A New Beginning

Alrighty, so it's been really a couple of years since I've written regularly on my blog. I don't know what happened, life just got busier or I made less time for my blog. Anyways, I love reading old posts of the kids or whatever was going on. Blogs are really like journals and it's so nice to keep track of memories. So I'm going to recommit myself to blogging on a more regular basis. I feel kind of bad that I let all that time go without keeping track of what was going on in our lives. 

So, let's start again:

Anna is in kindergarten. I got her transferred to a better school and she's doing great, really, truly great. She's just such a smart girl. She started learning how to read in preschool and she has steadily progressed. I would say she's at a 2nd grade reading level. She's by far the best reader in her class. 

I am lucky enough to volunteer every other week in her class. I love being able to see what she does when she's at school. And seriously, I don't think there's anything cuter than kindergarteners. They're so sweet and loving. The girls will come up and give me hugs and are excited to see someone new. They're still so innocent and happy. I really do love it. Her teacher is Mrs. Mealey. She's a lot of fun, does a lot of crafts and fun activities with the kids. 

Her writing is good. She loves to write her own songs and stories. She's pretty good, especially for a kindergartener. She has a great imagination. She's made her own board game, another game based off a computer game she plays.

She loves to make associations. She'll say, hey my spoon is orange and so is the food I'm eating! or Mommy, you were talking about cheese and I'm eating cheese! 

She also likes to count and keep track of things. I'll make her cut up strawberries and bananas and mix in some yogurt. After she's done, she'll say, "there were 22 strawberries and 16 bananas."She does this a lot. Haha. 

She also LOVES LOVES LOVES My Little Pony. We got her all 6 for Christmas and she is going to have a MLP birthday party when she turns 6. She loves to draw ponies, as well. 

Here, we went to this dinosaur activity/exhibit thingy, and she got a unicorn face painting. 

Okay, on to Alex boy. He's 3 years old and just my sweet little boy. He's home with me while Anna's at school. Next year, I'll put him in preschool. I can't put  him in the one Anna went to, which was great AND cheap, because he has a late fall birthday and he just misses the age cut off. So he'll be one of the older kids in class. 

Anyways, he's a smart little boy too. He knows all his letters, numbers, can count to 30, AND he knows the sounds most letters make. Even Anna didn't know them this early. Anna brought home a list of words that rhymed-cat, hat, sat. It was on the table and he was eating a snack. I suddenly hear him sounding out those words! This was a few months ago. It was crazy. I try and practice with him, but he doesn't like to do a lot, so slowly yet surely. I wouldn't be surprised if he's an early reader, too!

He really likes Cars, the movie and all the characters-Mater, Lightening McQueen, etc. He has all of them. He even had a Cars birthday when he turned 3. However, now he and Anna are getting more into the Mario Brother's franchise.

He's still my cuddly boy. He really likes it when we softly rub his back or tummy with our fingers. 

They both like to play this online game called Animal Jam, made by National Geographic Kids. He's getting pretty good, too. Haha.

He's pretty articulate for a 3 year old, at least I think so compared to some other 3 year olds I here sometimes. We potty trained him last fall and ever since then, he's been obsessed with poop. Calling people poo poo heads or whatnot. We finally had to make a rule this week that we're done talking about poop because it was happening so much. 

Here's my little man with Stegosaurus, his favorite dinosaur. 

That's it for now, folks. I will try and be more regular about blogging!

Finally, an update!!!

So, it has been quiiiiiiiite a while since I have blogged. Like, 9 months ago. Man, life has been busy lately. I started watching two kids in the afternoon, starting last January. And honestly, it took a lot of my time, was a little stressful and it was hard to have much free time. When I did have free time, I just wanted to sit down and relax. Then summer came, Dan was off for a bit, we had a lot of fun. He taught summer school this year, which was nice for the extra money, but sure made our summer go a lot faster. We got to go up to WA for a week for my family reunion. That was a ton of fun, and so good to see all my siblings. Anna and Alex had a blast with their cousins.

Life is starting to get back into its routine, so I thought I would actually write a blog post, though I don't know how many people actually check my blog anymore.

So the big news lately, is that Anna started kindergarten!!! She turned five this summer, we had a princess party for her. Here is a picture of the cake I made for her. She loved it!

Here she is on her birthday. She did this pose all by herself. :)

So, anyways, she's all big and grown up. 

