Blah, Blah, Blog

I hate when I go through these phases of blah-ness. It's not that we haven't been doing anything, I'm just feeling blah still. Those winter blues just lingering.

Here's what we've been doing...anxiously waiting for spring...and sun....and warm!


We've been playing with shaving cream


Doing the dishes. (check out how many dishes I made them do! ha! Actually, I think Rand did most of them) :)


Pretending it's summer inside


Enjoying school


Swimming in the tub


Looking straight up and imagining green...........................................Dreaming of spring


Decorating our indoor tree


Hopefully, I'll be back tomorrow. :0) Maybe a new video is in order!

When I Grow Up

The conversation this morning went as follows:

(I was getting ready for church. The boys were being occupied by a video.)

Brendan (yelling from the other room): Hey Mom!

Me: What's up?

Brendan: When I grow up, I want to be a paleontologist.

Me: Oh yeah? You want to hunt for dinosaur bones?

Brendan: Yeah, and put them together like a puzzle!

Me: Cool. Sounds fun.

Wyatt: Hey Mom!

Me: Yes??

Wyatt: When I grow up, I want to be a monkey.

Me (speechless, but absolutely cracking up in my head): Awesome!

1 Bed for 2 Boys

When we moved to Arizona I knew I wanted to get the kids bunk beds. Unfortunately I couldn't afford the 1200 price tag on the ones that I wanted. That's okay. I'd like to consider myself resourceful....sometimes. Anyway, someone at our church had some bunk beds that they sold us for a steal of a deal and I got to work turning them into the beds that I wanted....which meant hours of painting! They turned out good.

There was a matching dresser too that I painted as well. It worked.
BTW, this picture was obviously taken in Phoenix. Notice the blazing Arizona sun streaming in the window? Feels like forever since I've seen that summery sun.

Fast forward. Now we live in Pennsylvania......how'd did this happen again??? Sometimes I still have to ask that...and then answer it just to stay in check with reality!
The boys' room is much smaller, which is fine, because in my opinion, bedrooms are for sleeping and we don't do a whole lot else in there. I would prefer "space" in other places of the house where we do most of our living and playing (if I have to choose....or get to choose for that matter).
Anyway, the way we had to set up the room, that bottom bunk came out just about a half a foot away from the dresser...which had nowhere else to go. So that made getting into the dresser kind of annoying. Old houses have lots of tight little places.
Since we've moved here for some reason the boys tend to want to sleep in the same bed together. Sometimes they sleep up top, sometimes they sleep down below. The rule has always been that if they are quiet they can.
Well, to make a long story even longer we decided to get rid of the bottom bunk bed. Rand disassembled it and moved it to the basement yesterday. And then I got to work turning the empty space into a sweet man-cave for them! :) I'm sure it is the case with anyone who homeschools, but there is never enough bookshelf room. With that bed out I knew I could utilize that huge bookshelf under there. So all the kids books that aren't school books got moved down there, along with their comfy chairs, blankets and don't forget Christmas lights. I hung a couple quilts for some added privacy and Viola! Perfect little-boy-man cave! It's working for now and they spent a solid 30 minutes in there reading during rest time today. Lovely. I'm sure adjustments will be made in the near future. Like in the summer when they decide it is way too hot to sleep next to eachother anymore.

Long Live Spidey!

When Rand was a kid, I'm going to guesstimate age 4 or 5-ish, he had a Spiderman doll. Apparently it was his favorite. He can remember playing with it and all the things he used to do with it.....including biting the top of Spiderman's head.

Somehow this same Spiderman doll has made it's way into the hands of our kids....and strangely enough Wyatt likes biting the top of his head. I contemplated not letting them play with it because it is practically an antique and not in the best shape. The thing has been hand sewn, lovingly, a million times by Rand's mom. It looks like it is going to disintegrate. Well, of course, our boys love the thing and want to play with it. So I let them. I'm not sure what it is stuffed with, but over the years it has become hard as a rock and some spots have no stuffing at all, like the neck and the "joints". Well, you just can't play gently with a Spiderman doll. Just the nature of the character requires flinging and throwing and beating against things. So now I sew it. This last time its arm almost ripped completely off. The weird stuffing was falling out all over the place. What is that stuff anyway? It looks like old, disintegrating toilet paper. The boys have been BEGGING me to sew him up so they can play with it again. So finally I did. I added some poly-fil to his poor wobbling head and arms and did my best to pull together that old fabric. I'm sure he won't survive another generation.
Check this thing out!

Hum-Drum

It's official. The mid-winter blues have finally affected my blogging. Maybe that's a good thing, I don't know. The weather hasn't been so horrible...just cold. We got a rare glimpse of warm weather last week and it was lovely. Made me want spring to come even sooner. I know, I know, it's coming.

Still, it feels like nothing is going on. I have a case of the humdrums all over the place. Don't know what to cook, don't want to clean up, dragging my feet (BIG TIME) to do school with the boys, hardly whip out my camera lately. Just dull! I feel like I want to rearrange the whole house just to bring some new life to the place.

