Bring on the Fall!

Okay, summer was fun but I am soooo OVER IT!!! When is it going to end?!?!? Summers in Tucson are loooooooooong and hooooooooot! I'm excited for all the Fall-ish things we can do.

1. Drink Pumpkin Spiced Lattes
2. Visit Apple Annie's Orchard
3. Wear slippers
4. Light vanilla scented candles around the house
5. Bake
6. Take a walk outside and not sweat
7. Drive with the windows down
8. Watch the new season of tv shows (Fringe, Walking Dead, The Office, Parks and Rec, Grey's Anatomy, Parenthood, etc)
9. Watch Football
10. Eat pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin rolls
11. Wear light sweaters in earthy tones
12. Celebrate Thanksgiving
13. Have a Pie Exchange at the park
14. Play a Turkey Bowl tournament the night before Thanksgiving
15. Eat Caramel Apples!

There are so many things I love about Fall!!!!

What are your favorite things about fall???

So, we've decided to Home School. This decision did not come lightly and I fought against it for quite some time. But after much prayer, I know that this is what God has called me to do. I am nervous but excited. I've found some really helpful websites and blogs that I've been reading. I'm anxious to get started but I know my kids are still too young. But I did find this website where they give you ideas to do with your toddler to get them ready for school that I'm going to start doing. I'm planning on going to the Library tomorrow to get the book Crunch Munch tomorrow. I haven't been to the Library with Evy yet so we'll see how it goes. I really want the bible to be the core of home schooling because in the end it is the most important thing to study. I found this website called ABC Jesus Loves Me that is a free Preschool Curriculum that gives a solid foundation of the bible as well as education. So, I'm going to look more into that.

My goal is to start a Home School Co-op. I think it would be really cool to get other moms who want to home school together for support and encouragement. I'm not sure how to go about it yet. I would like to set it up kind of like a real school and each mom would teach a subject or something. Not too sure yet how  it will work out but I'm getting pretty excited about that. I'm already thinking of ideas on how to set up the front room in our new house as a school room.

If anyone has any advice or ideas about home schooling or any curriculum you could recommend, please let me know.

Well, I'll leave you with a few pictures of the best kids in the world!

HAVING FUN!

I know I must say this a lot, but I do have the best kids in the world.

Evy has been learning so much. I almost think she has a photographic memory. She remembers everything she sees. She knows what's coming next in a show we've only watched once before, she uses her words to tell me anything she wants, she's always wanting to learn. She points at everything wanting to know it's name. She knows most of her body parts and knows almost all of the animals and the noises they make. For an almost 17 month year old, I think that pretty impressive. She's obsessed with Elmo now. She will finally sit though one Elmo's World. I try to get a lot done in those 20 minutes she gives me. For the most part we spend a lot of time outside...even in this heat! We take lots and lots of walks around the neighborhood, we color on the porch with chalk, we pick flowers, and inspect bugs (we like to step on the ants), we check or pretend to check the mail (she loves to put the key in the hole), we lay on the grass and look at the clouds, we dance in the rain. Sooooo much fun!

Jack is such a ham. I love that boy so much. I call him my boyfriend. He's always smiling. Even when he's so tired or hungry he still manages to give me a smile. Or if he wakes in the middle of the night he smiles at me with his eyes still closed while I'm changing his diaper. Such a silly boy. He rolls all over the floor now. He sees something he wants, he'll roll til he gets it. He's getting pretty fast at it now too. He's not crawling yet but he might as well be. He's not as big of an eater as his sister was. He's not too interested in solids, but we still try. I just love this age.

So, that's what has been going on with us. We miss daddy, but we are making it okay without him.

XO

PRETTY THINGS - CLOTHES ADDITION

So, I have started to become majorly addicted to clothes!! So, I thought I'd share with you a few of my favorite dresses, shoes, and accessories with you.

Now introducing Pretty Things - Clothes Addition


1. Pretty white dress

2. Pretty black dress

3. Pretty ring - love the color

4. Pretty skirt

5. Pretty colors

6. Pretty hair pieces

7. Pretty outfit for Evy

8. Pretty cute bracelet

9. Pretty beautiful

10. Pretty little shoes

All clothes and accessories are courtesy of Shabby Apple. My new favorite online store right now. Cannot take my eyes off it. 

Have a great week!

RANDOM FACTS

1. Really like eating fish right now

2. Becoming majorly addicted to couponing

3. So many ideas running through my head about starting a Home School Co-op

4. The smell of Jackie's spit up is on me right now and I'm LOVING it!

5. Cannot wait to move into our new house

6. Pinterest is my new favorite website of all time

7. Mad Men is my new favorite show ever!! I want to dress like them!

8. Had some Frosted Mini Wheats in the middle of the night because I couldn't sleep

9. Once the kids are down for their naps and the house is straightened, I love just hanging out in my room, on my bed, watching Friends, and searching the web.

10. Playing tonight at a worship event and I'm really nervous!

July Cuteness

Just wanted to share a video of my cute kids. :)

STRESS FACTOR

The transition from having extra hands with the kids to having only my hands has been a little difficult. I will admit that I got pretty stressed out nearly everyday this week, but I am trying to stay optimistic. I know it'll get easier. I just need to get back into a good routine, but I just haven't quite figured it out yet. I think the stairs in my house just really throw everything off. I cannot wait to move. I daydream about what it is like to live in a one-story. I imagine all the things the kids and I will do when we live in one story. Not that I can't do those thing now, but having a two-story makes things a whole lot harder with two kids under the age of two. It's just a fact. Since Jack isn't holding his bottle quite yet and needs to be fed and rocked to sleep in his room for naps, I have to leave poor Evy downstairs all 16 months of her by herself and the whole time these crazy thoughts run through my head!


What if I left the toilet seat up?
What if she sticks something in the outlet that I still haven't gotten around to plugging up?
What if she's jumping on the couch? She could fall and break a bone!
What if she gets into the cabinet with all the cleaning products?
What if she gets onto my computer and deletes everything?
What if she has my phone? She could totally break it...or drop it in the toilet!!
What if she MAKES A HUGE MESS!!!


Yeah, stuff like that. It's a big stress factor. Those things would probably be running through my head even if we had a one-story though. So, maybe that's a bad reason to hate a two-story. But here are a few more reason I hate it.

We hardly ever play in Evy's room. It's really sad. And I tell myself "today will be the day that we will go upstairs and play in Evy's room." But it NEVER happens. And I'm totally to blame for that. I want it to be a natural thing. I want her to be able to access her room whenever she wants. And right now she can't because of the big gate in front of the stairs.

Carrying two kids up and down the stairs. Now, I hardly ever carry both of them up and down the stairs but there are those times when I just don't want to make 2 trips...it's terrible...I know.

Forgetting something either upstairs or downstairs. This one sucks. I hate when we've gotten settled upstairs and then I remember that I forgot something very important downstairs. Then I have to take Evy back down with me because I can't risk her falling down the stairs.

We have to buy double of everything. We have 2 changing stations, two diaper genies, we have one potty for Evy but we really need two if we're going to potty train her, we have two tv's, we had two microwaves when Jack was a newborn to warm up his bottles...you get the point

Having to go downstairs in the middle of the night to get Jack a bottle if he wakes. WORST. THING. EVER.

See, those are just a few examples of why living in a two-story sucks and why not having those extra hands during the day especially in a two-story is stressful. So, I'll be happy in October when we can move into our new one-story.

That is all.