Year 3, March 11-12th, 2018: Life as Normal

Normal Sunday Funday. Normal slower, but pushing through the day because it's the start of the week, Monday.  With the "spring forward" time change, we lost 1 hr early Sunday morning to "daylight stupid time" but it wasn't too bad.  The kids and I slept in today to catch up.  The men, however, carried on as normal, leaving bright and early.  It's been really cold here lately, even snowing huge flakes today!  I cannot wait for it to warm up a bit because having a 3 yr old stuck in the house can be exhausting!  He needs some outdoor time!  Sure, I bundle him up, but it's still too cold to stay out long.  Socks, however, keeps wanting to spend hours and hours outside and I think it's because he wants to get away from the noise and chaos inside.  With Abishai constantly throwing around toys or zooming through the hallways, there's not many places Socks can lay down and not be in the way, poor dog! I keep trying to remember to bring him in, but then he asks to go back out.  It's an interesting observation right now but I can't do anything about it.

Tomorrow we head to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis because there's a group going that can get us discounted tickets and we haven't been in a long time.  So we did our best to get a good day in with schoolwork, and we did just fine.  I'm feeling a bit of burn out with homeschooling this year, but we have to persevere for another couple of months or so.  The local homeschool conference is less than 2 weeks away, so hopefully, that will be a good kick in the pants to finish the year out strong.  I've got a plan, and hopefully, my man and kids can join me this time, at least for a little bit.  I just want them to see what excites Mommy, and that they are not alone in this homeschooling gig!  Not that any of them really feel that way because we have a ton of homeschool friends, so homeschooling does seem normal to them.  I'm even dragging the teenager along, so to give him some idea, too, that I do know what I'm talking about.  Homeschooling is a huge part of our life, and I want them to see it as our lifestyle, not just what Mommy thinks is best.  Anyway, I digress, but hopefully, it will help.  We've got the concert on Sunday first.

Which, I'm nervous and excited about, and I had to dig through a huge box of keepsake clothes, mostly t-shirts, to find the Newsboys shirts I have.  Well, I only have two shirts.  I thought I had more.  Oh well.  But, I did come across all kinds of teeny, tiny shirts that were mine, that shrunk, and I will never wear again even if I do lose 20 lbs.  Keturah can enjoy them now, and I'll keep them for later for a tshirt quilt or something that I've been sort of keeping them for anyway.  My graduation gown and hood from college is in that box, and my riding pants (again, way too small for my mama sized hips), and the dress I wore when I was immersed, and the shirt that I gave Jared as a gift on like our second date or for Christmas or something that first year of dating (and guessed the wrong size and had to take it back to get the right size, lol, at the outlet mall, 1 hr away).  Loads of other fun memories, but, most importantly, my 36 yr old teddy bear, Teddy, was in that box!  Yeah!  I don't think I saw her when I peeked in that box in Charlottetown a couple of times, so I don't think I've known where she was for like 6 years.  I never panicked because I knew she was somewhere, and I'm glad that box was upstairs in the boys' room in Charlottetown and then in a dry (although dusty) fairly secure brand new equipment storage barn, up on a plastic skid, away from creatures.  And even here, it's in the garage, and only on the floor after we took care of the bugs.  There's no sign of damage on any of the clothing, which was my biggest fear.  No smells, nothing.  Yeah!  I can't say that about every box I've packed and repacked in the last two years.  But Teddy is found and is back on my dresser, safe and sound.  See pictures of her below and you'll understand.  As far as the t-shirts go, sure, maybe, I'll get rid of some or I'll take pictures and make a collage, or I won't, but today was not the day to do that.  I have full confidence in that "someday" will come, but I wasn't emotionally prepared for that.  I located the shirts I wanted and moved on.  I can't wait for the big summer projects though and I'll be putting myself into that mindset and thinking things through a bit more.  It's enough just to homeschool and keep the preschooler from hurting himself or his toys or us.

Shenanigans abound over here......

Barbie central!

Yes, those are huge snowflakes falling around lunchtime today!

Watching the tree guys work with all their cool equipment.

I think they cut down two birch trees and one massive broadleaf tree.  It's a sad day in the land of trees.  They were done in about an hour.  Cool small machines, though!

Bryce joined us for lunch and the afternoon, before they went to small groups on Sunday.  Board games with friends are the best!

