Happy Birthday Izzy Bizzy

Happy 6th Birthday Izzy!  We love you so much!!

6 years old!!

And some Oldies!

Volleyball May Be My Sport

... To Watch.

This fall Mikayla wanted to give volleyball a try.  Spencer and I agreed that volleyball would be a really good sport for her because she's tall for her age and crazy strong, so if she could get the coordination part in there she'd be a pretty awesome player!

This past Tuesday night was Youth Night for the High School Volleyball teams.  This meant that all the youth volleyball players got a free ticket to the varsity game.  Mikayla and I went to the game while Spencer finagled Izzy and Connor for the night driving them around for Izzy's gymnastics class.  The game was awesome!  We didn't win, but it was really exciting to watch!  The pep band was there, lots of people in the stands cheering, and although it was a little chilly in the gym - I loved that it was indoors and the seats were fairly comfortable.  I thought, "This is a sport I could really get into sitting in the stands to watch!"  I couldn't play it, but I really liked watching! :o)  She played soccer years ago and that was fine, but being outdoors made it less than comfortable quite often.  I love being outside when it's nice out, but I don't like being stuck outside for extended time when it's too hot/cold/windy/rainy.

Mikayla loved the game too, she was doing lots of shouting and cheering her hometown team on.  It was the first volleyball game she'd ever seen, so it was good for her to see what a real game (wait... match? I don't know) looks like.

Then last night she had her first games, and I finally got a chance to really see her play!  She is a great server!  It was funny how excited everyone in the gym got any time there was more than one volley over the net! Ha! For first year players these girls were great!  Mikayla's team won both of their games against the neighboring town.  To be fair, the ages are different.  Our town groups 3rd and 4th grade together and the other town groups 2nd and 3rd together, so the teams we played against had some 2nd graders, and we have some really tall 4th graders.  But it was still so fun and such an encouragement to the girls to get a couple wins in them right away!

They only played games last night and then will play a couple next week and then they are done with games. It is so fun!  Even Izzy and Connor got into it.  Izzy was anxious to catch anything that came her way in the side lines and throw the ball back in, and Connor was all about the cheering and fist pumping! :o)

After watching a varsity game, and now Mikayla's game, I can definitely say that once I figure out how the scoring and rules work I will definitely enjoy going to volleyball games in the future!

Nap Time Woes

Naptime.

It's the only shot I get at a break in my 10.5 hour day, and when it goes badly, I get crabby.  Crabby Abby is not nearly as pleasant to be around as Happy Abby.

Lately naptime has been, shall we say... rough.  Connor has outgrown his naps, but I still make him because I  haven't outgrown his naps :o) .  So that's rough spot number one.

Then there's the crazy running around that ensues as I'm trying to lay each child down in their nap spots and helping kids to the bathroom, changing diapers, swaddling babies.  They think it's a free-for-all lately, and it only amps them up.  It's only been like this in the last month or so, but I'm tired of it.

So today we did something different...

After lunch was over and sort of cleaned up, I corralled everyone into the living room where we watched about 10 minutes of Signing Time while I changed the toddlers' diapers and helped them try the potty chair, all in the living room so nobody can escape the pre-nap confinement calm-down area.

Then once everyone was changed/pottied, I brought them one by one to bed, starting with the baby.  Once they were in bed (would have done this before laying them down but had to find it) I started a lullaby cd for some background white noise and to act as a sound cue that it is time to sleep.  Now that our noisy air conditioner isn't being used, it's too dang quiet for them to sleep!

So while it still took some time to get a couple of them to fall asleep, it was calm and peacefull and felt much better for all of us.  They are now, all 4 of them, sound asleep, and I'm going to get some birthday invitations done and some things ready to be mailed.  And drink more coffee! :o)

Mikayla Week Part 3

Pretty much 2009, starting with being a super-big sister holding Connor

Mikayla Week Part 2

Today's her birthday, and I didn't expect to be sad about it!  I really was thrown for a loop when I started crying this morning that my little angel is a 10 year old now. Wow.  Here's some photos from October 2006 when Izzy was born through 2008.

The BIG 1 - O

September 18th marks the day my first child was born.  This girl is nearly perfect and I'm always so proud to call her mine.  Here's some pictures of pictures of Mikayla when she was just born through age 4.  They are pictures of pictures because it would take much too long to scan them all and this was before I had a digital camera.  Mikayla was practically born in the stone age people.

First Birthday

5 Generation picture. 

I love the way Granny Ruth is adoring Mikayla

Mikayla would hug this big Santa at Nana and Papa's house every time she came over

Master of the Nuk

More pictures to come!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This was our first week of preschool for the year, and this month I ignored my Funshine Express curriculum book and went with something with more flexibility since I also started a 12 week old baby last thursday.

This month we are reading various Eric Carle books and doing extension projects related to the books we read.

This week we focused on The Very Hungry Caterpillar among other books.  We are also working on the literary concepts of "Cover", "Title", and "Author".

Our first project was simple and adorable!

fingerprint caterpillars

The second project (different day) was to make Hungry Caterpillar hats!  This one was mostly a gluing project for these guys, we're not ready for cutting circles yet, they found it enough of a challenge to work the glue stick, and manage to line up and stick the eye parts down that were also sticking to their fingers!

 And of course we've been doing the calendar every day, figuring out the pattern and predicting the picture on that day's piece, watching the weather and recording it, and have been working on the letter A, number 1, and color Red though those haven't made it onto the board because -well - I have a 6 month old and a brand new 12 week old also in the house. :o)

This is only some of what we've been doing this week, and it's been fun!

Summer of the Chicken

One of our projects this past summer was getting set up with Silver Laced Wyandotte chickens!  Back in June we bought four 1-day-old baby fluffy butts!

They quickly (very quickly) grew and when they were fully feathered out they moved from their brooder box  out to the coop.  The picture below is them in their coop outside of their box for the first time.  The bedding hasn't looked that neat and beautiful since then, but it's not as stinky as I would have thought.

 We will be getting some super delicious and healthier than store bought eggs starting in about 2 - 3 months from now!  We don't have a rooster because they are annoyingly loud and from what I've been reading can be aggressive... which doesn't fly well with this lady, especially considering I want our kids to feel comfortable doing the chicken chores and don't want them getting harassed by a cocky rooster.

Our 4 chickens are very gentle except when they get super excited about treats (worms, raisens, fruit scraps) and can get carried away.

 Though our chickens are not free-ranged because I have a business that requires they not roam around and poop on whatever they want, and their eggs won't be quite as magical as a free-ranged pasture-raised chicken egg, I expect some difference to occur.  They get greens, they get fruit and veggie scraps, bugs, worms, and decent feed, so they and their eggs will be healthier than the chickens living in egg-factories.

Supposedly, these are the differences between a free-range chicken's egg and a store bought egg:

• 1/3 less cholesterol• 1/4 less saturated fat• 2/3 more vitamin A• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids• 3 times more vitamin E• 7 times more beta carotene

Plus, chickens are fun. And funny.  And soft.  And quieter than I expected (our kids are a bajillion times louder when outside than the chickens).   

 The kids have really enjoyed getting to raise animals that are a little different than your usual house pet.  They help let them out of their coop by opening the door to their run in the morning, they can feed them, they can switch out the water jugs, and they can scoop poop as well!

 If the winter goes well we might get a couple more chicks to up our egg supply, because we eat a lot of eggs around here, and we're already getting lots of requests from friends and families for eggs!  But for now we're learning as we go, and taking it one season at a time!