Documented - 6/15

Life This Week:

Last week felt busy.  Like we were going in a different direction everyday.  This week we hit a nice balance between home and out.  Andrew was off Monday and I hosted book club that night.  Tuesday we went to the library and hit the pool with the Nichols Crew.  Wednesday I got out alone for a few hours and Thursday we had our buddies over for the day.  Yesterday I babysat the sweetest little baby ever.  He was good for my soul.

I'm working on getting the kids to be a bit friendlier to each other.  It's been a bit of a challenge, but we are making progress.  Don't get me wrong, they are great kids and usually choose to be nice to each other, but Josie is bossy and Gabe is a whiner and the two combined drives me a bit insane.  There's lots of "how do you think that makes them feel?" conversations going on.  Someone tell me it's possible to have kids that get along.

School This Week:

Summer School is going really well!  We are learning about ants and bees, reading Sarah, Plain & Tall, and doing a unit on American Symbols.

Going & Seeing:

The kids had to go back to North Georgia to finish the Mustard Pie photoshoot so we decided to take advantage of the trip and go on a tour of the Mayfield Dairy Plant while we were up there.  We brought Amber and Olivia with too!  The tour was short enough to keep the kids interest but still really informative.  We got to see the milk cartons being made and getting filled which was pretty cool.

The ice cream at the end wasn't bad either!

What I'm Reading:

I've been on a reading frenzy lately.  Normally I don't like self help type books but I've recently read a couple that have been really helpful.  "Don't Make Me Count To Three" is one of them.  I started reading this one when Josie was little but it wasn't very applicable.  But recently the kids have been having a hard time getting along and an even harder time not whining, both drive me insane.  So I picked it back up and it's been a God Send.

It basically lays out how to discipline while guiding their hearts so that they understand the why and how behind obedience.  The author uses scripture to teach her kids and sort of a three step process of correcting, rebuking, and role playing to show the correct behaviors.  All easier said than done, especially since I don't know a ton of scripture by heart.  I've been working on memorizing the ones dealing with whining, stirring up anger, and tattling.  Those are our biggest problems around here so I figured it was a good place to start.  We have a ways to go before I can consider it a success or not but so far it seems to help.

Now I've moved on to this month's book club book and I can't put it down!  It's called Ladies Night by Mary Kay Andrews.  Good Summer read.

Thankful For:

The past few weeks I've been thinking about how many great friends we have.

And I'm thankful for it.

We have some friends that we've had for years and years that are more like family and recently we've started some new friendships that I already know are going to bless my socks off.  I've met women that challenge me in areas that I want to grow in and encourage me to keep striving to be my best.

It's an added bonus that each of these new friends comes with a dude friend for Andrew and a gaggle of new buddies for Josie and Gabe.

Round These Parts

Let me start by telling y'all what we haven't been up to around these parts, and that would be swimming in our pool.

In fact, it's looking pretty dang sad lately.

We discovered a leak at the end of last Summer, but it was small so we ignored it.

This year it was pretty big and was flooding the yard.  So we drained the pool and tried to fix it, three times.  Last week, we finally had a real pool guy come check it out and, surprise, surprise, Mr. Terry didn't build it right.  We have tried a few different fixes and none have worked.  We have one more Hail Mary attempt before we have to give it up.

But that depresses me, so let's move on to what we have been enjoying round here:

Our garden is booming.

My zucchini plants are monsters, shading out one of my pepper plants and a few green bean stalks.  I'm winning the war on the squash bugs, but it's been a daily job.  I count it as meditation since I get a slightly alarming joy out of drowning the buggers.

We have harvested about 15 zucchinis, 2 cherry tomatoes, and 4 green peppers.  Plus and handful of blueberries that got gobbled up on the thirty steps from the garden to the kitchen.  Let's take a peek at what's growing:

blueberries galore!

green beans on the left, bell peppers on the right

monster zucchini plants

bucket loads of zucchini!

mystery squash turned out to be a cucumber plant!

approximately 2 billion cherry tomatoes

big ole tomatoes

josie's massive poppy plant and our watermelon patch

awesome fig production this year

pear on the left, wild blackberries on the right

beautiful pomegranates coming in!

