Española

I have been wanting to buy the Rosetta Stone program for Spanish for years and years, but it is so expensive that it was never even an option.  Then the other day Groupon had it for half off and even though it was still expensive we jumped at the chance to get it.  It came pretty quickly and T got it set up for him, Bug, and I.  We are loving it so far! 

At first Bug was just guessing and getting a lot of problems wrong, but once I sat down with her and showed her how to think about the answer and look for clues in the choices, she’s doing really well!  I also showed her how the number turns orange if you miss any and green if you don’t so, being the perfectionist that she is, she will go through her lesson and then go back and re-do the ones she missed so she can get a 100%. :)  We’ve been doing one lesson a day as part of our “school” when Boo Bear and Peanut are down for naps.

T and I are just using the first Levels for review since we’ve had quite a bit of Spanish classes in both high school and college.  Bug is doing great and catching on quickly.  If we hadn’t had so much schooling already she’d probably surpass our knowledge quickly!

I love how simple the program is to use.  She can do it completely by herself, but I usually sit with her to encourage her.  She gets upset if she can’t do it right the first time.  We’re working on that. :P  Here’s a little video of her working on her pronunciation.  There are different sections like vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, etc. 

What a great program!  Muy bien! :)

Wordless Wednesday

Cottonelle Castle

I really don’t know why we insist on buying toys for our kids.  They always have more fun with things that aren’t meant to be toys.  I am reminded of this every time we get a big cardboard box, but I never imagined that toilet paper could be so much fun!

Now that I have a laundry room to store stuff I buy two big packages of toilet paper at a time.  This last time I did it I was putting away groceries and looked in the living room to find that Bug had opened the big packages and got out all the smaller ones.  She literally spent almost an entire hour playing with them!  She built some pretty cool towers…I didn’t get a picture, but they were pretty impressive and taller than her!

She made a throne…but didn’t see the irony. :)

Boo came in and got in on the fun.

A bed complete with a pillow and headboard. :)

Oh to have such an active imagination! Maybe for Christmas we should skip the traditional presents and get her a Costco sized package of paper towels.  Just think of all the fun that could come of that! :)

Sweet Girls

Are kids born with an innate ability to determine when parents have a possibility of sleeping in and when they don’t??  I am convinced they do.  Last weekend the girls got up at 7:15 and 7:20 and even though they stayed upstairs until after 8:00, as per the rules of our household, they were not quiet by any stretch of the imagination.  There was running across the floor (which sounds like a herd of elephants) loud talking and slamming of doors, but come Monday morning not a peep was heard until 8:30 and then they played quietly until I went and got them around 9:00. :P

I really can’t complain though.  They have been so sweet since Peanut was born.  They almost always stay upstairs and play quietly or read.  Here’s a picture I took of them one day through the video monitor.

And the other morning they were quiet so long I finally went upstairs and found them like this.

Sweet, sweet girls.  Now if only we can get them to do it on the weekends! :)

Smiley Girl

Peanut is really starting to change!  My favorite of these changes is how smiley she is getting!  Before, she would give us a little smile every now and then, but we would really have to work for it.  Now when we come into view and say hi to her she will give us lots of smiles and get excited to see us.  It’s so sweet!

I love watching the girls’ faces light up when she smiles at them!  Bug is so happy when she does it, and says, “Aww, she’s so cute!”

Boo gets SO excited, “Hers smiling at me! Hers wike me!”  We don’t have our pronouns down yet. :)

She is starting to make some great expressions too.  So cute!

She will focus on us and actually look us in the eye now.  Up until now it didn’t seem like she was able to quite get focused enough to look us directly in the eye.  It was like she was always looking just past us, but now she’ll give us the stare down. :)

I hope she has as joyful a personality as her sisters.  They may drive me crazy with their overly excited, neverstopmoving craziness, but I love their joy for life.

“Oooo, what have we here?”

“Hers stick her tongue out! Hahahaha!” – Boo

In the evening after the Bug and Boo go to bed and she is still up we like to just look at her.  We think she is beyond cute!  Which is very helpful to remember when she’s screaming in the middle of the night. :P 

“I’m awfully cute, but I’m going to keep you up tonight!”

