Holy Catch Up!

 Saturday 112-Sunday 113

Oh my word I am so far behind!  Here it is a week after the bday party and I am just now catching up for the week before it!  Oye Vey!  So as stated previously Saturday we had a wonderful time going to a pumpking party!  Dominik's family hosted and it was a fantastic time had by all the children and adults too!  The girls enjoyed running about with the other children and I helped as needed to keep the party going smoothly.  I am a sort of in and out person but down here people LINGER....that party lasted 3 hours and I was ready to go home for sure.  Sunday was a lazy lazy day doing mostly nothing.  Baleighs real birthday was that Monday, the party would be the following weekend.

Monday 114-Friday 118

Well this proved to be an exciting week!  Not only was Monday my babies birthday....5 years old!!!, but I also received a phone call from the human resources officer on the base.  I was offered the job!  The job I applied for back in JULY!  Many of our dreams are coming true down here and it is wonderful.  The week flew by in a blur, I can not even remember most of it.  I had to lcall out of work on Wednesday so I could go have blood work done, do another federal background check, fingerprints you name it.   I had to schedule two days the following week off for a physical as well so I could get my health card.  This is required to be a government employee.  So as we struggle to find day care so Nana can actually go back to her normal life, we also found a solution to that this week as well.  We will see if all works out.  Monday was Bay's last day at Childtime, it was not a healthy fit for her.  I have been preparing the lessons I teach at work for her to do at home, and Nana has been continuing her education at home for now!  That is really all I remember for the week...I KNOW...horrible.  My brain is on overdrive right now between the events of Bay's birthday party and the incoming jobs....

Bays BOOTY!

Last day at school with a cupcake...

Watch me swing!

Soccerball!

Pippy helps

Thank you NANA and Grampa!

Ok...line it up...

We love these from Teresa and Dawn

Mommy and Jasper!  Gooood Morning!

Fun wind socks we did at school...ghosts, bats and witches

We love playing with our net!

Giggle....all the pirates are taking a ride on her pillow pet

Saturday 119-Sunday 120
Well Saturday was spent preparing for Bays birthday party Sunday.  We had a surprise visit from Lochlin and Salem for Bay which she loved.  Josh and I took the girls to the base and we played tennis with her new rackets.  We found ourselves super jealous and wanting to play too!  Sunday was the big party and everyone on the list made it!  Could not believe how huge a function it ended up being. 

While the party was a great success I was very saddened by the actions of some people I thought to be my friends.  It proved very dissapointing for the girls and myself.  No need to say anything more than that.  All the kids had a blast and I was so thankful to have Linda cuddling Jasper the entire time and was thrilled that Roger could make it up from Fort Myers.  Quite a long trip for a party!

That night...capn Jack Suratt set sail on the living room floor...

Baleigh made her tutu from Linda..

Monday 121-125

I am annoyed to be retyping this.  I had it all typed and it didn't post?!  This proved to be a very very exciting week for all of us.  Josh got his official OFFICIAL offer from the police department.  I know it seemed like weeks ago he graduated and weeks ago he was offered the job...but it is just now official.. H.R. can take a long time to get it all together.  It is so official we went on Friday after my physical  on base, to get his patches sewn on.  :)
Oh and if you want a good laugh, I am healthy as a horse BUT in order to get my medical card you need to have all your shots up to date etc.  Well they lost my immunization record, and rather than reschedule me to come back...THEY GAVE ME SIX SHOTS IN MY ARMS... INCLUDING TETANUS.  Do you know how bad that hurts?!!  I am typing so gingerly right now because I can not lift my arms about 45 degrees! I don't remember anything else that happened this week...it has been so crazy between all this waiting and appointments.  Today is Saturday Day 126...and I can tell you what will happen.  Nana is taking the girls to see Puss and Boots.  Josh and  I will hit up the base to do a little grocery shopping...and that's it.  Tonight is early to bed for him. He starts his police shift at 4 am tomorrow morning!  We love our policeman!

