Changes brewing...

I have 4 blogs right now - this one, one for what I'm reading, one for knitting, and one for sewing. I can't keep up with any of them. LOL I'm sorry I haven't been posting here or commenting in other blogs much lately. Life has just been busy and as usual I am so behind on everything. I am still reading your blogs though!

Anyway....

In September I will start homeschooling Lindsey (Kindergarten), and I've been thinking about doing a blog with more of a homeschool focus - what we're learning, accomplishments, struggles, and misc. ramblings. But I still want to write about reading, knitting, and occasionally sewing so I've decided to combine everything into one blog. I've decided to start this blog at Homeschool Blogger. I haven't decided on a name yet so I don't have a specific URL to share with you. I would LOVE suggestions on what to call this new blog! I am so uncreative. I don't want the word homeschool in the title since the blog will be about more than that. The same goes for any one subject such as reading, knitting, etc.

I'm thinking I may lose some readers when I go to this new blog but I may gain some too. I would love to have you follow me there, but I understand if you're not interested.

I hope to have my new blog started in the next few weeks and when I get a URL I will let you know! Thanks to the faithful readers/commenters of my many blogs.

We interrupt this post to bring you this opinion: I think it's ridiculous that some people say they're no longer going to be Packer fans after all that happened with the Brett Favre saga. I think both sides made mistakes (although I blame Favre more, much more) but are you a PACKER fan or just a Favre fan? Don't let the door hit you..... GO PACKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, had to get that off my chest. Back to your regularly scheduled post....

I will leave you with some misc. pictures from this summer. I will explain the first pic first. :-) This is my solution to letting Allison use scissors without cutting her hair. Like it? :-) I told her if she took the hat off she couldn't cut. She was pretty good about leaving it on. Notice her tongue sticking out. Every time she started to cut, out came the tongue.



And the rest....

Are you happy now?

Okay, okay, lest you think I totally deprive my kids, I put water in the pool! :-)

-After sweating and struggling with the hose to fill the pool, and running in and out getting things together to go out, after about 10-15 minutes in the pool Lindsey got a little scrape, nothing major AT ALL, but she was whining and crying about it and would.not.stop. I told her either stop fussing or get out of the pool. She chose to get out. (grrr) Allison spent another 5-10 minutes then she got out. ALL THAT WORK for less than 1/2 hour of swimming! Sigh.

-FYI, Allison has an appointment for a haircut next week Tuesday so no comments about her hair in her eyes, okay? LOL

Lifest and Misc. Ramblings

It's that time again – Lifest! It's a Christian music festival held every year at this time. This year is their 10th anniversary. I think I've gone the past 5 or 6 years with the exception of last year. I had only planned to go only one day, Saturday. It turned out to be the day after my mom's funeral and although 2 of my sisters went that day, and it might have been healing in some ways to go, Jay had done double and triple duty with the girls in the weeks before that since I was so busy with my mom, I didn't want to leave him with the girls all day again. I was also pretty well exhausted at that point. So I gave my ticket away. This year I bought a full event ticket as I usually do and Jay bought a one day ticket as he usually does. I went with just my sister last night, we're skipping today, we will all go on Friday, and just my sister and I will go again all day Saturday.

Highlights from last night:

*We parked our car and then I couldn't find my ticket. I knew I had brought it along because I remember looking at it in the car shortly after we left home. I had stuck it in the book I brought along to read but it wasn't there when I went to get it. I paged through the book at least 5 or 6 times, my sister paged through the book several times, we tore apart the car looking for it before finally finding it.....in my book! HOW did we both miss it so many times?

*We saw Natalie Grant (excellent!) and about ½ hour of the Newsboys. We left in the middle of their concert because a) we've both seen them before; b) we were both tired; and c) we were getting cold.

Friday night we will see Steven Curtis Chapman. It will be his first concert back since his daughter died. I can imagine how emotional it is going to be. We couldn't find a babysitter for the girls so we are taking them. It's going to be a long day!

We also plan to see Mandisa (formerly on American Idol) and Denver and the Mile High Orchestra (seen them a million times already but they're still fun to watch).

Saturday: Most years we are conflicted at least a few times about which concert to attend when there are several going on at the same time that we want to see. This year there are really only 2 people I wanted to see for sure during the whole festival - Natalie Grant (check) and SCC. But Casting Crowns is playing Saturday night so we will see them, and also Chris Sligh (another Idol contestant). Otherwise we will probably just walk around and decide on the fly who to watch. It's going to be fun no matter what!

In other news:

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my mom's death. It's so hard to believe I haven't seen or talked to her for a year. It still feels so wrong sometimes to be going on with my life, doing normal things, when she's gone.

Lindsey got stung by a bee on her finger on Tuesday after her t-ball class. She screamed at the top of her lungs for about 5 minutes. I mean she SCREAMED! She held ice on it for about an hour and then she was fine. No bad reaction so now we know she's not allergic to bee stings anyway.

She asked me this morning if I love her and Allison "to the moon and back ninety hundred and five times". I said yes. :-)

She's in the middle of the second session of swimming lessons. It's the first time she's taken them. She took Level 1 in the first session, didn't pass and is back for another round of Level 1. We're not going to the last session. I want August to be a little more laid back with not so much running. She just finished a 4 week t-ball skills class. She's going to 2 days of Safety Town in August at the same place I went to Safety Town when I was her age. Oh she's also taking swimming lessons at the same pool I took them at as a kid. Then I took Ben to lessons at that same pool, and now here we are again. Sort of a surreal feeling. The last thing she's signed up for this summer is a one hour "Kids in the Kitchen" class. She's doing that with her 2 cousins Andrew and Thomas. They were all adopted within a few months of each other back in 2004. Lindsey from China, Andrew from Russia, and Thomas from Guatemala.



