Pinteresting Day in School

Hardy-har-har

If you noticed, I've added first grade teacher-bloggers to my blog list. I'm really excited about this because they give out lots of ideas and freebies. I can watch their post and add the ones I like to my pinterest board, keeping it all sorted for when I'll need it. Here's some of the ideas I've used.

This greater than/less than I got from several bloggers. Since all my craft stuff is now nice and organized, it only took me 5 minutes to make. The kids think it's great. And I'm a little bias, but I think mine is cuter than the ones I saw.

Zane even incorporated teeth in his workpage. See them?

We've been learning about George Washington. This is Ca's school journel. I had them write a statement and a question about him. It's funny because everytime I ask the boys about George Washington, they give me all these other facts about him, but never remember to say the MOST IMPORTANT THING about him.  

I got this craft idea from here. That's Z behind the mask.

 Jack crawling. This is what he's learning in "school".

 Not doing anything offical, but I've started having Ben sit on the potty. I'm not ready to take the plunge and potty train him, but I thought he could start getting used to the idea. I think I'll get more serious about it during Spring Break. He is almost 3, but SO stubborn. I pick my battles with this guy. One of my blogger friends blogged about how her husband potty trained her son. I told Chris. Baaaaaw Haaaaaa!!!

Oh and speaking of Pinterest, I found Jack's nursery on there and I hadn't posted it. I have arrived.

Owl love you forever, Baby

 Jack at 9.5 months

We took him for his check-up this week and he's still the big one. 89 percentile in length, 31 in weight. My others were about 30/0. He's already pushing 20 lbs. His brothers weren't 20 lbs until they were 15 months. It seems so weird to me.

• He sits on his own
•  does a crawl/inchworm move. I think he'll be crawling REALLY soon.
•  sits on his own
• can go from laying down to sitting on his own
• says "da da" and makes lots of other sounds
• does a fake laugh and knows it's funny
• not too friendly with strangers, but a ham at home
• is perfectly content if I'm holding him, but can throw a huge fit otherwise
• wants what he wants and will let you know about it
• naps 2x a day
• loves his momma, but thinks daddy's pretty funny

I've been wanting to do owlet pictures for a long time. I've been waiting for him to learn to sit on his own and then I had to wait on the weather. We finally had a nice day and had a few minutes to take his picture. (Having the time has been more rare than the nice weather). He refused to smile. Most of my pictures look like that black and white one. I finally did a fake laugh and he thought I was funny - a little funny.

Not much longer and I won't have any babies to take pictures of! I may have to rent one.

SIDE NOTE: My sister, Jenny, offered to make me a blanket for Jack when I was pregnant with him. I already had a dozen blankets and my other sister had already told me she was making him one. So I asked Jenny to make him an owl hat. ISN"T IT DARLING?!?!? At Christmas time, my sister Courtney and I went shopping and he had on the owl hat and I had his blanket that she had made with us. Every store we stopped in, someone commented on his cute hat. I knew what Courtney was thinking. Sure enough, after about the 5th store/comment she says, "I should have made the hat." But his blanket IS gorgeous and when the hat isn't around, people notice it and comment on it, too. He's one lucky baby.

UPDATE: Jack crawled across an entire room this morning. I knew as soon as I blogged it . . .

All About the Love

With the exception of Christmas, I'm really not one to decorate for a holiday. I guess it's because we're homeschooling now, but I've decorated. Found this idea here.

Vday ornaments. On the backs, I put "What I love about you . . ." and then listed things the boys were into and doing. I thought it'd be cool to make them every year and keep the old ones as keepsakes.

They are hung in our tree. The boys helped make the heart ornaments.

Had to have a banner. I was going to put "Be Mine", but Ca wanted me to put this. How could I not?

I did a little table decor, too. The boys help make a lot of the stuff on the plate. I added the "love" rocks and some flowers. I really like the way it turned out. I tied yarn to our chairs and taped hearts to the ends. The boys helped with that, too.

We have 2 vday parties to attend, so I decided we better get cracking on those cards. Today, we made these. I printed everything off and the boys did the cutting. Even Ben helped cut with my special training scissors. We still have a lot more to make, but I think I'm going to find another design. They got a little bored with this at the end.

Working Hard for My Money

When CARS2 came out on DVD, the boys really wanted us to get it.  I made them wait because I knew if I did, I could find a deal. Sure enough, on Black Friday, the Blue Ray Combo Set went on sale at Sam's for right under $10. I was too late to get it there, but took their ad to Walmart and they price-matched it. (In hindsight, I'm not sure that they were suppose to price-match a Club store price, but I didn't think of it at the time, and they didn't either).



On top of that, I found this rebate deal where you buy the dvd plus get $20 in Kimberly-Clark products, and mail-in for a $10 rebate.



Since then, I've been watching for Kimberly-Clark products that I needed, saving the receipts and the UPC's. I had 7 different receipts by the time I was done. Most of it was diaper wipes which as a mother of 2 in diapers, I needed away. I just barely made the deadline.

I had about 700 wipes, 12 rolls TP, & 3 boxes of Kleenex. My total didn't include all the coupons I used when buying all that stuff. So I probably spent closer to $16. So after my rebate comes in, I will have spent a total of about $16 on all those wipes, TP,  Kleenex, AND the Blue Ray. The blue ray alone would have been close to $30 had I bought it full-price. Not the most amazing deal, but this was stuff I needed which makes it OH so worth it.