Baby Love

Bennett sure loves her Grandpa Teddy!

Shaving Foam Mania

Last Friday the kids and I went to a play date at my friend Quincey's house... it was her 3rd annual Shaving Foam Mania play date!

She laid out a tarp and all the kids wore their swimsuits and everyone brought shaving cream and we let the kids go crazy with it!

Here is Gunnar... he loved the shaving cream! He was the first kid to be totally covered and I think he had a smile on his face the entire time!

It took Conrad awhile to really get into it, but he had just as much fun as Gunnar!

Here are the boys totally covered!

And even sweet Bennett enjoyed playing in the foam a little! She would have played on the tarp had I let her, but she was pretty content in the grass with the leftover foam!

This was so much fun for the kids, and cheap too (shaving cream is $1 at dollar tree)! Thanks for hosting Quincey, such a great idea!

Rhythm

Join us at Rhythm Church this Sunday night and worship with us... we'll be playing the Time Has Come!

Check out www.rhythmchurch.org for more details

Chart Time

Believe it our not, my boys do not always play well together (like in the picture below!) And for awhile I have been thinking about starting an obedience/chore chart.... After a week with grandparents it seemed like a good thing to start! I made my own chart, but I stole the idea from a blog that I follow(it's one of my favorite blogs!)... you can check it out here: http://hollyfurtick.typepad.com/the_preachers_wife/2010/06/summer-chores-and-money-management.html

So, here is the chart that I made. I used picture's instead of words since the boys can't read. We chart Monday through Saturday and on Sunday we do our money management. The boys get a sticker for everything that they do and a X for the things they don't do. Our categories are: Make your bed, brush your teeth, listen the 1st time, take dishes to the sink, share toys, pick up toys, and feed our pet toads. The nice thing about making our own chart is that we can work on the things that the boys have a hard time with (picking up toys, sharing, listening the 1st time) and daily living things (brushing teeth, making bed). At the end of the day I sit down with the boys and we put stickers and X's and talk about what we did good and what we could do better.

Then on sunday we work on money management. For every sticker they have on the chart they will get 10 cents. We will lay the dimes out on the chart (over the stickers) and then in the votive holders I have pictured below we will sort out the dimes. Our categories are God (tithe) Save and Spend. For every 10 dimes 1 will go to God, 1 to Save, and the rest to spend.

Growing up I never really learned the importance of giving money to God or even saving money... I was given an allowance and I spent it. It is very important to us that our kids know how to manage money and that they are obedient to us and other adults, so hopefully this chart will be a great teaching tool!

DIY Headbands

I got a new haircut last week and thought it would be fun to add something to the new look, so I tried a headband and loved it! Then I was thinking about how nice it would be to make my own headbands so I wouldn't have to spend any money! So a big thanks to my friend Marie for all the free fabric and the run through on how to DIY headbands!

Here is a pile of all the fabric Marie gave me!

To start you will need fabric, scissors, and an iron. You will also need to measure your head and decide how long your headbands will be. As shown in the picture below I made one headband and used that to measure out the rest. I made all my headbands to be about 1 inch wide... so you start out by laying the fabric flat and then folding one side to the middle and ironing. Ironing the fabric holds it together... it makes the folds tight.

Then you fold the other half and iron that. Once the fabric is ironed I cut it down to match the size of my example headband... then I cut the ends to a point, just to add some character!

Here's what they look like on me! I wear a ton of plain colored shirts, so adding a fun colorful headband adds so much to my outfit!

And here are all my finished products... I made 15!

8 Days

This last Sunday I dropped the boys off at my parents house. They had Gunnar and Conrad from Sunday to Thursday and then took them to Thaddeus' parent's, who will have them until Monday! 8 days is a long time to be without those 2 crazy boys... but it has been so nice! I thought I would fill everyone in on all my doings without Gunnar and Conrad around.

Mostly, I've been hanging out with this sweet girl! I love our girl time and all the extra attention and playtime I have been able to have with Bennett! Not to mention that going from 3 kids down to 1 makes everything easier!

I've also been somewhat domestic this week, baking zucchini bread and bars... one of my most favorite things about summer is zucchini bread!

Finally cleaned out my refrigerator! There's nothing like opening the door to your clean, bright white fridge... satisfaction!

I've also spent sometime organizing all my recipes into a 3 ring binder (thanks for the idea Lori and Marie!) I'm a avid blog reader and got an idea for an obedience/money basics chart for the boys... so starting next week we'll be trying out the chart I made (more to come on that later).

I took a couple hours of me time earlier in the week and got a sweet new haircut and brow wax! And I even went out with the girls from work last night!

I have spent lots of time relaxing in front of the tv and spending time with friends that I don't see very often.

It's been a great week without the boys... but I am very excited to see them on Monday!!

Bennett is 14 months old!

Bennett turned 14 months old two days ago, so I wanted to give an update on all the fun things she is doing and how things are going with her eyes!

Bennett started walking about a month ago and has not stopped since! She is so good at standing up without holding onto things... once she gets up she tots around and kind of keeps up with the boys! She is our little climber! Many times a day I find her standing on the top step of the boys' bunk bed or sitting on one of the couches all by herself... she is always so happy when she does it herself!

Bennett loves to eat!! Some of her favorites are bananas, meat, pasta, carrots, broccoli, crackers, chocolate, and ice cream!

One of my most favorite things about Bennett is that she loves to cuddle... I absolutely love her hugs and kisses and cuddle times on the couch! She has a little brown bear that her Aunt Lindy gave her the day she was born that she just adores... she carries her around hugging her and patting on its back... so cute!

I also am in love with her hair... the longer it gets the more curls she gets.... I love playing with it! I will definitely be waiting a long time to cut it!

Bennett waves hi and bye, gives high fives, hugs, kisses, and also signs some words (please, more, thank you, and all done). She also has a growing vocabulary... whenever she says hi it always comes out hi dad, she also says all done, banana, and jabbers all the time!

Things are going really well with her eyes! Back in June we had her first appointment at the UofI Children's hospital. Basically the only way to fix her crossed eye is surgery, but in order to do the surgery her vision in both of her eyes need to be the same. At the first appointment she was not using her left eye (the crossed eye) at all... in other words her brain was not recognizing it, therefor not using it. We were told to start patching her right eye 6-8 hrs per day to strengthen the left eye. By putting a patch over the good eye we are forcing her brain to use the bad eye and make those connections so that when we do the surgery the connections are made and her brain won't ignore the fixed eye.

So we patched for 4 weeks and just had our second appointment on Monday. The Dr. is seeing really good progress!! She is using her left now, which means the patching is working!! We go back in 2 two and it sounds like her eye may be ready for surgery then!! Once her eye is ready we can schedule her surgery... it will be two or three months out (they are pretty busy at the UofI !) Thank you all so much for praying for Bennett and please continue to pray that this process would be successful! I will do my best to keep you all updated!

Time away from Mommy...

A couple of weekends ago Thaddeus took the kids out so I could get some cleaning done at home... here's what they did.

Ate lots of ice cream!

Bennett looks like such a big girl sitting on a bench with her cone!

This picture was last weekend when Thaddeus took Con and Bennett on a bike ride. It was Bennett's first time and she loved it!

Fourth of July!

Here are pictures from the fourth of July finally! We spent the fourth at Clear Lake watching the best fireworks and a really fun parade!