Yard Work (Again)

It has finally dried out enough here to finish the swing set.  We set it in place and Chris finished it over the weekend. Then amazingly both kids wanted to do nothing but play on it.  Today when A came home from school the first thing she did was put on her mud shoes to go play.  The kids and I helped some. A couple of girls who live in an adjacent back yard noticed A out (and they go to school with her) and asked her and GMan to come play.  The kids jumped the two fences between our yard and theirs and played for HOURs both Saturday and again Sunday.  It is nice to meet a few more faces in the neighborhood.  If the kids were to walk on foot it would be about a quarter mile walk.  GMan is surprisingly adept at jumping fences we found out which surprised us since A is more of the climber than he is.

Yard Work

This past week Chris+ kids have worked really hard to get a spot in our yard leveled enough for a swing set. Chris has been putting in a French drain of sorts in the middle of what we call "the river" when it rains. We had a lot of lava rock in the front that we wanted to dispose of so he's dug up the back yard to bury the rock. Now we need it to be dry enough to actually level the ground out, but today they started putting the main section together. GMan is super excited that he will get a swing set. He's been asking about it since it was delivered a few weeks ago. We now have slightly fewer rocks in the front flower beds so hopefully we can put in some new plants and things in the coming weeks.

We also started some container gardens. We put strawberries in them so hopefully they will grow. We repurposed some carboys from work into plastic containers. They should be good so hopefully the plants will grow. A says she loves strawberries so hopefully they will be eaten.

Other than that the twins are getting big. A goes back to school after spring break and has decided that being a mom is hard work. She'll just keep her baby doll for now. 😃 

MoBot + Sehorn visit

This past weekend we introduced the twins to Mimi & Paw Paw and Grandma Sehorn. They made the trip up from OK and we had a good couple of days. We managed to get to the botanical garden and see the orchid show again. Miss A remembered a shocking amount from the scavenger hunt they had to help keep purple occupied. She also did a significantly better job at writing the parts of the orchid in their scavenger hunt booklet. GMan became PawPaw's shadow and refuses to stay further than a shadow would the entire time they were around. PawPaw didn't realise that GMan light take him seriously so he told GMan that if HMan picked his nose deep enough then he could touch his brain.

Last week we had student led conferences at school. The teacher has been great and helpful all year. She's not ever quite sure what to do with Miss A, but that's normal and what I'm coming to expect. We discussed the advanced/gifted/whatever they call it these days program and her teacher thinks she is definetly a candidate. Hopefully curing her of the boredom will help her get past the learning to read hurdle she's set up for herself.

We've also really started fighting with GMan about wearing his glasses. He is slowly getting better but has had to miss out on things because of not locating his glasses.

Work continues to be good for me and Chris is doing well with 3 guys at home. They make a few jaunts a week and it is getting easier I'm told.

Sunday Afternoon Nap

The bigger kids are increasingly less likely to take a nap. After lunch the neighbor kids were out so ours wanted to play as well. After they came in they wanted to play a game. A wanted them to have their candy canes and a stuffed animal. I suggested that we make it a game to see who falls asleep first. GMan increased the game by adding a blanket to the mix of things he wanted. He even shared with Big Sister. However, I'm thinking that Big E won.

Sweet Boy

As I'm on maternity leave and unable to do "strenuous" exercise, I've been going to the Y for yoga. I take GMan with me while the twins scream at Chris for letting their food source leave. They don't understand that I'm coming back and I figure giving them a shorter duration before I go back to work is good for everyone. This morning driving home from yoga GMan told me, "Mommy, when I'm your age I'll take you to the Y so you can go to yoga class. I'm going to do yoga class too." He's really started saying things like this a lot. They are regularly highlights of the day and some of the best ones begin, "when I was a puppy..."

This week has brought lots of frustration for A as we challenge her to read. Her sight words are repetitive and easy so we found some easy readers that are at least 50% sight words so she can see them in context. She'd rather do the simple stuff but is getting better at the reading books and realizing just read for us. It normally takes her 2 or 3 times reading through the book to memorize it, so we will be visiting the library a LOT to keep her challenged I think. Maybe this summer we can start her with the library reading club.

This week A lost her 2nd tooth. We think it is because she's got the first one coming in and it made the 2nd one loose. It came out as she used her teeth to rid herself of her gloves one of the cold days here. She forgot to tell the tooth fairy about the tooth though when she put it under her pillow. Last night she very adamantly reminded me that she had lost the tooth and the tooth fairy better come to give her something, anything, just like it did for a girl in her class.  We hadn't really discussed doing anything as after the first one came out she lost it and never even thought about putting it under her pillow. She said she didn't care what the tooth fairy brought her, just anything.

Expanding Family

For those of you unaware, I've been a human incubator for the past ~9 months to the newest set of twins in my family. Wednesday, January 11, we doubled the number of children 5 and under in our household. So far we are all adjusting to our new roles. We are working on the sleeping bit and doing okay. I think it is more us adjusting to lack of sleep than anything.

The birth went amazingly well, much to the entire hospital staff's dismay/disbelief. Both came vaginally, with the second one being breech. They tried to turn him, but he wouldn't budge.

Happy New Year

The middle of last week Chris and the kids went to OK for a wedding.  It was a good wedding and everyone enjoyed seeing them. I was sad to miss it, but had fun finishing the quilt tops. Hopefully I'll get a chance to finish the quilts in the next week or so.

A has decided that she likes school enough that she is done with being on break. Hopefully she'll do well over summer, but no bets on that. We have several carboys that I get from work so hopefully we can get some container gardening going for the kids and will help her do something.

Right after Christmas we got a display table from Hobby Lobby as a train table for GMan. He got some tracks and trains for Christmas and we wanted to have a place for him to lay tracks and not always pick them up. They got the table set up in the basement today and the kids were super excited. Excited enough to want me to see it before I even took my coat off after work today.

Here's hoping we get some cold weather soon and all is going well with you.