After the first week

Well, one week down. It's been fun, frustrating, interesting & exhausting! We have DEFINITELY decided we like Gregg working 2nd shift better! It doesn't help that he's working 10 hour days so he doesn't get home until after 5pm right now but we are glad it's only for one more week! We miss him being around - especially Alyssa has missed him, which I thought was surpising since she's such a mommy's girl. I have missed the ability to take naps in the morning when I've had a bad night of sleep!

Our first day of actually sitting down to do school, Alyssa threw a tantrum at one point and I thought, is this what it's going to be like every day? The lesson I learned was that I had left the hardest part of school, the part she had to actually work on & take her time on (handwriting) until last. She was hungry and her attention span was gone. We got it done but since then we have been doing that part first, even before we're ready to do everything else and that has made a HUGE difference.

On the other hand, on Wednesday towards the end of our class time, Alyssa exclaimed "I LOVE school!" That was so nice to hear! :-)

Matt has been doing a lot of "school" with us and I think Alyssa has enjoyed that. Of course, he does some things a bit different (and some things not at all) but he likes being in school with his sister. We've had a lot of fun playing abc games, illustrating each day of creation & Alyssa and I have even been trying to learn sign language for each letter of the alphabet.

Due to a thunder storm Wednesday night (the first one all summer), Alyssa & I were both up that night so between some early & late nights & Gregg working such long hours, I find myself really tired today and very much looking forward to the weekend and hopefully some relaxation as we head up to Brainerd to visit Gregg's family.

Thanks for your prayers!

Matthew

This morning Matt knew we were going somewhere but didn't know where. I told Alyssa that she needed to get dressed and Matt decided to go ahead and get himself dressed as well. When he came out he was wearing a bright green, blue & white striped shirt on backwards, cammo shorts on backwards, (later I learned underwear on backwards) and red socks. My first thought was, "am I going to let him go to the zoo wearing that?" My second thought was, "yep, I want to encourage him to get himself dressed." I was able to get his shorts & underwear turned around by the time we left but he wore the rest of the outfit including blue sandals (which really set off the red socks well. :-) )

We are starting a new way to help the kids remember their chores and one of their morning "chores" is getting dressed. Once they do the task, they can flip their chore card over for the day. Matt has told me that he is going to get himself dressed from now on so he can flip his card. Should be some interesting outfits coming my way in the coming days!

First Day of School

Well, today was our first day of (home) school. I thought I'd start a little early as I am planning to be done by the end of May. So, what did we do for the first day of school? Went on a field trip, of course! :-)

I debated about going to the State Fair but in the end decided to go to Como Zoo instead - much cheaper (esp. thanks to the pass from the library) & less stressful, especially when I had to take the kids by myself (Gregg is working 1st shift the next 2 weeks, great timing!).

Here are some pictures of Alyssa's first day of Kindergarten...

First picture is us on the train ride (not sure what Matt is doing but I should've expected as much!) 2nd picture - Alyssa on the frog jumper (her favorite ride now), she's 2nd from the left. 3rd picture - Matt & I hiding in the dinosaur skeleton at the ComoTown playland. 4th picture - the kids eating cotton candy for the first time. They've wanted to try it for a long time and today was the day. I haven't had it in a looong time and after trying it today, I know why! (don't worry, Josh & I sampled some mini donuts!). 5th picture - Alyssa took pictures of the flamingos, they even had a baby flamingo, which was gray...

He's off and running...almost

I blogged about a month ago when Joshua took his first steps. Well, he's officially a walker now. Last week when we were at my parent's house he began to take more steps and really take off with his walking and this week there's been no looking back. I find it amazing how quickly once toddlers figure out that they really can walk that they decide they prefer to walk and do it almost all the time. Just 2 weeks ago he was almost exclusively crawling & only walking when we would stand him up and encourage him. Now he's totally walking and enjoying every minute. He is absolutely LOVING the fact he can walk around a room or kick a ball. It's fun to see the absolute happiness on his face as he walks around - especially outside or in a larger setting than our house. It's as if he is amazed at his own ability to walk.

Sleep, who needs sleep??

Has anyone else found themselves not getting enough sleep the last couple of weeks due to the Olympics? I have loved watching the Olympics, but between that, work for MOPS and kids having hard nights of sleep while we were at my parent's house, I have been averaging about 7 hours of sleep a night which for me is not enough. Thankfully I've been able to take some morning naps since Gregg is home but I almost look forward to the end of the Olympics so I can get in bed by 10pm! :-)

Busy Times

So where have I been? Well, I've been working on stuff for MOPS. We just had our kick-off last night and it went really well. I really enjoy working with my co-coordinator but it's been a lot of work. Both of us being new in this area and with our personalities, we just want everything to be perfect so we're having to learn how to let go of a few things because we are finding we can't "do it all." Such a learning process but I've still really enjoyed it and I've already had to push myself into learning some new things.

Can't wait to see how God works in our group this year!

