More Random Updates

Makenna said the other day, “Mom, why don’t you take pictures of us anymore?!?”  Well, it’s cause Mom, quite frankly, doesn’t feel like it! : ) I barely feel well enough to do things with them, so pictures aren’t necessarily first on my to do list! But here are the few we’ve taken since last update:

One day we met some friends from the ward at a local farm (the same farm we went to last year for Makenna’s Preschool field trip). We quickly saw the animals and then the kids spent the majority of their time playing on some old tractors.

Makenna cracks herself up. She pulled some leaves and put it on her chin and said she had a beard. She and Max thought this was HILARIOUS! I think they are pretty goofy! ; )

With the school year starting back up, Makenna is thrilled to also be starting back to dance class. This girl LOVES her dance and was literally counting down the days until she could start back!

I am now an aunt again! My sister just had her second baby last week. He is a cutie pie little boy and they named him Kayson Joel. We can’t wait until we can go visit Alabama and see this little guy!

The weather is quickly turning chilly here in Michigan! Unfortunately our kids outgrew ALL their cold weather clothes from last year (okay, to be honest Makenna still had a pair of pants that fit and Max had two pairs of pants and a sweatshirt… but doesn’t that just prove they don’t have any clothes?!?). We went to the outlets to try to find some clothes for the kids. Things were crazy expensive so we only picked up a few things and are making do with them. Makenna tried on a pair of PJ pants we bought her. They are HUGE on her and she made us laugh when she tried them on.

Oh funny, funny girl!

School is going well I think. Max is starting to do a little better. He really likes counting. : ) Makenna is a little sponge and quickly picks up everything I attempt to teach her. Last week we tried reading simple sentences for the first time. She did so great I had to video tape her!

Reading

My mom says I do not post enough videos of Max. So when I saw him practicing t-ball the other day I took a couple of videos of him. He LOVES playing t-ball. He spends hours putting the ball on the tee, hitting it, running to get it, and then starting all over again. The video is pretty short so I will post two of them. I think it shows how hard he can hit!

T-ball

Tball 2

And that’s that!

Random

I have a few, random pictures that I wanted to blog but they didn’t really have a “theme” to qualify them for their own blog post. So here comes another “random” post (and if you follow me on Facebook, you have probably seen many of these)!

My sister is having her baby next week. A week or so ago Makenna asked me to ask my sister for a picture of her tummy—Makenna wanted  to see what a tummy looks like when it is almost time for a baby to be born. She sent me a picture and was complaining that she looked big. I told her she hasn’t seen BIG because she hasn’t seen ME pregnant! I get absolutely enormous! In fact, I am ALREADY very large for my due date! So I sent her a picture of myself. Well, in taking this picture I realized how RIDICULOUS my tan lines are! I have to post this picture on the blog as just a permanent laugh at myself. NO one gets raccoon eyes like I do! : )

In fact, looking at this picture reminds me of my pictures when Max was born:

Yup, I am definitely the raccoon eyes queen! But seriously, you have to wear sunglasses in the sun! So how do people avoid raccoon eyes?!?

My next photo is of Maxie. One night I told the kids to go and put on pjs. There was a lot of giggling going on back in the bedrooms and soon I could see why!

Umm, Max, that would be Makenna’s nightgown… NOT your pjs! We definitely need Daddy home more to toughen this boy up! : D

A few weeks ago our ward had its annual ward picnic. Austin was working a 24 hour shift so he was unable to come, but the kids and I went and had a good time. There wasn’t much I could eat (I still can’t handle meat so picnic food is not my best), but the kids ate until they were stuffed. Then the kids went to play while I sat in the shade and enjoyed the beautiful day (I’ve said it before and I will say it again—being outside helps me with my sickness more than anything else!).

