Little Drummer Girl

Today is one of my all time favorite little girls special, special day.

Miss Olivia Kate is ONE!

I will never get used to how fast they grow. 

How can 365 days be all it takes for them to change this much?!?!

Olivia marches to the beat of her own drum.

She listens to the "norms" of what babies do and then blows right through them.

She is a fire ball and I personally cannot wait to see all that she is going to be.

Because I know, whatever she decides to do, it will be big and bold and braek all the social norms.

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl.  Aunt Nic loves every sassy inch of you!

That right up there is a little teaser of the AMAZING monster party Amber threw this past weekend.  You have got to go check it out.

Seriously.  Nothing cuter.  Ever.

Oh, and just because it's my blog so I get to make the rules here, lets take one last look at my all time favorite picture of Amber with Olivia in utero.

Now how was that only a year ago?!?! 

God Bless You Leap Frog

Ever since we 100% decided to homeschool Josie I have had a constant, nagging fear in the back of my mind:

How on Earth do I teach this child to read???

We have spent lots of time learning to recognize the letters but I hadn't been brave enough to broch letter sounds.  Then I started to hear lots of praise for the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD. 

So when we were in Minnesota I spotted it at Sam's and decided to give it a shot.

Josie watched it everyday for a month without really showing any new understanding of the letter sounds. 

Then three days ago she was in the bathtub and she held up her foam letter B and said, "B says Bah."

I freaked.

Seriously.  (If you homeschool, I'm sure you know how over the top excited you get when they actually learn something new!)

After she got over the fear my squealing induced, she proceeded to pick up every letter and tell me the correct letter sound.

Holy Cow!

Just to be sure it wasn't a fluke, I quizzed her throughout the day and today we whipped out the Letter Recognition and Letter Sounds Charts I printed at the start of our year.

She has a hard time recognizing N, V, and X (she gets them confused with M, U, and K) but she knows the rest.

And she knows every letter sound!

I can't believe how quickly she picked it up.  We started watching the Words Factory DVD today.

So Thank You Leap Frog for squishing my fear of teaching Josie to read!  I'm pretty sure we can handle it from here! 

Letter Sheets Found Here

The Quiet Way Home

Since we were talking about the 5 senses in Little School last week, we decided to to the book, "The Quiet Way Home" for our B4FIAR work.

This story is about a little girl and her Daddy walking home from school the quiet way and all the small noises they observe.  Josie really liked this book and loved sitting outside listening to hear all the small noises around our house.

I wasn't able to find many activities to go along with this book so we kind of winged it all week.  

Her favorite by far was sitting on the swing listening.  Pretty easy!

In the book, they pass by a friend riding a trike.  I took that as a cue to head outside and do some trike riding of our own.

The only other project I was really able to work out of the book was an art project.  In part of the book the Dad and Daughter rest in a field of dandelions to listen to the grasshoppers.  So we painted our own dandelion fields!

I divided the paper into sky and grass and had her color them in.  She still doesn't like coloring so I just lightly went over the whole area after she was done.  

Then she used a cotton ball to paint on her dandelions!  She loved using something other then a paint brush.

For our Raising Rock Stars, we learned about the 10 Commandments.  We spent some time talking about why God made rules for us and then worked our our number recognition.  Josie loved the ABC BINGO I made for her last year so I made up a number one.

She doesn't recognize many of the numbers yet so we are going to keep playing this one.

A little tweezer action to work those fine motor skills.

And last, we worked on the color red (which she 100% knows but needed to work on coloring skills) and the letter T.



I have Jury Duty this week, which I'm actually pretty excited about.  I've heard you get to sit and read all day in a quiet room.  That sounds right up my alley!  So school will be light if it happens at all.

VTTN LADIES!

It's been a year now since we found our amazing church, Voice To The Nations.

It's one of those things in my life that is just right.  It's perfect.  Walking through the doors always feels just like when I walk through the doors of my parent's house.

It feels like going home.

In the past few months we have begun some pretty awesome friendships.  But to be totally honest, Andrew has carried the new relationships.

He is the outgoing, funny, easy to talk to one.  

Me?

I'm the one who avoids eye contact and says awkward things a lot.

So when God told me this month was the month I am supposed to start nurturing my relationships with the women in our church I was a tiny bit nervous.  

And then, in true God Fashion, he lined up a Girl's Night Out the very next week.

Normally I would be a little uncomfortable going to something like this where I don't really know more then one person very well.  I get all nervous and scared I won't know what to talk about.

Luckily though, these ladies are more then easy to talk to and I had an absolute blast!

We went to the Melting Pot.  The last time I went there I had just graduated high school and between Jenna, Jenny, Jessica, and myself we racked up a $387.00 bill.

I was much more conscious of my choices this time and got out much cheaper!

There were 17 of us!  It was loud and crazy and our waiter thought we were the cheapest women ever, but it was so much fun!

I sat by Miss Nay Nay.  She's Josie's Sunday School Teacher.  She loves purple almost as much as Josie does!

Andrea is becoming one of my favorite friends.  We have so much in common, including our spunky little sassafrass girls!

I laughed as I looked around at us all cooking our meat and veggies.  

Shouldn't we NOT have to cook on our night out?!?!

  

I was the official time keeper.  No Salmonella Poisoning on my watch!

We all ate our cheese and our salads and our meat and veggies.  But lets just be honest ladies, we came for the CHOCOLATE!!!

Ying Yang Chocolate:

Flaming Turtle Chocolate:

And the dippers.  OH THE DIPPERS!!

Fights over who gets to dip first!

I thought I was going to make myself sick.  I seriously could not quit eating the stuff!  I made a serious mess.

We didn't get home until after 12:30, which is way past my bedtime, but it was a total blast!

Thanks for an awesome night VTTN Ladies!  Can't wait till next time!

Influence

We have been spending lots and lots of time making new friends with the families we go to church with.  It's been awesome.

We had the Harris Family and their 5 adorable (and extremely well mannered) kiddos over for a night swim.

I sat up on the pool deck and watched the kids play.  Then I started to notice Josie carefully watching every move Madeline made and then copy her to the T.

I seriously started tearing up.

Something about that moment made me realize how much influence her friends are going to have over her.

I stewed over this realization all week and finally had to talk to Amber about it.  I was struggling with the loss of control I was going to end up having.  I was scared about the decisions she would someday have to make without my input.  I felt the intense need to hold my baby very, very close.  To not let anyone influence her.

Amber indulged my crazy talk and then told me about this post she had just read. 

Seriously, go read it.

As soon as I read it, I felt reassured.

Yes, Josie will make friends that will influence her.  She will seek their approval and try to fit in.

But I get to be the one who decides which friends get to be the close friends.

And that makes me smile really big.

Little School - Colors!

This week we learned all about colors at Little School!

The kids all know their colors so we focused on different art projects and mixing colors.

Tiffany read Rainbow Fish to the kids while Ashley and I set up the craft.  Then they headed outside and made their own Rainbow Fish!

I was feeding a very hungry baby so I didn't get any finished pics, but the fish turned out super cute!

Ashley had found these super cool kits to make chalk.  The kids were pretty excited!

Ashely mixed and the kiddos shook.

And then we had a chalk mishap. 

The chalk hardened before we even got it in the molds!  Not so great for the chalk, but the kids thought it was hilarious!

After a snack of Rainbow Goldfish, we did our color mixing project. 

I made each of them a color wheel and labeled it.  We started by talking about the Primary Colors and coloring in those parts then we made predictions about what would happen if we mixed any 2 primaries together.

They mixed and we filled in the results for Secondary Colors as we went.  The kids loved it and really caught on fast to the Color Wheel!