A Break

Sometimes ,when the weather is beautiful, you need a break from addition families, consonants, patterns, long vowel sounds and the indoors! You need to run off some energy.
Practice your ballet form.

Act a little silly.

Or just take your coupe for a spin.

Then when our wiggles are out, we are ready to get back at the spelling words, counting objects,
six addition family, memory verses, world geography, drawing, coloring, reading groups......man I'm gonna need another break ;-)

Making Progress

Over the past three weeks we have made some major progress in our home improvement projects. The first thing we finished was painting our existing living room/dinning room that is now the school room/ dinning room. These rooms used to be a pale yellow, and now they are called "Sand". Appropriate as our yard and surrounding areas are covered with sand. We moved the piano onto this small wall and are excited for Maddie to start lessons next year. Sam wants to play the drums, but I'm not setting up a drum set ;-) (My piano is not normally this cluttered, but we haven't gotten everything on the walls, so things are just stacked in various places right now)
The fireplace and mantle wall. Now that we painted I need to change the mat around our picture since it clashes with the wall a bit....I'll just add that to my list!

This is our school room wall. We are getting two small desks to go on either side of their school cubbies. We are also going to hang bulletin boards above their desks and a write and wipe calendar above the cubbies.

This is the dinning room area. We need the table to seat five now and I love the extra space in here! You can't really tell in this picture, or real life unfortunately, but the wall with the hole in it is a shade darker than the rest of the walls. We were trying to do an accent wall and it is there, just very subtle.

I want to get a hutch for this wall. Again I'm adding this to my list....

And this is the new room! We moved furniture in once the floor was complete so we can all have a little more space and we are going to trim it out as we can afford it. This area rug goes in my dinning room, but we are using it in here until we can get a bigger one for this area. I found one I liked and we may go grab it this weekend. (This is the view coming through the front door and looking right.)

This is the view looking from the far wall of the new room toward the kitchen. We have some pictures to hang....now we are back to the list!

And this is looking straight on from the far wall of the house. We brought the kitchen center and train set down for Megan. She really needed something to play with while everyone is doing school and where I can still keep an eye on her. So far we have loved having some toys in the family room.

And this is the wall where the garage door used to be. One of the first things on my list is to finish out the windows and get blinds. The sun sets right into these windows, and the room gets really hot in the afternoon with nothing to block it out. I picked some indoor shutter type coverings so I'll be excited when they get put up! We have really enjoyed all the extra space and have already entertained in the new room twice! I'm proud of all Troy's hard work and persistence. We are really excited now to get it finished. Next weekend we plan on putting up the exterior siding and painting it. Then we will start to finish up the inside. It's very nice to have the house livable and cleanable again!

Cars 2 Party

Well Sam had his big Cars 2 party this weekend, and I didn't take one picture....Ultimate mom fail! Let's just say there was alot going on with lots of kids at our house and picture taking just wasn't on my mind. I did however get a shot of the cake that Maddie and I made before everyone got here. We were having an outdoor party at 5:30 pm. At 4:15 it started pouring rain. It rained for about 20 minutes soaking everything in the yard, making the humidity soar and encouraging every mosquito in Bay County to come out. Troy got towels out and got most of the water off the trampoline and the kids did enjoy jumping on that, but most of the party was spent in the house with little boys and girls chasing each other with light sabers and play swords up and down the stairs! The kids had a such a great time that none of them wanted any cake or ice cream. So the adults enjoyed it while the chasing continued. The kdis were all very well behaved and really enjoyed just playing with one another.
I did get a shot of Daddy and the kids enjoying the trampoline on Saturday. The kids have jumped themselves silly every day since it has been set up. Sam is very blessed to have so many good friends show up for his party, and I was blessed to have Saturday and Sunday to recuperate!

Sam turns 5

Sam has had an awesome 5th birthday so far! He got Star Wars Legos from Mimi and Papa.
A yummy chocolate cupcake from Sugar Crave.

And a special fishing trip with Daddy!

We are gearing up for his big party this weekend. He invited lots of his Sunday School Friends and can hardly wait!

Karate

Sam started a Karate class about 3 weeks ago. Last night the much anticipated uniform came in. He was very excited and has tried to wear it continually since he got it. At class he has learned how to jump rope well and do a cartwheel. I'm really glad he has found something he loves doing! This is about 32 pounds of pure intimidation!

3 Little Monkeys

We have been enjoying some awesome weather for the past few weeks!

We decided to celebrate by climbing trees, Playing outside on our ride-on toys,

(Megan even put shoes on for the occasion!)
and pouting?!?Well most of us are enjoying it anyway!
Happy Fall!!

Megan and Me

It's just been Megan and Me at the house for the last 3 days.

Man oh man has it been quiet!

Maddie and Sam are on a special trip with Don and Mary to Crystal River. Megan has been looking everywhere for them. We will both be excited when they get back!