Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Matthew-isms

I have compiled some Matthew-isms. I love the vocabulary of 3 year olds!

  1. Just talking! Matthew yells this whenever I sing. He really doesn't like my singing.
  2. Get home take low off. In Matthew's world low= shoe and lock = sock. He often substitutes l's for s's.
  3. Go work out in the basement rectangle light. Matthew loves to work out. Every evening at dinner we list our favorite things of the day. Matthew's favorite thing is always "Go work out in the basement rectangle light." There are a few rectangle lights in the basement that are particularly exciting to him.
  4. Eat milk cup. Matthew doesn't seem to like eating (maybe he's not my kid). When I try to get him to eat dinner, he just wants to drink his milk cup. So he says "no, eat milk cup!"
  5. Go to McDonalds eat chicken nuggets. This is the only thing he really ever wants to eat.
  6. Go to store, buy more pee-la. He also likes pizza. When we eat something that is not McDonalds chicken nuggets or pizza. He will ask for those things. If we say we don't have pizza, he says go to store, buy more pee-la.
  7. It is bumpy. Everything is bumpy to Matthew. 
  8. It is berry lucky I don't yike it. This is another dinnertime sentence for Matthew. When we are eating something he doesn't like, he says it is very yucky and that he doesn't like it. It comes out as "berry lucky" though.
  9. It is berry lippery. If it's not bumpy it is slippery.
  10. Roll da leeves up. When he washes his hands he always wants his sleeves rolled up.
  11. Work is broken. Matthew loves creating train tracks. One of the train tracks he calls "work". One day it was disconnected. So then, work was broken.
  12. Peepee in the potty get nuke nack. Matthew knows that when he goes potty he gets fruit snacks. They come out more as nuke nacks.
  13. Booboo light need a ice pack. If a light is broken or even just turned off, it has a booboo and thus needs an ice pack (what else would it need?)
  14. Light is broken maybe Daddy wix it. Any light anywhere that is broken is Erik's responsibility, our basement, Kroger, driving along the highway. Erik needs to fix it.
Another interesting development with Matthew is that a few days ago he decided he was going to pee standing up. I did not teach him this - I don't know why he decided to do it but I want him to stop. He has absolutely no aim and our entire bathroom is covered in urine. 

We have had a lot of snow days. This week the kids had Monday, Tuesday, and today (Wednesday) off. When our school system has a 2 hour delay (we've had a lot of those as well) Matthew's preschool is canceled. So in the past two weeks Matthew has gone to preschool once, Sarah has gone to kindergarten twice, and Jenna has gone to school 3 days.

On a related note, our alphabet menu has been going well. 
The first week of January was A week. I made artichoke chicken. No one liked that but me.
The second week of January was B week. I made beets which were tolerated (Jenna and I liked them)
The third week of January was C week. I made coconut rice. Everyone seemed to like this.
For this week I really wanted to find daikon but had trouble finding it at the grocery store. So we are settling for dates and dill (not together).




Thursday, January 23, 2014

Jenna's Bling!

Jenna has been diligently making her bed every day for the past month and a half. This was her chore to show us that she is responsible enough to take care of earrings if she gets her ears pierced. She made a chore chart for herself and checked off each day until her birthday. On January 20 we headed to Claire's at the mall to get her ears pierced. She was so excited!


Jenna and her bling
 Then we went to Olive Garden with Grandma and Grandpa since January 20 is Grandpa's birthday too. Olive Garden is Jenna's current favorite restaurant.  After dinner we all headed back home for some chocolate blackout cake. I made a 3 layer rich chocolate cake and dark chocolate frosting. Yum!
Happy Birthday Grandpa and Jenna
 So Jenna and Grandpa had a pretty good birthday.

Erik and I really dislike the wire shelves we have in all of our closets. Everything seems to fall over and then we have maple syrup dripping onto our flour and chocolate chips. Chocolate chip pancakes anyone? So he went to a craft store and bought foam board to put on the shelves then topped them with contact paper. It was a relatively simple solution but the shelves are much more stable. I know our pantry is messy but you can somewhat see the foam board on our shelves.
Shelves!
Since so  many of my students want to program games (they have no idea what they are in for!) I have modified some of my examples so that they are games. I'm pretty excited about some of the games I've made and now am brainstorming more games my students can write themselves. Like a dungeon game with monsters, tic tac, toe, hangman, but I also want to work on games like Tetris or Settlers of Catan. Those might be fun to implement in C++.

