spring WIPs

So apparently we skipped winter this year and jumped right into  "work outside" season??   We've barely been inside, much less on the computer, since the beginning of the month.  I thought perhaps it was time for an update.  If you agree, you should say so and maybe I'll try to update sooner next time!

so...the month's works-in-progress, in no particular order:

WIP#1 is not actually an in-progress anymore, but it was when I first thought of this post, so there.  boy #2 has mastered his 2 wheeler.  oh boy.  this means that I now have to run to keep up with those 2 older boys, while pushing #3 in the stroller.  Well, that or make them wait at every intersection or parking lot for me to catch up.  I'll let you guess which is the preferred method.

WIP#2: We were informed by our insurance agency that our house was basically un-insurable as-is (go figure, it was un-financeable as-is too...).  So instead of installing Hardi Board (our first love) we are doing the fiscally responsible thing and painting. The lower half is a grey/blue/green and is somewhat appropriately named "Mount Etna." All the trim and porch will be "Cottage Cream." In this light, the asphalt top half and painted bottom half look remarkably dissimilar.  In other lights, they coordinate really well.  All in all, even though we were aiming for "not as ugly" I think we in fact ended up with "kinda like it!" This is a WIP that will likely last all summer.  ugh.

WIP #3 is school.  We don't do sit-down learning every single day (more on our field trips in another post), but today we did.  Pictured is our workbox system.  Top row for boy1, middle for boy2, third and fourth for group activities or boy3.

WIP#4: boy3 is potty training.  Which works out well as long as mom remembers to set the timer and pay attention, lol.  We have our good days and our bad, but I presume he'll be reliable by age 2, so yay.

WIP#5: the garden.  My handy dandy father build me 3 garden boxes, and they were promptly filled with sheep poo, straw, a little dirt, and compost.  The town provided 4 trees worth of stump mulch, and we were in business.  I sure hope at least something bears fruit (or vegetable...) because my aching muscles could use the nourishment ;-p  ps: way back in the corner is my rhubarb, blueberry, and bush cherry "orchard" right next to the grape vine that I found last fall.

WIP#6 has been functional for awhile, but just this week I did a little work to make it prettier.  We have yet to decide how to tackle the paneling, but there is paint on the floor, pictures and a mirror on the walls, and a rug almost finished :)

 That's a lot of WIP's.  No wonder I'm tired at the end of the day!  It does feel good to get cracking on a few things though...pun intended.  What do you think?

to hold my pots

My Granny is a spectacular quilter.  Every color is perfect, every stitch tiny.  She hand quilted beautiful wedding quilt for me using squares first pieced by her own mother that has been on our bed for most of the past 8 (!) years and I bet it will last at least another 100.  I think of her often when I am in the sewing room, but my skills don't even come close to hers.  Yet still I create, and it makes me happy.

On the phone recently Granny agreed with me that sometimes "done" and "useful" is better than "beautiful" or "perfect."  I think she was just being nice, but I'll take it!  So, on the day after her birthday (oops), I thought it only fitting to make a little quilt.  A.K.A. potholder.  It looks better (more square) in person, but I will be the first to admit it is a FAR cry from perfect.  But the colors (mostly from a bag of pre-cut strips from my cousin, thanks Amy!) are great and with a layer of batting and a layer of felted wool in the middle, it will be quite useful.  Also, it quickly satisfied a crafting urge that struck once I realized all three boys were playing happily in 3 different corners of the house AND might very well stay that way for at least 20 minutes. 

Happy birthday Granny!  Maybe next time you visit I can get a few more pointers from the perfectionist =)

up to lately

not much computer time happening around here.  Instead, we've:

=)

babies in blue on Easter morning

Happy Easter!  Will update with egg hunting pics if I get a chance this afternoon.  Right now we're off to a church breakfast and then to worship our Risen Lord.

Take a picture, it lasts longer

 At 18 months, boy #3 is doing a lot more of this:

as opposed to this:

and waayyy more of this:

than this:

I thought it prudent to document the last few minutes of babyhood before they slipped right on by.

Boy meets Drill

 hmm, wonder if mom will notice me sneaking in here to check things out?  Papa Nate's saw is a bit loud, but it does keep the brothers from interfering, so I guess it's ok.  Good thing he is used to kids on the construction site!

 

Well hello, pointy red and black thing.

Wonder what this button does?  Bummer, my fingers aren't quite strong enough.  Maybe next renovation time. I hear the porch roof needs replacing, and I am pretty good at climbing!

Granny Boo says this is a DRILL and it is dangerous.  cool!  (insert the loudest toddler version of a motor possible)

Hello skinny silver thingy.  You are very fun to bang.  I do wish the bubble would come out though. Maybe I can use that drill to help the process along?