Today I am deathly ill with a head cold. Rand was home and cleaned up the whole house. He is sick of my "humdrums", I'm sure! :)

I've been struggling with homeschooling majorly. I don't have a lot of "support" in this area so that makes it especially hard. (I have got to find a group or something) Homeschooling is a decision I make and then have to re-make and re-make as we go through the struggles of the year. I'll admit, sometimes I do not want to do it. Sometimes I think Brendan would have more fun at school. Sometimes I think I would have more fun if he were at school.
A couple weeks ago Brendan got in trouble at Sunday school for talking. He actually got kicked out of his class!! I know he is not a behavior problem or anything like that. I know that he LOVES Sunday school and being with the kids in his class, and learning, etc. He is so excited he has trouble NOT talking. It triggered a real battle inside me though as to whether or not we are doing the right thing by homeschooling. I was feeling burnt out anyway. So Rand and I started talking about it, and what our options would be for him next year entering first grade. We talked about all the pros, like more free time for me, one on one with Wyatt, less stress if we have another baby (I'm not pregnant....don't freak out), etc, etc. Then I start looking into the whole thing, and all the reasons I decided to homeschool start coming at me from every side (even from people who aren't homeschooling). And all my "pros" for sending him off to public school get solved in another way. There is something I LOVE about homeschooling. It is hard, I'll admit, but worth it in so many way. SO MANY!
Anyway, I didn't mean to start going off about homeschooling. I rarely do that here. It's just been on my mind so much lately. So, instead of decide anything crazy in the middle of boring February, I decided to spiff up the school area a bit. I cleaned up the toys, organized some of my things a little better, propped up my gigantic chalkboard, and then painted a huge tree on the wall. The tree was totally random and just happened. I didn't actually paint on the wall....that would have been foolish. I have this huge role of white paper that I taped up and painted away. I had no idea what would come of it. I cut it out and taped it back up and I think I like it. The kids love it and have already made a squirrel nest for the tree and a purple plum. It's starting to feel more springy already. I think I will hang some blooms from that tree and some new green leaves. My humdrums will be gone in no time!

Virtual Jojee

Yesterday I needed some help, so my sister, Joanna, (affectionately known as Jojee thanks to one of her nephews) came over to babysit. Sadly, she lives all the way across the country in Washington and she would have never made it in time so we had the next best thing. Our virtual Jojee sat on the couch with the boys and watched a movie with them via the webcame while I worked in the kitchen. It was nice. They asked her all sorts of questions like, "Wasn't that a cute one?" and "Are you feeling scared?" and she answered them. I think the boys really felt like they had her company. Now if only that computer were huggable.

Oh how we miss our Jojee. (loves to Uncle Jon, too)

Passing Through

On Wenesday I got to see a good friend. Marieelena and I met at church in Phoenix. She lived just minutes from my house and we became walking buddies. Walking and talking, walking and talking. We bonded quickly! Length wise, we have only been friends a short time, but I feel like I've known her all my life. Her mom went to Heaven last week and Marieelena flew to Viriginia to attend the service. Wonderfully, she had a layover in Philadelphia, so I drove the 40 minutes to the airport and got to spend a good couple hours talking with her face to face before her connecting flight. I also got to meet her new baby girl, Stella Rose, who she was pregnant with when I moved. It made my whole week to get to give her a big hug. It wasn't nearly enough time, but I'll take what I can get. I miss a lot of people....in a lot of places.

I love you, friend!

Snow Day

Yesterday was another one of those days. It just felt weird. Rand was home from work. The boys stayed in their jammies all day. And all day long it snowed.....except as the day went on there was less and less snow on the ground.
It's February.
As long as I can remember February is when I start to feel a little crazy about being stuck in the house and really tired of all the cold weather. Although, I am pleased with how much less it rains here compared to Seattle. I love the rain, but like I said, by February, enough is enough. That really does get old. So we did some arts and crafts to brighten our otherwise colorless existence in the dead middle of winter.




By evening it was cold enough for all that white stuff to start sticking to the ground and by morning we had a good 4 inches of powdery snow.




Off to go sledding!


And in case you missed it on Facebook, here are a couple videos of the boys being boys. (I know, I know, Brendan should not have been going off that jump in his condition. I tried to make him go on his tummy, mostly, to avoid impact to his leg.)



HAPPY SNOW DAY!

Squirrel Feeder

The boys and I made a bird feeder the other day. The classic "cover a pinecone with peanut butter and bird seed and hang it from a tree" kind. We watched it for days. No birds. (I think they are little spoiled over at the bird sanctuary across the street.) Yesterday I came downstairs and found this guy going to town on our bird feeder. Wyatt thought it was horribly sad that he was stealing it from the poor birdies, but I thought it was kind of funny. I knew the squirrels were probably going to get it since I hung it from a huge branch and there is just more squirrel activity than bird activity in our yard.
Well he chewed the thing clean and all that remains is a little twig tied to our tree with a piece of yarn.

__________________________________________He really loved it!

I have a real bird feeder hanging up for the birds that the squirrels can't get, but even that one doesn't see much activity. So perhaps I will just stick to feeding the squirrels.