Makenna, as always, had a lot of fun playing with her friends. She also spent quite a bit of time swinging. I am the mean mom who refuses to push my kids on the swing, so both kids have learned how to “pump” their legs and swing themselves. They are GREAT swingers now! : )

Max makes me a little sad at things like this. He doesn’t play with anyone—he just roams around on his own. Max plays GREAT with Makenna, but not so great with other children. I’m not sure why that it is and it bums me out a little to see him always by himself. However, I think he still had a fun time! He collected and played with acorns a lot. Towards the end he played in the sand with a little spoon he found. At least he is pretty good at finding things to amuse himself!

They also had face painting at the picnic. Max got a caterpillar painted on his arm:

And Makenna got a butterfly:

Last week the weather was cooler so I took the kiddos to the zoo (once again, send me outside!). We stayed about two hours until the kids got tired. It was actually a bit much for sick mom—I felt pretty light headed and dizzy and all around horrible by the end—but we had a pretty good day.

We watched a polar bear swim for a little while and then he climbed out of the water and walked away. It’s always awesome to watch the polar bear when he is that close to you!

Because our insurance changed, we had to change the kids’ pediatrician. We FINALLY took Max for his 3 year check up yesterday (you know, because he turned three in JUNE!). This new pediatrician wanted Max to put on a hospital gown before the check up. They found a green one for him and I put it on him. I thought he looked ADORABLE!

A few seconds later Makenna says, “Mom, Max looks sad.” I look over and as soon as I do, he bursts into tears! This sweet boy was MORTIFIED to have to remove his clothes and wear a hospital gown! Poor baby just cried and cried. He said he just wanted his clothes back! The visit went fairly well and we really liked our new pediatrician. Max is a perfectly healthy little boy and is in the 50 percentile for both height and weight. However, he was so upset about the gown he refused to speak to the doctor the whole entire time we were there! : ) Our trip to the pediatrician was also successful because we got a referral for Max to start seeing a new eye doctor (once again the change in insurance is causing us to change doctors), and we also set up an appointment to reevaluate his speech now that he is three (he has a HUGE vocabulary but still mispronounces his words. At his last evaluation they said he is perfectly on track for pronunciation, but now that he is three we want to reevaluate and make sure he is still on track).

And that’s it! I think I am now all caught up with the random pictures I had left!

Everything is still going okay for all of us. School is going pretty well. Makenna is upset because she doesn’t get to have school with her friends, and Max still doesn’t really like working, but what do you do? Austin is still working ALL THE TIME! This month he is on internal medicine and he works 6am-7pm (ish) for two days, then on the third day he goes in at noon and gets off at noon on the fourth day. Then the next day (the fifth day basically) he starts the rotation all over again. So he doesn’t get weekends or days off or anything so that is tough for him and I know he is tired. I may be getting better. I still have sick moments most days but it’s not all day sick any more. I am also having quite a bit of other symptoms now—back pain, headaches, etc. but I will talk to the doctor about those next appointment.

The End.

Back to School

Last year Makenna did a joy school preschool with four other kids, while Max just did some crafty projects at home with me. This year Makenna’s school friends all started kindergarten or “real” preschool, so I decided to do my own homeschool preschool with my kids. I used to do it with Makenna when she was younger (and, hello!, I used to teach elementary AND I worked at a preschool), so I thought it would work out well for us.

Makenna and Max are on TOTALLY different levels when it comes to school, so we are doing two different programs with them. Both programs come from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Max is doing the Letter of the Week curriculum, while Makenna is doing the K4 curriculum (which is basically kindergarten for 4 year olds). I originally thought I would take turns with their school—Max on Monday, Makenna on Wednesday, etc.—but that didn’t work well, so now I am doing both of them at the same time.

We started back to school last Tuesday. The kids were so excited to start school that they didn’t sleep well on Monday and were up at 6am on Tuesday! I have to admit I was pretty excited too, but it made it hard to teach school when I was tired and feeling sick from all this morning sickness business. But school we did!

Like I said, I originally started out just doing school with one kid at a time. That lasted all of one day… but on Tuesday Max had school by himself. What did Makenna do?

