Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Marie playing in the rain

Jake in the rain, camping trip is officially postponed

Monday, June 28, 2010

No Camping on the beach today

We were supposed to go camping on the beach today. The AC in the car went out when we were just a few miles from home, so I turned around to get it checked out by the mechanic. While we were waiting for the news on the car, we got the call that the state park was closing because a hurricane was coming in and our reservation was canceled.

The car will get fixed tomorrow and we have a reservation at Bastrop State Park, its close by, has a swimming pool and some fishing and nice trails. The kids were pretty sad we aren't camping tonight, but I got a kid babysitter so I can go out with some girl friends and they are happy again, because they love kid babysitters, and tonights is a awesome singer/rock star.

We are being TV vegtables right now, just relaxing and enjoying the AC. Waiting for our new kitchen chairs to arrive, hopefully any minute.

That is all for now.

Julie

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Marie and Daddy watching the world cup soccer math

Saturday! Birthday Party and then a relaxing day.

Last night while I was tucking Jake into bed, he decided to practice his counting skills. He counted to 54 (with help on the transitions) and then he stopped and said, Mom this is too easy I am going to bed.

The tent is awesome and all of us are really excited about camping in it. I purchased a portable AC, we will see how well it works, I am doubtful it will help at all during the day, in one hour it took the tent from 100 degrees to 90 degrees during the date. But if it can drop it 10 degrees at night that might help us all out. We will see.

I still need to purchase tent stakes today, 14 stakes I need, holy cow!

Monday, June 21, 2010

Marie in her new dress painting the horse

Jake painting his dinosaur

Saturday, June 19, 2010

They are back

Jake and Daddy in the paddle boat :)

Jakes giant sugar cookie

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Swim pool

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Action shot

The giant chess match

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Jakes smokey snowy geotrax town

Playdate on a rainy day, play dough time!

Marie's project

Jakes puzzle map he colored.

The cars the kids made

Jake eating pancakes

Woohoo!

Yesterday was a true summer fun busy day, we did our chores and homework and before we knew it, it was time for our playdate. The Barnes and Noble story time was not good, they had a classic guitar player there from the Austin Lyric Opera, he was really good, but after about 3 songs, the kids were done - he played classical guitar from many countries, lost on the little ones. And the poor guy playing above the crying, also had to put up with little kids spinning the book stands and they squeaked that finger nail on chalk board kind of irritating squeak. It was funny to me, but not in a good way ;)

Marie volunteered as the first kid to strum the guitar and you could see her maturity and she really enjoyed it. Of course after Marie volunteered Jake had to immediately volunteer and he strummed a little too. Then we looked at a few books and then our clan headed over to Bee Cave Park, where the kids just ran and ran and ran back and forth. They had a great time.

After that I promised Jake we could go to Micheal's, about a week ago, to pick up a project. Jake got a puzzle of the US to color, Marie bought a giant bird house to paint - for her dolls, and I bought flowers to paint. We got home and worked.

Then we went to the park for a swim, fun as always, the lake is nice and warm. Then out on the lake for a great time, one of our neighbors brought a ski and went skiing off the back of the boat, Jake was very excited about it, his eyes were glued the entire time. After the first fall, Jake shouted out, "Don't do that trick again, you had a big wipe out" and he was laughing and laughing with sheer happiness.

The kids crashed hard last night and we had a good day. Today, we have a few of Marie's friends coming over for a play date and we will probably head to the park to swim.

Now off to do our chores..
J

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The dolphin is swimming in the ocean they colored

The nest in the bed

On the window

Leaves taped on the wall of the rainforest

Feeding the parrots

Leaf taped to toliet

Our other tour guide

Jake and Marie made a rainforest, Jake is starting the tour.

Tuesday - another fun filled day is apon us!

Today we have some great plans.

The chores have to come first. We have to put everything away and clean up the house as the maids are coming to clean the house. Then we have to finish organizing the garage, which should not be too hard, it is almost done (FINALLY!). And I have to replace the inside of one of our toilets, my favorite job. I will be doing that while Bill is home this morning, I told the kids last night when Marie wanted to come watch me do the repair, "Mommy says bad words when working on fixing toilets and she doesn't want any help". Marie replied, "o yea, I remember" and went back upstairs with Jake and Bill.

