100 days

Happy 100 days of school!

Man down

Jack bumped his hip on our hutch this morning and cried 'Man down, Man down!' I had to laugh first and then tend to the bump.😉
Have a good Thursday.

Random thoughts

I saw more kids today at preschool with their fingers up their noses than I can count, seriously. I just love when their little fingers are shoved way up there and they are digging for 'heaven only knows what' and I ask if they need a tissue and they respond 'no'. I had to change my reaction to, 'go get a tissue and wash your hands!'

Dylan got a homework assignment today that I am actually looking forward to. He has to do laundry, woohoo! It's for his Family and Consumer Science class. He has to sort, check for and treat stains, wash, fold and PUT AWAY and we get to grade him on his job performance.

Dylan's school called today at 10:30 am and reported him absent? What? It scared me to death because he left this house at 7:45 am to get on the bus. Apparently, he wasn't in his assigned seat when the teacher checked attendance. He was talking to a friend in a different seat and she marked him absent? That seems so ridiculous to me. She knew he was there because she saw him in a different seat, maybe she could have marked him tardy, but absent?

Grants's teacher brought a tear to my eye (in a good way) during conferences today when she showed me a piece of Grant's schoolwork. He wrote a sentence about me and drew a sweet picture. She said she had to show it off to the other kindergarten teachers :-) Jack's report at his conference was glowing. He scored in the accelerated area on some reading comprehension tests and is in the top math group. He and Grant have wonderful, caring teachers who I am truly grateful for.

Matt and I attended an open house at city hall tonight. It was a little appreciation/get to know each other gathering for the city council and the various committees that support Gahanna. Matt is serving on the landscape board for Gahanna so off we went (me, reluctantly. I hate going places where I don't know anybody). I was ready to crawl into a corner when I spotted someone I thought I knew...thank heavens! She taught at Stonybrook a few years ago so she and I chatted the rest of the time. I thanked her for saving me and she said the feeling was mutual :-)

Dylan babysat his brothers twice this past week and did a great job. When we got home, no one was crying or complaining, so we called that a success!

I put up a few decorations for Valentines day. Grant and Dylan made the paper chain above my sink together during a babysitting adventure. Notice the open window? 60 degrees in January?






'That's all' for now, as my Papa used to say.

Instagram pics

Blue...Lily with Jack's winter coat on


Object...Jack's Solar car



Friends...out with the 'funsuckers'



Big... Lily

Reproduction of the mantis

I ran an errand and left Jack and Grant home with Matt. Grant had to read his easy readers to Jack and Jack had to read a library book to Grant.
When I walked in the door, I got the full run-down on how the preying mantis reproduces. The library book was a factual (maybe too factual) account of the life of the preying mantis. The boys were very excited to tell me all about how 'the male sprays his sperm foam around the egg' and how the 'female releases an egg' and 'that's how they make new babies'. WOW!
Great, now can we erase the word sperm from your 'too young' memories for a few more years please. Who knew that my six and nine year old would have their initiation into sex education from a library book about the preying mantis?

Breathing

Do you breath deeply when things are frustrating? How about when you walk to the basement to get something and see a HUGE stack of laundry piled up in front of the washing machine? Or what about when you get home from the grocery and walk in the door only to realize you are out of paper towels or soap or shampoo? Or, dare i say it, about something your kids have or have not done? I breath deeply quite often about little things, about big things, important and trivial. It makes me feel better, I guess it's a release of some sort.

I just read a story about breathing and it is so relevant to me right now. It was from a blog 'A Holy Experience'. She writes about breathing through childbirth, through motherhood, through hardships. She reminds me that God knows our every breath our every worry.
"Just let everything that comes on, trickle on through. Don’t hold on… Just breathe and let go.
We breathe slow together, letting what He gives in this moment fill us, run through us, move on out into the world.
I don’t know how many times a day I still midwife myself and these children, “Just take a deep breath… Breathe.“"

In the same way we breath out the frustrations, we should then be filled with His love and understanding and forgiveness.

