Day 1 On A Schedule

Just like everyone else this is our first week being stuck at home for who-knows-how-long. We were super lazy Monday and Tuesday. I slept in WAY too late and there was total chaos around here. I decided I had to put a schedule of sorts in place if I wanted to keep my sanity. So today is day one of being on a schedule. 

I wrote out a schedule last night and the 3 older kids woke up before me and were super excited to start on the scheduled day while L and I slept in again. Ha! I did wake up earlier today than I did Monday and Tuesday so that's a start anyway. 

This morning after breakfast the three older kids had Bible time. J and C have some Bible workbooks they've been working through off and on so they did that. And my mom helped S start learning a Bible verse. 

After unloading and loading the dishwasher we took the dogs on a walk down the street then came home for "school" time which turned into drawing lessons from YouTube while I updated Instagram and my blog. 

C and S both drew a pizza guy from this Art For Kids Hub YouTube lesson. I think they both did great! Art For Kids Hub has tons of other fun art lessons!

J wanted to work on something a little more realistic looking. I think her drawing looks great but she was getting frustrated with it and wants to work on it again later. 

 Even my mom draws pretty good! 

 S drew another pizza guy from her own imagination. :) 

And L is starting to draw better and better! She said this was her and our puppy. :) And she wrote her name. She got all the letters of her name right.. just wrote them in the wrong order. I was impressed but we'll have to work on the correct order. :) 



All my kids LOVE art so much so I think daily art lessons will be a great idea while we're stuck at home! Since I'm already planning to homeschool all the kids this fall this is giving us a great head start and I actually love having everyone at home all day! 



After lunch we need to go pick up school work for the two older girls, then we'll come home for quiet time, outdoor time, chores and maybe a little more "school" time.. maybe a virtual fieldtrip or something. I guess real school work will start for the girls tomorrow and I think we'll be picking up school work for C on Friday. 





I'm linking up to Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop today.

Weekend Wrap-Up

Linking up with Hello Monday again today.

Our new puppy loves for my husband to hold her. It's so sweet!

She also enjoys relaxing and sleeping like this lol! I walked in the room to tell

J good night and the puppy looked up at me but stayed in the position the entire time I was in the room. Cracks me up! She does this a lot too. 

J and S didn't have school on Friday. We stayed home and cleaned house most the day.

Then our friends dropped off their 4 kids for us to baby-sit while they went out on a date night. On Saturday we switched. We dropped our kids off at our friends' house and my husband and I went out for a date night. We ate at Red Rocks Café, walked around Birkdale and then went to Home Depot ha! Not super exciting but it was fun and nice to get out together. We haven't had a date night in forever. 

My husband brought me tulips and flowers for all the girls on Valentine's Day! 

So sweet! I didn't get pics of mine. 

I happened to see this broom closet on Facebook today and decided I absolutely have

to have something like this in our new house! Right now we just lean our broom 

in the corner for convenience. It would be so much nicer to have a little closet to keep it in.

We had to pick out a color for our new house (for the third time!) on Thursday. Our first two options are out because our future next door and across the street neighbors chose those colors. So our third option is this tan color shown on the lower part of this house above. We picked a linen (white-ish) color for above the garage. Besides the tan color the front of our house is completely different than this one.. I just wanted to show the color we chose. 



I'm sure I'll be blogging about our new house A LOT in the months to come! We are so excited!! 

Busy, busy and lots of changes

So much has happened in the last several weeks! 



The three older kids started school in early August, S and I flew to Texas for a few days to visit family. My mom flew back home with us and ended up staying almost 3 weeks. 






All the kids' fall activities have started up. C turned 9 in mid August and I had a birthday in late August. Then the day after my birthday.. the day my mom was supposed to fly home... my husband had a heart attack! He is okay for now (more on all this later) but our lives were turned upside down during the week he spent in the hospital and things are just starting to get back to normal (new normal) around here. My mom ended up staying an extra week.. I don't know how I would have managed without her. We also decided to move back to Texas to be closer to family... although we probably won't move back until May. 



So, things have been crazy!! Our weeks are busy, busy, busy with three kids in two different elementary schools across town from each other, Girls On The Run, baseball, choir, soccer, American Heritage Girls, working at church and much more!! We had to cut out dance this year with everything else we have going on and may cut out Trail Life. 



Our first Disney trip is coming up in about 6 weeks! The kids are super excited and I'm having fun planning everything! Any and all Disney tips are welcome! 



I've gotten so far behind... I'll try to catch up on everything in the next few posts.

4th Of July Fun!

The Sunday before July 4th. This was the most patriotic-ish looking pic I got of all of them together this year.

We joined half our town the evening of July 3rd and set up along a main road to watch fireworks from the YMCA. This year we were right down the street from Bruster's Ice Cream and got cones before the fireworks started! 

We were planning to go to a parade the morning of July 4th but we all slept in instead. The kids weren't too disappointed. We headed the mall later that morning. My mother-in-law was in town for the week and wanted to look for a few sovernirs. We almost never go to the mall and the kids love to go so they had fun! L's face cracks me up here. She's getting a little too big for those toddler rocking animals but she still loves them ha! 

I saw this mug at Books-A-Million. Describes me to a tee lol! 

 All the girls had fun looking around Claire's! 

The three younger kids had pizza for lunch while JG and I split Chinese food and my MIL and J  got chicken from Popeyes. That's the beauty of a mall food court.. everyone gets what they want.

The kids with J and my mother-in-law. L is sooo attached to her. It's adorable! My MIL speaks almost no English and L speaks toddler English but they manage to understand each other and get along great. :D 

We stopped by the Bass Pro Shop to see the aquarium before we left. The kids love it and the waterfall sounds so peaceful! 

Our life group friends had a cook-out the evening of July 4th! It rained a little but not too bad. The kids had fun with sparklers and running around the backyard! Their neighbor's set off several fireworks in street so the kids all enjoyed watching that too. 

The kids with kids from life group. They all have a TON of energy!

Sweet sisters in their red, white and blue!



Back at home our neighborhood was full of fireworks going off until late at night. We sat outside and watched for a little while before going to bed. 



We had a busy, fun day! Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!! 

2018, A Look Back (Part 2)

July - We spent tons of time in the pool! C and my husband flew to Texas to visit family. This was C's first time on a plane! 

August - The guys went camping (I think it was in August but it may have been in the fall..)

C turned 8! School started! And I celebrated another birthday!

September - We got settled into our fall schedule and prepared for Hurricane Florence. Thankfully we didn't get any damage from the hurricane... just lots of rain. The Sunday that we got all the rain from L started getting sick, had a seizure, fell off a chair and hit her head. She was fine but we spent a few hours in the ER having tests and x-rays. In late September my husband celebrated a birthday!

October - My mom came to visit! L  turned 3! We spent an afternoon in the mountains and celebrated Halloween!

November - November seemed to fly by! Mar marched in the annual Christmas parade (held the Tuesday before Thanksgiving) and we spent Thanksgiving Day with friends!

We had an amazing 2018! It was our first full year living in North Carolina. I hope this year will be just as wonderful!!