Victory

I have finally reached a goal that I have been working on since Ryan's birth. I have wanted to get to the point where I could scrapbook his pictures but made it a goal to go in chronological order by date. Today I finished the page of my 29th birthday which is 2 days before Ryan's birth. Hooray! I am so excited to start scrapping those baby blue boy pages instead of so many pink and purple girl pages!

Now the challenge is to figure out how to go from this point. With Arianna, I have just done albums of her life. I have journaled as if writing to her. I have 8 completed albums for her. But now there will be two lives to scrap. Should I do an album for Ari and an album for Ryan, a family album or all three? I want them to have their own individual albums but so many of our activities involve both kids. I want it to be special that is the joy of scrapbooking. What do those of you who have more than one kids do? What do you think I should do?

What does these things have in common?

What does puppet shows, singing in the rain, stinkbugs and cute kids have in common?

Our day!

Today, we went to a puppet show with some friends. The puppet show was about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They called kids on stage to participate but Ari didn't get chosen. She was disappointed about not being chosen. Honestly, I was too! I wonder what she would have done in front of all of those people:) You never know with my sometimes shy sometimes friendly child! I told her we could go back and try again. I have to prep her on the best way to get noticed in a crowd. She raised her hand calmly and stood still. Great behavior and exactly how she has been taught to do in school. But not the best way to get noticed in a crowd of kids that have their hands raised too but are also jumping up and down in trying to get picked.

This is a pic of the two kids in front of the library after the puppet show sitting with the statue kids.

We went out and played in the rain (one of our favorite things to do). Arianna was in concert. She was singing "River Lullaby" from Prince of Egypt. I told her she should sing "Singing in the Rain" but she didn't know that song. I guess she is too young for that one:) If I had a working camecorder, it would been a great video but mine is broken. Oh Well.

Ryan found a stink bug in the sensory table. He was very excited! He touched it for a while and then exclaims "He licked me". I guess the flutter of the bug felt like a lick to him! He eventually picked it up. Despite the bugs multiple attempts to fly away, Ryan kept him for most of the time outside. He let it crawl over him. Arianna kept telling him that if he squished it then it would stink really bad...they both have no idea! I figured the smell would just be another life lesson. But my gentle bug lover didn't squish his dear stink bug.

Ryan made multiple attempts to give the bug a kiss. The bug would either fly away or would move before Ryan's lips reached him. Excuse the unwiped runny nose:)

Here Arianna poses with her new found umbrella and Ryan has his precious stink bug.

Here are those cute kids posing for the camera.

Typos

Okay so I am the first to catch a typo when I read anything. You wouldn't know this if you read my typo-ridden blog. As I read back over my blog, I find a typo in almost every post. I want you to realize something. I usually type these things with kids climbing over me, I usually end up doing something for the kids midway through typing. My thoughts are constantly interrupted by something from the kids. I also don't have the time to read back through the posts until later when they are in bed. So I apologize from this point forward for my typos:) I correct them when I see them but those of you who receive this via email get my unedited version. It could become a game like "Where's Waldo?" but instead "Where's Crystall's Typos?"

Enjoy my unedited versions of my ramblings about our crazy and charmed life!

Enjoying the Fruits of our Labor

We planted sunflower seeds back in June. It was late in the season so I wasn't sure they would grow. Some of them got eaten by deer and rabbits. We watched the bees pollinate them. When the hurricane came we cut most of them and put them in a vase. I was disappointed because I really wanted the kids to see where the seeds came from. But today we were pleasantly surprised. We didn't cut one of the large flowers because we thought it was dying. It was hanging way over almost touching the ground. I was cutting the stalks down today and picked that flower up to discover that there were seeds in it. I was excited to share with the kids that we would get to enjoy sunflower seeds after all.

There were a few small silky worms in the flower but there were plenty of untouched seeds for us to enjoy.

Ryan trying to break open a sunflower seed.

Ari getting seeds out of the flower.

Ryan posing with our seeds and flower.

School this week

We are finishing up our unit on Friendship this week. This morning's devo was on Cain and Abel. We discussed how Cain dealt with his anger and jealousy. We then discussed appropriate ways to deal with our own anger and jealousy towards others. The kids practiced their memory verse for this week which is Proverbs 17:17 "A friend loves at all times, a brother is born for adversity."

Later we had school. We read The Rainbow Fish and discussed what made the rainbow fish happy. Next we worked on our Rainbow Fish cape. We stamped our handprints onto the cloth. Once we are done with our capes, we plan to act out the Rainbow Fish.

Slumber Party part 2

Saturday night we spent the night with Heather and her 3 boys. Here they are all pretending to be grass. Silly Kids.

Heather and I were up until after 2:30 am scrapbooking. Ryan woke up at 6am. I was so tired at church! I ended up getting a total of 7 hours of sleep the whole weekend. I am not complaining though. I got to spend some great times with friends and was productive: I got about 25 scrapbook pages done. I am almost to Ryan's birth, all I have is opening Christmas presents and my birthday and then I will finally be to the point to start working on Ryan's albums.

I was very excited to have my husband back! He says he had a great weekend with the boys too!

Mountain Goat

We go to the playground and Ryan looks for the highest and most dangerous thing for a 2 year old to do. I watched an almost 6 year old struggle to get up on this and then get stuck and need help down. Ryan tackled it and did NOT want help. When I tried to spot him he asked me to stop. What's a Mom to do?

He did really great climbing. He even was able to get over the head and sit on the nose.