Just today at preschool, a little boy was upset about ripping his Martin Luther King Jr. Newspaper and he was crying. What were my words to him? 'Breathe, just breathe'. It made him feel better.

It works. In through the nose, out through the mouth.....

The truth

Truth be told, this is what I want to do today.





That was last week after school one day, but shouldn't we all be doing that today when it's below zero outside?

Three wins

Three basketball games yesterday and three wins!
Grants game was first and 'the Shamrocks' were awesome. He has a team made up of a lot of the youngest brothers in families. The boys were so excited, there was a lot of hopping going on as you can see in the picture below (Grant has the blue shoes that are not touching the ground). Grant even fell off his chair one time when he was sitting out :-)





Jack played next and had a great game as well. He is a great defender and is quick on his feet. He is in the purple in the middle of the pack #0.


Dylan's game was last and it was a nail biter, but so fun to watch.



They won by 2 points and Dylan really started being aggressive picking up 4 fouls. He's #4 below.


We got home at 9:00 pm, everybody showered and we celebrated with some cake and ice cream and then everybody crashed!

In addition to the busyness of the games, both sets of grandparents visited, Jack went on a hike and then bowling with scouts, my mom and I did a little shopping, we had lunch with my sister and niece and nephew, my dad's brand new car incurred two bruises:-( , Matt installed a new garbage disposal, we watched the first half of the buckeye game, and had dinner with Matt's parents.

Life is good (except for the car mishaps)!

Instagram pictures

Movie: the pacifier


In My Bag: a mess



Night: my 'knight









Play: jack grant and lily wrestling in the back yard and cousins playing dress up



Patterns: stack of pillows I'm sewing for the boys' school project

Puzzles

Matt bought me this little table at a sale, I gave it a makeover and it is currently serving as our puzzle table.

We just finished that bad boy last night, 750 pieces! We just leave it out and everybody works on the puzzle when they have a minute.

We picked up some puzzles at a flea market this past summer and they are coming in handy now to pass the cold, grey winter days.

When do boys become men?

Teacher: Hey man, come on over and put your weekly reader together with me.
4 year old boy student: Actually, Miss Lori, I'm not truly a man until I turn 10 years old, maybe 11.

Marsupials

A conversation at preschool last week:
Teacher: Why do you think koalas are called marsupials?
Student: I don't know, maybe because they eat soup.

Basketball

Today was the first basketball Saturday of the year for us. Grant had practice at 9:15 am and brought a friend home to play. These two are hard core sports fanatics and played every sport imaginable outside today because of the warm weather, hence the muddy knees and elbows and hands and faces.


Jack was dropped off at a friends house to play at 10 and then he had practice at 2:00. I picked up Jack at three and Matt dropped him off at a birthday party at 4. We picked up Jack at 6:30 and headed to Dylan's basketball game at 7 which they lost by 3 points. I love watching him play ball. (Blue shirt, in front of boy with white shorts)





Somehow I still managed to Zumba, paint a table Matt got at an auction for me, clean the house, do two loads of laundry, and go to Meijer. Dylan took down the Christmas lights outside, played basketball with a friend at the park and shot some air soft guns with Matt outback. It was a fun, busy day, and will repeat in some form every Saturday until mid March.

Nevertheless

The rain, much to my boys' dismay, is washing away all of our beautiful snow. Over break, Jack made a giant Santa hat out of snow in the front yard to welcome visitors for a party we were having. He spelled the word 'Santa' out of sticks too. Here's what left:


Pretty sad. I guess the upside is that the temperature is in the 60's today, the boys didn't have to wear boots to school, I have a window open in my house, and the sun did shine for just a little bit.

My devotional this morning was about always trying to find something to be thankful for in all situations by ending a complaint with a 'nevertheless' and then a positive aspect of the problem. Like 'the snow is melting, nevertheless, the temperature was very warm and springlike'. Or how about a very irritating day with a coworker (perfect example for my day)....nevertheless, I have a job. Hard, but worth a try.

