Christmas 2013 at home

For the first time in our family's history, we stayed at our home for Christmas.  We had a wonderful time, but had to learn to make some new traditions.  

We learned to make a tripod from some boxes to take a family portrait.

What a good looking bunch!

The kids always smile better when one of us is behind the camera acting like a crazy person.  That is sure to get some good smiles.

Here's the sweet girl in her Christmas outfit from Nana.

It was the year of the baby doll for her.  She received a Bitty Baby, which she absolutely loves!

 The rest of the family got her baby clothes and accessories so she is all set.  She is such a good mama.  She takes her baby everywhere she goes.

There were lots of great expressions like this one from the boys.  They are so thrilled by Legos, Minecraft, and the Hobbit.

I cooked my first solo holiday meal and it turned out pretty well.  We ate a little later than planned, but that was minor.  We even ate on our wedding china.  The boys didn't really understand the significance, but it was nice just the same.

We had a good time just being together.  We watched a lot of Star Wars, built a lot of Legos, and ate a lot of good food.  Merry Christmas!

Miss K

Miss K is very talented in many areas.  She is developing lady like habits like carrying a purse.  We found this little purple bag at Wal-mart and she just had to have it.  She hangs it on her arm and toddles all over the house.

She gets excited about shoes and putting on her clothes in the morning.  She is definitely a girl.  

Never fear, she can play with the boys.  Here she is wearing the Incredible Hulk gloves.  

That's just what every girl needs.  The other day she was playing with a baby doll and a tank.  She will be a well rounded child.

She LOVES spaghetti.  Actually, I make it with rotini because it is easier to pick up.  Nonetheless, she loves it!

Remember how she used to be a picky eater?  Not anymore.  She still isn't crazy about vegetables and rarely eats meat, but she has found some favorite items.  She loves bananas, red bell peppers, raisins, spaghetti, cheese quesadillas, apples, oranges, and milk.  That girl drinks a lot of milk.  

And she definitely needs a bath at the end of every day.  

Fall soccer

It's that time of year again.  Fall soccer season has begun, except we only have 1 boy playing this fall.  I can't remember the last time we only had one kid playing a sport.  It's actually kind of nice not to be spend 5 hours at the soccer field, but don't tell the boys.  

J and S decided that they wanted to try basketball so they are sitting out soccer and waiting patiently for basketball season.  

W is playing in U10 division.  As always, I am so nervous for him when he moves up in divisions.  They base it on age and not grade, but he seems to be able to hang with the other boys.  Miss K stands on the sidelines yelling, "Go, go, go."

He has a fellow homeschool buddy on the team this year.

Their team is always short on players so he has played every position from goalie to forward.  

He even practiced in the rain!!!  I can't tell you how big of a deal that is for him.  He is like a cat and hates rain.  He just looked at me and said, "I am a man now and I will play in the rain."  Ha!  I guess daddy's "man training" has been paying off.  

Daddy has been trying to intentionally model or talk about "man" like behavior for the boys.  They take turns going to breakfast with Daddy and talking about these things.  I guess it's working.

He did inform me the other day that he is too old for a kid's meal.  They get so big so fast.  

First Day of School

So I am really behind, but here are our first day of school pictures.  Everyone started on different days, so we are a little staggered in our routine.

Here's a shot of everyone before the first day of home schooling.  It's our 4th year as a family.  We are switching our core curriculum and our excited about the changes.

W is starting 2nd grade.  He still loves super heroes.  All his school supplies have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Ninjago on them.  He's doing Saxon Math 3 and studying ancient history this year.

Big J is starting 5th grade, his last official year in elementary school.  Sigh.  He is starting an online math class, with an actual live teacher.  His class runs from 7:00am to 8:30am.  He is not thrilled about the class times, but other wise is enjoying himself.  

Here's S on his first day of Kindergarten.  He's going to the same private Christian school that W attended for Kindergarten.  Miss K had to join in the picture.

He loves his new dinosaur backpack from Nana.

He was really excited to go to class, until we actually arrived.  Then he froze.  He's been great ever since.  He loves the constant activity and seems to have made some good friends.  His favorite part of school is "chasing the girls, of course."  Oh my!

Miss K started Mother's Day Out this year.  It's Mondays and Wednesday mornings.  I haven't had a child start this early, but she is rather busy.  She gets quite busy when we are doing school.  She dumped 700 q-tips into the fan.  Another day she strung 300 jumbo sized cotton balls all over the house and into the toilet.  She has been enjoying school and comes home ready for a nap.  I think it's been good for everyone.

Our home school co-op started this week, so our schedule is very full.  I am teaching 2 Lego Simple Machines classes.  The boys all seem to be enjoying their various classes and meeting new friends.

Our new babysitter

Our family has a new babysitter.  He's really wonderful.  He knows my routine.  He's quite dependable and pretty cheap.  It's Big Brother J!

I had a sitter cancel on me and I had a doctor's appointment.  The husband was home, so I thought we would try him out.  I gave him explicit instructions.  He did great!  

I told him he had to pay attention to her the whole time.  He decided to program his Lego Mindstorms robot to talk to K.  He even uploaded her picture to the robot.

He is not your average babysitter.  K loved it!  He programmed his voice into the robot to say "Hello baby girl!" when she hits a button.  I never had a sitter program a robot for me.

She just loves her biggest brother.  She's walking now and loves for him to walk her down the block.

He does everything except change diapers.  He has no interest and looks at me like I am crazy when I bring it up.  Oh well!  I will just have to settle for the robot programming babysitter.

He's asking when I am going to hire him again.

4th of July 2013

We went to Fredericksburg for their 4th of July parade.  The weather was lovely for Texas.  

Here's the girl and I  in our hats.  I have to apologize to everyone at the parade.  We did not know that our daughter had contracted the highly contagious hand foot mouth disease so we were toting her all over the Hill Country.  Sorry for spreading germs.

We met up with some friends at the parade.  My friend helped me diagnosis our ailment.  That was a new one to me.

It was a great parade with all sorts of country charm.

The Pacific War Museum had a group of men in uniform in the parade.

What's a parade without a double decker tour bus.  I think every small town fire department was there with their sirens and lights a-blarin!

We had a great time and weren't melted when the parade was over.  Later in the evening, the boys all headed out to the fireworks.  This is the first year that we didn't use ear plugs to help the tender ears cope with the fireworks noise. The girl and I skipped the show as we had an early flight the next morning.

E's 10th birthday

After our last blog post, we drove to my sister's for my oldest nephew's birthday.  

Here's my sister and baby K.  The skin tones is a big difference between myself and my sister.

E, D, and J all posing before church.  I can't believe how big they have gotten.

Nana and Grandave were there with their dogs.  Baby K really enjoys Toby.  Thankfully, he is quite the trooper and lets her pet him.

Cousin A and S like to play animals and horses together.  W was there, but somehow managed to avoid the camera.  

Nana and her 2 granddaughters.

Cousin A made a playmat for baby K with toys for her.  It was so sweet.  Baby K seemed to enjoy the attention.  

We had lots of fun celebrating cousin E's birthday.  Just for my memory:  E had received a large gift for his birthday so his parents toned down the birthday celebrating.  It was a small party at his home with family.  I think it was a great party.  Apparently, he was a little disappointed.  

One evening, he was sad for some unknown reason.  My helpful son says, "Are you sad, because your parents didn't give you a REAL birthday party?"

We had a good laugh over that one.