Picking Pineapples August 20, 2009

Ok, I have yet another renewed commitment to blogging. Who knows, maybe I’ll stick with this one.

 

Did I ever mention here that I’m homeschooling Amelia? We made that decision a few months ago and began doing the A Beka curriculum with her. It’s been amazing to see what she’s already learned. About that same time we also decided to enrol her in the Classical Conversations homeschool program. Today was our first day doing that program. It was interesting and we have a lot to learn before next week, so wish me luck… oh and wish Amelia luck too.

 

The first thing they did in class was to have each child come up in front of the class and introduce themselves and tell a little bit about them. So it was Amelia’s turn and she gave her full name. Then the tutor (that’s what they call them instead of a teacher) asked her what was her favorite thing ever. Since she’s been talking nonstop lately about her Cinderella party that she’s going to have on her November birthday (she’s apparently been planning this for a while because I had no idea about it), I figured she’d say her favorite thing is princesses or something like that. Oh no, not my Amelia. She stood there for a couple of seconds and finally said, “Picking pineapples.” I just burst out laughing as did the rest of the kids and moms. I think she has officially established herself as an odd duck!

 

One nice thing about the program is that it is currently meeting at our church. I had been planning to go to the one in Clermont and so I’m glad I only have a 7 minute drive now instead of 30 minutes! After classes, we all go outside and eat lunch at the picnic tables and the kids have a chance to play on the playground. I let my kids go over there without me since there were plenty of kids running around. At one point, I took a look over and there was 2 year old Jack climbing up the metal ladder thing all by himself. By the time I looked over, he was almost at the top (probably about 6 feet in the air), so I bit my lip and held my breath and just let him keep climbing. I wonder how long it will be before we’ll be calling 911 for him.

I feel so loved March 26, 2009

We were all sitting in the family room tonight playing, when Amelia walks up to me, puts her arm around my neck and proclaims in such a loving voice, “Sometimes, I love you.” That girl cracks me up! Another of her favorite things to say is that she almost loves something… which means that she really likes it a lot. As in, “I almost love cookies.”

Today, I took the kids to a gymnastics place and they each took a trial class. Jack’s class was a Mommy and Me class, so I was with him the whole time. He kind of melted down during the class, but I think we’ll be enrolling both of them in the classes. Amelia had a blast in her class. She was a little afraid of the bigger trampoline they had, but overall her teacher said she did well. And she was in a class with 4 other boys. The teacher said she kind of showed the boys that they were actually supposed to listen to the teacher.

And on another note, here are some more recent scrapbook pages:

Not much March 15, 2009

Not too much going on around here. This past Thursday, the kids and I went to Sea World. We have season passes, so we try to go once a week during the cooler months just for the morning. We usually see the dolphins, penguins, sea lions and the whale and dolphin show. But this week, Rick, Miriam and all the kids happened to be going during Elisabeth’s spring break. She works at Discovery Cove and gets a few free tickets to Sea World out of that. So they all got in free. Amelia was so surprised to see them when we walked up. Miriam took her and Jack off to see the penguins and I got to ride some roller coasters!!

Then after we all watched the whale and dolphin show, we headed over to the kiddie section. They have several rides over there including a roller coaster for kids. This year, every time we get close to Sea World, Amelia will start asking if she can ride the roller coasters since she can see them from far away. I have yet to convince her that she has to be really tall and really old to ride those roller coasters. So when we got to this roller coaster, she was all excited because she could ride it. Well, Jack was being cranky, so I stayed with him while Amelia went on the roller coaster with Marissa and Dalton. After I got Jack settled down, I was able to run back over to the roller coaster just as it was about to take off. And I got there just in time to see Marissa and Amelia getting off the roller coaster without having gone on it. Amelia wasn’t screaming, but she was kind of freaking out and losing all of the nerve she claims to have about going on roller coasters.

So after she got off we all went on the tea cup type ride they have over there. She loved that. Then we went on another kind of fun ride that she loved as well. After that one, we kept trying to convince her to get back on the roller coaster and try again, but she was having none of that. So Marissa and Dalton went to ride it and Amelia and I were going to watch. As we were standing there, I kept trying to convince her to ride it and eventually something I said clicked and she agreed to go on it as long as I held onto her and as long as it wouldn’t go too fast. Well we rode it and after it was all done, she said, “That was fun!” However, she didn’t want to ride it again.

While Amelia was riding all of those fun rides, Jack only wanted to play in the water section they had. So we stripped him down to his diaper and let him go for it. He loves playing in water and had a blast putting his hand into the shooting fountains.

 

Yesterday, I met up with a someone I’m friends with on an online message board about scrapbooking.  We met her at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney. Here are a few pictures from then.

This is Melissa (the friend), her son Kieran and Amelia inside Planet Hollywood:

Here are Jack and Amelia playing in the water fountain outside:

If you look closely in the picture above, Jack was in the process of turning himself around so he could just slide right into the water fountain and play. Well, this was his reaction when I wouldn’t let him do that:

Amelia and Kieran:

Melissa and I:

 

And last, but not least, here are a few more scrapbook pages I’ve done recently:

Counting February 6, 2009

Jack surprised me yesterday by counting all the way to 12! He’s known bits and pieces of number sequences, but has never counted all the way from 1. Then he started pulling blocks out of the bucket and counting them. He only got to about 4with actually counting them, but I thought that was pretty good. For some reason, it took Amelia a long time to realize that you can actually count items instead of just reciting numbers.

Do you know the muffin man? February 1, 2009

No, not the one who lives on Drury Lane, but the one who lives on Hampshire Bay! Jack LOVES muffins! Here is a picture of him from Thanksgiving day eating a muffin I had made for breakfast.

One day he saw me taking some muffins out of the oven and screamed his head off for them until they were cool enough to eat! All the while screaming, “Muppins, muppins” because that’s what he calls them.

 

Yesterday, he wandered away from me and later I found that the three muffins that had been on the counter on a paper towel were all laying on the kitchen floor with bites taken out of all 3 of them. It looked like a rat had come and nibbled bits out of each muffin. Pretty funny.

 

And as a bonus, here’s a picture of Jack doing his “angry eyes.”

Night Guys January 29, 2009

That’s what Jack said to us after we put him down for bed last night and were leaving his room… ‘night guys. He’s such a funny little guy.

 

Oh and here are a couple of more scrapbook pages I made:

 

So Funny January 26, 2009

Jack was being so quiet in Amelia’s room today while I fixed lunch, so I snuck up on him to take a peek. He was sitting there “reading” books. He had the Dr. Seuss ABC book and had turned to the page for C that shows a camel on the ceiling. It was so funny to see him turn the book around and around over and over. He had to turn it upside to see the camel right side up, then turn it back the right way so the opposite page was the right side up. Over and over, it was hilarious.

 

And I wanted to share a couple of scrapbook pages I made recently. I am taking a class from Jessica Sprague to better learn my newly acquired Photoshop Elements. I made these 2 pages from the first week of her class. They were premade pages, but I still like how they turned out!