Monday, August 22, 2011

Hannah doing her school work with a smile!


Ethan 4 and Chase 3 doing the Bears game.


Chase finished his tracing page and we were so proud of him.





Cody working like a good boy on his math.







Hannah really thinking....



PS... MOM I didnt get any pictures of Jolene at school time today.SORRY! I will be sure to do so tomorrow and post them ;)









We have been busy away with school and what else, cleaning. I'm down sizing all the clothes and toys in this house up until the day I give birth! I have already pulled 8 trash bags of clothes from the kids rooms and that doesn't even touch the laundry room or the dozen totes downstairs.Each child has a dresser and a shared closet and they are over flowing it the point the laundry room always has a table full of folded laundry and theres at least 6 laundry baskets in there with either dirty or clean clothes.Id say yes we need to down size AGAIN.So I'm doing about 8 outfits per child with a couple pjs.Ill store a tote for all 3 boys of extras clothes just in case and ill store the 3 girls in one tote of extras as well. Im so tired of looking at clothes just stacked every where and its not what I need. We are home must of the time and no need to wear a new outfit every hour! And don't even get me started on these toys. HELLO why do we have so many toys that just sit in the way and don't get played with. They use hot wheels,dolls,action people,blocks,Lego's etc.....why all the extra stuff! Because in a toy hoarder, just ask my husband. So down size here we come!! Now lets talk about our one room school house we have shall we :) I cant really say that because we do school through out the house but mainly stick to the dinning room table so I can keep my eyes on everyone.Must of the time. Hannah has not be keeping herself organized and got in a little trouble for that today.Each child has there own bookshelf to keep their work and books on. I keep Hannahs in the pantry because its big and right in the dinning room where she works. But everyday she has to search for her writing books. So its time she learns a lesson in organization. I keep Codys in the cubes in the dinning room right below the dry board because I keep all my teaching books in some of those cubes and im at the board alot. Let me first say CODY is doing amazing work this year. we had a huge bumpy patch that required some testing to see where he fell and so on. I now have my day set to have the first 2 hours with him at the table and then again after lunch we do more reading. He is really starting to improve on reading. I still battle the kids left and right on normal chores and keep up but they see now I do actually mean what I say and you will lose something. I have even brought back the dreaded running of the laps! If you know me at all you know that we use to run laps for anything that was not right. So they run from the front driveway to the side of the tree and back as one lap. The little boys find it fun as they get a chance to burn the energy, Cody could careless but if he gets to 20 or more laps he thinks about complaining then stops because he knows he will get more. Its not a long run by any means but at least they get the picture. The littles are doing wonderful in school ad Chase my goodness is just like Hannah and total book worm! We call him our professor! This child is like no other. Blows my mind.All the kids are doing great and today I brought out My Fathers World ECC maps and their faces lit up like a firecracker. They love maps and they love the games we play. Cody is our map KING.Hannah is just as awesome at maps but I think Cody holds more info in. So we are looking forward to starting that back tomorrow and going full force with that. Chase and Ethan will be doing the USA map and Chase can label 5 states so far. Ethan knows Missouri and Indiana ohh and Texas. Jolene will be right in the mix and likes to babble as she goes.You can usually find her in the middle of the table scribbling or running in the house like a mad woman. I have reserved some of the Before FIAR books we will be doing for next week. The first one we will do is "We are going on a bear hunt". With the weather not as bloody hot we can take a treasure hunt outside and enjoy our the nature.The big kids will get on this little boat with their art and do oil pastel drawings of nature.So far so good! Only a few more weeks and the baby will be here and lets see how small of a hiccup we will have with changing it up!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Pic update :)

This is how Jolene is the WHOLE time daddy is home :)


Cody was touching a bomb at the Military Museum in Indiana and he was loven it!




If you look really close they have a bunch of baby frogs






The boys next to a tank/truck.








Can you tell she is my child??




As for today we are doing school, cleaning and freezer cooking for the after arrival of the baby. Its already been a busy morning with muffins in the oven, kids playing and not getting along, morning sickness, and well the general morning. Im praying for another beautiful like we had yesterday. The kids played outside until almost dark and played so hard they fell asleep fast. Much needed. Im so ready for fall that yesterday I brought up some of my fall house stuff and the kids loved it. Im a total fall pumpkin person and ready for sweaters and leaves falling and of course the baby to be here!











