this week

This week we started "school" with Aaron. We're just doing a letter of the week and carrying that theme as far as we can : ) We studied ants, our All-powerful God, and did a little bit with apples. On Tuesday night, Aaron came down with the flu so we didn't do all of the activities that I had planned, but that's how life is sometimes. We did as much as we could.

Aaron practiced counting "apples" and putting them on the tree.

We made an apple tart in the shape of the letter "A"

Aaron's not ready for writing yet, so I just had him trace the letter "A" in flour a little bit. This is where I made a rookie mistake on Friday. Jonas needed to be changed and I thought "Aaron will be fine doing this for just a couple of minutes" Cue head-smacks. Yeah, I actually thought that.

This is the result of that thought:

what you can't see in this picture is that the flour is all over the floor too.

I couldn't keep Jonas from playing in it, so I put him in his crib while I swept and mopped the floor. Then I told Aaron to play in their room so that Jonas wouldn't be lonely. When I got done cleaning this is what I found...

Jonas wasn't very happy.
But actually I really needed to mop, so it was kind of a good thing, because otherwise I probably would have put it off... forever.

And if anyone was wondering.... I finished the alphabet plushes! I'm really happy with how they turned out!

Sammy and His Sheperd

Aaron currently loves this book:

Most nights before bed, we read out of children's bible to the boys. But I saw this book a little while ago in our church's book store and picked it up. The sub-title "Seeing Jesus in Psalm 23" intrigued me. I'm so glad I got it.

It's the story of Sammy and his friend who is a lamb in another flock. His friend is redeemed by the Shepherd (even though she is small and sickly) and the shepherd nurses her back to health while Sammy tells her about his Shepherd. The book goes through each verse of Psalm 23, explaining about the Good Shepherd in a way that is really easy for children to understand. The book says it's for kids 4+ but Aaron really likes it. He'll ask: "Can we weed (read) the shepherd book?"

My project

This week I'm going to start doing "school" with Aaron. We're basically just going to go through the alphabet, make sure he knows all of the letters, work on counting, and do lots of read-alouds. I saw this tutorial a long time ago and bookmarked it for just this reason. I thought it would be good for him to have something in his hands he can play with, feel, and squeeze when we're talking about the different letters.

This is what I've completed so far

Obviously I have a lot more to do, but we're going at a slow pace through the alphabet (one letter a week), so I have lots of time to finish, and they don't take that long to do.

One thing about the tutorial... I am fairly sewing illiterate (or I just pick projects that are beyond my skill level, not sure which it is) and this was a super easy project! The only thing I did differently was I made my letters a lot bigger than the creators, about twice as big, but it was easy to make the pattern bigger. She also puts a magnet in each letter, but I didn't do that 1) because I didn't feel like it, and 2) because I was pretty sure Jonas would find a way to eat them.

8K

Last Sunday, David and I did an 8K at McAllister Park to benefit the Wounded Warrior project. An 8k is about 4.8 miles.
For those who live in San Antonio, you know that there was a downpour all morning.

Yes, we still ran in it.
No they did not delay the start time.

We were literally running through shin-deep puddles and places where the water just flowed like a river over the path. Pretty crazy. Did I mention this was my first organized race ever?

Yep, here's the proof. I was going to take pictures at the race, but I realized after we were already on our way, that the batteries were dead.
So this is us. After the race, completely soaked.



But we still had a good time and we want to do more races together. It was fun and nice to do it together.

Ice cream sandwiches

The other night daddy was out hunting, and I wanted to do something fun with the boys. So we went to the store and got some ice cream sandwiches. I'm pretty sure this was the first time either of the boys had had them.

I was shocked that Aaron stayed so clean. Jonas on the other hand.... well, that's where the real story is.

It's a good thing it was bath night!

Art Group

I'm not much of an artist. In fact, I pretty much do not do any form of art ever. Trust me... you're welcome!

But I started realizing that even though art really isn't my "thing" I should at least give Aaron the opportunity to see if he likes it. I saw a couple of blogs where moms would get together with their kids and do art together and that seemed like a really good idea. And I know *lots* of other moms with kids the same age as Aaron. So we had our first meeting last week and it went pretty well! Scratch that.. for the number of kids we had working with paint and other messy things, it went awesome! I think everyone had fun : )

Everyone's art drying on the clothes line

I'm not sure, but I think Aaron may have won the who-can-get-the-most-paint-on-their-face contest : )

The final products. These are Aaron's pictures from the other day. The blue one is tempura paint (there were other colors, but I guess he really liked the blue)and it folded over while it was drying. The orange, red, and yellow one is something called "paint dough" that I made. I saw that project go differently in my head, but pretty much all the kids just made like a lake of paint, which took about 2 days to dry. oh well, they enjoyed it. The other picture is water-colors.

I don't think this one needs any explanation

The box

Yikes! Has it really been over two months since I last posted?? Whoops sorry about that. Life has been busy and it never slows down. But I promise to try harder to blog about life here in the crazy house... I mean um, our house.

Even though these pictures are from a while ago, I thought they were so fun, I would go ahead and post them anyway. At the end of June, I went MI for a weekend and while I was gone this huge box arrived. As anyone can guess... the boys loved the box! We left it in our living room for about a week, until it just got to be too much. Want to know what was in the box??? You'll have to wait until the last picture in this post.

