CD giveaway

Rocks in My Dryer is hosting a mega-giveaway with twenty winners. Count 'em...TWENTY winners! Woohoo! She's giving away boxed sets of WOW cds--Christian music. Head on over to Rocks in My Dryer if you'd like to enter the giveaway!

Shutterbug

Ahhh, he's just like his mama. He's even trying to zoom in with the lens! And no, that isn't my camera--it is from the pretend play area at the preschool his sister attends.

Preschool Graduation, Take Two

On Monday Princess graduated from preschool. Again. And next year she'll graduate for the third time. *sigh* I understand the point of preschool graduation for each class level (since some of her classmates only attend for one year) but the bulk of her class of 20+ will have "graduated" from preschool at least two times! Oh well, it seems the novelty doesn't wear off. Plus she was thrilled to get flowers--I bought her a spray of pink tea roses and the florist put in some purple flowers too. Pink and purple, her favorite colors.


She has made some wonderful friends at preschool and I have been blessed to make some friends with the other moms. Princess is at a Christian preschool and I love how God is a part of her everyday life at school. Too often it seems that religion is reserved for Sundays. I am so thankful that is not the case with Princess. Our experiences with this preschool really have made us see another wonderful reason to have our children attend a parochial school rather than a public school. Of course we teach our children about Jesus, but it is wonderful to have religion happen in the classroom as well. Earlier I wrote about touring a school that seems to be a wonderful fit for our family. Of course I'll continue to obsess over this topic for the next year, but at least for now I'm feeling at peace with the schooling decision.

Works for Me Wednesday ~ Geocaching

This weeks theme at Works for Me Wednesday involves sharing how you will keep your children busy and happy this summer. My children are almost 2.5 and 4.5 and have virtually no formalized plans for the summer--ballet class picks up again in July for my 4.5 year old and my 2.5 year old has a once a week Parent-Tot gymnastics class. That is IT though.

Our main activity this summer will be geocaching. The children call it treasure hunting. We started this family activity in late March and love it--last weekend marked my 100th find. Geocaching has brought us to some fun and interesting locations--we even cached on our family vacation to Oregon and just loved it! Caching involves using a handheld GPS (we bought ours for under $100--you can find them for even less on craigslist!) and coordinates that you find on the geocaching website...and then you go out and look for the treasure!

The treasure can be a vintage ammo can hidden in the woods (the picture at the top of this post is of Princess and Handsome after finding an ammo can after a short hike), a small magnetic container inside a lamp post, a tupperware hidden in the woods, an old crab pot attached to a dock, or any number of things. Larger containers have "swag" hidden inside that you can trade for--we bring bouncy balls and mini tubs of Play-doh to trade. There also are "trackable items" in some of the containers. You don't get to keep those; instead you bring them home, enter the item's code number on the geocaching website, and then move the trackable item (sometimes a coin, sometimes a small toy or car) to another geocache the next time you go out treasure hunting. Then the person who "released" the trackable item (aka the owner!) can look online to see where in the world their item has traveled. Yes, there are geocaches ALL over the world!

We really love treasure hunting and definitely will do it all summer long. And, as a bonus, my mom is into caching too and will go out with us this summer. It is a wonderful family activity and VERY inexpensive after you buy the GPS.

Here are some of the spots geocaching has brought us...I hope you enjoy the pictures! Isn't the one of my husband with his face pressed up against a mailbox rather bizarre? That was such a fun cache! It was a two part cache--part one involved finding a "tool box." Inside the box were balloons and on each balloon were coordinates to the second part of the cache. Once you found that cache (actually a mailbox in the fire department parking lot!), you had to figure out how to open it. The only way to open the box was to stick your balloon in a small hole at the back of the box and start blowing--soon the pressure of the expanding balloon caused the front of the mailbox to pop open! What fun! I first did that cache with the children and then we decided we had to bring Dada back so that Mama could get pictures of him figuring this out!


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Timber!

No, that isn't a shrub--that is our beloved Red Japanese Maple. On the ground. With its roots snapped up in the air.
And those plants around its base are my vinca and bleeding hearts. *sob* This tree was my FAVORITE part of the backyard. It bloomed beautifully in the spring--a huge tree full of pink flowers!!--and provided the shade for my bleeding hearts to flourish into early summer. Unfortunately on Tuesday in the early evening the soaking wet soil and heavy wetness on the branches made the tree fall. So sad. My husband went out last night and started chopping it up so that we can try to salvage the bushes it fell on. The wood inside the tree is pink...no wonder I like that tree so much!

We plan to plant another Red Japanese Maple in its place, but we can't afford to buy a fully mature tree (as this one was) so it will be many years before the tree we plant is as gorgeous as this one was. Sad.




All of this rain is, however, great for my little vegetable garden! Look at those plants grow--I even have some itty bitty green tomatoes! The little sprouts you see are lettuce and they will be thinned when the plants are a couple of inches tall. Everything is growing beautifully except the carrots. Those are not sprouting at all. I thought those were supposed to be easy to grow! (Oh, and in case you are wondering...no, I haven't finished nailing the pickets around the garden box yet. And yes, there was a bunny sitting next to the garden box the other day. Uh oh.)

