makenna's b-day

Makenna was one lucky girl this year. She was able to celebrate her birthday three times: once in Michigan on her actual birthday, once when we came home with her dad, and she had a shared birthday party with her sis. Talk about one spoiled little girl. Here's a few pics to highlight all three occasions.

Birthday celebration #1 Grandma made the fabulous cake!





presents

hmmm...what's in the bag from Grandma and T-Rex

Surprise!!!!

Birthday celebration #2 B-day at home with homemade ice cream cake



all the loot at home

Birthday celebration #3

B-day party at Mickey D's

The girls' b-day party

We had a birthday party for the girls' this year at Mickey D's. We had such a great turnout. I was so thankful to everyone who came and made their birthdays memorable.

School's Started

PS... Long post..and pictures ahead....a whole first week of school in one blog post

School started this last week. AHHHHH!!!! I have a 6th grader, 5th grader, 3rd grader, 1st grader, preschooler, and a toddler. (Of course, pretty soonyou can a newborn to the list too.) I'm working hard this year to be organized. I have most of our school plans done until Christmas which it totally unlike me. Hopefully I can stay on schedule. I'm trying to throw some preschool/toddler activities into it all. Not to mention we started a few new curriculums this week like SOS and Math U See. (However, we haven't been able to really do Math-U-See cause it's on back order. Whoops!) And we haven't started real history yet because we still haven't gotten all of our books. I know....I shouldn't have waited till the last minute to order them, but well...that's me. So far, it went smoothly this week, and I think we all enjoyed it. At least this is the first week I enjoyed the first week of school.

The girls working on dotting their I's with our new Do-A-Dot markers. I love those things.


I made my first sensory bin. It was school themed with letters, colors, school supplies, beans, and pom-poms, and some other stuff in it. As you can see Jakeb like it too. What's funny is that I saw even Luke playing with it the other day too, so it's good for all ages if you ask me.


Luke working hard on A Beka language


The boys got a new Science program, Switched-on-Schoolhouse, and I'm sure they like it a lot more than me teaching them science. It took us awhile to figure it out, but we got it going and now they're working hard at it.


Here's Blake typing out his spelling words in Microsoft Word. Afterwards, he was able to go to Spelling City and play some games. The boys are using a Keyboarding program to learn to type, so I thought by typing the words once a week, it would help in both areas. All three older boys made above a 92% on their Spelling Test this week, so see...it did help.

Klaire playing with her Guidecraft stack n sort puzzle


Kaleb working hard on his first grade A Beka Arithmetic. He did at least 1/3 of it last year, so that's why he's already so far in his book. I'm hoping to switch to Math-U-See for him later this year.


Here's our Pop-Beads that the girls were sorting by color. Klaire had A LOT of help with it, but Makenna aced it.

Here's Makenna simply working on her pop bead necklace.

The next day she did it by shape. I think she liked doing that better.

And well, I had to take a couple of pictures of Klaire playing dress up.....with the boys dress up stuff.

And here's how I found Klaire quite a few days...completely tuckered out form all the hard school work she had to do.

Here's she fell asleep while they were watching Leap Frog. How uncomfortable does she look? Crazy!

PS. Just so you know why there's more pics of the girls than boys.....they still let me take pictures of them. The boys fought me when I went to take pictures. That's why there is lovely pictures of the back of their heads. Here's proof of what they do when I take pics.

oh and one last thing. I've got a lot of catching up to do on the blog. I'll get to it eventually. I've got birthdays and lots of summer fun we had! Eventually I'll get around to that.

Wacky Day

I can't believe Makenna let me dress her up wacky. You have to understand this is the girl who gets made when I don't let her pick out her own clothes. If I make a suggestion of shoes or anything, she gets very grumpy and tries to refuse whatever I want her to wear which then always ends badly for her, but one day she'll learn. ANyways, she actually got into the mood to dress wacky and wow, did she look great! She did so good with it, she won!! Who-hoo! that's my girl! Kaleb looked adorable too, by the way, but you have to admit, you can do so much more with girls on wacky day! I mean, the hair alone....wins the prize!

Winners

This is the older Master Club from earlier in the year! Yes, that's me. Go ahead, get a good laugh.