Celebration Weekend-Productive School Week!

Saturday and Sunday-Day 105-106

Saturday and Sunday were spent mainly celebrating Joshua's accomplishment at the academy.  It was a holiday weekend for him and the girls, but not for me as I had to work on Monday...darn private school.  Actual can not blame them...even the public schools are in session in FL for Columbus Day.
We did have some phenomenal storming this weekend however, and saw some of the best rainfall all season.  The winds whipped through here in hurricane fashion, and we kept the door to the porch open while we watched it together.  Roger came up again because it was Joshua's graduation after all and we all had a fantastic weekend sitting around lazily together!

Day 107-111 Monday thru Friday




Apart from some little hiccups like having a sick co-teacher and assistant and running a class of 24 4-5 yr olds by myself, this turned out to be a great, productive, creative week!  We got lots done.  The children were introduced to Eric Carle again, I try every week to put his books into play.  They worked on sequencing, the letters P, R and S, and making patterns out of quilt squares and letters.  Amazing how many of them made the words, NANA, PAPA, and MIMI.  Letter pattern? YES...but also a fond name for most of them to call family.  I am still struggling with several of the children as far as writing and letter recognition is concerned.  The most difficult obstacle for me is allowing one on one time with each child.  Children unfortunately will fall through the crack if we are not given enough quality time with each one.  I have some who still can't hold a pencil, still can't hold scissors, and of course over half who still can't sit in a chair for more than 10 minutes.  Unfortunately in a Reggio Emelia/Montessori type school, a child can DO AS THEY PLEASE, so I can not reprimand nor can I force a child to sit and do work with me.  Therefor my job is to create lessons so captivating that the children would rather do that....than play in centers. :)  This week was much much improved as far as the behaviors are concerned, but still a work in progress!  Here is some of their work...such a shame I can't show them doing the work...but legal stuff ya know! 

Sequencing

What a fantastic job on the internal organs they did!!!

balancing exercise home made bean bags...pantyhose and rice!

I can show because no faces are in the pic

Symmetrical pumpkin presses!

My favorite...he chose to do a bat instead!

Who doesn't love handprints...

I love hanging stuff...

So fun!  We made skeletons from pipe cleaners and the kids practiced moving their bones and then moving the bones on the skeletons.  The picked what position they wanted them in and I hot glued them down.

S is for Sand...thats sand on glue.

My fall board....completely child made. You can't see the leaves....I hadn't put them up yet.  They painted coffee filters with brown red green and yellow.  I cut into leaf shapes.

I try to staple something to the top of each assignment so parents know the purpose of the lessons...

Ok so tomorrow ( Saturday) is a pumpkin party!  Our first party out with kids....so happy for Bay ( and Pip gets to go too!).  I adore the family we are going to see and most of the kids will be at bays party next weekend....pics to come in the next blog of that party!  YAY!

What a week!

Saturday-Sunday Day 98-99

So a beautiful gorgeous weekend it was.  We celebrated Nana's birthday all weekend and took the kids to the park to get them out of the house and running around.  Payton still didn't look or sound good this weekend...maybe a Dr. visit in our future.  I still don't feel great and am thinking something is brewing deep in the old bronchial area.  Our friend next door Teresa and Dawn brought over deep fried Oreos!  If you can believe it they were....delicious.  I ate one and thought I would die...I just don't eat like that anymore and my body hated me for it.  My taste buds thanked me though.  I turned in at 8 pm on Saturday night because I felt awful.  Same thing happened on Sunday so not much of a productive weekend, although I did clean....ALOT.

I just realized Pip isn't in any of these pics...she was running around like a maniac....yet had no voice.  This was the start of her getting sick...

