Move Hannah, Move

Hannah isn't quite crawling yet but still gets around.
She rolls to get where she wants to.

Of course, Daddy is there to play with her. I love her big tummy.

She can also get to a sitting position all by herself.

And from there tries to crawl.

Crafts

One of my hobbies is doing random crafts. So here are the crafts I've been doing lately.
My sister is getting married in October. My girls are the only little girls from the immediate family coming. Kerstin's wedding colors are a red/orange and a yellow/orange. Since dresses really don't come in those colors, I am making Hailey and Hannah's dresses. Hailey dress is almost done. I still have a flower to attach, inside lining work, and ironing left to do. I've very proud of it. I worked with netting and lining a dress for the first time.

I got this idea for my mommy. I made these boards with two canvas boards and cotton filling. I love being able to see the jewelry I have instead of using a jewelry box. Also they don't get tangled up this way.

Next, I laminated different emotions for a family emotion chart on the refrigerator. Hopefully this will help us all be able to recognize how we are feeling and be able to express it in a good way instead of yelling or screaming (which is what the kids do).
This is how Hailey arranged the feelings.

We also have a emotion chart for just Nate and I upstairs. Nathan was very surprised at how many feelings I have in one moment and how often they can change.

Princess Tent

I needed a little peace and quiet, so I gave into Bronte's and Hailey's request and let her take the princess tent and Pretty Pretty Princess outside. She got both the tent and game for her birthday.

I love my pretty, pretty Hailey!

Picnic

The schools start later then the college, so I got to watch Luc for a week and a half. Then one of my good friends needed someone to watch their kids for a few hours. I had 6 kids during lunch time. My table wouldn't hold that many so we had a fun picnic outside.
Hailey loves playing with Emily and they love playing dress up.

Hannah was sleeping at this time, which made things a little easier.

Here's Luc! He is such a ham most of the time.

Hailey's School

To entertain Robert before bedtime, we watch old home videos on the computer. I found this video and melted. I remember starting Hailey School August 2008. I was planning on doing Joy School again with her but this video made me excited to do it.

I will do the second year of Joy School with Hailey at 1:00pm Monday-Thursday starting September 6th. Since I am doing the second year, a kindergarten readiness packet is included. Robert and Hannah will be sleeping during that time so we will have 2 hours for school.

Also my goal is to do Preschool with Robert at 10:00am Monday-Thursday starting September 6th also. Hannah will be taking her morning nap and I'll give Hailey computer time (with a timer) so Robert and I can have our much needed one-on-one time. With him I will work on upper and lower case letters, numbers 1-15, shapes, and colors. For the uppercase letters, I'm using AlphaTales as my guide. Most of my other ideas will come from notimeforflashcards.com

I'm really excited to be my kids' teacher. I love having this project and when I have a house I want a room set aside to be the library/school room. From Costco I got "My Kindergarten Learning Book" from Bright Start Learn & Grow. It has a lot of worksheets with alphabet, math, social studies and more. It also has a CD so I can print out the pages. I hope to go back to Costco and get "What my kindergartner needs to know". The book isn't very child friend and it more of a manual for parents, which is why I think using both books will be a great curriculum.

I also want to go to the dollar store and get a US map and a map of the world. This is why I need a whole room for school. Also, since this will be my third year teaching, I consider myself a home school mom and signed up at Scholastic for Book Orders.

So, if you would like to know how school is going, follow Hailey's School starting September 6th.

FYI: I don't really want to home school my kids when they are school age. Hailey will start kindergarten next year, hopefully in a charter school. I do plan on doing supplement activities and summer school when they start going to regular school.

Waterslide Birthday Party

Turning 4 is a big deal at Ridge Crest because the kids finally understand ages. It seems like if you are four you are apart of a special club and are instant friends with other 4 year olds. So, a neighbor had a water slide party for her boy to celebrate his 4th birthday. Her motivation was to keep it simple. The kids loved it!

There were parents lined up on the side originally to keep the plastic down but ended up being pushers to help the kids make it to the bottom.

Crazy Robert went head first after he got used to the slide.

And here's cute Hannah in a matching swimsuit.

Kelly made a beautiful basketball cake and cupcakes. On each cupcake there was a little candy basketball. Robert ate it first by dipping his face in, which is why there is ice cream on his face. It only went down hill from there and won the messiest kid award.

After cake and presents, the kids (and some of the dads) went back to the water slide.

Robert wanted to take Hannah down. Hannah loved it. She's really a water baby.

Wesley wanted to take Hannah down too. He did a better job at holding her up. He will have a baby sister late November and is so excited.

Happy Birthday Tanner! You had an amazing party! Welcome to the 4 year old club.

Ward Campout and Hike

We went to our yearly Ward Camp out. It was nice, the kids had a fun time running around.

Our tent is the big, tan one. Some kids snuck into our tent (thanks to Robert and Hailey) and found our water bottle and split water over our sleeping bags, which is why they are on top to dry.

When night came, we played glow in the dark capture the flag. The kids liked having glow sticks to play with. After we put our kids in bed, we played a game called firefly which is kind of like tag with flashlights.

I took Tylenol PM to help me sleep, since I know I can't sleep well while camping. Apparently no one else can but Robert. Hailey cried around 12:00am and Hannah cried around 3ish but she was a easy fix since I could nurse her back to sleep.

After a nice pancake breakfast, the ward was supposed to meet at Cherry Hill for a little hike. We were the first people there and after waiting 20 minutes, we just started the hike ourselves.

I had a lot of fun with the kids, but Nate was too tired to function well.

I was surprised to find a forest area in Idaho.

After fighting over who can push Hannah, Hailey and Robert held hands on the way back to our car.

I love it when siblings are cute and nice to each other.

We went went back to our car (the hike was only 1 mile each way), we recognized three other cars but they went down the other path and Nathan needed a nap so we ended our fun ward camp and hike experience then. I think this was the best camp out experience that we have had. Too bad this will be our last with a big group like that, but we'll carry on the tradition and try to camp at least once each year.