Contest

Thanks to Nicole at Our Cozy Nest, I learned about a new little contest and blog group thingie. (Very technical explanation, eh?! ) At any rate, the contest has wonderful prizes with a side benefit of increasing traffic to your blog. A win-win in my book!

The "Formal" Living Room

Lara over on The Lazy Organizer is doing a "Talk About Tuesday" and this month it will be a tour of people's homes. I *love* getting a peek into other people's homes! Today I'm opting to talk about my formal living room. It is the first room you see when you walk into my home and it opens right into the formal dining room.

Ahhh, the "formal" living room and dining room. I like the living room couches and chair...but the rest of it is kind of blah...too formulaic in the living room, if you know what I mean. Last week I bought some blue/white/yellow striped fabric to make new throw pillows for the couch and chairs--I think that will help freshen things up a bit. And, as a bonus, the fabric is decorator weight fabric marked down to $9.99 a yard from $19.99! Woohoo!

Ignore the oak framed mirror and wall candles you can see off to the right of the picture. I dislike all of those pieces and want to change them out. Heck, I want to change out the whole dining room! I'll save that for another post though.

I do have some barn stars I want to put up on the wall (ala The Nester) but I'm not sure where to position them--should they be over the armoire or centered under the peak of the ceiling? Decisions, decisions! The armoire, by the way, houses our office stuff--desktop computer, wireless modem hub, envelopes, bills, and my husband's clutter. The little table to the right of the armoire isn't usually there--usually it is a petite round black table...but we bought a new family room couch and I needed to borrow the cute little black table for that room.

I do want to add a tray to the coffee table so that I can add some decorative items to the table. I also think the round table between the armchairs needs some pizazz. Maybe a contrasting piece of fabric over the tablecloth and some more frames and such on top.

One thing you can't see very well in the living room picture is the antique Wedgwood plate I have hanging on the wall. I love the plate--it has a picture of the chapel at my college alma mater...the place where my husband and I were married almost seven years ago. LOVE that plate!

We may have a winner!

Yesterday afternoon we visited the Catholic school I mentioned in an earlier post. And...we may have a winner! We walked away from our visit with a VERY good feeling. The principal was very friendly as were all the teachers we encountered. The kindergarten classroom was inviting (as were the other classrooms) and we were pleased with answers to our questions about how the school will challenge Princess.

The best part was seeing how students reacted to Princess. School was out at 3:10pm and we arrived at 3:20pm so there still were some students around. Princess tends to try to engage people in conversation--the students were very patient and not at all annoyed with our four year old.

If we had to choose a school TODAY for our children, we would choose this school. We asked for (and were given) contact information for some parents so that we can get their views on the school too. We're keeping our fingers crossed. It really was a great visit!

And, I must admit--I love the uniforms. I've always loved school uniforms and the ones at this school are pretty cute! Plaid jumpers with red sweaters for the little girls and plaid skirts with blue sweaters for the older girls. Boys wear blue pants with red sweaters when they're in the lower grades and then their sweaters switch to blue when they're older.

100 Geocaches

On Saturday we went out and did a bit of caching as a family. The last time we cached was on our family vacation at the end of April, so it was great to get back into it. Our first Saturday cache was my 100th cache! Woohoo! Our GPS zeroed out in completely the wrong location, but luckily we still were able to find the cache after a fair amount of searching.

Reading and Schooling

Princess is 4 1/2 and reads fluently. She started reading just before she turned 4 and her fluency has steadily improved since then. Now she has moved beyond easy readers and will read just about anything. She reads books to herself, to her brother, to anyone who will listen. It is wonderful and amazing to listen to her. She adores reading and books and it thrills me to see my love of books and reading embodied in my little girl.

The downside to all of this? She is 100% ready for kindergarten...and yet she is not ALLOWED to go until the fall of 2009. That is more than a year away! This is ridiculous. Unfortunately we cannot find a school anywhere around here who will allow her to attend this fall.

I know kindergarten is about more than reading, but trust me, she is READY. She has two years of academic preschool under her belt and knows how to behave in a classroom setting. She does basic math problems, she uses scissors well, she does phonetic spelling. The child is more ready for kindergarten than many students in school now.

Frustrated doesn't even begin to describe my feelings at this point. To add to my frustration, we don't know where to send her to school. Our local public school is okay but not great. The local Christian school is good but expensive--plus since we're Catholic, eventually we will have to deal with things such as the portrayal of Catholics vs Martin Luther in the curriculum plus we're not too enthused about aspects of the science curriculum. The Catholic schools are an option. One school is twenty minutes away and is relatively new. We went to an open house at this school and were not very impressed by the kindergarten teacher or the curriculum. The other Catholic school is thirty minutes away and we're going on a tour there on Monday. It is a more established school and is the least expensive school of all the options. Oh, and of course we have to add in commuting costs in addition to tuition amounts.

The only other school options are so expensive that we can't even consider them. We can barely consider these options as it is. Homeschooling keeps flitting in and out of my mind, but I really don't think I'm cut out for it. I'm not social enough and fear that I would keep my children at home too much. Plus I think successful homeschoolers are 100% committed to homeschooling and that just doesn't describe me.

Ack. Where is the manual on parenting when you need it?