The obedient little girl

(Names have been left out to keep the privacy of the individuals.)


This is the story of a little girl who told her mom that she wanted a hamburger at Burger King. After sitting down and seeing her sister's chicken nuggets, this little girl proceeded to get upset that she didn't get chicken nuggets. "
But, Little Girl, you said you wanted a hamburger, so that's why you got that. You must eat it all or you will be in trouble," said the little girl's mom.
The little girl went on to pout ever so slightly, but then noticed the apples in her bag, and went on to eat those. Then she discovered the caramel dip that went with the apples. "Yum, these are good," she thought, "Mmm...maybe they will even make my hamburger tasted better. My mom said I HAVE to eat it, and well, it's worth a try."


The little girl daringly dipped her hamburger in the caramel sauce. "Well, here goes nothing," she thought.

The little girl's younger sister looked on in disbelief and complete horror. "Something just doesn't seem right about the hamburger in that brown sauce. Ewwwww!" the younger sister thought. The younger sister glanced over at her mom, "Oooooo, she must think so too. Her face has the face that looks like she smelling a dirty diaper."

"Wow, this is pretty good," beamed the little girl who had just finished her first bite of her caramel dipped hamburger.

"Hey, Mom! you gotta try this. It's great! It's a thumbs up meal! Really! What? You don't believe me? I'll let you try some if you want!" the little girl tried to convince her mom.
Umm...no thank you little girl. I'll just, ahem...sit here and watch you eat....(and try not to gag). I"m just glad you're..ahem...obeying and eating your food like a good little girl." said the little girl's mom with a strange look on her face.

"Hmm, I wonder if mom's not feeling well." thought the little girl. "She's looking a little green."

Girl boots

For those of you who know my family, you know that my boys love boots. It all started back when Blake was little, and he had a pair or yellow rain boots that he called his "santa boots." He eventually called them his "pirate boots." Since then he moved on to many other different boots, and if I would buy him a new pair of rubber boots that fit him, he would wear those too. Jakeb also wears boots, but I think that's simply because they are easy to put on, and no other reason than that. Kaleb, however, loves boots too. He's been known to wear them to bed, outside with shorts, and just about anywhere. I thought that the boot infatuation would stop with the boys. I never thought my girls would like boots this much, but well...it's happened. They've bought into the boot craze too.

and then we have Klaire who insists on wearing boots too. AHHH!!! Hey but at least they're stylin' boots!

The obedient little girl

(Names have been left out to keep the privacy of the individuals.)


This is the story of a little girl who told her mom that she wanted a hamburger at Burger King. After sitting down and seeing her sister's chicken nuggets, this little girl proceeded to get upset that she didn't get chicken nuggets. "
But, Little Girl, you said you wanted a hamburger, so that's why you got that. You must eat it all or you will be in trouble," said the little girl's mom.
The little girl went on to pout ever so slightly, but then noticed the apples in her bag, and went on to eat those. Then she discovered the caramel dip that went with the apples. "Yum, these are good," she thought, "Mmm...maybe they will even make my hamburger tasted better. My mom said I HAVE to eat it, and well, it's worth a try."


The little girl daringly dipped her hamburger in the caramel sauce. "Well, here goes nothing," she thought.

The little girl's younger sister looked on in disbelief and complete horror. "Something just doesn't seem right about the hamburger in that brown sauce. Ewwwww!" the younger sister thought. The younger sister glanced over at her mom, "Oooooo, she must think so too. Her face has the face that looks like she smelling a dirty diaper."

"Wow, this is pretty good," beamed the little girl who had just finished her first bite of her caramel dipped hamburger.

"Hey, Mom! you gotta try this. It's great! It's a thumbs up meal! Really! What? You don't believe me? I'll let you try some if you want!" the little girl tried to convince her mom.
Umm...no thank you little girl. I'll just, ahem...sit here and watch you eat....(and try not to gag). I"m just glad you're..ahem...obeying and eating your food like a good little girl." said the little girl's mom with a strange look on her face.

"Hmm, I wonder if mom's not feeling well." thought the little girl. "She's looking a little green."