Monday Day 100- Friday Day 104
So this week we started working on the body...senses, how the body works, how we use it etc.  For sense of smell and vision the kids made floral arrangements using my fake wedding flowers...they did a great job! I took a picture of each child with the arrangement when they were done and made a giant flower shop area on one of my walls.  So cute.  Can't show you because the faces are in it...I can show you the final arrangement though.  Also the children made silver leaf art work...so cool, did some smell tests with cinnamon, lime, coffee, dirt and mint.  Taste tested gummy bears on different parts of their tongues and played in dirt....yes dirt.  I love dirt tables.  The clean dirt ya know?  So a productive week all around and next week they start looking inside the body.  How it works on the inside.  Some of the projects include making bones and muscles from red tissue paper and white pipe cleaners and tracing each other and drawing in the organs!  I can't wait to see what they come up with.  God knows one of them will draw a roller coaster inside someones body!  Tis the age.  I also broke out the sewing machine this week and decided to create some ugly dolls.  Why not.  I needed something to do with my minuscule amount of free time and each doll takes about 10 minutes....very instantly gratifying!  So by Wednesday it was apparent that Pip was not getting better and neither was I.  We both stayed up all night sitting on couch coughing our lungs out but to no avail....we just couldn't breath.  So after a Dr. visit for both of us it turned out she did have croup ( steroid shot right then and there because her oxygen was low breathing treatments, antibiotics and more) a double ear infection a positive strep test and sinusitis!  How does it go from a cough to that in two days?  She is not a sickly child!  The next day I ended up in the walk in....to discover I had bronchitis and ear infection and sinusitis....JEESH!  The following day NANA had gotten it too!  It starts with a nasty virus and for some turns into a bacterial infection.  It sure did for all of us.  Everyone is on the mend hopefully but it looks like jasper is getting a little glassy eyed and feverish... ( I sit here Saturday morning typing this and he has 101.4 with meds....)  Hopefully this weekend will be a nice restful one.  Who am I kidding...we will be partying!  Friday Josh graduated from the police academy...I couldn't be prouder of him!  Roger came up for the event but Nana Babs was so sick she stayed home with Jasper :(  She was greatly missed at the occasion.  I know we all wish she had been there.  The girls were excellent and cheered so loudly for their dad when he was recognized as being the top of his class!  So proud...and happy for him.  This was something he never could have done had we stayed in RI.  Opportunity keeps knocking....and we are always willing to open the door.  Wonder what or who will knock this week?

Cream of the crop

Catching up! The end of September!

Day 91 Saturday-
Today Nana Babs and I went to the Farmers Market with Pip.  We had a blast picking out fruits and veggies and Payton felt great ownership in being a part of the ladies day out and picking our food for the week.  She was a doll.   The agreement was she got the morning with us running errands and the Bay got the afternoon picking out a new stroller for Jasper.

To market to market...

After the market we stopped by Linda's house so Babs could see it.  Miss hanging out with my buddy...this work stuff stinks!  We head back home to pick up Bay so we could go to Mandarin to the beautiful consignment shop they have there. I love this place because you can walk in with baby stuff and walk OUT with CASH if you haven't spent it on a new fun toy.   They hand you cash for your things.  They are VERY picky and its just amazing the prices they have.  We saw a woman walking in with a beautiful grey and blue Baby trend stroller hardly used at all.  We were tempted to talk to her outside the store but walked in to check things out...  The prices on strollers were 40 ish dollars and they just weren't up to par.  They were no where near as cute as hers.  So while she was standing in line to sell hers we approached. " Hi are you selling?"  " Yes I am" she responded.  "Ok well they are selling the strollers for 40$ over there and there is no way they will pay you that much for it..."  she cut me off, " well you pay me 40 and its YOURS!"  What a DEAL!  A STEAL!  Stole her right out from under their noses!  Everyone was happy !  ( Well perhaps not the store owner but oh well.  So Barbara bought Jasper a new stroller, a more functional one that works WITH his current baby trend car seat and is so much easier than the sit n stand we had.

LOVE IT!

