What a difference five days makes!

Last Wednesday, we were in the throes of an ice storm. It was actually raining ice, there were sheets of ice on the roads and sidewalks and it was just a mess all around.

Today it is 70 degrees outside.

In two days, its supposed to snow again!

Happy Birthday Emma!!

Today is Emma's 3rd birthday!! I will share photos of her Dora party later.

But we are happy to celebrate that 3 years ago today, Emma joined our family after a long and tough pregnancy and was, and still is, quite the snuggle baby!!

Happy Valentine's Day

The kids woke up to new Webkins at the breakfast table (the Love Frog, of course), and cards and candy from us. I had a beautiful bouquet of red roses, with 3 placed in separate vases(1 for each child).

And then I had a delivery from the FedEx man - a Roomba vacuum. I have been coveting one of these for a while and it is currently in its charging base. If it works like it's advertised, then I look forward to having our high-traffic family room vacuumed each day. And, this means that the clutter will have to be picked up each day so that the vacuum can run! But at least I can be doing something else while it runs!

Poor, Busy Tooth Fairy

The poor tooth fairy has been busy, and will continue to be busy in our house.

Samantha lost a tooth over the weekend. The tooth fairy visited that night.

Michael's other front tooth FINALLY came out this morning, with lots of struggles including both myself and Mike. Tooth fairy will be visiting tonight.

Samantha is getting some teeth pulled tomorrow - hopefully one of the ones planned to be pulled was the one that fell out - and the tooth fairy is going to go BROKE tomorrow night!!

Poor, tired tooth fairy.

Good homeschool week

Well, I can certainly say that my standards for a good week have changed over the past year and a half, especially with all the extra that we have had to take on with Emma.

The past month or so has been difficult. One or the other of us seems to always be sick, there have been any NUMBER of doctor's and other appointments, and just when I would feel like we are getting in a groove, we get derailed again.

This was a good homeschool week.

The first day was actually a carry over from the last day last week, that was yet another sick day. But, we actually have five good days in a row. I did all of the lessons with the kids all week, including everything that involved me (which is always the areas that I fall short on). We are catching up with where I'd like to be in history and we have finally started a science program. So, all in all a good week.

Happy Birthday Samantha!

A couple of weeks ago, Samantha turned 11. She went back and forth on what she wanted to do for her birthday, and finally decided to have dinner at Olive Garden on her actual birthday (with just family) and then a party at the Laser Tag place for her friends.

Laser Tag was pretty neat. They had a party room where we could set up, and the kids played two different games of Laser Tag, with snacks in between and cake afterwards. Samantha initially wanted cupcakes and then we found these fun "star shaped" mini cakes so we made those and each person got their own little mini cake to eat.

Samantha even invited the younger brother of a friend of hers so Michael would have someone to play with.

It was a nice afternoon but, as always, quite exhausting, and I was just happy that I didn't have to clean up remnants of a party at home when it was all over!

Gold-stripe belt

I am a bit behind in my updating so I'm going to update with some random events that have happened in the past month.

Michael earned his next Tae Kwon Do belt. He is now a "Gold Stripe". This is basically halfway between Gold and Green. They "break the curriculum up" into two parts, I think, to give the kids something "closer" to strive for. Michael earned this pretty quickly, considering there were lots of weeks of limited classes due to the holidays and our trip to Disney

Once he earns his next belt, I have to change the class schedule, which is a shame because I like the times he goes now. But most of the classes he attends are for "low belts" and when he gets his next belt, he will no longer be a "low belt"

You may notice the black uniform among the sea of white uniforms. Michael joined the "Elite" program, which means he can go an unlimited number of times in a week (right now, he goes 5), and he gets to go to an additional "Elite" class. They focus on additional physical fitness, leadership skills, and weapons. He really enjoys it and because I changed the way I was paying from monthly to all up front, it actually didn't cost me anymore to upgrade - I just had to go ahead and pay for the year.