Family Movie Night

Trevor and I have tried to raise our girls the best way we know how.  Most of this comes from being raised by excellent parents ourselves.  Among the good values we took from our childhoods are eating as a family at the table, playing together as a family, and a fun family movie night here and there.  Tonight was our movie night, and we had a blast!  We rented Night at the Museum, which none of us have seen yet, go figure.  We made popcorn with peanut butter M&M's and had a few donuts.  We all really had a good time.  It's night's like these that make me think that maybe we are doing something right with our kids.  I guess only time will tell for sure. 

Tomorrow is Saturday and most of the time that means a day and/or night with our great friends Paul and Allesha.  We'll hang out, eat well, watch the UFC fight and relax in the hot tub (no worries for the concerned out there, we keep Brooklyn out of the hot tub--she sleeps in a crib while we use the hot tub and keep a monitor close by).

Since our home preschool animal of the week was the cow, after church Sunday we will track down those Texas long horn cows that are here in La Grande somewhere to show Hailey.  Now if we could just find her a horse to ride around here, we'd probably complete her tiny world. : )  We'll save that for another weekend I suppose. 

This should be a fun weekend!  Hope you enjoy yours...

Christian PreSchool at Home

We have found that preschool is ridiculously expensive.  Who would have thought that teaching/entertaining 3 and 4 year olds for a few hours a day could cost more than our truck payment?  Anyway, I am no dummy, I graduated high school with honors, graduated from Chaffey Community College, and finished trade school, seriously, how hard can it be to teach a 4 year old shapes, colors, letters, numbers, and simple vocabulary?  As it turns out, not hard at all with Hailey as a student.  Granted, Hailey has known most of this stuff since she was 2, so we are just raising her awareness of these things in her world.  But with the help of a few homeschooling blogs (Our Preschool Home school & Christian Preschool Printables) I was able to put together a pretty fun and educational curriculum for Hailey.  Since we are Christian and regularly attend church I figured, why not add a biblical element to our studies?  This made our home preschool into a Christian home school preschool. WOW!  I've added an element to our school that she wouldn't be able to receive at most of our local preschools.  And as an added bonus I don't feel lazy for putting my kid in preschool while I am a stay-at-home-mom, I get to spend quality time with my little girl, and I truly become a mentor to her, all for the cost of some paper and printer ink.  This is great!  Sure my house suffers here and there, I have less time to fold laundry, clean my kitchen and just pick up in general, but our kids will be little only once.  And when it comes down to it, our kids ALWAYS come before chores.  The way we see it, the house is clean and mostly picked up, but there will be plenty of time later on to have a clean house, there will be only one chance to watch our children grow up, only one chance to enjoy this time of their lives.  They've already grown so much in such a short time. 

So you ask, will we home school our kids for all of their schooling?  Who knows... we just started preschool this week, in fact today is only day 2.  Kindergarten is a whole year and a half away.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have a better answer for that, but for now we are just enjoying preschool. : )

Our New Life...

As of June 2010, I am a stay-at-home-mom.  I was fortunate enough to spend the last trimester of my pregnancy at home with Hailey.  That gave Hailey and I time to get used to the idea of a new person joining our family.  While this time has been difficult for us financially.  It has blessed us in many other aspects. 

Being at home has caused me to REALLY understand the value of the dollar.  And saving dollars has become one of my top priorities.  One of the ways we save money is by eating all of our meals at home.  All of them.  We spend $0 a month on eating out.  This puts more on my plate, but is healthier and saves us a ton of money every month.  In order to keep our meals interesting I have turned to the Internet.  I use blogs and websites of all kinds to get new and fresh ideas for meals.  And I thought it might be fun to share some of those websites with you.

Won in the Oven
Handle the Heat
Budget101
AllRecipes
Campbell's Kitchen
Food Network

Those are a few of my "go to" websites that rarely let me down in the dinner department. We eat well, and most often have a variety of meals each month.  Budget101 is a wonderful resource for using coupons, making your own cleaning products, recipes and a ton more.  It is one of my most used websites for being on a budget and not losing my mind.

Anyway, some of you are probably completely uninterested in any of these websites, however, I use them all on a weekly basis and thought it might be helpful for someone, somewhere.

The Cousins

Over the weekend we had my two little cousins, Nick and Elise. They stayed the night Friday night and had a good time playing with Hailey. We played outside for a while on Saturday and threw the "Chuck-It" for Cody. It was super windy (it's ALWAYS windy at our house) and pretty cold, so we only played outside for a little while. Turns out Nick's friend from school lives next door to us, and they took up a game of dodge ball. Trevor joined in. After Hailey's nap, we did a project with the laminater and leaves. I printed out little sayings to laminate with the leaves, and Hailey had a hard time reading what they said. We had a good time and enjoyed having the extra bodies here.

Playing in Hailey's room


Throwing Cody's Chuck-It

Elise throwing the Chuck-It

Trevor throwing the ball really high

Wait...... what does this say mama?

I like to play in the leaves

Playing dodge ball with the neighborhood kids

4 Generations

We were fortunate enough to have my grandma (my "gumun") come visit us here in Oregon. She is 82 years old, and still as feisty as ever. And best of all, she adores my little girl, and Hailey adores her right back. It is so neat to have all 4 generations together, especially 4 generations of girls! Here are the pictures we have of our 4 living generations. Hailey always needs to see the pictures after we've taken them, that's what the last picture is all about.

Jordan World Circus

Jordan World Circus

The circus was here in La Grande, Thursday, June 11th, and we took Hailey. She had a blast. The show didn't start until after Hailey's bedtime, but we decided that we would take her anyway. She had a rough start, but she ended up doing really well.

Unfortunately, the weather dind't really hold out. There was a large amount of wind, lightening, and finally rain. We chose to leave early, and get the little monkey into bed. All in all, we had a great time, and the circus was pretty neat. I don't think I've been to a circus since I was about 4 years old.

Watching the show with Nana and Papa

Hailey riding on the ponies before the show started

The elephant that kids could ride on, we had to leave before Hailey had a chance to ride

Having fun at the show