This Week Things

This week we counted down to Daddy getting home from his conference in TX.  And we facetimed.  A bunch.  I manned up and kept the kiddos busy and fed Saturday - Wednesday, and the night before Josh got home, Anna said she didn't miss him as much as she thought she would.  I did that good a job at solo parenting!  We all had low expectations for that. HA!

We had friends over for hours and other days we visited with buds at the park because temps in the low 80s in June are AWESOMELY awesome. 

And we played in the hot tub.  Lasa loved trying out her new arm swimmies.  Too bad they don't make swimmies for wide open toddler mouths.  This child kept choking and sputtering on water when her mouth would go under.  Sometimes grappling at her goggles in fear when she couldn't catch her breath quick enough. Makes water play a tricky business.  Cute beyond all words, but tricky. 

Josh got home late Wednesday night and we hit the road running Thursday morning with Lasa's second specialist visit of the week.  The day before ,we did a post op visit at the ENT and her hearing was back to normal and all looked good.  Yesterday, we checked in at the pediatric cardiologist to follow up on what the anesthesiologist had concerns about.  

After an echocardiogram, pulse ox checks, an EKG, and lots of tears throughout,  

it was determined that this child's heart is fit as fiddle and "stone-cold normal."  Glad for that reassurance! 

After picked the big kiddos up from a friend's house, we let them break in Lasa's new pool/puddle.  HA!  

That afternoon, Josh let me sneak away to to watch a movie with my sweet Cathy and we ADORED the flick we picked, Wonder Woman.  And that evening, we made a quick bolt across town to pick up a friend's free pass for Noah's Friday plans for a water park.  While out, we dodged downpours and gazed up in awe at beautiful rainbows, the brightest I have ever seen in my life!

The pics don't do them justice ... they were so bright in different moments and scattered all over the areas we traveled.  It was a special night!  Thankful.

Lasa's Lovely Room Reveal

This was the front bedroom room once upon a time. Guest room.

Then we moved Noah into it when we needed the bonus room for homeschooling.

At some point, Noah upgraded to a loft bed needing more floor space for Legos ...

And then he moved out again when we needed the room for fostering.

The room got slightly less boy themed for our second and third placements.  And then it turned baby once Lasa came long.  But as you can see, it mostly stayed neutral in color and mood.

I have been itching to finally make it more intentionally Lasa's room for months.  This summer afforded us the free time to tackle that project.  Pretty happy with how it turned out.  Take a look! All it's missing at the moment is Lasa's name that Josh is going to scroll from wood soon and those two greenish square shelves you see on the pink table by her crib.

Looking forward to the next morph of this room when the crib moves out and the toddler bed moves to that wall, freeing up much space.  After that, when she moves into a twin bed, she will have Anna's Pottery Barn bedspread that Anna just traded out for her own new room color scheme.  It matches that green photo collage in the last pic ... trees and birds in polka dots, green, pinks, and blue. :) Darling!

More Hair

At this point, I should have created a Hair category with how I keep returning to this topic ... and probably always will.  :}  Guess I will start with this one and go back and relabel the others now.

Piggyback Ponytails.

Another day of same parts, I just let loose some of the ponytails and twisted.  Easier on the hairline.

 

Just messing around one day.  Tried some flat twists there on the bottom going into the braid.  If you look hard you can see them. Ha!

 

I LOVE this one ... I was trying my hand at flat twists again with much more success!  Unfortunately, those loose curls created more breakage than she's had in awhile when it came time to detangle. :( 

So back into a more protective style with another flat twist attempt.  Not bad!

Got inspriation for this many parts by a box braid style.  Braids take a while, so I went with box twists instead.  The bottom three are braids though and have held up wonderfully through sleeps and naptimes and play.  We are on day 3 of this 'do.

Love a reliable go-to - I can tell how much her hair is growing because of how much bigger these twist looks now than they did months ago.

That's a Wrap, Gr. 2 and 4!

Well, goodness gracious!  I almost forgot to post our post school year post! Let me crank this out real fast, because in a word, this year was a breeze!  

First, school stuff we wrapped up in May.  Anchored Enrichment.  These pics were from the Award Ceremony.  Noah was voted Biggest Dreamer ... which is absurd, but that's what happens when you let 4th and 5th graders try to assess Superlatives for each other.  Noah literally mouthed to me from the stage, "I don't know what this means?"  HA! 

Thankfully, Anna's teacher picked the awards herself for each kid so she got something more thoughtfully descriptive of her - the RockStar Student Award.  Her teacher also stopped to find me in the audience and made me raise my hand before telling this little snippet. She had the kiddos name what they want to be when they grow up -  Anna explained that she wants to be a missionary in a refugee camp.  You can imagine the Awwwwwwwwww sound that this elicited from the roomful of parents.  I was proud of my sweetie, yes, and that is really and truly what she means.  But I also know it was mostly just fresh in her mind because we had just finished reading a book about someone in a refugee camp.

Proud of BOTH my big kid babies and what great classmates they are among their peers.

The next thing Noah and Anna wrapped up in May was a year long Spanish class they attended on Wednesdays.  They learned so much!! Anna enjoyed it the most.

