Blake's First Day of Preschool

Blake started preschool on Wednesday. As the day approached, I tried not to think to much about it, but I knew it was going to be tough on me. I was in tears about it weeks ago, then after Morgan started Kindergarten last week, I knew that Wednesday was going to be particularly rough (for me).


HE did great! No tears and went with his teachers no problem after hugging his Daddy and I.

His teacher had a good 8 other parents sign in their little ones, but for some reason when she got to me she asked ME if I was going to be okay...just ME...and I thought I was doing good at that point! LOL! But walking out of the school without him for the first time was tough. Unfortunately, with the new security at the school, we were unable to go into the class and take pictures of his first day....

...so I took a picture of his bus coming up the road to make up for it-LOL! I had to hold back tears waiting for it. All I kept thinking was how lonely it was waiting...I had Blake with me last year to wait for Morgan to come home...

Of course all of it was no big deal for my little guy. He came home and told me all about his first day. We had a special lunch of french toast followed by a dessert of chocolate zucchini cake that I made especially for Blake for his first day of school.

A little while later we had to go pick up Morgan from school. Listening to a preschooler and kindergartener discuss school and seeing each other in the hallway was PRICELESS! Had to have been one of the cutest conversations I've heard from them :-)

We then had an after school snack of pencils!!!
They're made from a cheese stick with a Bugle and piece of raisin on the top and a cut out piece of bologna on the bottom.

It was the kids first experience with Bugles, so I had to show them had to make them into fingernails...

...they thought that was pretty neat! :-)
I'm still emotional over them both being in school. I'm keeping quite busy while they're away right now to keep my mind off it as much as possible. And Rich says NO to having another baby, so I'm thinking chocolate...LOTS of chocolate...will be a good way to ease the pain instead. ;-)

Family Fun Night

Morgan's preschool class, along with another class, put on a Family Fun Night at their school last week. Everyone in the family was invited to come, so all 4 of us made sure to go...a little late due to the car getting stuck at the end of the driveway in a snow drift....but we made it! :-)

They provided us with pizza, chips, cookies and drinks and then everyone could make their way to the gym to do several activities. There was a table for writing your name and putting stickers around it. Another bin that Blake enjoyed fishing for the alphabet. Plus a table to make and decorate bookmarks.

There was also a clown that did magic tricks that Morgan thoroughly enjoyed.

And the clown painted smiley faces too!

Before we left, each family could pick up a gift bag that had even more activities to do at home and a book "The Butterfly House". It ended up being a really nice night. I thought it was a great to have a chance to meet other parents and just have time for the kids outside of the day-to-day classroom activities. Rich also enjoyed it more than he expected. Turns out there are a lot of people he knows that have kids our kids' ages that he spent most of the night talking to. We're living in the school district that he grew up in, so he was bound to know a few people! :-)

Happenings and Projects

I wanted to apologize for the lack of personal posts lately. (And that I haven't been to visit your blogs the last week or so.) I've been busier than I realized I would be:

*My sister is engaged now...happened last Sunday (November 7th) and she plans to have her wedding up by me. So between her working 60 hours a week and not having time and the fact that I live near everything, I've been trying to help figure out the wedding plans...it's starting to come together now and we can relax a little, but there is still a lot of work to do!

*I'm trying to make sure to do a little bit of preschool with the kids...I mostly read to them more (my goal is 5 hours a week, but even that hasn't been happening) and then we have creative time, music time, game time and learning time (where they work on writing/reading/etc.). We try do each of those "times" once a week. Morgan gets a lot of this in school, but I wanted to expand on her schooling here at home :-)

*I've been signing up for giveaways like crazy!! Because I don't work outside the home, I feel like it's my way of contributing. Winning food, gift cards, clothes and toys/books (for presents) helps out a little....plus it's fun just getting those "You Won!" e-mails! LOL! :-)

*I started doing a craft night with my mom once a week (or 3 times a week like last week) and it really feels good to finish a few projects. These are what I have done so far:

This is my first project. It's a book sling for over/next to Morgan's bed. I happened to have more fabric from when her bedspread was made (it used to be mine when I was in junior high/high school), so all I had to purchase were the dowels and the curtain rod brackets.

I sewed it at my mom's one night and put it up while Morgan was in school the next day. I surprised her with it when she came home from school that day. She still asks if I have a surprise for her when she gets off the bus on occasion-LOL!

I also made some curtains for the kids to go with the valences (there are 2 windows) they had from the nursery set...I know it's baby-ish, but I figured we'd stick with the gender neutral farm animal theme since they still share a room. This is the first that they've had window coverings since getting the new windows this summer!

