You are the "High-Light" of my life.

Who knows why kids do what they do.  One night Lauren highlighted her face.  We caught a picture as she slept but we could hardly contain her laughter.  What the what?

Egg Monster

Eden is at the age where she is curious about everything.  She wants to try every new experience.  Eat what we eat.  Take it out and examine in properly and then squish it in her hands.

Which is exactly what happened when Eden tried Hard-Boiled Eggs for the first time.  The squishing it and making a mess didn't surprise me.  The chasing daddy around the house with her messy hands did.  (He was trying to stay clean so he could go to work and she somehow picked up on this.)

Messy hands!

Chasing Daddy!

 Daddy picks her up to wash her hands.

Look at that messy smile!

Such a cutie.  lol

Easter 2012

Matt pointed out that all my Easter posts just say "Easter."  So I've decided to end the confusion and start putting the year on too.  That outta fix the confusion...

Anywho.  Easter kind of took my by surprise this year.  In fact the Easter Bunny found him/herself out collecting more candy because there wasn't actually enough.  I had a hard time believing this one.  But it was true.  The Easter Bunny decided to get them a small present and less candy.  But after the Easter eggs were filled all that was in the baskets were the small gifts and that just seemed pathetic.  So more stuff was brought in.

Lauren isn't wearing pants.  WHY?  I don't know.  But I'm not showing many pictures because of it.

Eden Looking a little chocolate drunk.

Truthfully I was mainly enthused about their Easter outfits.  I try to spend as little as possible and sure staples, but I ran into a few snags this year.  Every blasted dress was around $60.  Times that by three daughters and for a while I didn't think Easter dresses were going to happen.  PLUS, Elijah needed new pants, shoes, shirt, tie and socks.  I was worried.

Thankfully, I fell in love with some Target dresses.  And they are so cute.

Elijah had to make due with just the shoes, tie and pants.  His outfit cost the most for sure.  It turns out that his feet are HUGE.  He is now in men's sizes and his shoes now cost close to $50.  And yes, that was at Payless.  I was horrified.  The girls shoes were around $12-$14 each.  What a difference!

What was I talking about....oh yes, Easter.  I am in nursery now and for some reason all the children were screaming.  But after church I went to my parents and then I got to enjoy Easter.

We actually got around to dying Easter Egg's late.  It just didn't get done with my strange work schedule until Sunday.  But that's okay, the eggs still tasted great!

How To Exhaust Your Kids

Around the beginning of April Elijah came home from school with a kite.  He was met with instant adoration from his sisters who, it turns out, also wanted a kite.  Elijah's teacher bought them each one for a weather unit they had been studying.  The day he brought it home, the weather was perfect.  It was one of those days when kites just "go" in the air without much effort.  So they all ran out side and ran from one side of the front yard to the other flying it.  Okay mainly Elijah was flying it, but still.  They following him around for a while...

 

 

The Peterson's gave the girls some pom poms from a football game that the girls turns into horse tails.  It cracked me up.

 We decided that the kids needed a larger field to run around on so we took them to the high school to run around.

For Easter they each got a kite for Easter, but it appeared that the wind had died down.  Literally.  Repeated trips to the same field was met with frustrating results when the kites wouldn't fly as well as they did that same day.  But they sure exhausted themselves trying.

Iz Haz Skillz

A couple years ago I helped a long time friend of Matt's content edit a book. It was a cute Romance story and I loved reading it. I suggested some changes. Mainly the ending.

A couple years later she got the book published! I am so proud and I didn't even write it. But she let me know I'm in the acknowledgments. I've always wanted to be in acknowledgments!!!

She sent this email today:

Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh!!!!!!!!!! Robert just found this at Night Owl Reviews:

http://romance.nightowlreviews.com/nor/Reviews/Megan-reviews-Ever-Together-by-Margie-L-Miller.aspx

(I promise not to flood you ever time I get a review, but... WOW!!!!!)

Ever Together

Author: Margie L. Miller Publisher: The Wild Rose Press Tags: Contemporary, Romance