82 points on Quiddler today. 

Monday, January 20, 2014

Chiller parteeee


A barbie cake + frigid temperatures +  13 eight year old girls + lots of giggling = a happy party for Jenna!
Jenna's party was at the Chiller North. We went ice skating and then sang Happy Birthday to Jenna afterwards. She had a beautiful barbie cake made by a woman named Debbie at our church. It was a blast! Her actual birthday is on Monday and I'll post more later about that since she has been counting down the days to her 9th birthday.
Matthew LOVES trains! He built this entire track when we were at a train show
Hugging the wall at the skating rink

Happy Birthday



Happy Birthday Jenna!
Jenna really enjoys ice skating. They do offer lessons but Jenna is in ballet and gymnastics, adding a third activity would set me over the edge.

Speaking of setting me over the edge, our church did the Daniel fast for 3 days. This is based on Daniel from the Bible who only ate vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, lentils and only drank water for 21 days. It is basically a vegan diet. I'm 95% sure that no vegans are overweight. Can't happen. Who wants to eat boring food all the time?

78 points on Quiddler today!

Sunday, January 05, 2014

Hope and Artichoke

Every once in a while I like to take each of my kids out on a Mommy date. I will take them to Starbucks or Tim Hortons for a treat and one on one time with Mommy. I ask them what their hopes and dreams are and if there is anything they are concerned about. The responses of each of my 3 children is very different:

Mommy: Jenna, what are your hopes and dreams?
Jenna: I hope that I can get the time thing that Hermione had so I can skip through time to get my ears pierced then skip through more time so I can be done with third grade. I just want to be in fourth grade, I hate multiplication tests.

Mommy: Sarah, what are your hopes and dreams?
Sarah: Once I dreamed I ate breakfast, then it seemed like I ate two breakfasts

Mommy: Matthew, what are your hopes and dreams?
Matthew: Light broken...booboo light... need a ice pack

They all have different hopes and dreams.

Something I'd like to do in the new year is try new foods. We tend to eat the same meals so I thought it would be fun to try a new food every week. Amanda and I came up with the idea to try a new food corresponding to a letter of the alphabet each week. So this week is A and we are eating artichokes and apples. No - apples is not a new food. I made the list but Erik decided that I would get to choose one food and he would get to choose one food. So we didn't just eat artichokes and arugula.

Anyway - if you'd like to see our awesome list here is the link.

We can start tomorrow - school is already canceled so we will eat artichokes!!

My score on Quiddler today was a miserable 8. The letters were pretty hard today with few vowels.





Wednesday, January 01, 2014

20 ups and downs of the year

This year was filled with many ups and downs. Here is my recap of the year

  1. Best Wedding - Missy and Dave's in April. Congratulations!
  2. Best Vacation - Paris, obviously
  3. Funniest Joke - Person 1: I'm really cold, person 2: Go stand in the corner, person 1: why? person 2: A corner is always 90°
  4. New Ministry - We Are Cherished
  5. Most Heartbreaking moment - the passing of my good friend Lynn
  6. Best New neighbors - my in-laws
  7. Favorite day of the week - Thursday, all the kids are in school
  8. New Favorite animal - puffin, we bought peanut butter puffin cereal at Trader Joes and it was so good, my new favorite animal is a puffin
  9. Favorite monitor configuration - dual
  10. New Favorite mac and cheese - Annies, no yellow #5
  11. Favorite book - The Unincorporated Man
  12. Best new comforter - Natural comfort microfiber from amazon, warm - so warm!
  13. Favorite movie - Man of Steel
  14. Best new job - my full time online job
  15. Favorite song - Natalie Grant "Your Great Name", this song was not released this year but I like to sing it, a lot, loudly...
  16. Favorite key on the keyboard - Delete
  17. Favorite archery, fishing, and zip lining experience - Women in the Outdoors
  18. Favorite family size - 7 (5 humans + two cats)
  19. Favorite list - Animals and magical creatures 
  20. Worst technology disappointment - Matthew breaking my new Windows 8 tablet
What was your best moment/worst moment of the year?