Getting Silly With Counting Cats

Joel was now competent enough that he was not missing a beat - except on purpose .....



"So, do da yewwow one doe nest? Hmmm... Dat nod yook wight."

"If yewwow nod wight, den whad I pud dare?"

"Burble, Burble, Boo, Burble, Burble, Boo ...."

"No more burble."

Counting Cats 3

This kid can make some seriously STRANGE faces. I don't remember what promoted this look - but I had to share it. His dad has a similar "face" and when Joel makes this face, he looks so much like Daddy - LOL.

Deep concentration - but he missed his mistake this time.

So I pulled it apart and he fixed it right away.

"But if I do more it will fall off down here," says Joel.

Counting Cats 2

Look at that face - he LOVES this game!

Then we tried something much harder ... green blue green. He concentrated VERY HARD and did fairly good ....

But did manage to begin a green blue green blue string instead .... so I pulled them apart so he could see them better ....

Which he liked .... until he ran out of greens! What a worried look!

Patterns and Counting Cats

Joel was showing a knack for patterns - so I thought I would check to see just how far he could go.

Since I can only put 4 pictures in a post, I'll spread this over several.


Back when Kendra was a small fry and learning counting, colors, and patterns, Grammy Rue bought her a set of counting cats.

After Vannan graduated from needing them, we returned them to Grammy Rue, so I was pleased to spot a nice little jar of them last week in her office.

I started Joel off with a very easy pattern. He kept it up until his cats fell off of the stool.




So we tried something a little harder. He really concentrated HARD - and loved every minute of it.

He counted and repeated the sequence over and over - made a few mistakes and corrected them all by himself.

In the end, he was quite pleased.

We kept this up for nearly an hour.

Things Are A Changing Around Here

Exactly ONE YEAR to the day after Tim was "let go" from his job of 2 years, located just a few miles north of us, Tim was offered a job working nearly 100 MILES north of us - though I think it's also a bit west. It's a bit far to commute - 3+ hours a day to do that! He's done it reffing, but daily? Plus his work day starts at 6:00 AM. He'll be working 4 days a week, for 10 hour days. Long hard days, and 6AM is very early for him! And you should see the mountians of paperwork he's been filling out! SHEESH. I know he'll be doing some database programming and managing a team, but that's about it. And he starts TOMORROW.

So tonight he's holed up in a NICE little hotel with his own tiny kitchen eating steak and macaroni. He sent us pictures! He's even called to say hi and see how we are doing. It's much nicer than we thought he was getting - the company put him there while he searches for something more permanent - like an apartment.

And we are staying here - in our trailer. Of course Tim is planning to basically take his office - so he's giving Joel back his room. We hope to paint it yellow before moving Joel in for good - the color Joel picked out. He also wants the alphabet poster and the number poster in his room. This will make a huge difference in the livingroom. We hope to buy a place next summer and join him up north.

Other big news, we went to the midwife for a 12 week check up on Tuesday. We were delighted to hear a heartbeat! So we are very optimistic that we'll be welcoming a new baby into the family early in the fall. All my little preschoolers are delighted and love to pat and kiss the baby. Joel makes a little fist and tells everyone .... Mommy's baby is this small! He is very excited.

Today I volunteered to teach Jr. Church at church - it was a need and I'm good at it, so why not? Part of me is excited - and the tired part wonders why I did it... KWIM? Joel is really too big for the nursery, but not quite ready to sit quietly in church - though we have tried and he doesn't do too badly - but the auditorium is very small, and sound travels. This way they will have a smaller sermon, sing, and do a craft. I think I'm going to just start at creation and start with making a hanging Mobil each week with the days of creation. It'll only be about 30 minutes, because most of these kids DO sit in church for the worship service.

So, lots of things changing around here.

Joe's "New Bedroom"

Joel's idea - not ours.

He says his new bedroom is my closet!

He wanted his picture taken, but the flash hurt his eyes. The closet is VERY DARK even at full day.

With everyone coming down with a tummy bug, I was slightly worried that he might throw up in there. But he did fine. I think he had the bug last week actually and just had the runs.

That crocheted blanket on top is his favorite. It was a baby gift to him from the "stand in" pastor of our church - made it himself. Too cool!

Sun Cookies

The lesson plan said to get some clay and make bright yellow suns.

I just couldn't see wasting good clay making yellow blobs that would be thrown away - money is too tight!

So inspiration hit!

Let's make yellow cookies!

Each preschooler got a big chunck of cookie dough that we had colored yellow.
We wrote the word SUN across the middle and put a different colored MnM on each cookie so we would know whose was whose.

We also put their initial on them, but most of them were not readable after cooking, so we were glad for the MnMs.

They cooked up HUGE so they had plenty to eat and to share with brothers and sisters.

Making Kefir

We convert most of our milk to kefir - except what gets used for yogurt - or that Tim drinks.

I got some grains a few years ago - and we've been going at it ever since.

Yummy!

Joel's Chores

On the weekends - the girls write their chores down on the black board and erase them as they are completed. Joel wanted his chores on the board too. He has 4. Feed the dog, pick up your toys, go to bed, and take out the trash. Two of the chores he has big sister help - Kendra helps him with his toys, and Vannan helps with the trash.

He wrote Toys. I wrote the other two. He and Vannan had already done the trash.

He wanted his picture taken, but was being so funny!

He wanted you to see his chalk.

If you look closely - you can see the pictures HE DREW beside each chore.

The next day, he wrote the chores out by himself - he did ask for help with the spelling.

A Little Lizard

L is for Lizard.

Joel says so.

A couple of days ago, as I was headed for a shower, I nearly stepped on this cute little guy sitting on the board that covers the hole (under carpet) in our bedroom. Technically, there is a crawl space under the floor, but it has holes too, so wild life sometimes crawls in.

After some thoughtful looking at each other - we remembered that Joel got a new net.

So with Joel and Vannan cheering - I managed to get the little fellow into the net.

It wasn't easy.

But we sure were laughing hard.

Joel spent several minutes talking to him and looking at him from all angles.

Then he helped Vannan take it outside to set it free.

I have a feeling that this will be a useful little gadget around here.

Joel just looked at what I was doing and grinning from ear to ear says, "Yook! Ids name id Yizard!"

More Christmas Arrived

A little late - but my second down sister sent a BIG package down and it arrived last week. Mom finally got all of the packages sorted to the right families - our packages were all wrapped in gold.



Joel got a bug catcher net and jar.

We got 2 DVD's and 2 books.

Vannan and Kendra got purses with lots of goodies inside. They were especially thrilled with the lip gloss.

AWANA have Helping Hands

Xavier was our proud winner of helping hands night. We told the Cubbies that just bing obedient, cleaning up messes, and sharing, would earn them a whole bunch of stickers.

We gave stickers for standing at attention during the flag time, coming to different zones when called, cleaning up their cutting messes, eating their whole snack and then throwing away their napkins, drinking all of their water, and anything else we could think of to award. It was a LOT of fun.

Some of them lost stickers in hair and during games, but I asked them to show off their stickers anyway!

AWANA be a Turtle

Each week at Cubbies - we work on a different letter of the alphabet.
This week was T.

So we pretended to be turtles.



But the paper kept falling off of our backs. This was not fun. It was frustrating!

So when our game leader walked by - I asked if he had anything in the closet we could use.... hoping for beanbags or something.

But he came back with something even better!

And the kids LOVED them. Too bad there were only 2 turtle shells.

And they SMELLED YUMMY!

Ok, now I'm craving Pepperoni and Sausage Pizza!