Sunday, August 7, 2011

Five In A Row and Beyond FIAR.

So ill be adding FIAR to this years curric. Why? Some of the children need it.The repeat of reading the same book( words) over and over through the week I think will be huge for C10. E4 is also very interested in reading and Before FIAR was something we did a few months ago with the littles and it was nice. But now im going to take it a step futher and do the book how its planned.Our library has a few of the books and whatever books we love or cant find we will search for and buy. You can never have to many books! Oh my dream would be to do all the things I bought for this year but im realizing with adding another blessing we will in fact stick to the importance- reading alot for the ones who need it. H12 is flying through and really only needs to work on turning in book reports....she is complete book smart when it comes to school and she doesnt need me much these days to help. Or if she does its over my head and I need (have to) have my teacher book :( Im feeling really good about having my head on right this year and making changes I know God helped me with.Lots to do when you have many in row! Loven just about every min of it.
As for this new blessing, well she is keeping me up at night and making it hard to breathe.My feet are swollen and gross and ready for her to flip and engage. Im sooo ready to snuggle and nurse her and BEND over to tie my shoes!!!

Friday, August 5, 2011

Updates on the wild crew

Went to the doctors today and prayers have been heard and He is in full swing making it happen.Laura is up to 4.5 pounds now and in the 67th%! Yes thats right she is gaining and making mommy happy! I had more blood taken as I get it done every time I step out of my house it feels like. Just a few more weeks to go and we are counting it down. Husband is on the look out for a new treadmill for me once this breech bouncing baby arrives. I plan to be really strict with myself after she comes. After I had Cody I think he was like 2 or 3 I busted my butt to get into shape.I babysat my sisters twins and had my kids and managed to work out like I was in boot camp. My body was awesome! I was never skinny skinny I always had a body like an athlete. Im soooo ready to get that back and be me again.I have been in baby mode for 5 years straight now and im ready to get back to the healthy littler me. We spent this past week over in Indiana with the husband. We had a field trip to the Military Museum out there and it was amazing.History is my FAVORITE thing and to touch and see all these things just does it for me. The clothes from what these men and women wore were so small its nuts! All the letters they wrote and pics they took is so neat. From the toothbrush to the dinner plate it all is amazing. Cody is a huge Military fan and he got up close and touched all the tanks,jeeps,airplanes, helicopters he could. He was beaming from ear to ear the whole time. we also had a school melt down with one of the kids and we thought for sure that was it we were done! But nope we pulled though and prayed and prayed and have some things lined up that should help alot. I was listening to the radio this afternoon while out and they were talking about powering down parenting up. I have to say this past year has been the hardest year I have ever had with the kids. With Jeff working out of state and coming home for 18 hours on the weekend, leaving me a single parent to alot of littles and the big ones has proven to be the test of tests.granted we are all doing good and getting things done, I have failed huge on my kids.I have let things go and not disciplined where I should have.Let bad attitudes go on, screaming, fighting, just plain rudeness happen.I have been drained! Taking the kids out to the stores is now something I dont ever want to do but sometimes have to do. I remember when I would get complements every TIME we all would go out on how well my children are and Im so amazed at how well they listen. every time we would go out! Now I get oh my your hands are full or Im yelling at one or 2 of them or im losing a child to the clothes rack and freaking out. Well I make sure any time I need grocery's my mom watches the kids on Friday for me or Hannah watches half of them so im not so over stressed. Its hard to say the least to not have the support of the husband here. Well after I was praying and thinking and thinking about how Im going to parent up and figure out what we I need to do to get this house back on track it exploded right in my face! When I had listeners and good behavior, we had the Word of God in our house everyday! Didn't skip one day because we were busy or skip a day because I could do this.We had a routine of Prayer and talk. Everyday! Im pretty sure that was our ticket to good behavior. we had God on our side. back to the basics so call it we are. Theres no more running around the house with the child thinking they are over me. No more lazy, ill take care of that attitude later thinking. Im going to be back on track and parent up big time!! AS far as school goes we re now behind, yes behind! why because I parented down. I let the kids win and me lose and now I feel like crap about it! way to go JEN!

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