This would work so much faster if I could figure out how that switch works...

Aw man, now everyone's back and Mom's feeling claustrophobic.  Maybe if I don't look at her she will think I can't hear her saying put the drill down and come eat dinner.  lalalala not listening and DEFINITELY not letting go!

MOB challenge GIVEAWAY!

I just KEEP hearing about this little book and the ladies who have read it and taken the challenge.  So when an opportunity came up tonight for me to receive a copy for myself and a copy for another mom just in time for a new challenge, I jumped right in.  If you saw my facebook post last night, maybe you also have a copy?  If not and you want one, leave a comment and I'll have one of my warriors pick from a hat :)  The challenge starts May 1, and if you don't win and didn't see the offer in time but still want a copy, relax, it's only $3.  If I'd known that I would have been "in" a long time ago, lol.

Call me "Old Fashioned" if you will...

...but there is something about skirts, front porches, and sock darning that makes me smile.  A purring kitty never hurt either ;-p

What I'm wearing: skirt from a free clothes place (!), shirt rescued from a college student who destined it for the trash, bracelet from my mom's cousin Susie (btw, if you see this, I LOVE it and am reminding the H every month that I want matching dangly earrings for my birthday!), newly repaired favorite watch, wedding ring. 

St. Patrick's Day in the Morning

 Daddy graciously informed the boys that since they were about 1/8 Irish, they only had 3 hours to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  Which lit a fire under me to get school going.  We all wore as much green as we could find (too bad you can't see my necklace, it's jadeite and very pretty and was a birthday present a couple of years ago) and I raided the bookshelf.  Might need to flesh out our selections at the library later on today!

In the Bins:
1) St. Patrick's Day in the Morning was read, and Clever Tom and the Leprechaun will be read later.  We talked about St. Patrick and why  he is important, and where Ireland is on the map.
2) Boy #1 did some shamrock math. The alligator and tank escaped destruction for the day because they happened to be green ;-p  I also wrote numbers 0-15 on the backs of the shamrocks and had him line them up in the correct order.  We counted down from 15 to 0 and the resident Saint (ha) was pretty impressed with himself.

3) both boys drew a leprechaun using shape stencils and their own imaginations.  #1 wrote the word on his own, #2 practiced tracing and we talked about "starting dots" for letters. again.
4) boy #2 used an activity first prepared by my very own mother for her first class a few (haha) years ago.  Sorting pickes into their approprate "jar."  Good thing laminate was around, or these would be falling apart by now!

5) Not pictured are their journals, where they taped a 3 leaf clover and narrated back to me the story about St. Patrick using a shamrock to illustrate the trinity.  #1 also sounded out the word "clfr" all by himself before I could spell it for him.  Yay!

6) boy#3's favorite part of the day was going outside, which is where I am writing this post right now!  Hello, wireless router, nice to meet you.  I'd like to say I had a green snack all prepared to go with the theme, but alas, it's just date pieces (my mom calls them turds) and pretzels.  Please note the adorable jersey lined wool cap.  There is a matching diaper cover, but it's under all the other layers of green so you'll just have to imagine the cuteness.

And now there is way too much sun out here to stay on the computer any longer.  hooray Spring!

WOD= Workout Of the Day

1)survey the yard. pick up pine cones and toss to the back fence.
2)prune (with a saw and while balancing halfway up) a lilac tree into manageable height. pile cuttings with preexisting pile of grapevines, move both to brush pile. (see waaay back on the right in the pic)
3)survey the barn pile. sort all (even remotely) useable wood to another pile (offscreen).
4)load all icky wood into trailer.  fill it.
5)rake the newly exposed ground so that all bits of asphalt, nails, etc. are closer to the remaining barn pile and less in the way of children, cars, mowers, etc.
6)pick up rocks and toss them into the driveway for awhile.
7)hang two loads of laundry.

why yes, I do believe that "counts" as a pretty good WOD.  Now to survey the pile of chocolate on the counter.

how to teach your kids to count to 100

or, the year I began my New Year's Resolution in February.
or, maybe by spring I'll be motivated to do more.
or, at least I'm off my butt!

A few of you have been following my new workout plan via facebook.  For the rest, here it is: on the first day, I did one sit-up, one push-up, one squat, and one jumping jack.  That's it.  On day 2, I did 2 of each, and so on and so forth.

Fast forward a bit and here I am at day 31.  I think I can officially call exercising a habit again!  I've skipped a few days, but who doesn't, ya know?  I've made up for it by adding in walks whenever I can and I really do hope that by the time it's warm enough to work out outside I'll be ready for all the work required for the digging of a brand-new garden, trips to the pool, and house renovation that will hopefully surely occur.