I've gotta run and switch the laundry, nevertheless, we have clothes to wear and a means to wash them. This could be really hard....

Pics from week

I joined Instagram. I'm posting a random picture a day for a month according to some prompts I found on a website.



'Light'


'Early' riser


'Work'


'Relax'


'Indulgence'


'Favorite' pair of little red well loved outgrown cowboy boots


'To do' return library books

Happy Monday

This picture makes me smile, hope it brings a smile to your face too.

Babies

On New Year's Day, I got to meet my cousin's new baby girl...in a red tutu! Are you ready for this?


She was the happiest baby, she smiled all day long, and I got to hold that sweet baby for a long time (longer if my mom and sister didn't keep snatching her-lol). I love me some babies!

I got a little extra time this week with my baby because I got to walk him home from school (brother Jack usually walks him home, but he was home with the dreaded step).













He's not as little and he doesn't wear red tutus, but he'll do just fine :-)

Movie

Last night when the boys were playing a shoot-em-up game in the mancave, I was upstairs watching a great movie, Hope Floats. It is one of my faves. I love Sandra Bullock and especially Harry Connick Jr.! Matt joined me for the last half of the movie after the boys went to bed and witnessed lots of tears from me. You know, that movie is sad. Her dad is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's, her mom dies, her husband cheated on her with her best friend, her nephew was abandoned by his mother, her daughter is mad at her and got beat up at school by big Darlene, you get the picture? The part that sent me to the ugly cry was when the little girl, Bernice was chasing after her daddy's car and crying because he was leaving without her and didn't want her. She is just standing in the street with her little suitcase, crying. I know, so sad. Don't fret though, there are bright parts of the movie, mostly in the form of Harry. He is sunshine in the gloom and thank heavens for that. Matt asked me why I liked the movie if it made me cry. I really don't know, it's a girl thing I guess. It has a great ending, a happy ending and maybe that's why I like it. When good trumps the bad, I'm in.

Pledge

Today, my preschool students were asked why we say the pledge of allegiance.
A little boy with a slight speech impediment answered so sweetly and I had to share, please read it phonetically.
"We say da pwedge of awegence cuz it tews peepow we wove wiving in Amewica."
Translation: We say the pledge of allegiance because it tells people we love living in America.
Doesn't that just warm your heart?! So sweet.

Africa

A little boy in my preschool class came to school yesterday with a new shirt on with the world on it. I was talking to him about his shirt and he was showing me where we live and where Africa was and so on...I told him I had a cousin who lived in Sudan with his family. He asked if I had been to Africa to see him and why he lived there. I told him that my cousin was a missionary.
Student: What's a missionary?
Me: It's a person who travels to places where people don't know about Jesus and teaches them about who He is.
Student: Well....... (Long pause while rubbing his chin)....who's Jesus?
Me: He is God's son.
Student: Oh.
Me: Do you go to church or Sunday school?
Student: Well, I know about Christmas!
Me: Oh, Christmas is when Jesus was born.
Student: What?! What's a missionary again?
Me: It's a person who spreads good news about Jesus to people who don't know Him.
Student: Oh. (Pointing to the toy on the floor) Is that our new classroom toy that Santa brought?
Me: Yep.
Student: Exit stage left :-)

And that was the extent of my witnessing for the day, short and sweet.

Hello, infectious disease?

Three boys, three prescriptions, three strep throat victims, we can't get rid of it!
Grant- 3rd time in 2 months
Jack-2nd time in 1 month
Dylan-1 time

Two boys back to school, one on the couch feeling miserable.

One mother bleaching everything in sight, washing every towel, buying 8 new toothbrushes, contemplating having our dog checked for strep to see if she is the contaminator (seriously, somebody told me that could happen), and/or calling infectious disease to come and de-germ our house.

What the heck?