We have a pr pr pr problem

For most of last school year, Jack Jack was in speech therapy through our local school district. He started out elongating his words. But over time, he started stuttering. That's when we started taking him up to Cades school to "play" with the speech therapist there.

Jack made good progress. My mom even commented on how well he seemed to be doing. When summer neared, Jack was deemed not too bad as to need therapy during the summer (the speech therapists get the summers off too!). I got a list of speech therapists that I could call if we wanted to have Jack continue through the summer. At the time, he didn't need it

Over the last two weeks, Jack has regressed quite a bit. And just yesterday, for the first time, Jack got so frustrated trying to talk that he almost started crying. And it's been like that all day today he strains to eke a word out.

Tomorrow I'm going to call some of those therapists and see if they have an opening.

We can't wait 4 more weeks until school starts.




-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Traveling Cade

Cade is up visiting Scott's parents this week. Yes, that's right. For a whole week!

Courtesy of Lin and Rick:



-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Full price

Well, it looks like my mom has sold her home and property for her full asking price. And without effort! Neighbors were talking, and it spread that mom was looking to sell. And one set of neighbors wanted it bad enough that they brought over a contract for full price! God clearly orchestrated this, and I am so pleased that His timing (for once!) was in line with our timing!

Now to find her a house...


-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Check

Drive 4+ hours with two pre-schoolers?

Check.

Hang swinging cafe doors?



Check.

Weed-eat and mow around MawMaw's house?

Check.

About to pass out?

Check.

-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

The highs and lows

Just a day in our life...

We started off the day meeting a lady to buy a DVD/VHS converter through Craigslist. On the way to meet her, we passed by a thrift shop. I love thrift stores. You never know what treasures lay within!

On the way back from our meeting, we stopped at this thrift store. Lo and behold, many treasures were inside the store.

Besides the $3 Crocs I got for Cade, we also picked up another gem. It's a cash egister complete with price tags, scanner, and little money that goes everywhere. It even includes (MUCH to my chagrine)
credit cards. When you slide a credit card through the "swipe" thingy, a female voice chimes, "credit approved!". Great. The evils of plastic now in a toy near you.

The cash register has been a huge hit in our house, and it has already proved to be much more valuable than the 4 measley dollars I paid for it. It is also apparently going to be a thorn in my side as it will force me to teach Claire, over and over and over again, how to share. See pictures below for explanation











-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

We're Baaaaack

We're back from movin' MawMaw. All in all, it wasn't too bad. Of course we didn't even move half of her stuff. But it still went smoothly. And I inherited some pretty cool things. Like a movable router table. And a table saw. And a scroll saw. And... *sigh* I am my father's daughter. I have a hard time getting rid of things too!

So the search is on for a buyer for mom's property. Know anyone interested in 22 acres outside of Houston? Let me know!

Didn't get too many pictures from the weekend since I was busy moving stuff, driving, and packing. And besides. No one wants to see me on the Slip n Slide. Really.

Movin' MawMaw

This weekend we will move up MawMaw's nonessential junk to our area so that we can stage her home for sale. It looks like the neighbors that were interested in buying her property aren't able to get close to her asking price, so Mom is going to go forward with "listing" the property & house by owner. And since there is still so much to sell to get the house cleaned out, we're just going to move it all up here so that I can better help sell things on Craigslist.

This weekend also marks the time when MawMaw will start living with us part-time. Part-time until she sells her place. Then she'll live with us full-time until she can find a house near us. We are still talking with our neighbors to see if it can work out for Mom to buy their house. But we're unsure that the home will work out, which is such a shame. How ideal for Mom to live next door to us! She needs a jar opened? She just walks over for help. I need to run out real quick to the grocery store because I forgot one thing at the store? Just send the kids over next door.

It will be great. Plus Mom can come with us to church, learn more about Jesus, and get plugged in with other ladies.

How does it come to this?

I just wanted to plant a few flowers I had bought at 50% off at Lowes (about this time of year, lowes has tons of iffy looking plants that aren't doing well at 50% off. If you spend a few days watering them and holding their hands, you can get great plants cheap!). I had bought them a week ago, and I was getting tired of watering them every day and worrying if they were going to die before I could ironically get them in the ground. And it just so happens that Scott is out of town at Eagles Canyon Raceway this weekend.

So we innocently go out in the backyard to plant the flowers (varieties of icoreopsis and sage). And of course I need to water the plants after they've been planted. So I get the hose out. And that's when chaos breaks out

Claire doing some kind of water/tribal dance.









To build a good immunity system..





A backwards bidet.

-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Progress Part II

The other progress that we made with Jack this weekend was at the pool. Not only did he get in the water. (Oh yeah! he got in the water) This boy sat BY HIMSELF on the big tanning ledge at our neighborhood pool. By himself, I said. Slighly short of a miracle.


-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Fanette legs

I just realizes that poor Claire has inherited the Fanette legs: short, stubby and with big quad muscles. I'm so sorry, Claire!


By the way, Claire is enjoying a lollipop because she sat on the little potty this evening!!!!



-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Home sweet home

I visited my sweet friends Andrew & Nikki this evening; they recently sold their house and bought an rv trailer to live in. My kids thoroughly getting to go on top of one of the bunkbeds. The perfect picture moment!