Ok so that was Saturday...
Day 92 Sunday
Honestly....don't recall what I did.   We cleaned and cleaned and reorganized the house, finished hanging pictures and shelves that got lost in the mix and just hung out with the kids while Nana took a much deserved day off.  She went to the movies and piddled around town while we got the house ready for her arrival back home.  The kids were great and it was a stormy day so they were patient with us cleaning while they watched movies and played blocks.  No pics...oh yeah wait.  That night we sat on the porch and blew bubbles with the kiddies!!!

So the the week started....
Day 93 Monday- Day 97 Friday
What a great week.  Apart from seasonal issues with my sinuses and the girls not feeling 100% either, the week at school and home was good.  This week we finished our unit on our community and world around us so Ms. C and I decided to give the children a mini unit on fairytale stories.  Amazing that these children don't know fairy tales!  They only know Disney...which yes some are fairy tales but...seriously....a true fairy tale has a princess, a bad character a  good one, a problem a resolution a Once upon a time and a happily ever after.  Oh yes and D and J(children in class)...no Dinosaurs are not fairy tales, neither is batman or spiderman or Ben-10.   UGH!  Like pulling teeth but so much fun!  The kids created fairy tale wands for the girls and wizard staffs for the boys.  They created a boat from their "favorite" voted on fairy tale, Peter Pan and a pirate treasure chest.  We have swapped out the trade centers and put the boat and treasure chest out for October.  This is also considered a tribute to Columbus...I mean he had a boat right?  See :) its all related.  Next week we start the unit on the body.  How we use it etc.  Lots of fun to come from that...secret taste tests between lemons and oranges, salt and sugar.  :)  Feeling tests with peeled grapes, cotton balls, feather, sand paper etc.  I can't wait to get creative with this one!  Smell tests with coffee cinnamon, vanilla, and citrus.  So much fun!  Now to enjoy a weekend with the family.  I tell you its 50 out ( saturday morning)  and feels like winter its awesome!  Going for a morning walk with the kids!
All for now enjoy the pics!

construction begins on boat

fairy tale quilts

another quilt

pirate treasure!

Day 86-90  Monday - Friday

Like I have said previously, the days blend together so I am doing my best to relay all that happens during the week.  I take a lot of pics so its sometimes the best way to show what I have done!  However this week I did not have a chance.  Class was very busy.  This week at school the children worked on community helpers, firemen of course being the highlight for all of them.  They have decided they want to build a 3d fire truck.  And this coming week has another 3d construction piece....so I need to find some cardboard boxes stat!  I love projects like this.  Kids learn, they are busy and they work hard and long to get a completed project.  We shall see what comes of it.  We talked about blueprints and sketches and the children practiced making fire trucks out of foam blocks.  I can show these pics because there are no children faces present.  We also

My budding artist!  Painting herself as an artist.

I love that she knows INDIGO and VIOLET lol

Fire truck blue prints! LOL

"There's got to be two pedals one for revving up and one for when you go to fast."  I love child quotes

 So the kids worked a lot on their names as well.  Florida is much different than RI in that they want children to learn LOWER case first.  Up north I recall Bay learning all capitals first.  They prefer that children understand that your name consists of one upper case and the rest lower case letters.  It amazes me that some of the children can't hold a pencil or cut paper with scissors.  Such a basic need that I was never taught to teach if you get what I am saying.  Nobody teaches you to TEACH a child to hold scissors.  I do a lot of " open shut open shut open shut" hand over hand.  Sounds easy right... you go do it LOL.  Children have soft hands too...meaning they don't push down enough to even see that they are writing....or the complete opposite, the rip the paper every time they try to write.  It is an interesting grade level that is for sure!  In this week, Friday couldn't come quick enough.  Bay had been sick and stayed home with Nana ( thank god she is here to help...), I am not feeling 100% and I just need a break from all the "Miss Christen's".  Nobody talk to me.  My weekend is here!  Ahhhhhhh.