Allison has elevated whining to a new level. Heavy sigh. She can say almost 50 words now. She's still about a year behind in her speech but making really good progress.

Her taking off her diaper is going to send me to the looney bin. We've had over a month of this with no end in sight. We have to duct tape her diaper on at naps and bedtime otherwise she takes it off and pees on her bed or the floor. Yesterday she discovered a new trick - taking her diaper off from under her shorts, then wetting her shorts. Just lovely. Both my girls are quite challenging in their own ways, but that's another post for another day.

Ben will be 18 next month. EIGHTEEN! I can't believe soon he's going to be a legal adult and can vote for president in November.

That's it for now. It took me over an hour to write this post and now it's almost time to leave for swimming lessons and I've gotten nothing done except feed the girls breakfast and get them dressed. Slacker! Have a great day!

Who Needs Water?

My neighbor very generously gave me her old swimming pool since it's now too small for her 3 girls (all adopted from China!) She brought it over the other day but we haven't had a chance to swim in it yet. So it was just sitting on the grass empty for now, but that didn't seem to matter to my girls!

Notice the dog in the picture, of course! He always manages to sneak in pics!

Dorks, Jeeps, and Horses

So no one else is dorky enough to be hooked on a toddler snack??? :-)

About a month ago we visited some friends who live on the Wisconsin/Illinois border (they are in Wisconsin, right across the street is Illinois). They live out in the country and have 2 little boys and 2 horses. Their older boy is 6 months older than Lindsey and their younger boy is almost a year older than Allison. They also have one of those kid sized jeeps or whatever you call them. I was surprised that Lindsey had no qualms about driving it all over the place. At one point their younger son drove around with Allison in the passenger seat for over 1/2 hour. Allison LOVED it. Riding the horse, not so much at first, as you will see. But she did ride for a little bit. Lindsey, on the other hand, loved riding the horse. I had to walk alongside Allison while she rode as my friend led the horse around. The horse was HUGE! I was probably more scared than Allison. :-)

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who commented with kind words of condolence and birthday wishes for Lindsey. It means a lot to me!

We were given a real gift the Sunday before my dad died, Memorial Day weekend. My sister had us all over for a cookout, including my dad. We were able to take him out of the nursing home for the day. He was feeling as good as we had seen in a long time. He really enjoyed himself, had seconds and thirds of supper (including watermelon which he loved so much but couldn't have much of in his last months), loved spending time outside with his children and grandchildren. We are so thankful that we had that day with him.

Here are a few pictures of my girls from that day:





Allison fell asleep on the way home (a 5 minute drive!). We carried her inside and laid her on the couch, she was exhausted!


Thanks again dear friends!

Haircuts.....one planned and one - not so much!!!

Lindsey got her hair cut about a week ago. I've been living vicariously through her and her long hair. :-) I've always wanted long, straight hair, but that style does not look good on me at all. Her long hair was beautiful but shortly after brushing in the morning it would look stringy and the ends needed to be cut too. I thought for summer and her upcoming birthday I would get her hair cut a little bit shorter. It turned out great, she looks beautiful. :-)

BEFORE:

GETTING HER HAIR WASHED:

READY TO CUT:

ALL DONE:

Remember this from when she got her hair cut about a year ago?.....


She gave me the EXACT SAME LOOK again! That is SO Lindsey!

Allison was having fun playing with the water cooler and running around.

Now onto the unplanned hair cut - I think you can guess what I mean!!!! Background story: Allison will be transitioned to the school system for speech therapy next fall when she turns 3, but they are doing all the evaluations now before school is out for the summer. Various people from her "team" have been over to do their evals, and when the occupational therapist came out, she was actually really impressed with Allison. She didn't think she had any delays in that area. One of the things she did was have Allison try to use scissors. She did a great job! I had no idea she could use them, I know I tried with Lindsey at this age or even older and she could not work them. (Now one of Lindsey's favorite things to do is cut up old magazines and papers, etc.)

So the other day I put Allison in her high chair and gave her some paper and scissors and she was having a great time cutting up paper. She was happily doing that for over 1/2 hour! Of course when I turned my back for a bit she cut some of her hair. It wasn't a big deal, she basically only thinned it out some and you couldn't even tell really. You would think after that I would learn, right? WRONG!

Yesterday morning I put her in her high chair again with paper and scissors but this time I put her hair back in a ponytail and stayed right next to her at the computer while she cut. She was having a grand old time again. Well I got complacent and forgot and went to get their clothes ready for the day. We were going to visit daddy at work in about an hour. I came back in the kitchen to find Allison had taken her hair out of the pony tail and had cut quite a bit of hair off her left side! YIKES! This time she cut much more than last time.

The other mistake I made was giving her sharp pointed scissors. I bought each of the girls a pair of scissors at WalMart the other day and I accidentally got the sharp pointed ones instead of the blunt scissors. I think the blunt ones would have cut her hair too but maybe not so much? I don't know, but the deed is done. Just looking at her you still can't totally tell. But it sort of looks like she has a mullet! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! :-) I won't be able to pull it back in any way for a long time otherwise all the short pieces will show and she'll be almost bald on that side (or "bolt" as Lindsey says for some reason instead of "bald"). She wouldn't let me get a good picture, she kept turning her head, but you can sort of see how short it is on that side:

I think it's going to be a good year before I can pull her hair back again. Sigh. I'm thinking maybe by the end of summer I can get her hair cut into a little bob or pixie style and then go from there. There's really nothing that can be done about it right now. Maybe when she's ready for another bang trim they can fix it up a bit.

Does anyone else have a good "my kid cut their hair" story? Lindsey cut her bangs once, pretty short, but they didn't take very long to grow out again.

Have a great weekend! Keep those scissors away from your toddlers! :-)