And with Ethan and Chrstian. Those boys are so sweet!!

-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Brilliant parenting idea

Our family had dinner over at a friends house (shout out to Sarah and Drew!) last weeked -- yummy sausage and steak! This family is great. They love and follow the Lord. They have 4 well behaved kids. They have a great marriage. We just enjoy being around them!

I discovered a jewel in their home office.




It's a bulletin board with 10 Godly character traits laminated. When the kids see one another exhiitjng one of these traits, they let their parents know (to help confirm which character trait was seen). And then the kid or parent writes a short note that says what the kid. The note then goes on the corkboard under that trait.

BRILLIANT! So not only are your kids encouraged to practice good behavior, kids are also recognizing in others and praising them for who they are. Love it!

Here are the traits and scripture verses Sarah & Drew have on their board:




































-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Creative Construction

Cade has his 2nd day camp this week. It's called Creative Construction, and they'll be building stuff out of all kinds of materials. Cade ha a fantasic ime today, although he was quite nervous before entering he room this morning. After I signed Cade in this morning, his teachers presented him with a yellow plastic construction hat and an orange Home Depot kids work apron. Cade was actually ok with wearing the gear. He gave me a pretty weak smile and thumbs up and then went into his class.



I have a feeling this picture is going to come back and haunt Cade.


-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Backyard time

It felt fantastic this evening, so Jack and Claire and I played in the backyard for a while. Claire can walk up the slide now and loves it. She and Jack took turns walking up and then sliding down. And of course giggling in the fort.

















-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Cricut. Cricket? I cut!

I can't believe I haven't posted about my most recent "large" purchase! Two weeks ago I bought myself a Cricut! (pronounced "cricket") It's a little on the expensive side, but considering all the paper crafting I do (scrapbooking, card making, ID tags for the kids bags, birthday signs, etc) it will get a lot of use!

Basically, it's a die cutter. Provocraft has made all of these cartridges ("carts", as the veterans call them) that have different fonts and shapes that you can cut out with this machine. But each cart, at its cheapest, is $40. Yikes! So, with a little research, I found software (retails around $60) that allows you to use any TT font on your computer as well as any clipart to cut! Do you know how many free fonts and free shapes there are online? TONS AND TONS! Plus there's this great free drawing program (very similar to Adobe Illustrator) that allows you to draw your own images/text and convert images you find online to cut with your Cricut.

There's been a little bit of a learning curve with both sets of software, but it's been fun fun fun to play around, and I'm so excited about all the things I'll be able to do! You know those cute chinese take-out boxes? Got a pattern for that. Cute tags and nameplates? Got that too. Oh, the possibilities are almost endless!

And if you find yourself in the market for one of these bad babies, skip the smaller sized Cricut. Go with the 24" Expression... it seems that almost everyone who buys the smaller Personal sized Cricut (which is much cheaper) ends up upgrading to the Expression and having to sell their Personal sized Cricut for much less than they bought it for.

Progress

Normal kids love the pool. Normal kids play on the playground with squaling joy. Most kids potty train by 3 years old My kids aren't normal.

Cade didn't potty train until 3 years and 8 months. You tend to keep track of this sort of thing. The ditching of diapers by just one kid in your house makes you feel amost as. Liberated as the Iraqi people.

So I knew going in with Jack that we probably wouldn't have him trained until about 3.5 also. That time came and went. Jack is now 4, and up until today has showed no interest in the potty. He's actually been vehemently opposed to he whole idea. He has actually told us that he wants to stay in diapers even though all the other kids are already in underwear.

Can I tell you how gross 4 yr old's poop is? Technically it's not much different Han a 2 yr old's. But here is something psychologically wrong and disgusting with old kid poop. We're pretty done win it around here

So out of frustrating today, Scott made Jack sit on the big potty wig one of those seats that sits ontop. There was much weeping and fussing. But after scott got Jack to calm down, Scott set his timer for 2 minutes. Jack lasted that long without ching and was allowed toget off the seat

We tried this again this evening after bath (this time we promised him candy), and he did it again. Without crying! He was nervous, but he was a trooper. Can't believe it!

I'm tired; I'll tell you about he other morsel of progess we had today with Jack in my next post.

-- Posted from my iPhone -- ain't technology grand?

Who needs toys?

I'm convinced that we (as a country) spend needless money on expensive plastic toys when our kids would be well entertained AND use their imagination with a big pile of craft paper.






Apologies for the blurriness. Lighting was bad, an the iPhone doesn't have a flash!

-- Post From My iPhone

VBS poop-out

Thankfully this post will not be as graphic as the title suggests. VBS has been great this week (I love my 5th graders!) but it's just been exhausting for the kids and me. Jack is still, for over a year now in fact, in this in-between phase of needing a nap vs. not needin a nap. There are some days when he doesn't need a nap at all. Then there are some days when I can't keep him awake at 5pm because he's so sleepy. Then there are days when he is a tired little pre-k monster and things get verrrrrrrrrry ugly.

As God would have it, Jack passed out today around 5pm. I walked into his room to check on him and saw this:






-- Post From My iPhone