She spent her time playing educational games on my iPad. However, she ended up getting pretty bored after a few minutes so that’s why I decided that would just not work! But that’s what we did the first day.

Max did pretty okay the first day. I tried to make his activities more active and fun and like playtime. However, he complained quite a bit about everything and rushed through it all. This boy is just not a fan of school work! Here are some pictures of him “hard” at “work.”

This was his favorite activity. I put numbers out on the floor and would yell a number and he had to find the number (he counted apples on the trees to find the correct number) and run it back to me as fast as he could. He hated the counting, but loved the running.

We finished the day by doing a group project—decorating binder covers for their ABC books.

The first day ended and I was pretty disappointed with it all. Makenna was bored. Max didn’t want to do school and rushed through everything. Even after repeatedly discussing the letter A, he was still calling it other letters and couldn’t tell me its sound. I felt sick and pretty miserable and was getting a migraine. I wasn’t sure if I could do it anymore!

However, day 2 went much better and set up a precedent for our school schedule. We now start each school day with our group time. We go over the calendar, seasons, weather, and a few songs. Then the kids each go to their individual tables and start their school work. Makenna’s school work is harder and more time intensive, but Max’s ends up taking just as long because he complains so much about doing it. Whoever finishes their work first (which has been Makenna so far because Max is so upset about having to do anything) gets to play games on the ipad until both are finished. We finish our day with books and then another group activity (play dough, craft, wii game, etc.). School has been lasting from a hour and a half to two hours, depending on how long they want to continue doing their group activity.

After a full week of school, I think we have things mostly figured out. The schedule seems to be working out well. I have decided to do school on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Tuesday we will do story time at the library and start going back to our Play and Learns in the afternoon. So I am all set with our scheduling. Makenna is doing great with school. She loves the activities and is so smart and really is a “joy to teach” (as comments from teachers on report cards always say!). Max, well, he is a struggle. We will keep working with him, and hopefully he will start learning something soon, ha ha. : )

Beach Day

Well our beach days have come to an end. Unfortunately, the beach that we go to is only open from Memorial Day to Labor Day and I am SAD about it. The beach days have been a life savior for me. Because of my smell problem (most smells make me throw up), I am happiest outside. However, it is hot outside. What better compromise than to head to the beach—no inside smells and I can head into the water to cool off (plus the kids are kept occupied playing)! : ) We had our last ward beach day and thought that was it. Then we found out Austin had the day off. In all the time we have lived here, Austin has never gone to the beach. Last Thursday was a gorgeous day so we hit the beach for one last visit before it closed and to introduce Daddy to our beach!

Our little Makenna is such a skinny mini that she quickly FREEZES in the water. She can only stay a little while before she has to come and get warm!

Water play with Dad. The water was pretty chilly, so we only stayed in the water for brief periods of time.

The majority of our time was spent playing in the sand.

They built sand castles:

Buried Max in the sand:

(Do you see Makenna in the background? We have been trying to break her from sucking her thumb. So what did she pick up? Biting her nails! Grr!)

Buried Makenna in the sand:

No matter how many times Austin buried them in the sand…

… those little toes would not stay buried!

Then we laughed and giggled as the kids “fought” with Daddy. Austin would build a little sandcastle and try to protect it, but the kids thought it was super funny to slip past Dad and smoosh his castle!

“You’d better not squash my castle!”

“Would a fruit snack make it better?”

“Oh, yea! It worked!”

Back to stepping on Dad’s castle!

After Austin finally tired of remaking his castle : D, the kids buried him in sand.

Ha ha, they weren’t very good at it. This was the final result:

These cute kids had so, so much fun playing with Dad at the beach!

I am SO happy that we were able to have such a fun, family day. Most of our days lately have been spent with Austin working long hours and me being sick. It was so fantastic to get to get out of the house and away from work and sick days and head to our favorite place for fun in the sun!