Inside the box were the taxidermied heads of the animals David got when he went hunting out in west Texas last December.

water table fun

We recently got a water table (which I put together myself! Go me!) I'm pretty sure the boys like it... what do you think?

This addition to our yard makes it possible for the boys to play outside for at least a little while (it can get very hot here and Jonas does not do well in the heat).

Good morning momma

Happy Father's Day!

Sing it!

So Aaron has always liked singing, but lately he's been singing a lot more. His current favorites are:
*The ABC song (which he sang about 800 times yesterday... sounds like an exaggeration, but it's not.... I know I might come across as annoyed, in actuality I'm really just brain-deadened by it. What? you say that's not a word? Well, I think I've made my point).
*Zaccheaus
*Micah 6:8

If you've never heard Micah 6:8, it really is fun to hear Aaron sing it. The words are:
He has shown thee, O man
What is good and what the Lord requires of thee
But to do justly, and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with thy God

If Jonas is in the room with him while he's singing, he'll usually sing a little bit of the chosen song then say: "Sing it Jonas, sing it!" hilarious!

And while we're on the topic of Jonas, he is saying a few things now. "uh-oh" is definitely his favorite thing to say, but he also says: "momma", "dadda," "ni-ni" (aka night-night) and most recently he's started to say "amen." : )

We love our daddy

We got ourselves a convoy

The boys just started this today... they'll grab their dump trucks and drive around following each other : )

"I put my shoes on all by myself!"

(yes, they are on the wrong feet. no, he doesn't seem to mind.)

Sad baby... silly daddy

Wanted

Name: Jonas

AKA: Chunky boy, trouble-maker, chunky monkey, cuddly boy,

Favorite things to do: throw things on the floor then laugh, taking/hiding mommy's shoes, running while laughing, taking/hiding the remote, giggling,

Favorite sayings: "uh-oh"

Last seen: grabbing all the food out of the pantry he can reach





Name: Aaron

AKA: big boy (it's the only nickname he'll tolerate)

Favorite things to do: singing, coloring, bossing Jonas around, going outside, reading, giggling with Jonas

Favorite sayings: "It's not an 'uh-oh' Jonas"

"where's my blue car?"

"Aaron's pooping"

"I have a question for you"

"uh-oh spagetti-oh"

Last seen: Driving his tonka truck at speeds in excess of 20 m.p.h.

Parade

Every year, a town in our area has a parade on Memorial Day weekend. I saw the signs about it and thought it might be fun to take the boys. I later found out that three people in our family had never been to a parade.

Aaron and I sat and talked about flags while we waited for the parade to start. We were sitting at the very end of the route, so we could hear it long before we could see it......

Daddy chased Jonas : )

This I do not understand! When I was a kid the parade would go right by our house. So we would watch it and have to fight with like 10 other kids for the candy.... there wasn't anyone near us, so Aaron didn't even have to work for his candy.
Lucky!

Surprised by Oxford

I've been reading this book:

Let me just say.... I love it!!

Broad synopsis... the author goes to Oxford to study English literature and goes on a journey of faith and discovery. I love it because she not only quotes the Bible (and her love for the word is infectious!) but she also quotes Shakespeare, Emily Dickenson, Milton, C.S Lewis and many other classic authors.

I thought I would share this quote. The author is talking to one of her professors about her professors decision to leave the workforce and stay home with her children. Her professor says

""What does it matter what committee you serve on? What promotion you get? That book you labor to write and push to publish, someone will end up resting a coffee cup on, without any care as to your sacrifice. Your children are only young once. Your marriage provides you a chance to put someone else first daily. Such things refine your soul" A faraway look passed over her eyes, and I caught myself remembering that she was a widow" (pg. 233-234)

Summer days

FroYo

A few weeks ago, David and I went to Orange Leaf a frozen yogurt place. LOVE! so awesome! If you haven't been.... I'm dragging you there (that includes you mom!).

Monday, I wanted to do something fun, so after lunch we took the boys there.

After one bite, Aaron didn't want anymore (too cold) so he stole my Nilla wafers instead. Jonas ate a bunch, then it got too cold for him too and every time we offered him a bite, he would violently shake his head : ) Pretty funny!

After we ate, I tried to get a picture of the boys together. I sat them down next to each other and said "sit still, I want to get a picture of you" and they immediately rolled away from each other and started climbing all over the bright orange couch.

Surfing USA

When you think about surfing... you probably don't think about surfing in Texas, but it turns out you can in fact surf the Gulf of Mexico : ) That's what we did this past weekend! We were given the opportunity to attend an adaptive surf clinic by the Wounded Warrior Project. This event was such a blessing to us. We had been talking about getting away for a day or two for awhile, but didn't know when it would happen and the WWP payed for everything, we just had to pay for gas to drive to Corpus Christi!

So we were able to go surfing, kayaking, and boating. One of the nights, the local yacht club put on a dinner for us!

Here are some pictures from our trip

We really enjoyed our time in Corpus Christi and David really had fun learning how to surf. He got pretty good at it too. One of the instructors told him that he had a lot of natural talent and that he should keep doing it : ) I tried it for a little while, and I was able to stand up on the board a few times... for about 3 seconds. But that's ok, I enjoyed reading on the beach almost as much as David enjoyed the waves : )

The local newpaper in Corpus Christi covered the event, you can read their article here. David is in one of the pictures they took... can you find him?? : )