She did very well her first day. I knew she would. Luckily, she's never had a problem adjusting to new situations like that. She does go to all day kindergarten, so she is pretty tired when she gets home and can be kind of cranky. I got her transferred to a better school, than the one we were charted for. It's a bit of a drive for me, but not too bad. However, there are no buses around here, so everyone has to drive their kids to school. So parking is kind of crazy. I have to leave 25 minutes early, just to park a few blocks away and walk her to school. That's not much fun, but oh well. Her school also starts very early, 7:50 for kindergarteners. So I now have to set my alarm and get up early! I'm not used to that. Haha.

I made this sign for her first day. I told her to pick it up and this is what she did for the picture. 

She was so excited to go!

All ready to go! She has a Hello Kitty backpack, I got at a garage sell for $2. It's in excellent shape! There was a small tear, that I just sewed up. 

She is really into My Little Pony, so we got her a My Little Pony lunchbox. She loves it!

Daddy and Anna, walking to her first day of school.

Me and Anna, waiting our turn to go into her classroom.

Daddy and Anna waiting.

Tomorrow will be interesting. Dan is starting back at work. And it will be the first day of just me and Alex. He's doing pretty good with his only playmate gone for the whole day. He just wants to play with me the whole time now! It will be a bit of an adjustment for us. I'm looking forward to having one on one time with him, but it's going to be tricky to teach him to do his own thing for short periods of time, while I do things or just need a break. I need to plan playdates for him, and activities that we can do or go to.

I'm also going to start potty training him next week. He'll be three in a few months, so I think the time has come for him. Though I really have no idea how this will go! I think he's going to have many more accidents than Anna did. 

Halloween 2012

***I know this is super late. I actually started writing it, shortly after Halloween and never got around to finishing it, until now! Oops. :)

We had a great Halloween this year! In case you don't know what we are, we are Steve and Blue from Blue's Clues.

This show was popular in the 90's, but it's on Netflix and Anna really likes it.

Dan has been told numerous times over the years that he looks like Steve from Blue's Clues. A few months ago, he told me, I should be Steve for Halloween and Anna could be Blue! I agreed, but it wasn't definite.

A few weeks later, I asked Anna what she wanted to be for Halloween and said, I thought daddy was going to be Steve and I was going to be Blue! I didn't realize she'd been paying attention to our conversation.

So then, it was decided.

Here is Alex's Handy Dandy notebook candy bag. I made it out of felt. For the chair I printed out a picture online and traced it onto the red felt. Then I drew on the chair lines. I thought it turned out really cute. 

Here is Anna's Blue candy bag. I first just made it blue. Then when it was all done, I decided to add the paw print. I wish I had thought of it sooner, because Blue's paw print is supposed to be dark blue, but oh well. 

I played around with the idea of Alex being the green dog that was sometimes on the show. I was going to maybe be a girl version of Steve, with a striped shirt. Dan finally came up with the idea of the girls being Blue and the boys being Steve.

We went trick or treating with some of Dan's friends. Here is Jasmine, the baby giraffe, Alex, Anna and Koji.

Anna was so cute, we decided we were done trick or treating, and she didn't want to finish! So I took her to a few more houses. Silly little girl. 

I love this picture of Dan and Anna, ahem, I mean Steve and Blue!

Me and my little Steve!

Dan, as Steve, with the complete package. His handy dandy notebook and Blue!

He wore this to work and the kids LOVED it. They grew up with Blue's Clues, so all of them knew the show and who he was. It was great. 

A little more about how I made the costumes: I bought Anna's shirt at the 99 cent store. It was a little big, but for $1, I figured I could alter it.

I put one of her shirts that fit, over the blue one, and traced it. Then I cut off the sleeves and excess and sewed the sleeves back on. I've never done anything like this, but it actually turned out! The shirt itself, was made of super cheap material, so that was kind of hard to work with, but it was all good in the end. 

I got mine for $1 at another discount store. I sewed blue felt circles on both of our shirts. I made Anna's tutu skirt and ears. Dan made an ear template, I traced it and cut it out with felt, sewed it, then put wire in the ear and hot glued it to a head band, that I had covered with blue ribbon. I thought she was the cutest little doggy! 

We went to our Church's Halloween party and all the teenagers just oohed and awed over our costumes. Because they were little when it was airing. 

Overall, it was a very fun Halloween!