And finally, the bulk of all our giant exhales regarding what we wrapped up in May - schoolwork!  Both kiddos finished strong in Math, each in their respective levels of Right Start Mathematics.  Anna completed her year in April, so we rolled right on into her third grade math to fill time to the end of the year.  Noah's math level cranked up the challenge at the end of the year and he took it all in stride.  Here's a shot of him multiplying fractions like a whiz. We will be sticking with Right Start Mathematics for both kids next year as well, BUT we might shift Noah on up to a computer based math curriculum called Teaching Textbooks midyear, depending on how we like the next book coming out and how we are feeling about it. It's actually still being written at the moment, which is a little unnerving. We shall see. Exciting, though, to see Noah so near to middle school level work!  Both kiddos did maintenance work online throughout this year with xTra Math again.  Noah tested out completely of their 2 second challenge levels a few months ago, in fact. Anna is jealous.

The rest of our subjects (History, Geography, Reading, Language Arts, Writing, Art) ended right on time in May too via this year's new curriculum, Trail Guide to Learning.  We did the first year of the sequence, Paths of Exploration, and thoroughly enjoyed each and every unit, of which there were 6.  We dove in deep studying all facets of history and exploration via Columbus, the Pilgrims, Jamestown, Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, and the Oregon Trail.  It was a great year!  We will be sticking with the curriculum for next year as well, Paths of Settlement.  Also, we continued with greek and latin roots and word parts with our Word Build curriculum and will finish that through morning work maintenance this summer. We will continue with this with their online option next year.

At year's end, we happened to be on a field trip to Mammoth Cave in KY.  It was perfect timing!  On the way home, we stopped for our annual last day doughnut tradition.

Other honorable mentionables the kids spent time working on this year included cursive, independent devotions for Bible, audiobooks, AR reading and tests, and just getting used to doing more daily tasks independently.  And rolling with the toddler punches that required many breaks and interruptions in our days.

This summer, we have enjoyed having less on our Have To Do list each day, but I have given the kids silent reading each day, audio books in the car, and a smidge of morning work just for healthy routine and maintenance.  Mostly, this has involved cursive practice, Adventure Science TV vids,  Salsa episodes on computer, journal writing, and some vocabulary work.  We have a new writing curriculum to do this upcoming school year that I think we will get a head start on in July.  Thinking about waiting til mid August to start our school year for 2017-2018.  That's later than I have ever done before, but I am more tired than I have even been before too. Ha!

Just June

In these lazy June days I have lagged in blogging.  Attempting to catch up now, I'll just post June happenings all at once, with brief notes.

Our neighborhood hosted an outdoor movie night.

 Anna put on a puppet show.

Anna attended Jr. Ranger Camp for her second time.  She thoroughly enjoyed carpooling with Ava.  They have since met up at the park for more hang time and are looking forward to more play time soon!

 

We've read The Cay together and just started My Side of the Mountain.  As well, we've listened to almost 5 audio books in Focus on the Family's version of The Chronicles of Narnia.

Every day is a tomato harvest again. Yum!

This smiling wild child giggles and screams her way through the days lately.  Keeping us all on our toes.

On any given summer day...

Redeemer Women hanging out.  I love the fellowship we share and deepen every time we gather!

 

I accidentally cut this hair of Lasa's while cutting out one of her rubber bands.  It pains me greatly to look at this again.  And every time I do her hair and see the short piece where this went.  :( Kicking myself!

Noah and Anna were introduced to The Princess Bride this summer.  Fun!

Got a fun blast from the past when Kasey texted me this memory.  Gosh, the heartwarming grin that spreads across my face at these memories and these friendships and that season of our lives pre-kids.

Ahhh, Peay Park.  Another visit with Angelique.  Noah and Anna sure are good sports about it all.

Lasa sure loves her play kitchen stuff.  And her new table on loan from Miss Cathy. And her Bubba.

Josh is in TX this week for a conference, a fact which bums us all out royally. 

On any given morning this summer...

Alas, we have no pool.  But we play water guns and sprinkler instead!

And hot tub, of course!

Have I told y'all about our church, who has always met at the YMCA since its planting 7 years ago, being GIVEN a building and property and all that was there?  It has been an amazing answer to prayer!  Just humbling and amazing and so exciting!  We start meeting there next weekend.

Living it up when we DO find a pool.

 

Or a splashpad! :)

As always, sky shots whenever I can.

 

Bandaid love.

Silly selfies.

Hair love.

Walks to the neighborhood park love.

Learning a new game, way after bedtime, because that's the only time we can play without a toddler tornado tearin' through. ;)  Their other board game loves this summer include Archery Dice and Castle Panic.

Proof that the child WILL sleep in her carseat once in awhile.  Hope that our beach trip in October won't kill us on the car ride down there.

Proof that I CAN paint a shelf without throwing my back out.

Pastor Jamie fearlessly leading us out of the YMCA on our last Sunday there after the fire alarm went off ... that we ignored until the firemen actually came and made us leave.  It was oh-so-poetic for our last service there.  HA!

And finally, wise words I have been saving since the last time I dropped some on the blog. Which wasn't that long ago, I wanna say.