This last project I actually worked on at home without my mom. I spun up a few small skeins of yarn made from raw (unwashed) alpaca fiber. Rich's Aunt and Uncle have alpacas at their place and had an open house that I spun at for 3 hours this past Saturday. I made these up ahead of time for them to display at the open house. (There is a black one too that I had already sent to them before this picture was taken.)

I have a few Christmas presents under way that I'm making for the kiddos as well. I just hope I can get them done in time because I'm really excited to actually make the kids some gifts this year...my mom used to make things for my sister and I-I'm loving being able to do the same for my kiddos! :-)

So that's what has been happening here! I'm hoping to catch up on here this week and visit everyone...so I should be by soon! :-)

Summer 2010 Update #3

The last couple months have been a bit of a whirlwind and as much as I thought things were going to settle down, they really haven't....and with the upcoming holidays, I don't anticipate that life will slow down too much, but I'm back!! I've decided that I'd like to cut back on blogging, though, so you probably won't see posts as often as I had been (before the break), but I am hoping to have something up at least once a week.

So, for the summer update! WAY back at the beginning of August, the neighboring town had one of my favorite groups perform at their Music in the Park, so I made sure to take the kiddos and we thoroughly enjoyed them! (The group was Three Men and a Tenor for those of you who may have heard of them.)

The following day the same town, that had the music in the park, had their Art Fair. I made sure to get some kettle corn while I was there (it's the best!) and my brother's friend was doing a book signing for his newest book, Michigan's Mysterious Lighthouse. It was a beautiful day and there was some truly amazing art there!

The 2nd weekend of August we had a birthday party to go to for my friend's little girl who turned 4 (she's also Morgan's best friend.) I also got to see her new little baby who was only a couple weeks old, then drove to see my other friends' new little one the next day. That Sunday we picked up 2 more calves, too, so that weekend was a weekend of getting my baby fix! ;-) It also ended with truck problems...with our brand new truck...but it was a fairly quick and easy fix...thankfully!

Two weeks later was another birthday weekend with my Aunt's surprise birthday party and Blake's birthday. (They share the same birthday-kinda cool!) Plus we went to Rich's old fire department's pancake breakfast that Sunday and followed that with his fire department's picnic....it was in the mid 90's that day and I really didn't need to eat anything! LOL!

Speaking of fire departments, Rich's burned an old house which I got pictures of, but on my dad's camera :-/ Then a few weeks later his old department burned a house that was on his grandma's new property and Rich had the opportunity to help with it!

This is the house being burned on the family's property. Rich is the one with the yellow helmet.

Watching the fire was so interesting! And the darkness in the picture is from the thickness of the smoke!

Rich is on the nozzle spraying down the tree to keep it from burning.

Family picture :-)

Labor Day weekend was a little more relaxed and on Labor Day we had a picnic with the family. The weekend after that, though, we had a wedding to attend. The wedding was Friday afternoon, so we dropped the kids off with my parents', who were going camping, then carpooled with Rich's parents and some family friends. We stayed that night, came back the next day and ran up to where my parents' were camping to get the kids....a lot of time on the road! The wedding was fun, though, and the kids had an awesome time with my parents' attending The Thumb Octagon Barn's Fall Family Days where they got to milk a goat, card wool and have it spun to bring home, make greeting cards using dried & pressed flowers, take train rides, pump water at old-fashioned pump and lots more! (I'm thinking I'll have to go there next year-sounds awesome!)

Rich and I ready for the wedding! Had to get a pic of us, since we don't dress up often :-)

The newlyweds :-)

A quick pic of the Octogon barn...we drove by since Rich had never seen it before.

Morgan started preschool the following Monday and has been LOVING it! I take her to school in the morning, so she doesn't have to ride the bus with the big kids and she rides the bus home right before lunch. It was a tough decision to let her go, but now that she's going I know we did the right thing :-)

Rich took a couple hours off to drop Morgan off at school with me on her first day...another family pic.

The next weekend was the fireman's memorial festival and the weekend after I had another Girls' Night Out with the girls from high school as well as an open house for a couple who is expecting their first in October. (SO many babies!!) :-)

In between all that I've picked, husked, hung, dried and shelled my popcorn. I ended up with a gallon bag full even though I cut back! I made sure to get them done asap this year and only lost a little bit to the chipmunks who decided to infest our mudroom (they are quite cute little pests though!) I also got 42 quarts of tomatoes canned and 14 pints of salsa...so far....all the tomatoes are picked (due to a frost threat) and I'm just waiting for them to ripen. The garden is basically done for the year-the only thing left out there is our pumpkins! :-)

The kids and I have also been working on several activities/crafts/projects that I hope to share with you in another post....this one is long enough! ;-)