Family Fun at the Pumpkin Patch

Last week, we took a little family trip to the pumpkin patch. Anna's preschool had a field trip there. Dan took the day off and we brought Alex. The kids had a lot of fun.

It was pretty chilly in the morning. So the kids were bundled up.

Having fun on some big pumpkins. 

Cute little Alex on a pumpkin!

Is it Anna or a pumpkin?

The first thing Anna did was go on these swings. She loved them!

Alex, on the other hand, not so much. We weren't even going to put him on them, but he saw Anna on them and really wanted to go on them. So we did. The swings started spinning and Alex was kind of like, whoa, what's going on. Well, then the swings went faster and each time Alex came around, his facial expression just got more and more scared. The poor kid. Haha! He finally started crying and the guy stopped the swings, so we could get him off. 

This pumpkind patch had a lot of jumper type toys. 

Anna had a ton of fun on them.

This one was a really big slide, but it was really hard to get up. There were about 5 kids trying to all get up at once. There were these kind of handle things that Anna started to grab that helped her get up!

There was another smaller bouncer toy that we let Alex play on and he really enjoyed that.

After they played for a while, they gathered together on these hay bales. The kids all got a cowboy hat and the owner read them a story about a pumpkin farmer. It was really cute. The kids were so well behaved.

After, they got to pet some of the animals.

Overall, it was a really fun trip. They got a goodie bag at the end with a little pumpkin, a pencil and a coloring book. I'm glad we could all go together as a family.

My big boy Alex.

It's funny how fast time goes. I feel like Alex was just a little baby, and now he's such a big boy. He'll be 2 in less than two months!

I am so proud of Alex, though. The last few months, he's really developed a lot. He has a lot of big accomplishments. I'm very proud of the fact that he knows just about ALL the letters in the alphabet! I got some Sesame Street books about letters and colors. He's known his colors for a long time now, at least 5 months, if not more. But he didn't know his letters. Well, he knew a few. The very first letter he ever learned was B. I had a different alphabet book and he learned it there. One day we were at Winco, by the dairy section, and suddenly, he starts saying, B! B! B! I was trying to figure out what he was looking at. I looked up and saw the big 'ol BEER sign on the wall. He recognized the B!

Anyways, so Anna was a little prodigy child and actually taught herself the alphabet from a really great toy I got for 50 cents. So I know you're not supposed to compare your kids and their learning/development, but I felt that Alex needed to learn his letters, since Anna did it right before she turned two. So, he really liked the Sesame street book about letters and we read that a lot to him. That's what really spurred his learning. About a month ago, he really started pointing out different letters. We'd be at a stoplight and he'd look out the window  and call out a letter he recognized.

Here, he is playing with an alphabet puzzle. This is where I realized he really knew more letters than I was aware of. He'd pick up a piece and say the letter. I was very surprised, since in the past we'd point out letters, but he wouldn't really respond. Kids do that, they really are observing and learning, but just not telling you! Haha.

He and Anna really like to color. He likes for me to get a marker or crayon and write out letters. He'll say the letter, and I'll write it on the paper he's coloring on! It's really cute.

His other BIG accomplishment is speaking! The last few weeks, he's just exploded with two word phrases. His first one was "yellow bus." We were coming home from dropping Anna off at preschool and we usually see a few buses on the way there or back. I pointed one out, and he just said, "yellow bus!" And ever since then, he's just kept it up. He'll say things like read book, Anna's preschool, runny nose (he was sick this week), doggy park, ride bike, etc. He's getting really good at it. And last week, he had his first THREE word phrase. Ironically, it was "two yellow bus." Haha. We were coming back from preschool again, and we saw two yellow buses next to each other. I said that, and before I knew it, he was saying a 3 letter sentence.

I should add, that he also knows some of his shapes-sqaure, triangle, pentagon, and I think circle.

I just love this little guy!

Anna likes to play games on my phone, Alex decided to join her.

Alex, eating some bread, while watching a show on the couch. He pulled these pillows up around him!

He's getting better with his coloring. He's starting to actually color specific parts of a picture, instead of just scribbling all over it (however, he'll still eat crayons once in a while).

A Little Preschooler

 Well, it has happened. This cute, adorable, little baby has gone from this:

To this:

A Preschooler!

 I told her we needed to take a picture, and she responds, I want to be a zombie! I told her we could do one silly picture and one nice picture. Haha.

