Awww

Baby birds and puppy love!

My little flapper.

I've not seen the famous Grandma Mary pictures so somebody else is going to have to tell me if there's a resemblance. I'm guessing Grandma Mary's dress wasn't polyester with sequins and if her dress had fringe it probably didn't get caught in her toes! The purple fringy dress is Rosie's favorite dress up dress of the moment so when she found the hat in the box of winter stuff she latched on and proceeded to pose while I was trying to get pictures of Miss E's toothless smile.

The tooth fairy visited again last night. Didn't he find the coolest suckers?
I am so glad that tooth came out! It was sticking out so far! If you watched Nanny McPhee, that's about what it looked like! I didn't want to show it close up because the gum looks so gross from the tooth being wonky for so long. The good news is that I do think I can see the other tooth coming in - whew! We didn't know for sure if that injury had damaged her adult tooth or not. It's funny how mothering works - I hated that gray, dead tooth but I'm still sad to see it go.

Curriculum

Just thought I'd share our plans for next year!

Sonlight 4/5
This is our main program, it's literature based so we'll be doing a lot of reading. Not really anything different than what we do now, it's just that this has a theme and a plan as opposed to me randomly grabbing books off the library or reading the same story for the 1ooth time. Because Rosie will be included if she wants I went ahead and got the 4/5 instead of the older one. We're going to supplement with outside stuff for art, reading, math and history to make it a little bit more than just reading. I'm sure I'm being the classic first year homeschooler and thinking that we can do too much but that's okay, it'll keep for next year!

Saxon Math
or
Singapore Math

I'm not entirely certain what we'll be doing for Math. She's only just showed an interest in clocks and writing numbers so I haven't researched a whole, whole lot. I'm going to see if our education superstore has them before I order, that way I can look at them. I highly doubt I'll be teaching math anyway, not with a Daddy like Nathan around! One thing I do know though is we don't like worksheets. She does much, much better with manipulative's but I feel like I need the structure of the program.

Encyclopedia of World History

And this is what we're going to try and use for History. I really like the idea of starting at the beginning and going from there. This is a linked book, which means that Usborne has set up a search engine on their site to type in the page number of your book and it will pull up links on the Internet that relate to the text on that page.
The one I viewed was a PBS page with an interactive time line. Very cool stuff.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a dragon !

Mom got Nathan these Dragon planes for his birthday. They were SO FUN. We found them at TJMAx I believe and they were pretty cheap for the amount of entertainment they provided. They fly so far, it's kinda like kite flying crossed with playing frisbee. Definitely good for running children that can't really catch yet.

Girlies in pretty dresses

Just wanted to let everybody know that we had to put JaqJaq down yesterday. A big dog got in the fence, attacked him and broke his lower jaw. He was so old that they thought it was the best thing to do.
Very sad obviously. I just keep telling myself that we gave him two very good years at the end of his life.
Just the other day Evie was pulling him around in the wagon, I so wish I had gotten a picture of it but this will have to do. From Christmas the year before last in all his furry cuteness.

Rosies Birtday Bash

This is our german sling, it's a didymos. Got that? It doubles as a hammock/swing when you tie it to the monkey bar and is super fun.

Can you tell she's saying "NO!"?
Fishing with Daddy, her pole already has a plastic fish on the end.
Playing with the fun croquette set Aunt Ali and Uncle Wes sent.
Mmmm, cupcakes.
Daddy caught a fish!
The very sad caterpillar cupcake. It was not made with travel in mind. And it got seriously abused on the trip to the fishing spot.
Love how she sat all dainty like with those little ankles crossed.
Check out that wrapping job Mimi did, Martha should be very scared.

It's done.

Done, gone, over, outta here - the hair has been cut.
I'm sad and regretful but after all it wasn't my choice . She really is old enough to decide how she wants her hair cut even if that puts a little dagger in my heart.
So what do you think?
I don't like it. I think it added a good 3 years to her. She's always cute though, right? Even if she's looking more like a tween than a preschooler? right?
Oh and if you can check out how snaggled that top left tooth has gotten, it's adorable!

