on Tape

Sleep Out
American Tall Tales

                                                                              DVDs

Superman: the animated series
Batman: Holy Batmania!
Alexander Graham Bell
Scooby Doo Meets Batman
Liberty's Kids
Between the Lions Season 1
The Best of Beakman's World

What We Read and Watched in March 2010

               BOOKS

Stories of princes and princesses

Batman: the copycat crime

Batman: race against time

What were castle's for?

Stories of ghosts

The Dark Knight: Batmans' friends and foes

Batman: the Perfect Crime

Arthur Loses a Friend

The Missing Tooth Mystery

Mush A Dog From Space

Arthur Lost in the Museum

The Biggest Bear

Dinosaurs Before Dark (A Magic Treehouse Book)

Roald Dahl's The BFG

Batman: the Mad Hatter

A knight at dawn (A Magic Treehouse Book)

It's Justin Time, Amber Brown

The Twits (Roald Dahl)

Stories of knights

Batman: Heads or Tails

The King's Stilts

Batman: Time Thaw

Dinosaur Deals

Little Bear's Friend

Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!

I had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew

CD's OR BOOKS ON TAPE

The Long Way to the New Land

Fairytale Favorites in Story and Song

Stories of Pirates

Animal Tales

Ghost's Hour, Spook's Hour

DVD's

Between the Lions, Season 1

The Ant Bully

Flowers, Plants, and Trees

Jim Henson's The Storyteller

Muppet Classic Theater

Reading Rainbow: The lady with the ship on her head

Irish-American Heritage

Let's talk about it - a trip to the emergency room

Mister Roger's Neighborhood: What do you do with the mad you feel?

Reading Rainbow: Space Case

Roald Dahl's The BFG

Digging up Dinosaurs

Magic School Bus Hops Home

Batman: the animated series

Bambi

Morton Arboretum and Ice Cream Sundaes

When Steve goes away on a business trip and is gone overnight, I try to plan a lot of special things to do throughout the day to keep our minds off missing him, and for me, to help the day go by faster. With the kids not taking naps, it can be a long 14-15 hours straight with them, and by the time I go to sleep, I'm wiped out. Often on those days, I won't even have energy to read for a while before I go to sleep.

The 19th of April was one of those day. A meet-up.com mother's group I'm with had a meet-up scheduled that day at the  Morton Arboretum. We had been there only once before with the kids, and I was anxious to check out the Children's Garden. 

The kids enjoyed the pond set up for kids to dip their hands into, although many moms started to get stressed out about the kids throwing rocks into the pond, so we left after a short while.

We headed over to another section that had a slide and other equipment. Alexa liked this contraption in the picture below, although we could never figure out what it was for.

There was a small pond that had walking stones going across, so we walked across the pond to the other side where there was a sign labled Adventure Walk.

There we found these wonderful tree-house type things with enclosed ropes leading from one to another. The kids spent quite a bit of time climbing back and forth before we felt nature calling.

On the way out of the bathroom, we met people from our group, so we went back to the section of the park that had the slide. Once again, Jared became very clingy and crying, so I wasn't able to chat that much with the other moms. I think he just gets overwhelmed after awhile with other people around him. Alexa didn't last that much longer and started saying she wanted to go back to the tree houses. Oh, well. At least we were out of the house. We found some other lower ropes to climb on, went back to the tree houses for a little while and headed to the car. By now it was 1:00, and I was HUNGRY.

Jared fell asleep in the car, so I picked up burgers and fries in a drive-through and we ate at home. They watched some cartoons on TV for awhile and then played outside. We discovered our caterpillars arrived, and we looked at them for while. We ate an early dinner, and then headed to McDonald's for a sundae.

There always seems to be other kids here for them to play with, and it's one of the only places they don't actually beg me the whole time to play with them. So, I was able to read my book for awhile. YEAH!!!!

Fun Things We've Been Up to the Last Two Weeks of April

The  last two weeks in April have been fun, busy weeks. I fogot to post that on the 17th we went to Steve's brother's house for a party celebrating his new job. The picture above is from a Curious George game I playe with the little kids.

There was a family there with four boys and a baby girl, besides the four cousins, and their cousin who lives next door, so there were many kids. Jared especially loved so many older boys to wrestle with. The cousins have a huge trampline in the back, and the kids must have spent several hours on that throughout the day.

Jared also loved sneaking up to his cousin's room to play on his drum set.

My sister-in-law baked a fabulous cake.

I've included yet some more hard-boiled egg pictures. If your kids are like mine, it will buy you at least a good 15 to 20 minutes time if you give them hard-boiled eggs to peel and eat. (They're trying to cool their eggs down so they can eat them faster!)