And of course, Alex wanted to have his picture taken. 

Anna started preschool last week. She goes everyday in the afternoon. She loves preschool! She didn't have any problems about me leaving, which I knew she wouldn't. This little girl has gone to the gym since she was 6 months old and is very used to us leaving her for an hour or so. 

She went and sat at the little table and instantly started making a tower out of some little blocks they had. I don't know if she even noticed I left. I said goodbye, but it didn't seem like she was paying attention. 

The only down side, is she gets kind of tired and cranky in the late afternoon/evening time. 

I drop her off, then come home and put Alex down for his nap. I then have to wake up him (which I hate doing, but gotta do it) and go pick her up. She's used to having down time and watching shows during his nap. So it's a long day for her, but she does have a lot of fun.

She's in a great preschool, the main teacher is great, very loving and very child oriented. I think she's going to have a great year. I just can't believe she's big enough to go to preschool!

Here are Anna and Alex riding in our neighbors little police car. They had a blast!

We had some gift cards and went out to dinner last week. I got a high chair for Alex, and Anna insisted she wanted one, even though I said she could sit at the table with us.

We went and got cupcakes afterward. She was so excited to get a cupcake!

Anna's hair is actually very curly. This is it, right after a shower. It's so thin and wispy, that it's hard to look nice.

Anna is ever improving her art skills. This is a train she drew, all by herself!

Summer Reflections

I can't believe it's already September. It sure doesn't feel like it, since it's still in the 90's around here. This past summer, has been quite the summer. I feel like it's been a real eye opener for me, in terms of life, family, relationships and I guess, really, my ideology of life.

My summer started off normal enough. Dan got done with work at the end of May, we hung out for a week or so, then headed out to Utah. We were there for about a week and a half, when I got a phone call from my mom, that my older brother had been shot in the head. It was quite shocking news. She didn't know what was going to happen to him. He was in the ICU on life support. I prayed really hard, that everything would be okay. After a couple of days, my other brother called me, and said things weren't looking good. And that basically, I need to come up to WA asap, if I wanted to say goodbye.

Luckily, my sister and 3rd brother live in Utah, and we were able to all get on the same flight to WA. I'm not going to give all the details, but man was it hard to see my brother for the first time. His head was all bandaged up, a machine was making his lungs breathe, which looked very abnormal, his right side was completely numb. It was a tough 3 days, trying to figure things out, decide if we should keep him on life support, etc. 

Plus, I was able to get a better glimpse of his life. He's struggled with drug use since he was about 15. The last year or two, he's been doing really well. He was working for my brother's company, going to church, had a calling, etc. Things seemed good for him. While I was in WA, I found out more information about his past and really his personal thoughts about his life and struggles. He was unhappy. He was still addicted to drugs, though it was an off and on again kind of thing. It really opened my eyes about how I viewed life and the gospel together. Just because you go to church, doesn't mean your life is great. Just because you have a calling, doesn't mean your testimony is solid. Writing this out, makes me go, duh, of course it doesn't. But I think we still think it does, in a way. I thought he was okay, I thought he was over drugs, I thought he had finally done it.

My brother is doing much better by the way. We really thought he was going to die, but he's actually walking now, and learning to use his right side. He still can't really talk, but he's making some progress.

Anyways, this experience just kind of changed the way I look at things. Things aren't exactly black and white anymore. More like differing shades of gray. It's not easy to say, if you do this, then you'll be happy. If you do that, things will work out. I guess I thought that way, and now I don't, at least to some degree. Everyone is different and so is their situation.

Then, a few weeks after I got back from WA, a close friend of mine told me that they didn't feel the church was true anymore and was even doubting the existence of God! That took me by surprise.

Then a month after that, another friend told me she was getting divorced because her husband was addicted to pornography and had been for years.

Then, last week a family member of mine, told me they and their wife, of 13 years were getting divorced. They have 4 kids.

I don't know, it just seems so much has happened to people I care about the last few months. You always hear of things like this happening and it makes you said, but it's never really happened to people I know personally.

I just feel like my ideology on life has been changed. It's hard to explain. Things that were a constant, aren't anymore. I know no one is immune to the challenges of life, but I sure wish they were. I obviously can't make choices for others, but it makes me sad and kind of shakes me when negative consequences occur to people I care about. 

I guess I'm done rambling. Here's to a Happy Fall!!!