It's here!

The mail lady brought my charger about 15 minutes ago.... hooray!
Don't you just love our newest girl and her big sis?

We're back from our exhausting whirlwind wedding week trip and I did a very bad thing. I had tons of pictures to show, especially some of my beautiful cousin to be and her two babies (one is only 2 weeks old!) buuuut like I said , I did a bad thing. Last night I pulled off these two pictures of my most adorable cousin because the last time I took pictures of her it took me 8 months to get them to her Mama and I wanted it done before I forgot. Well, I left my camera on and hooked into my computer and it drained my battery and now I can't find my battery charger!
Ack! I'm hoping Nathan can pull them off my card using the printer, we'll see. We had a great time and it was a lovely wedding! I don't have any pictures of the gorgeous bride which I am very sad about, I'll just have to wait for the real photographers, I guess.

Some classic Rosie moments... it's my last day to be Mamma to a 2 year old. I'm just a little sad and weepy. Okay, maybe a lot.


She loves her dino's and her BIG, BIG bubbles.
Sigh.... how much longer until that soft babyness is gone? I can still see the hint of a an elbow dimple. And the slight pudge in those little starfish hands.
That thumb.... and her messy, messy hair!
Playing with the shop vac with me trying to ignore just how gross that air coming out must be.
My little rock star and her naked heavy baby. Totally classic Rosie complete with marker tattoos.
Shhh. Fairy sleeping.

She loves sunglasses. They make her world so happy.

my horse girl and the ragamuffin

Somebody needs dance lessons..

I got some muddy

Rosie is obsessed with money... we keep finding it stashed all over the house and we had to put their piggy bank up in the closet to keep it's contents protected. So we're getting her a cash register for her birthday.... good idea, eh?



Oh and those are the famous Thomas unmentionables ... she's such a silly girl.

Grass Fight

So the other day we cut 3 months worth of grass and weeds. Rosie was taking a late, late nap so we got some unusual alone time with Evelyn.


I don't know if you can tell but her feet were green from the fresh cut grass - ewww!
Warning: do not try this at home. Will cause allergy attacks and massive hysterical fits upon next hair brushing.
Some much needed Daddy loving. They are just starved for Daddy attention right now, he's regularly getting home after 7:00 and sometimes even after 8:00. An hour long commute on top of a demanding new job is not a good thing.
Notice the horse/unicorn is never far away no matter what the play is.
We've had many, many moments of worry over this one and we know you've been there right along with us. In the past 6 months or so ... wow have things changed. You'll be amazed when you next spend some time wit her. Unless you knew about it you wouldn't realize she was so, so late in communicating. She still mixes up phrasing every now and then and sometimes her structures sound "off" but we really feel it's more of a habit than anything else. Right now we're trying to get her into a Montessori School for next year. I still feel homeschooling is an amazing thing and I would still be planning for it if I felt like it was in Evelyn's best interests. But we feel that she needs an outside source of confidence to get her started on the educational/learning road. My big worry now is Rosie - we can do one tuition but two? Oh my word! I either need to start getting lots of bookings or go back to school or something and try to get a career! It's a two income world now, that's for sure.

That's so Rosie.

And no, it was not staged. She helped her little self to 5 suckers. Five pink suckers!

reason # 27 on why we don't live in a subdivison

My kids are way too stylish for all those covenant rules.

Playing house

Her imagination is amazing. So is her dexterity. She moved all those logs up onto the saw horse and tied the clothes line up herself. She even grabbed a box out of the recycle to use as a clothes basket. Not to mention how she found the clothesline and clothespins hidden away in my gift stash and spirited them away with out my noticing( guess I need to find a new hiding spot). Isn't she fabulous?