Friends

As a woman who enjoys her days with her children each and every day, it is so important to have good friends, and that, I have. I sent out an email on Thursday night reminding all my dear friends that I would be taking Thing 1 and Thing 2 to the gym to run at 9:30 AM on Friday. I almost cried when I walked in and saw the gym full of my dearest friends and all their little ones. We spent the morning laughing and even crying a little as we discussed things from nutrition to tantrums. I am truly blessed to live in a community where so many smart and talented mothers have chosen the path to be home with our children to enjoy the little things that happen each and every minute.

I could not take on the challenges of mothering without them.

God bless

Go Fish, "Mommy School" and "Ashton School"

Reading

Ashton has really started to enjoy his reading. He loves to bring books home from the library that he can read. Yesterday after he got home from school, he wanted to read his library book right away and then decided to teach Drew and Darcy how to read. From all the DIBELS testing at school(which as a teacher, I think are the most pointless tests EVER), Ashton feels that he needs to give the twins DIBELS tests. He takes each twin, one at a time and reads with them from his Starfall series books and then scores them based on the difficulty level of the book and how many words they "read" correctly. He is pretty fair and this morning when he woke up, he got each of them caught up with one another and scored them both at a 14 before he headed out the door to school. I think I might have a future little teacher on my hands and am LOVING every minute of it!

Today after taking the twins to Kindermusik and then Story Time, we came home to work on our letter of the day, which was "I" and then played a few games of Go Fish before our lunch and naps. Watching Drew and Darcy play Go Fish is about the funniest thing ever. They show each other their cards when asking for a certain one and both peek at the others whenever they shift around to "Go Fish"....so adorable.

With our new computer, I am trying to figure out how to upload pics, but will post some soon of them playing their game of Go Fish.

I am so blessed and feel so much better now that I have dropped several Kindermusik classes to spend more time with my kiddos while the time quickly slips away from us. :(

Simple Joys

I could not possibly dream of a better morning. Well, at least in the dead of winter in Iowa. A note from my hubby this morning(who was at Bible Study across the street) reads, "I will take Asher to school. I love you." Oh, bliss. No rushing to get the three kiddos and myself ready to drive Ashton to Slater. I could stay in my jammies and just get one little man ready to go. Because of the calm in the house, I was able to enoy two storybooks with Ashton and Darcy while Drewby slept and before pushing Ashton out the door. Once Ashton was gone, I finally showered and the twins and I spent almost 2 hours at the library reading books and playing with blocks. We were the only children in the library and so we had a large area all to ourselves to enjoy the comfort of books and each other. It was sooooo relaxing. I decided to find myself a book and was even able to sit in the rocking chair while reading a book and watching my lovely children play with the blocks. After the library, we had some races in the gym and then finally home to have lunch and make some pumpkin muffins. To top it all off, they are sleeping now and I am enjoying Blog Land. Oh the joys of staying home. :)

Creativity

I continue to be amazed at how creative our children can be. It is simply beautiful that their brains are so pure and have so much imagination. After making airplanes and rockets with Ashton after school a few days ago, he called me in to see his new "hand sanitizer dispenser." Ashton made sure that everyone was keeping their germs at bay be frequently visiting the pump. Everywhere you go these days, they have a pump with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer in them, so I guess we might as well have one in our own house. When Andrew walked in the door from work, Ashton immediately directed him to the pump to kill all those germs from his busy hand-shaking day at work. ;)

Fall and Winter

Oh, it feels good to be back! I have officially left the FB world and come back to where I feel more productive...keeping up with my children and their youth is so much more important than roaming around FB.

It has been a busy, busy Fall and Winter...Ashton started Kindergarten and I am involved in a Co-op Preschool with the twins. I was so blessed to fall into a group of women, many educators like myself, who decided being home with their children was where they needed to be and "retired" from public school teaching. The group of women came together and now we team teach our own children, taking turns with days in the classroom and having time to ourselves on days that we don't teach.

School for all the children is going so well. Ashton really jumped right into Kindergarten without many issues, sure, he loves to be home with Mommy, but only had one major fit about going to school and it was short-lived. He came home today saying, "my teacher said that I am the best in the classroom." He had a sub today and she told him that he was the nicest child and did a great job on all his work today. What could make a Mommy more proud?

As much as I don't like this crummy weather and really, REALLY want Spring, I am so glad that I am home with my kiddos and watching them all grow into amazing little people. I know too well that they grow way too fast and my time with them is soooo short. I still get sad when I think about Ashton already being six! How did that happen.

I am blessed beyond words and love my family beyond words as well.

God Bless

Ashton

Tonight after Daddy got home from work, I needed to get out of the house BADLY and so did Ashton. Ashton and I decided to spend the evening at the Huxley library and we had so much fun together. I realized how much I missed him and his personality when he is not with his 3-year old brother and sister...such a different little guy. We held hands in the library going from shelf to shelf looking for the perfect robot and cat books, two of his passions. The calm of the library at 6:30 in the evening is almost as relaxing as meditation in my yoga class. We found ourselves sitting on the floor in the the middle of wonderful books, choosing which ones to take home. I am so happy that we decided to spend this time together and hope and pray that we will remember to do it more often. We ended our evening together snuggled in his bed reading the first of the Junie B. Jones series...I think we are going to like them! Fun, fun! We are not so fond of the title of the first book, but Ashton says we can call it, "silly bus" vs. "stupid bus"!

Love you Asher!