The Big Day

Tomorrow is the big day.  Leah starts Kindergarten.  She is so excited she can hardly stand it.  Every morning since this last Thursday she's been asking me if it was Monday yet so she could go to school.  This morning she was so excited because she knew tomorrow was Monday.

This last Thursday we had the open houses at her school and Charlie's school.  I was a little worried because they were in the evening and if you have been keeping track of me at all, you know my morning sickness increases exponentially after 4pm.  I managed to make it through both open houses without too much trouble.

Leah's school was first on the stop.  We found her classroom without any problems and got to meet her teacher.  She had a little treasure hunt set up to help the kids navigate their way around the classroom and get familiar with it.  She was endeared to Leah because of the chocolate chip cookie treat waiting for her at the end of the hunt.  Her teacher seemed like a sweet lady.  We didn't get to talk much with her, there were too many of her classmates coming in and out.  Leah is dying to ride the school bus so our next stop was to get the info on bus pick up and drop off.  We also had to sit through a briefing on dropping our kids off and picking them up in a car.  I had no idea the production that went into taking your child to school.  There are special lanes, and 8 second limit for the child to extract themselves from the car with all their belongings.  Pick up seems even crazier.  The kids wait in a special area inside. I have a piece of paper with her name on it and grade that I hope up to the Car Monitor teacher and he calls in to send my kid out. I don't even leave the car. It's nice but a little crazy at the same time.  Times have definitely changed from when I was a kid.

Charlie's preschool was really nice.  I was impressed the the facility.  I mean it wasn't Ft. Lewis preschool, but close.  I loved that they had a big indoor gym for the kids to play if the weather was too hot or stormy for them to go outside.  The classroom sizes are small and the teachers were really nice.  He is so excited to go to school too.  He doesn't quite understand that he has to wait until Tuesday to start.  He wants to start tomorrow too.

And what am I going to do with my first kid free day?  I'm going shopping for maternity clothes.  I went through all my old close and I had very little I could reuse.  This pregnancy is starting in a different season and definitely a different climate.  So off I am going to the mall all by myself.  I can't wait.  I don't even remember the last time I got to do that without at least one kid following me around.  Well I guess technically I will have one kid with me, but I don't think that really counts.  He/She won't make me crazy trying to keep them out of the clothes racks, touching everything in site or just plain not listen to me.

I will be taking pictures tomorrow of the big day and of course Charlie's big day Tuesday.  I will do my best to download them and get them up here for all to see.

13 Weeks and Counting

Today I'm officially 13 weeks pregnant.  I'm posting today because the morning sickness seems to be abating ever so slightly.  Which means, I'm actually feeling good enough to type.  It's been a rough summer.  As crappy as I have felt, I felt worse for my poor kids.  They have been stuck inside with nothing to do for the last 2 months.  I've suffered through a few outings and playgroups, but it's definitely not the normal summer fun we would have had.  We had grand dreams of water parks, pools, spray parks and the lake, sigh.  They have been tremendously good sports.  Dad was wonderful and took them out on the weekends to play somewhere, just to get them out of the house.  I mean it's pretty sad when the only thing you have to look forward to is an outing to the grocery store.

On some happier news, the kids get to start school next week!  Leah will begin full-day Kindergarten next Monday and Charlie will start pre-school three days a week.  I'm looking forward for them to have something fun to do and also for the 12 hours a week of me time.  At least I won't be wasting those few precious hours in the thralls of morning sickness.  I should be in the clear in another 2 or 3 weeks.

Hmm, that about sums up the boring life we have led this summer.  May I have something more interesting to say next time.

Carnival Fun

 At the beginning of the month, the carnival came to Fort Gordon.  Charlie and I drove past it one morning while they were setting up.  I knew the kids would have a blast and it would be something fun for us to do over the weekend.  They had a small petting zoo, but the kids were a little leery of the animals.  Neither one wanted to touch any of the animals.  I settled with some pictures.

 Leah was totally excited to see the pony rides.  She talks all the time about wanting to ride a horse and when we can go horseback riding.  So I took lots of pictures with her on her first pony.  Charlie wanted nothing to do with them.  He's not taking after his namesake very well.

 This is their first ever ride at the fair.  

 They really liked it.  Charlie was smiling so big.  He didn't want to get off.

 This was Charlie's ride.  The blue truck.  I think we had to drag him away kicking and screaming from this one. I have no idea why he thought it was so fun.

Easter Pictures

I know, better late than never.  Easter wasn't super exciting around here, but I did manage to get a couple of pictures.

The Ants Attack!

Charlie was attacked by ants in the back yard yesterday.  I was inside making dinner when I heard him screaming bloody murder.  I ran out to find his left foot covered in ants.  I brushed them off the best I could then raced him the the water spigot.  He cried for a long time after this.  Derek searched the area for ants but couldn't find a hill. We have no idea where they came from.  I hope they don't return.

Finished! Alphabet Memory Game

    I'd been toying around with making a memory game for Leah using the alphabet.  She's been struggling with retention on the names of the letters.  She can draw them, she can name when she sings the song, but holding a letter up in front of her and asking her what it is...that is a struggle.  I think this as been in the back of my head for a while now, I just couldn't figure out how to execute it and make it durable. 
     Wandering the toy isles of Target with Charlie this past week, I had a flash of insight while staring at the card games.  A deck of face cards has 52 cards in it, the alphabet has 26, double for a memory game and you get 52!  I did the math....twice....  Anyway, I realized I could glue pretty paper onto the front of the card and use the already printed design on the back of the face card to make the set AND it would be strong enough to survive my kids playing with it, at least that's the theory.  So away I went cranking out the cards.  I think this is one of my fastest finishes yet! 
     I've been looking at way to many blog tutorials lately and decided, "what the heck?" I'm going to make this into a tutorial.  So that is to come, I have the pictures, they are downloaded from my camera and organized in a file.  I will get them on here soon.  Not that I expect anyone to find this silly blog and make it.  It just seemed like a fun thing to do at the time.

Finished! CD Cases

A while back, while preparing for this move, I decided it was time to go through the huge bin of Cd cases I have and get rid of them.  The Cd's themselves are in those travel cases in my closet, but I couldn't part with the stupid plastic cases and the cover art.  So I started hunting around the craft stores and so forth for a container and a way to KEEP my Cd inserts and Cd's organized, accessible, yet with a minimized foot print.  I found these fantastic boxes at Wal-mart, I wish I'd bought one more, because they don't sell them anymore, much to my dismay.  I would love to say this was a fun project...but it really wasn't that fun.  Tedious is a word that works well.  I can't even tell you how many hours this took me to complete. I'm sure my time would be better spent elsewhere, like with my kids, or working out...but my OCD is satiated, at least for now.