Finds for ME!

I have a mental list of things I want to blog about, but JBF and a big birthday party have been taking up oh so much of the little spare time I have. But now they are done and I can breathe a little and blog a little.

Last Saturday, I went with a couple of girlfriends garage sale-ing. We had such a good time. We found a lady selling boutique clothes in our sizes. We all got our share of cute new clothes. Here's what I got. . .

The dress on the left was $5. I don't think I ever have spent that much on clothes at a garage sale. The lady started to explain why she was charging so much, but I didn't care. I totally thought it was worth it. The one on the right was only $0.50. Excuse my modeling.

I paid $3 for these shoes. I really don't think they had ever been worn. I had wanted some wedges, but didn't want to pay $20 plus, so I was totally excited when I found these. And they match my new dress and shirt!

Easter dress? I just might. We have a wedding coming up, too. This one still had the original tag.

Check it out!

I also got this necklace for $0.50. I saw it and grabbed it right away. I've been following this blog because I've realized that being a stay-at-home-schooling-mom, I've really lost touch with the style. I haven't made any big purchases, but just been trying to figure out what I like/dislike. When I saw her with this necklace, I was on the hunt for a red beaded necklace of my own. SCORE!!

The dress and shirt I paid $1.50 for. They didn't fit. I put them in the JBF, hoping to sell them. There was another skirt that I bought and when I washed it, all these grease-like stains showed up on it. Who knows? I threw it away. $0.50. Oh well.

Courtney wanted me to make sure to put a picture up of my new haircut.  

Didn't she do a good job? FREE! Thanks, sis!

 I made this "art" for a friend having her second boy. I saw it on her pinterest wall and decided that I could do that. First, I made it in photoshop to figure out how I wanted it layed out. Then I free-handed it. The scrabble letters, I had from a garage sale from last summer. I think it turned out cute. In fact, I was trying to figure out how I could do it with my boys names. I was so tired the night I worked on it, my eyes were crossing. I think I would have done a better job otherwise, but . . .

She loved it!! 

Since I already had the paint and scrabble letters, all I had to buy was the canvas.

Batman Gets a Phone Call

 This weekend, the big boys went with Be-maw and the little ones stayed home so Ben could learn how to pee in the potty. I had read this blog post and used a lot of her tips. It did not all happen in one day (I wasn't that hopeful, anyway), but I'm proud of him for as far as he's come.

• I let him pick out underwear. I really tried to talk him into Diego because those have not graced our home yet and doing laundry with 3 boys in underwear is easier when everyone has a different hero. He chose superheros. We have lots of those already, but at least his are a little different.
• Lots of candy the first day. Every time he peed in the potty, he got one. And he peed everytime he went. But he hadn't quite made the connection to not pee in between.
• Lots of laundry the first day.
• I let him call a "friend" to tell them the good news if he kept his underwear dry for a whole hour. His favorite person to call was Batman (Chris). He really got giggling when Batman told him that he must be a superhero because superheros pee in the potty.
• Day 2: I changed up his reward system. I had him put pom poms in a cup everytime he peed and his underwear was still dry. When he filled up the cup (4 pom poms), he got a cookie. He started making the connection to keep his underwear dry.
• Day 3 (today): Did much better. Only had 1 accident. Of course, I have him go every 20 - 30 minutes. Problem was, I needed to do some shopping and didn't want to put a diaper on him, but didn't want him to have an accident in the store. So, I kept him in underwear, but put a pull up on over it. We went to 2 stores, coming home in between to drop off groceries and for him to pee. He kept it dry!! I'm so impressed.

The other boys took so long to learn how to stay dry. BUT I didn't start with underwear like I did with Ben and I started them when they were younger. Ben is definitely NOT potty trained, yet, but I'm hoping it will only take weeks as oppose to MONTHS like the other boys.

Lorax-amous Weekend

Snacks, movie, school, and a book

Read on through and take a look

The weekend was full of Lorax and friends

Seuss' birthday is how it begins

On Friday, we had a few homeschooler friends over and we read/discussed Dr.Seuss' the Lorax. We talked about Dr. Seuss, rhyming, his art, nonsense words, greed, being polite (Once-ler uses "shut up" and "stupid" - those are cuss words in our house) & the moral of the book. Did you know this book was once almost banned?

We did a couple art sheets from this lapbook. Then we made Truffula trees (idea) and created a truffula land scene out of our snack.

On Saturday, we went with our friends to see the movie. I love going to see movies after I've read the book - like I'm more sophisticated - yes, even when it's a Dr. Seuss book. I'm not sure if that made the kids feel cool, too, but they liked it either way.

Today, we worked on finishing our lapbooks. I had never done a lapbook before, and I'm not even sure if we did it right. Z really liked making it. I think we'll make more of them in the summer. Besides what we had done on Friday, we did it all in one day because I didn't want to get too behind with our regular schoolwork. I don't think it was meant to do it like that. Woo! It was a lot.

We didn't do EVERYTHING, but I also added some from this unit plan, too. We made a Venn diagram of the movie vs. the book and talked about the characters, setting, and plot.

I even found a Lorax unit for Ben. It was right at his level.

I've been doing "letter of the week" with him for a while. After I print/laminate everything, I put them in folders, so I just did the same with the Lorax stuff. (I'm laminating in hopes that I'll reuse them all with Jack). Ca was hanging around when I made Ben's folder and told me I had to put a picture on the front. So I drew a Lorax. The kids also made Loraxes for their folders, too. I printed theirs smaller, but here's the link for it.

  

Ben is in his pj's because he was sick this morning, and I was giving him a pj day.

 Jack had nothing to do with the Lorax lesson, but I couldn't leave him out, could I?