Haha :)  For some reason her sleep is very fickle.  She’ll sleep great two nights in a row, going six hours between feedings, and then the next night she’ll wake up every hour, crying just long enough to wake us up and then go back to sleep, or (heaven forbid) she’ll just refuse to go to sleep, like she did the other night, and scream angrily for over an hour!  She was fed, dry, and ready for bed and then just decided she wasn’t going to go to sleep.  We tried everything, and then she finally cried so long that it was only half an hour till her next feeding so I just fed her again and she finally went to sleep. 

It wouldn’t be as frustrating if it was consistent, but since we know that she can go 6 hours between feedings it’s hard when she reverts back to waking up so often.  Oh well, I know she’ll get it figured out one of these days. 

Good thing she’s got a smile that melts our hearts and totally makes up for it! :)

Wordless Wednesday

Painting

We spent the weekend painting the porch!  And by “we” I mean mostly T, but Buggy and I did help some…we still have the paint in our hair to prove it. :)  T borrowed a paint sprayer from one of our friends and OH MY GOODNESS!  Why have I never used one of these before?!?  It was SO fast!  SO messy as well, but it would have literally taken me a week’s worth of naptimes…or more…to paint all that railing!  We got it done in just a couple of hours! 

I love how it looks!  We have been waiting for it to cure and then we will wash the floor part of the porch and seal it.  Our house it really turning into my dream house!  I love how it looks like a farmhouse in the country, complete with my newly planted old fashioned roses in the front!

And my favorite flower of them all, hydrangeas!  I love them!  We originally got them to go in the backyard but realized it wasn’t going to work so I stuck all four of them on the end of the porch where there is more shade.  I’m really hoping they do well there.  They just make me happy!

Doesn’t the rail look amazing?!  T did a wonderful job!

The girls and I took time out from the painting project to attend the wedding of one of their babysitters.  It was a beautiful wedding.  The bride was absolutely stunning, and everything was just perfect.  I got teary watching, first her 3 year old little sister come down the aisle sprinkling flower petals, and then the bride herself.  I can’t imagine how I’m going to keep it together at my own girls’ weddings when I was tearing up just watching this sweet girl who I’ve only known for four years! 

Yesterday was our last day in the 70’s. :’(  But I’m so thankful for this gorgeous weather we have been having!  Tonight is supposed to be the first freeze so the girls and I spent all day yesterday bringing in the garden, and planting tulip bulbs. 

We had a ton of carrots!

And a TON of tomatoes!  Last year I just snipped off clumps of tomatoes and left them in the laundry room where they got some sun and they slowly ripened.  I think we had tomatoes all the way up until January!  I’m hoping that works again, although I think part of the success was that it was cold in there, but we have since insulated so they might go bad before they ripen this time.  Maybe I should stick them in the garage?

T actually had success with the pumpkins and squash he planted this year!  Every year we plant them and we never get them big enough before the frost gets them.  This year instead of starting with seeds he bought some that were already about four inches high and that seems to have done the trick.  We have three pumpkins and one really good squash. 

K also grew a watermelon!  I let her buy the seeds even though I have never been able to grow a watermelon in our short season.  She was thrilled that she got one…although I don’t know if it will be edible.  It’s pretty small, but she’s just happy that she grew one. :)

We had our first homeschool lesson on plants yesterday when we were bringing the garden in (carpet is coming Thursday and we’ll finally be able to set up our classroom!). 

We had fun identifying the parts of a flower that I pulled up for them to look at and then we made a chart that compared 8 different kinds of vegetables/fruit that we grew in our garden.  I asked the girls to describe the root, leaf, stem, and produce on each of the plants and they did a great job! 

Bug came up with words like feathery (carrot and asparagus leaves) and vine-ey (pumpkin and strawberries) and wiggly (tomato roots) and ridges (strawberry leaves).  It was actually a lot of fun, and they listened really well.  I’m looking forward to getting our classroom set up and getting going! Hopefully by next week!