Sit-ups are aided by weights on my feet. Also, this is the only reason I can smile during exercise.  You should see them try to jump with me...hilarious.

Push-ups are REAL ones, thankyouverymuch.  I do stuff in sets now, so don't go thinking I can do all 31 at once!  For the record, 31 days ago I couldn't do much more than 10, so there has been some progress.

Squats make me look pregnant.  Which I'm not, for the record.

Jumping jacks are hard for a kid to photograph, as it turns out.

When I'm done, boy#1 writes the current number on the chart (noticeably without much supervision!).  Both he and boy#2 count out loud while I do the exercises when they're not participating.  This has really helped them both remember what number comes next.

And there you have it.  I have no idea what I'll do next, probably a scaled down version of Crossfit.com's workout of the day, as long as hubby is close by to explain the acronyms. I'm nowhere near the fitness level of this pretty mama, but these things take time, ya know?!

in the bins

We have a set of shelves that hold 4 big bins and 8 smaller ones.  Each older boy gets his own row of 4 bins with school"work" in them each day, and the baby gets the big bins on the bottom 2 shelves. Theoretically.  So anyway, when I say "go get a bin" the kids know it's time for a little schoolwork.  These pics were taken over the course of many days, so don't go thinking we're superschoolers or anything ;-p

The grid game, this time with snack instead of stickers (draw a grid, roll the dice, place that many pieces.  Keep going until the grid is full).  Number recognition, counting, patience.

 

Story sequencing with three and four part cards.  These are from when my mother was a teacher in an entirely different state before I was even born! 

 Beginning addition with legos.  I have some paper that is longer than normal and have discovered that if I fold the end over it makes a perfect place to hide answers.  Or sometimes it's a pocket.  For this one, I folded and then cut so boy #1 could fold back individual answers and not see the rest.  He really liked this!

 Boy #1 has not been very interested in drawing for most of his life. The day we got our new dry-erase board that has a slot for papers to be inserted and holders for the markers and eraser changed all that.  To our surprise, he's pretty good at drawing recognizable things, especially vehicles.  Some of them are so great he has to take a picture before erasing.  This one is a rocket ship, inspired no doubt by the Space Exploration book we got out of the free box at the library :)

 Mittens.  I think this day I had him organizing them by # (1-25), but they could also be sorted by color or matching pairs (left and right.  not too hard since they're all solid).  We went on to measuring how many mittens tall or long various objects were.

Beads on a shoestring (or sweatshirt string in this case) never get old. I think he did some patterning.

Ordering dinosaurs biggest to smallest.  We continue to be fascinated and I admit I can name most of the ones pictured here.

I downloaded some "Mitten" things to make my own preschool pack.  This one was matching beginning consonants (the letters are written on the clothespins, the pictures are of animals in the book).  The popsicle sticks have words from the book written on them, Boy #1 matched the word in the text to the word on the stick while I read.  Surprisingly fun for him, as was the rest of the pack.

My mom made this number thingie.  Boy #2 moved most of these marbles to their proper position using a spoon, and then gave up and did the rest by hand.  Good counting and 1:1 practice.  We also talked about all the different possible shades for each color.

Tracing letters and shapes in a bag filled with some hair gel and food coloring.  Note: you don't need nearly as much gel as you would think because you want the drawing to stick around long enough to be completed.  This works on fine motor control and muscle memory. I duct-taped the sides for longevity.

Hmm, bad pic.  this is putting nuts and washers on various bolts and screws that have been first sorted by size. 

Boy #2 LOVES puzzles.  These 2 are vintage, and he made them more difficult the next time by putting them together upside down.  His idea.  I love the colors and crazy shapes of the pieces.

I lined up the clothespins along the can's edge, he took them off and put them in.  Over and over.  I presume eventually he'll line them up himself.  The other 2 boys helped him with patterning the different size pins.

We read a LOT of books.  Boy #1 read his first book all by himself last week!!  I should show you my bookshelves sometime, they're overwhelming impressive.

I got this stacking block tower from an etsy seller.  When put together correctly, the pieces alternate between dark and light.  This one keeps him occupied for a long time, especially if I line up the pieces in the right order (which is not always followed, lol).

rub-a-dub dub, three boys in a tub

and who do you think they be?

...and while they were in the tub I altered a pair of jammie pants into FOOTIE jammie pants for the oldest boy. Yes, I am that crazy talented. Thanks goes to my hubby for paying attention to the kiddos and to my mom for supplying the practically vintage feet fabric.

ps: does anyone care about homeschooling updates? I have a ton of pics but at this point they might be gratuitous. Yes, kind of like posting about the boys just so I can brag about mad altering skilz is gratuitous. The alternative is bathroom reno updates because we're diverse like that. lmk.