Justin can't tie his own shoes, so it's a good thing his best friend (and we of course) can help a brother out!

Ok, ok, this is a screenshot of John Crist's merchandise, but come on!  This is hilarious!  And we certainly have counted these for a day or two (or the whole week Justin was down after his injury).

John Crist's newest famous saying.  I watched an hour long serious interview with this comedian, and his heart his golden.  He comes off as a sarcastic comedian over social media, but he views it as a ministry.  This phrase is used when someone asks him about something like playing golf or something and he doesn't want to do it.  He puts a lot of emphasis on the "sure" part with little head bobbing.  Just Google it!

The kids had a little dodgeball tournament after Crave this evening.  Benaiah doesn't play sports, so he wasn't interested in trying it.  We had our homeschool meeting in an adjacent room and the kids were pretty loud, but we could still talk,which was good.  It did make a bit difficult to cross from one side of the room to the other though to Jared's office, lol.

Yup, the boys just stand there and talk.  And they are just SO BIG!  I remember when they were so little!

Just two kids, sitting in a boat, at church.  Yup, that's how we roll! It was a prop for middle school Crave this morning.

Make that THREE kids in a boat!  Abishai LOVED the boat and wasn't scared when it rocked back and forth either.

Abishai having fun while....

.....Daddy rocks the boat!  Thanks for letting us mess with it!

Hm,...I think a new bedtime ritual has begun and I'm loving it!  I used to read to Abishai after he nursed before bedtime, and I think at one point I was doing it after other nursing times, too.  Abishai actually reads to Daddy though.  He knows all his colors, including pink, white, black, and brown, his shapes, his animals, and a few numbers.  All by picking it up from us talking or his YouTube shows.  I'm ok with that, because we reinforce it, too.  He's a quick learner!

And then he read books to me in the morning!

Daylight stupid time has me like....ooooo, I get to wake up in the sunshine!

Loads of sunshine!

Trouble with this one starts before I even get out of bed!  But he's soooooo cute!

Like this!  I told him not to do it, but he did, and now his ball sat there in time out.  I don't make him go to time out because I can't physically keep him there unless I'm using the pack and play.  So, if he's rough with toys or disobeys, the toys go in time out.

This is Teddy.  I've had her since I was 1 years old.  And thankfully, she's not moldy or musty.

But she has been well loved with lots of her fur missing.

And a few surgeries to put her back together.

Can you tell that shirt was from the 80's?  And she's got Cabbage Patch doll size pantaloons underneath.  And human sized, silky baby socks on.

My mom made the little quilt of course.  And, I knew how to wrap a baby up in a blanket by doing it with her.  Now, the method I used wasn't as good as the wrapping that Jared could always do, and I did have to tweak it with the real babies, but, I had some general idea from the get go.  Teddy went to college of course, and has sat on on my dresser for many years.  I'm not sure if I'm going to leave her there this time, because I feel like I'm so much older now, but I'm not going to stuff her somewhere where it's dark either.  I'll have to think about that some more.  Jared doesn't care, thankfully.  Perhaps somewhere somewhat hidden on my desk where only I can see her.  Who knows.  At least she's still around!

Wow!  They even chopped up the tree stump!  I can't tell if they got it all out of the ground, but they at least cut it down TO the ground with this really big chainsaw device!

Look who joined us for read aloud time!  He actually did stay for most of the chapter.  This is a very imaginative book, but we are enjoying it!  It's just a little breather while we waited for the next book in our series to come from the library.

Ok, so this was interesting.  I was messing around with music on my phone and Abishai heard it and came over to me and said, "Music sad.  Sad music."  Say what?!  How do you, at 3 years old, know what sad and happy music sounds like?  Ok, first of all, it wasn't a very sad song, but it wasn't a very upbeat song either.  It is an instrumental song, though.  He also noticed that a dinosaur in one of his books looks sad and usually notices when things are wrong (like a car crash) in other books.  I don't know what that all means, but I'm thinking he might be a very compassion/passionate little guy, intuitive, too.  I'm very impressed! 

No more big tree.  But check out the big pieces of wood there, too!  It was sad watching them make wood chips out of all that awesome wood!  I know we wouldn't use it all, but it just seems like a waste when you can use it for firewood.  Oh well, it was fun to watch!