Daddy's Orange Girl

Jill has definitely become a Daddy's Girl these past few months. Her favorite thing to do is pick out her orange shirt and Daddy's orange shirt so they can be matching. She's always so proud when they wear their "matching" outfits. Thank you, Daddy for playing along so well!

Adam writes...

Today Jason and Beth summarized our recent lessons for a notebook page. I wrote their summary on the whiteboard for them to then copy. While doing this, Adam was drawing on his whiteboard, a common activity for him. He usually draws pictures or practices his letters or writes his name. I honestly wasn't paying much attention to him as he worked until he was two lines in and I realized he wasn't writing random letters or doodling. He was doing the same thing as Jason and Beth. He was copying the Revolutionary War summary. I was shocked, impressed, and proud. And little does he know, but he just showed me a little of what he's truly capable of, hee, hee, hee...

What he's written: The Colonists thought the British were unfair. They wro...and then he ran out of room (in case you're wondering, They wrote the Declaration of Independence, fought the Revolutionary War, and won!) I do find it somewhat amusing that he doesn't write left to right but rather zig zag - left to right on line one, right to left on line 2 (the T and S are reversed) and left to right on line three and right to left on line four ending in the U of unfair which continues on the next line. He's adorable and I can't wait to see what he does next!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I've been fighting it since Halloween. We do not celebrate Christmas until after Thanksgiving. But today, we went to the mall and discovered Christmas cannot be avoided. Santa is already there! Why fight it...we just embraced it and rode the reindeer.

We even watched the carolers and clapped along...Merry Christmas!

Adding our John Hancocks

I am loving our study of American History. I'm learning right alongside my 1st and 2nd graders. We just read and read and read some more. It's been so much fun! Today we made blueberry ink and signed a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Where are the adults?

I traveled an hour and a half north today to visit my cousin who was in town. This was a last minute trip but I hadn't seen her in over two years, and we don't know when it will happen again so I made the drive with the kids. It was a great evening just chatting, catching up, and being with family. You'd think I'd come back with a picture of us together or at least of her...nope.

I took pictures of the kids but there are no adults in my photos except this great one of Great Grandma Mae chatting with Jill. Next time, Amy!!!

The Cheesy Head Tilt Pose

Jill is obsessed with this tilt the head, cheesy grin pose! It was cute at first...but it's just not coming across on camera as much as it does in person (it's actually very adorable to watch her tilt her head and say cheese!) See for yourself...

I'm hoping we can get her to move on to something else very soon!

Our Piano

We recently acquired a free piano. I am soooo grateful. We had a large electronic keyboard that was great but a key recently broke off (we have four kids, who knows what happened?) but I really wanted to teach our children how to play the piano. To the rescue - my mom finds out about a free piano, woo hoo! Best part is that my amazing husband gave up a Saturday morning to drive an hour north. He organized friends to help, and then used his amazing strength to move our piano and get it safely to it's new home. Thank you, Andrew!
I have already taken Jason to his first lesson. He's practicing regularly and doing great. And Beth then takes her turn all on her own and copies everything he has done. I guess I should begin her official lessons, too. Even Jill loves to play. This picture was taken after she took the book out of the bench, set it up, climbed onto the bench, and began playing. She's ready, and if you've seen her super long fingers, you'll know how happy we are that she's eager to begin playing, too.

Free to be you and me...

We were listening to "Free To Be You and Me," and Jason asked me to explain the song. For those who don't know the song the part that confused him goes like this: Take my hand, come with me where the children are free...He wanted to know where they are going, what land is this. I started explaining that it's not a specific place but more a way of thinking. They are trying to encourage children to be free to be whatever they want to be. Jason then says, "but we live in a free country!" I then tried to explain that even though we are free, people may think it's wrong, or strange if you wanted to be a ballet dancer or if Beth wanted to be a firefighter but that's not wrong or strange and we should be free to be what we want to be, and that is why people write songs like this. I told them to follow their dreams. Adam then pipes in, "like me! I had a dream last week that I wanted to be Buzz Lightyear and then for Halloween, I was!" Yes, Adam, you were, and I pray you will always be free to follow your dreams!

Our 2 year old...

I was singing a silly made-up song to Jill, "you're my baby, baby girl..." and she says, "No, I 2!" So that's it, she's no longer a baby, she's 2.Many call this the "terrible twos!" (This is Jill refusing to take photos on her birthday. I gave up and fortunately that night after dinner she was more than happy to smile. See top photo.)Me, I love this age. It has it's challenges but it is so much fun! Every day she discovers something new, says a new word, or surprises us with how much she understands. We went to Sea World yesterday. That night when Andrew got home, Jill ran up to him and said, "ale, ale." One of her siblings interpreted for us - whale! She was telling Andrew about Sea World. I was impressed because we had been home for over 2 hours. Jill is not a big talker. She wasn't saying much at all at 18 months, and although she has tons of words now, she uses them sparingly. But if you spend some time with her, you will soon realize she communicates very well and understands everything you are saying...even when you don't want her to. For example, I can ask Andrew if we should do cookies for dessert and she'll run over to the pantry, open the door, get out the stool and start looking for cookies!

Her current favorite things include Elmo, baby dolls, coloring with markers, and her pacifiers (aka papi).

She uses her pacifiers for downtime if she's tired, needs a cuddle, or when she's mad. She's been known to put herself in a sort of timeout just her and her paci.It's time to accept that Jill is growing up. She can climb onto this equipment with absolutely no help...and get back down. (That really freaked me out!) She sleeps in a big girl bed (although it is with her sister, which was both their choice).

And she's becoming the beautiful, creative, intelligent, amazing girl God created her to be!

Love you, Jillian!

Harvest Fair

We had a blast at this year's Harvest Fair. The kids loved dressing up and fortunately chose mostly from costumes we already owned! Jason chose his clone trooper costume to match with Andrew's Chewbacca shirt. I did buy shirts for Andrew and I since it's been years since we've dressed up although Andrew ended up being everyone by the end of the night... Beth wanted to be Pocahontas last year. We bought the material and then realized that not only do neither Andrew nor I really know how to sew, but the machine we recently had been given wasn't working. We ended up borrowing a costume from a friend so she was Pocahontas. But this year she wanted us to make the costume we were supposed to make last year. Well, the sewing machine is at Grandma's being fixed (turns out it just needed a good tune-up, and we'll all be learning how to use it very soon) but we can't let her down two years in a row so Andrew got out the hot glue gun. I cut, he glued and wow, we did it! For Adam, I was really rooting for a fourth year of Nemo, and he was all for it until we found the Buzz Lightyear costume I bought some months back. He not only wanted to be Buzz for the Harvest Fair but he slept in Buzz Saturday night and wore it to church! At least he had Nemo face painted on him :) And then there's Jill...she has a few hand-me-down costumes to choose from but it took her no time at all to pick, "mooooo." She was very excited to be a cow. She was not as excited to meet a cow (that's our pastor in there). In fact, in the great jousting battle between cow and chicken, she was rooting 100% for the chicken! In Conclusion, whether we were getting a hole in 6, jousting with dad, riding the swings, screaming on the pirate ship with friends, or bouncing down the bounce house slide, we had a fabulous night! (And here we are all sugared up and exhausted! Good Night!)