Last night the kids made model cars out of plaster molds. We painted them last night, but we need to glue on the wheels this morning. Homework went well, Marie is practicing reading - she read a leveled reader on her own where she got stuck on only one word (umbrella) last night, wooohooo! She is working on her math facts (addition and subtraction up through the 5's) and writing, working on answering questions in her first grade workbook and writing her first and last name with correct upper and lower case letters. Jake continues to amaze me, he had to pick out the item that looked different out of 4 objects and just whizzed through the worksheets, some of them were pretty hard, he also did some same worksheets - where he had to circle the same objects. He also worked on mazes which he again whizzed through. I thought it would be too hard for him, but he whizzed through the groupings worksheets as well, I presented him with 4 pictures and he had to choose which two belonged together. The final worksheet was a cause and effect worksheet, where he looked at the picture of what someone was doing and had to draw a line to what the effect would be, it took him about 5 seconds to complete that sheet. I am interested to find out what is going to be a challenge for him, but we have plenty of worksheets.

For fun, we are going to the Barnes and Noble story time, then we will play in the fountains at Bee Caves in the splash zone. We are meeting up with two other families there, so 6 kids in all, always fun times with other kids.

Happy Tuesday!

Monday, June 7, 2010

Marie as Rudolph

At the park

Jake as Santa

Back from Vacation

We got back from vacation on Saturday night. Fun trip home after visiting our friends in Lincoln, Texas on the way back. Sunday we had our end of year Girl Scout party on Sunday, so today we are just hanging out at the house.

Marie and Jake are playing school, Marie was teaching Jake all his letters, but I just went to check on them and they kicked me out as it is the end of school year party now and there are disco lights on, music and they are singing really loud and dancing.

This morning we had a short visit from the neighbors kids and hung out. Jake and Marie played Santa for a long time, that is where one kid sits on a bean bag chair loaded with toys and the other pulls the kids around (that is the reindeer).

Not much planned for today, our pumpkin plants now have four leaves and are growing well. We also planted corn and one sunflower.

Later...

Friday, June 4, 2010

Rest time after lunch

Rainforest cafe

At the pool!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Our balcony

Kids eat free, free kids club during day, movie at night!  View and balcony of ocean!  This rocks, yea hotel points...

Our first grader, wooohooo!

Jake let his ballon go to fly into the dark cloud to make it rain.  It rained!

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Jake's last ride on the rocking horse before we go off to Goodwill.

1.5 days of School Left!

Yesterday was a lot of fun. When I asked Jake what his favorite part of the day was yesterday, he said EVERYTHING! He even enjoyed cleaning the garage with me.

He made up a new knock knock joke and just thinks its the most funniest thing ever. After he told it to Bill he said, is that funny?? And Bill said its weird, and so Jake said, is that funny, and Bill said yes and Jake laughed and laughed and laughed. I think he told it to me 100 times yesterday.

"Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"Fire"
"Fire who?"
"Liar Liar pants on Fire"

I said that old saying to him the other day when he was telling me something that wasn't true and he has managed to weave it into everything. I heard on NPR the other day that 90% of 4 year old's lie -- we are certainly in that 90%.

The swim center was a LOT of fun, but I was so tired, I slept really good. Marie must have gone down the slides 30 times. Where she gets all that energy after a full day of school I do not know. Jake swam all over the place, he is a really good swimmer now. I think a few more days of practice at the pool and he will be confident to swim on his own in the deeper areas.

We are counting the days to our trip to Galveston, wooohooo - beach, here I come!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Tuesday - 2.5 more days left of school

Who is more excited?? Marie or Me? I can't wait to officially start our crazy vacation summer!

Today for Jake and I, we will primarily be having an "errand day" of getting end of year presents for teachers, mailing in registration forms for summer stuff, returning some stuff to work, and going to Dick's sporting goods to purchase some fun floaties for the lake and pool.

And I always have a cleaning goal, today is to clean and organize the garage, I think it requires purchasing some shelving...a home depot stop after school drop-off.

Today the swimming pool in Lakeway is open from noon - 8pm, so thinking about going after I get Marie from the bus. Meeting a friend for dinner tonight too.

Our pumpkins we planted last week are now in the garden and have three leaves. Jake just couldn't believe it. When we checked yesterday morning we counted each leaf on the plants and they had two leaves, by 6pm yesterday evening a third leaf popped out on both plants. I think we all really want to see a 500 pound pumpkin. I watered it in the morning, Bill watered it in the afternoon, and I watered it again with Jake last night :)

Never a dull day!
Julie