Can't forget about my homegrown babies!

I'm babysitting a couple days a week this Summer and it's been awesome.  Christian is so patient with Gabe and they've been playing for hours outside together.  Josie and Audrey are two peas in a pod too. I am loving having one day a week that I know we will just be home.  It's been the perfect day to get some major gardening and housework done in between pool hopping.

That's about all we are up to around here!

What's happening in your neck of the woods?

In The Bag

Last week we were on the go a lot.  

Like, a lot a lot.

I feel like we lived out of the car.

And today, my purse is in need of a major clean out.  Since we all are admitted stalkers around here who love peeking inside other people's lives, I thought I'd share the mass amount of crap that I carry around in my purse.

I'll start by telling you that I have purse issues.

When my kids were in diapers, I had an awesome diaper bag that could hold their stuff and mine and was still stylish.  I loved it.

But (praise the good Lord above) my kids are out of diapers and I felt ridiculous carrying that huge bag with a wallet in it.  I've tried a few different purses and didn't like any of them.  Then I saw my Sister in law carrying the perfect bag.  Her's was a real, adult purse with a real, adult name brand on it.  Out of my budget dang it.  But the stars aligned one day last Fall and Target saved the day with a bonafide knock off.

I love it.

It holds my wallet, and all this other junk, very nicely.

So here we go.  Here's what's in my bag:

wallet, my sunglasses, josies' sunglasses, 8 receipts, notepad from hotel, 4 pens,

earrings, sticker wrapper, key fab, carmex, 3 lipsticks, security tags from children's church,

doll socks, 4 hair ties, 2 hair clips, necklace from josie, old movie stub,

elastic headband, toy fish (huh?!?), unwrapped sucker

Every sunday, when I look down and see their names on this claim sticker, it catches my breathe that I have kids.  Like, if I don't pick them up I'm in trouble because they are mine.  Still can't believe it.

let's not talk about this unwrapped sucker and what all it was attached to in the bottom of my bag.

Not too bad for all the going I've been doing.

So now that that's all cleaned out, what should I show off next?  Our freezer that desperately needs to be cleaned out?  My makeup bag?  Our pantry?  They all need a good purge!

Have a good Thursday everyone.

TOS Review - Birdcage Press

What Is It?

Birdcage Press is a company that took history, art, and nature and paired it with long loved children's games to make learning fun.  They offer games and books covering a vast array of topics that are sold in museums and specialty shops, as well as on their website.

For this review, we were sent the Art Up Close - Museum of Modern Art memory and match game.  The cards are a little bit bigger than playing cards and printed on thick card stock type paper.  They are a great quality and could for sure stand up to many little hands playing with them.

How We Used It:

Josie is at the young end of the recommended age, so I wasn't sure how I wanted to use them with her at first.  I decided to let her explore them first and then try the games.  There are 48 cards depicting famous works of art and facts about the artist or artwork.  A lot of the art was new to me too and we enjoyed talking about which ones were our favorite or what we thought the artist was trying to show.

There were directions for how to play Memory, Old Maid, and two new matching games in the deck as well as a scavenger hunt for the museum.  We tried them all (except the hunt at the museum of modern art) and ended up having the most fun doing the finding game where I showed her the zoomed in card and she had to find the card that showed the whole painting.  She was even able to memorize a few of the names of different artists and art work.

My Dad is an art lover and I can't wait to take these out the next time he is at our house.  He will be able to tell her a lot more about it than I ever could!

My Opinion:

I think these cards were a great way to introduce Josie to all the different types of art that are out there.  We hadn't done any art study before and was surprised at how much we both enjoyed it.  I also think this is a deck of cards that you could build on as your student gets older.  This would be a unique gift for a child that likes art as well.

After seeing the art cards, I'm dying to order the bird cards.  The nature series looks awesome!

Product Details

www.BirdCagePress.com
Art Up Close - Museum of Modern Art: $10.95