A NIGHT OWL REVIEWS BOOK REVIEW | Reviewed by: Megan "Ever Together" is essentially a feel good romance, with an almost child-like heart at its core. The story revolves around Katy, a rare young woman, who has the gift of loving others and a huge, rambling old house in which to do so, and Caleb, the severely harassed, yet kind-hearted, A-List actor, who is lonely for something only she can fill. If you like traditional romance movies where there are “meet-cutes” rather than staged or overly dramatic ‘hook-ups’, this is definitely a story for you. Instead of being JUST a sex-symbol, Caleb is down-to-earth, a bit melodramatic, and adorably dorky (though only around Katy). Likewise, Katy starts to honestly fall for a guy, allowing him to see her insecurities, and even letting out her temper when she is sad or feels he is threatened, while never neglecting who she herself is. As only a blush-level romance, I found it amazing the innocent fun and connection with the characters, finding myself loving their quirks, from start to finish, even down to the all-essential secondary characters. There were any number of things I loved about this book, not least the fact that the main couple were not the normal fall-into-lust-then-love romance I see so often. Instead, this couple is perfect together because- through humor, honesty, temper, and compromise- they create a real relationship, where they are each other’s best friend AND tender lover. Who wouldn’t fall for a guy who indulges your kookie roommate’s creative endeavors, learned how to bake just to make your favorite cookies, would go through heck or high water to protect you, and looked like a million bucks in JUST some tight black jeans? For that matter, who wouldn’t fall for a cute girl that extends a hand to total strangers, drinks a mean (and somehow sensual) chocolate shake, can pitch AND bat like a pro, and- whether saucy or innocent- shows she loves you with everything in her? My point exactly. In fact, the only real detraction I could find lay in the ending’s ‘villian’. Honestly, the villain seemed to come out of nowhere and so rather jarred the story for me. It also spoke to the limited amount of time that our characters had actually known each other, which made me a bit nervous about the length of their relationship. However, the entire story IS a somewhat idealized version of a romance. I thought that the author did a great job, in fact, of lightly noting this running theme, and intentionally including scenes where the characters’ pure feelings and actions are contrasted with a gritty reality or modern take on sexuality and romance, especially seen in instances where his work gets in the way. These are just some of the marks of a thoughtful writer, and a talented one, whatever else may come. My suggestion: this is a great book for the pure, young romantic in everyone, and was an indulgence worth taking in today’s saturated “romance” genre. Apr 06, 2012 | So if you want to read a cute love story and want to read MY name, here you go. And I'm also offering my skills out as a content editor. I haz some mad editing skillz! (Which is ironic seeing as I never edit this blog. Bahahaha!)

Easter 2012

Happy Easter!

Love, Us!

How Did I Teach...

I have been "tutoring" Lauren since she was three years old and realized she was behind. I wanted to list here what I did to help her learn her basics. I used to teach preschool as well, so I just started including preschool lesson plans into my life for her.

Colors

Colors are one of the funnest things to teach I think. Because it requires not a lot of additional work than I would normally do. I teach colors through things I would normally do. Here are a couple of examples.

Example 1: Coloring pages. What kid doesn't like to color? Eden is doing it constantly on my walls, so I know she loves it. So when Lauren wanted to color, I wouldn't worry about coloring in the lines (at that point), I would worry about what colors she wants to pick.

At first I would give her a couple of markers/crayons and tell her what colors they were. After many repeats of this, then she would graduate up to three colors and I would give her the ones she could tell me the colors of. This method is challenging at first for a speech delayed child. If there was one she really wanted and was trying to think of the color I would provide the name of the color.

Example 2: When getting her dressed I would pick two pairs of pants and two shirts. And I would have her pick which combination she wanted. Sometimes this created so horrible combinations, but she would have to say, "The blue pants and the brown shirt." To get what she wanted. This took a lot of time.

We spent the better part of a year teaching her colors.

Shapes

At this point I noticed that Lauren really loved Memory games. She loved matching things. She would play memory with glee for a long time. So I made a Shape Memory game. I did it without colors because I didn't initially want the colors to confuse her.

So with this Memory Shape game I would either play:

Matching. (This is what we started with because she didn't know her shapes at all initially.) I would lay out one set and then have her say the name of the matching shape and then lay it on the shape she had just said.

Eventually we moved to....

Memory. She loves this. She cheats a little, but she learned her shapes pretty quickly.

The Closest I Hope I Ever Get To Homeschooling...

A year and a half ago Lauren was VERY behind in her learning. It terrified me. She qualified for Special Education Services she was so far behind. When she started preschool this year she didn't know her letters, sounds, numbers or anything.

And I think that the preschool is great, but how much greater would it be if I supplemented her schooling. I mean, I used to teach Kindergarten. I know what the standards are. So I cracked my knuckles and went to work.

I started with her letter names. And we went over them three times a week. And within two and a half months she had them! Then I moved on to letter sounds and she got them within two WEEKS! Wow. I can tell she is not quite ready for reading so I shifted my focus to numbers.

This is where we are now. Numbers have been a little harder for her, but we keep working. She can count to ten and now I'm working on quantity with her.

Here she is with her flashcards. She's already put them to order up until 5, and now she is working on the quantity with counting bears.

On to 6-10 in order.

She is now upset I don't have enough counting bears. I have ordered some from The Alphabet Station (who doesn't need more counting bears!) and both of us can hardly wait!

It is hard to see in the pictures, but she REALLY wasn't getting quantity so I put the correct number of dots on the top of the cards and she places the counting bear on it. This has helped so much.