Here's a picture of one of Jared's building creations. He's super into Batman now, so everything he builds becomes Gotham City.

A few days were pretty warm outside, and after I had used the hose to water the grass seed, the kids asked to use it to fill up their sand buckets.

Of course this led to wanting to dump all the water into the sandbox (which really didn't have much sand left in it anymore).

And that lead to this....

The farm program that we go to every Tuesday morning has been such a wonderful way for the kids to see how fast baby animals grow up. It's fine to visit a farm on your own on the weekend once in a while, but when you come to the same place every week over a period of a few months, you really get to notice things that you might not have otherwise. The kids get to see the same ducklings and chicks and watch them change from week to week. These past few weeks we've been able take out the adorable baby bunnies and watch them learn to eat grass on their own.

We've also watched the piglets and lambs grow bigger every week.

Almost every week the kids get to hold the baby chicks and carry them to their outside pen  for some sun.

Alexa has really started to impress me with her drawing. She goes days without wanting to draw anything at all, and then suddenly she'll get inspired to draw. Her drawings are becoming much more realistic. I'm most impressed because she has never once had anyone show her how to draw things. I've always wanted their approach to art to be as natural as possible. She told me the drawing below was called The Girl and The Ant.

On the 24th, we headed out once again to Steve's brother's house for the cousin's birthday party. All of his kids have birthdays within six weeks of each other, so we celebrate them all on one day. The family with all the boys were there, too, and Jared was so excited. I think he thinks they are his cousins, too. I don't have many pictures of that day, mainly because Steve and I kept an eye on the kid's outside and just tried to get adult conversation here and there when we could.

The last really exciting thing which happened the last week of April, besides their birthday which I'll write about in a separate post, was getting our caterpillars in the mail. We ordered them from Insect Lore, and so far all ten caterpillars are alive and crawling around. Actually, as of this morning writing this post, most of them are in a crysalis state. They grow ten times their size in seven days. It's been so much fun for the kids (and me, too!) to watch them grow and eat.

 It's been pointed out to me by several people that, yes, many school kids get this opportunity to do this, too, True, but they have to contend with twenty-five other kids crowding in to look, and of course once you've had your turn, you need to sit down. No popping out of your chair anytime you want to look at them.  I guess you could argue that you could do this at home on your own, too. Yes, but with being gone most the day, after school obligations, and then homework, you don't get much quality time, there too. Once, again, I'm reminded of how blessed a life we lead.

New Homeschool Group's First Meeting

As of the current date of writing this post, the kids are almost a week past their 4th birthday, so I am weeks behind posting about our lives. I'm going to quickly crank out several posts highlighting the best of the past few weeks. I am proud, though, that I've met my goal of fairly consistently keeping up with this blog for a year. Now my goal is to post even more details about how the kid's learning is evolving and feature a weekly detailed day.

So, on April 23rd, we meet with a new homeschooling group we've joined. It's called Chicagoland Homeschoolers Inclusively Learning and Discovering. Our first meet up was at the Lakeview Nature Center - a favorite hangout of ours. We met with two other families and another came right when we were leaving.

At first we hung out at the playground, just getting to know each other. There were quite a few little girls around Alexa's age, which was nice because we always seem to be around little boys. Jared wanted to hang out more by himself at the edge of the pond, throwing rocks into the water.

After a while we stopped in the nature center and checked out the small animals. Jared was upset the shark exhibit was mostly taken down.  Then, he wanted to throw bread to the ducks, but I had forgotten to bring it. We had crackers, which I assured him the ducks would love just as much, but that didn't matter. He had a nice long temper tantrum, so I couldn't talk with the moms any more. We went down to the pond where Alexa fed the ducks, and Jared still carried on. It's so hard when there is literally nothing you can do to help him see the logic in crackers are just as good as bread for the ducks.

Since he wouldn't calm down, we decided just to go, but after I said goodbye, he decided he DID want to go back down to the pond after all and feed the ducks crackers. It wound up being rather pleasant after all at the end, with the other kids joining us. We even found a dead fish washed up on the shore.

I don't think I have any pictures of this, but the following week we met up with the group again, this time there were three new families, at Wilder Park in Elmhurst. I don't have pictures because the kids wanted me to run around the park with them almost the whole time, and then Jared got whiny and crying once again, so I didn't have much time to talk with the other moms. It's very frustrating when your kids are hanging on you all the time and all the other families' kids are playing on their own or together. I have to keep telling myself they won't always be like this, and I'll miss them wanting me to play with them. Alexa did warm up to one 7 year old girl and was excited about having a picnic with them afterwards, but then we had to leave early because Steve's parents were coming to watch them so I could go grocery shopping. Ah, well.