Welcome with Love!

Oliver

Oliver finally arrived on May 2 in the late afternoon.  We are all thrilled to finally have here in our arms!  More to come.  I have loads of pictures already with hopes of many more.  I'm just lacking time and enough hands right now, but we'll get there.  

Simply Grateful.

While I wait, somewhat impatiently at times, for our little one to join us in the air breathing world, I have to remind myself to savor these last few hours, days, week?  Much to my dismay, this is my last pregnancy, but at the same time I'm so very grateful that we were blessed with this little one.  God decided our family wasn't quite complete.  For that I am most grateful!  Overall, I enjoy being pregnant and this pregnancy, despite being the most difficult circumstances has actually been my healthiest one yet.  Yes, there were definitely some tough points- 16 (minus the first 4 weeks) weeks of feeling like you want to throw up, being exhausted while keeping up with 2 tots.  The second trimester was blissful and I was able to keep that feeling well into the third trimester.  There are definitely some discomforts and days of being tired, but overall, I really can't complain, the baby and I are both healthy, I'll take the heart burn.  I'm 39.5 weeks pregnant and still feel pretty darn good (at least until about 5:30-6 pm)!  Having the gift of feeling a little one wiggle and grow inside of you is like nothing else.  We are all so excited to meet this little one!  Even Cooper cuddles up to my belly and says "out baby, come out!"  (Though, I don't think he really realizes what's coming....) 

A chorus of  'mama, mama, mama..." is ringing from upstairs.  It sounds like my little ones are not going to nap today...maybe I can convince them to cuddle with me instead...not likely, but I'll try.  Time to tickle and chase them while I can.  It won't be long, and our little one will be here.  We are so grateful and feel truly blessed!  

Homeschooling Part 2

When we aren't doing our home school co-op or other activities in the morning, I try to have activities set up.  How involved the activities are is very dependent on what's happening in life.  Here are a few activities we did back in January.

First, what happens when you put water out in the cold, cold weather- perfect for those single digit days!  

Salt drawing/writing- this was a huge hit!

Busy bag for Cooper, matching shapes.

Busy bag for both, Snowman felt board.  Both busy bags are from one of the previous busy bag exchange playdates we had in our parenting group.

Remember freezing our water- then we melted it with warm water, using droppers.  This was a test run for our home school co-op activity, I posted previously.

Playdough, trucks and arctic animals....

Oh and no home schooling is complete without calendar time!  Here's ours!  I kept it simple- month, date, season, weather, moon phase, and several  ____ of the day items.   Cooper's favorite is the yoga move of the day.  Evan is a big fan of the moon phases.  We spend as much time on this as the kids want, sometimes it's a minute, sometimes we are talking about seasons for 20 minutes...  

Our Homeschooling Co-Op

So mainly due to circumstances (trying to reduce too many changes) we are currently homeschooling for preschool.  Another huge draw, is that we have a great group of friends, with whom we created a homeschool co-op.  Our little co-op meets about once a week, with a week off every 3rd week.  Each mom takes turn hosting and teaching a lesson.  Each lesson is generally based on a book, with activities to go along.  We started last September and have been going strong since!  Here are a couple pictures from when I hosted back in January.  Our theme was snowmen, based on the book Snowmen at Night. 

We started with a sensory station, while we waited for everyone to arrive.  To introduce the wintery/snowman theme, I set up containers with 'snow dough' (cornstarch and shaving cream) complete with arctic animals and items to make snowmen.  Needless to say this was quite messy, but they loved it!

For art and fine motor skills, I made outlines of snowmen, then let the kiddos paint snow on them with Q-tips.

For the science angle, I made snowflake ice cubes- called 'ice bergs', placed on trays...then I gave them small droppers and containers of water and let them see what happens when they put water on the 'ice bergs.'  You could go more in depth on the science (global warming...) but seeing as how most of them are 3, we stuck with learning that water melts ice.  And a bonus, using the dropper was super fun for them and  great fine motor skill practice.  Oh, and I don't have a picture but for a gross motor and group activity we played Ring Around the Snowman!

Listing Agreement Signed! Deep breath....

We signed a listing agreement today.  I'd say that we've just started this journey of selling our home, but it's been in progress for a long time just to get to this point!  We've been finishing up house projects and making little repairs here an there since we decided that we were going to make this move (back in September).  I've done tons and tons of research trying to decide on a realtor, what price to list our house for, looking at all the 'comps,'  looking at the competition, talking my friends and families ears off trying to get second opinions, etc. 

I feel like I've spent 3 months or more cleaning, purging stuff, and cleaning more.  Silly me, I thought if I did a deep cleaning of certain, lesser used areas, I would at most just have to touch them up here and there. Ha!  Not so much.  This house, with our lifestyle, pretty much everything needs to be cleaned constantly.  I'm trying to figure out a way to only spend a short amount of time everyday to maintain a clean house... so far short is an hour at best, usually after the littles are in bed.  This seems like a good place to quote my neighbor, "cleaning with kids around, is like trying to brush your teeth while eating oreo cookies..."  Yep, makes me laugh every time!  I'm lucky at least that my littles are at the stage where they think helping mama clean is fun!  (unfortunately, their cleaning often requires more follow up cleaning by me...)  At least they have some fun though!

We did decide to use a listing agent vs trying to do FSBO.  We just have way too much going on to attempt FSBO.  We're using Assist 2 Sell, which is a low fee agency.  We'll see how it goes!  I'm hopeful!  

Okay, so the fun part- at least for me- was the staging and pictures!  I borrowed a friend's wide angle lens- which was crucial for the photographs.  Staging wise, I spent about $250 on pillows, linens, and some odds and ends to brighten and freshen the house.  Oh, and about $350 on a new rug, which we love and hope works in our future house!

So here's the result of all our efforts!  Hopefully, the house will look like this when we show it each time!

 

 

We'll be so sad to leave this house, but it'll all work out!  A new adventure awaits!

Finally a Snowman!

While this winter has been full of snow days...most of the snow has not been conducive to building a snowman... and the boys have desperately been wanting to build one!  Basically, we had to wait until one of the snowfalls started to melt- which also meant some warmer temperatures -better for outside play!  

Happy Birthday Coop!

My spunky baby is 2 whole years old now and growing so fast!  Here are the preparations for his birthday party.  First the cake and cupcakes and of course my helpers...

Then cookie central.  I baked the cookies Thursday, then decorated Friday night.  

Nana and Grandad came Saturday morning to play and brought a couple Birthday gifts!  I cannot tell you how excited he is about his bike!  He and Evan always fought over Ev's balance bike, which is actually a little too big for Cooper, so this should help things.  Cooper actually disappeared towards the end of the party- I found him in the basement riding his bike around.  Luckily we had a warmer weekend, so we were able to get the boys out to ride around too!

And some decoration pictures...  given our current situation...I kept decorations and food pretty simple.  The theme if you can't tell is 'hot air balloons'.

Our boys testing out the hot air balloon!

Oh my goodness, I'm actually in a picture...  (okay, I asked Brett to get me in a picture- after I went through all of our ski weekend pictures and found that I wasn't in any.)

Birthday boy trying to get a preview tasting....

Singing happy birthday...  Cooper wasn't quite sure what to think, but happily enjoyed some cake afterwards!  Thanks to all our friends for coming to celebrate our little one's second birthday!!!