Finding Joy - and other stuff

Well, it's been over a week since I last blogged. I've been staying up way too late either reading, watching the Olympics or working on MOPS stuff so I find myself very tired lately! Side note - I LOVE to watch the Olympics but am finding myself enjoying going to the Olympics website and checking out the results ahead of time. That way I don't feel quite so bummed if I miss seeing something since my kids don't always want to watch it with me & I can not stay up to watch it all!

Gregg has been away this weekend on the 1st Annual Sherrard Men Only retreat at his brother's cabin. They competed in fishing, bocce ball, cribbage & I'm not sure what else. He told me he won - didn't really surprise me. You've just got to know my husband, he isn't overly competitive but he's good at stuff and usually just does win. Especially if there's a target involved. Sounds like they had fun. I've had the kids by myself before when he's been gone but it's been awhile and now there are three. Made me definitely more appreciative of having him around most of the time! My "energy" drained faster than normal!

I wanted to update on my quest to find more joy in my day to day life. Well, this weekend was a bit trying but overall I think I've been walking in more joy. I still have much more to learn about how to remain joyful throughout my day but I have tried to be more intentional about praying to God and sometimes deciding not to try to go somewhere extra or do something extra so I don't get stressed out (and therefore lose my joy). A couple of times I was going to take the kids on some errand and it was like God whispered in my ear, "why are you going to do that?" or "can't you do that another day and just stay home?" When I've listened to that voice, I have greatly benefited from it and never regretted it. This past week I had all the kids in the van, Josh was doing his usual protest, Alyssa was whining about something and Matt was crying about something and I took a moment and instead of yelling & telling everyone to be quiet I just decided we could go to the library the next day and I told everyone to just get out. We ended up playing at home and having much more fun!

Of course, I've also had a few times where I didn't listen and we did something or went somewhere that just was too much and we were all miserable!

The other thing I've been able to do is just focus on the amazingness of my kids. I could go into lots of detail about how amazed I am about my kids but I've just been trying to focus not on what they can do but just who they are. Sometimes while I'm laying with Matthew while he's falling asleep for a nap instead of getting frustrated because he's not falling asleep faster, I'll just look at him and marvel that this little boy is mine, I gave birth to him and God thought I would be a good mom for him. Wow! Believe me I remember giving birth to him but I still marvel at all my kids sometimes in who they are becoming.

So, I keep working on this joy thing and am so thankful to know that God will continue to walk along with me teaching me. I know I still have more to learn.

Bells & Whistles

This week we traded vans with my parents so we could use their hitch and bring home a piano (I'll have to blog on that another day). So until yesterday I have been running my errands with their van. They bought this van brand new. They've had it for a while now but it has all the bells & whistles - doors that open with a push of a button, climate control, outdoor temperature, tells you what direction you're heading, 5 cd player. I have to admit, it's been kind of fun. A little bit of a pain waiting for the doors to open sometimes and not being familiar with the van there were several times when I was trying to find the wipers, cruise control, etc... while trying to drive of course!

It was fun... until the last day I had the van. Josh & I were out running errands. The difficulty started when I almost began backing out of a parking space only to realize that Josh's door was still wide open (forgot to push the button I guess). No big deal... Also, throughout the day I realized that while I made sure the doors were closed, sometimes I was forgetting to lock the door too. Oops! Later we were at Target, having a great ol' time shopping. We walked out the door, looked up at the car and my exact words were, "That's NOT my car... is it?" Yep, it was my car with the side door WIDE open - for a half an hour! Seems in my attempt to make sure I LOCKED the car, I forgot to SHUT the side door (guess I can't remember to push 2 buttons). As we were hurrying towards the van I was praying, "Lord, please don't let anything be taken - they can take the Goodwill stuff I was about to drop off but not anything else!" Fortunately, nothing was taken... and the doors were locked (just not closed).

So, today I am very happy to have my little ol' no frills van back. At least I always shut its doors!

latest projects

This summer we've been working on several projects around our house - the bathroom, kitchen & landscaping. I've already posted a picture of our bathroom.

Here's the kitchen. Gregg sanded & restained the cabinets in May (BIG job) & painted it light green in June but we just got the new lighting. We like it SO much! The light is much brighter than our old light and makes everything brighter in our kitchen. Plus we no longer have the 70s looking lighting - yea!

In July we added wegelia (not sure how you spell that) bushes, a rose shrub (I've been wanting one for a LONG time), and a mini hedge arbivitae kind of thing. Thankfully our association paid for some of it. Several years ago we pulled out some nasty, hard to kill shrubs and then we've gone for a while with nothing (well, Gregg planted sweet corn last summer there). It's nice to have something there again. We still have one more shrub we'd like to plant by the steps & maybe another rose shrub but those will have to wait until next year. I love to have a place for landscaping but am also really happy that this is all we have so other than buying some plants to put in pots each spring, it doesn't take much of our time now.

Here's another picture of my phlox just starting to bloom this last week. My mom gave me some several years ago and it's really taken off! The shorter, darker purple is some that we bought on clearance this summer. It was blooming back at the 4th of July so it's just about done.