got band aids?

Note to self: Don't leave a box of band aids in your purse within a childs reach. 

Although, he really did cover every "boo boo" on his legs and arms, he had the right idea.

Church Picnic

Sunday was our annul Church Picnic! This is the first year we went because normally it's during the kids nap times but we decided it was worth it to skip naps that day to be with our church family : ) We just love them! The picnic was at the Cannons, only 2 driveways down from ours so it worked out nice! There was tons of food, plenty of things to get into there like ponds, creeks, volleyball, a pool, etc. We had a great time. I was only able to capture a few pictures because I was chasing two boys around the entire time. Presley was in great hands of Destiny, Elise and Jill who held her the entire picnic! 

Cohen loves Ashton. They decided they were going to have a sleepover one night and watch Cars 2. (maybe when you start sleeping Cohen we can have sleepovers!) He played with Cohen almost the whole time and I decided he will be my mommys helper one day!

Outtakes of Caleb and Mason.

    And of course leave it to my child to find the nearest hill and slide down and encourage his friends to do the same.

We had a great time! Boys had baths and went to bed by 7pm :)

geez, where's cohen!

The other day my dear friend Kristin blogged about Jax's hiding spot during hide and seek   Not two days later we were playing hide and seek and Cohen found a very creative, yet obvious spot as well. Three year old boys, so clever and creative. :)

 

Richard Petty Driving Experience

Zach and Popaw both received Richard Petty Driving experiences for Fathers Day this year. This is an experience to go to a track and drive a NASCAR cup car for 12 laps. They chose to go to Martinsville :) This was more for Popaw then Zach since he drives a race car but for someone who never has this was really cool. We weren't going to go at first but Zach convinced me to bring the kids up to watch him and Popaw. The people who worked there were soooo generous and even let the boys play on the cars, get in them, etc.

The car popaw got to drive!

Zachs car!

Caleb had a hard time watching daddy

RP Driving Experience

Today the kids and I were able to go to Martinsville and watch Zach and Popaw do a Richard Petty Driving Experience. A longer post to follow!

2012

Going to "school"

:)

21

Caleb, you are 21 months old now!

but act so much older, guess it's because you mimic your brother and do many things he does. We love you so much. Your personality is so sweet. I love that you are saying more and more words, and giving me sweet kisses, they melt my heart. You are such a handsome little boy. We love you Cay.

cohen sleeps

This was at church last night.

He sure was tired. 

down set hut

Zach has volunteered to coach little league football this season and its so cute. He coaches Glenvar little league with some other guys from the church . He loves football and I know he can't wait until our boys are old enough to play! We were able to go watch a scrimage this past Saturday :)

Z loves some of these boys as if they are his own, Ty is one of them! 

"one day I will be big enough..." thought caleb watching from the sidelines.

cohen and jax decided to play in some dirt nearby.

cami was there and she is so great with our children. she had the kids racing back and forth aka wearing them out.

caleb loved on p

so did lilah, weird that i have a 3 year babysitter for presley? :)

we love being on the field watching zach and in 2 short years, im sure cohen will be out there. z has already been working with him on his football stance and his tackling skills. im sure those skills will backfire soon when he tackles random children just trying to play catch.

A year ago

I love looking through all my old pictures on the computer. I thought it would be fun to find this exact day one year ago today. This is what I found :)

Sweet Lilah, loving on Caleb, Such a little mommy. I have so many pictures of her doing this with Pres too!

Cohen and Vivian.

.

Again, more little mommies. These two girls love babies! Caleb was only 9 months old!

Park :) (I don't know boy to far left but its Macy, Jax, Lilah and Cohen)

I love that these friendships between our children are still forming and I love it!

Ivory soap can do what?

Pretty amazing what a bar of Ivory soap can do in the microwave! I saw this and thought it would be an awesome "science" lesson for the boys! Take one bar of Ivory Soap.... 

Put in microwave for about a minute. EVERY MICROWAVE is different. The link I used said a minute and 30 seconds.. but this is what happened...

But after it minute it turns into this...

this can be molded or broken up and made into a mess!

Or it can be snow for your train to play in!

This was such a great idea! And fun for the boys.

beautiful boy

beautiful lashes and lips :)

(we all know caleb falls asleep in random places, but falling asleep in grocery cart is a first!)

love my sleepy pretty boy!

Homeschool Preschool

Its almost time for school to start! Cohen isn't going to preschool this year again because we are choosing to keep him home and "homeschool" him during these years as prep for the upcoming years in which we do wish to formally homeschool. :) I have been researching cirriculums, etc for awhile now to prepare for our preschool at home. I am so excited to start! The county starts back on the 21st but we went ahead and started this week. I couldn't contain myself! 

I am really excited about the board I made!

 This board is the board we will do every morning to prepare for the day. It consists of the weather, the color of the day, the day of the week, our memory verse and our "virtue" we are studying. I got a laminator that I may or may not be obsessed with so I laminated all of this and put velcro on the backs so the boys can put the days of the week up, weather all by themselves every morning before we start our "school" and we can interchange them daily! I also posted the words to songs that we will sing about the weather and learning our days of the week, which are so cute by the way!

We have 6 memory verses that I hope we can cover in the first few months of school, and we will work on the same one until Cohen knows it and understands it, then move to the next.

Our "virtues" consist of contentment, forgiving, helpful, obedient, diligent, gentle, kind, honest and attentive.  We are going to start the year out with content being our virtue.  This will be something that I will focus on teaching the boys (AND MYSELF). We have crafts, stories, etc to read with each virtue as well as the fruits of the spirit.

This is our workbox system. 

This is the box with all Cohen's assignments for the day. Each day he will have something different in the boxes. Once he completes one he can take the #1 off and move to the second one, and so on. These are closed ended activities like puzzles, theme printables, ABC projects from Crafty ABCs. Once all three are done he can do any open ended activity like playing with playdoh, building something, free coloring, etc.

 

So whats in the boxes today?

 Tag reader, we will work on sounding out letters and reading. 

 The second box has beads in a pattern that he is to repeat with his own set of beads. This will help his fine motor skills and his hand eye coordination. We will do this a few times with different patterns.

 The third box is his workbook we are using to write his letters and numbers. He will also do his flashcards. And then a fun activity making this "A" look like an alligator.

I love this workbox system I got from my favorite homeschool blog! 1+1+1=1.  This will help keep him excited to move through the boxes and complete his work and it forces me to be organized seeing that everyday he will have 3 new activities/assignments in his boxes to complete.  Once he can get the hang of doing 3 we can add more boxes :)

Caleb will also have some fun activities to do while Cohen is doing his school. I have some games and fun crafts and books we will do so he can work on his colors, numbers, shapes, etc. 

Hope you enjoyed a preview into our homeschool preschool!

We are excited :)