The Smiles and Laughs

The girls are constantly bringing me a smile to my face. I love it. Like today...

Mom: It's time to take a nap.
Emily: I don't want to take a nap.
Dad: We have to take a nap so we can be happy.
Emily: I don't want to be happy, I want to be sad.

Or after Meredith and I take Emily to school, as soon as I sit down she says, "I want my lesson, Mom." She brings me the "Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten" book. She also has to have HER TURN! to recite the scripture we're memorizing all by herself. Unless of course she gets stuck and asks for it.

And then after preschool I question Emily on how school went and about her friends. There are a couple of things we can be pretty sure about. #1 - Jack was naughty. #2 - Sarah and Grace and Brian are her friends. #3 - Someone was naughty in school and someone was nice. #4 - Someone was missing. So, as soon as I'm done talking to Emily, Meredith loves to talk about Jack and the other names that she hears about from Emily. Although, it seems Jack is starting to be nice at school.

The Art of Cleaning (or Stuffing Under Furniture)

So a couple months back the girls learned the art of stuffing their books under the couch. They didn't really try it after that because Mommy wasn't happy and made them clean up all the books yet again, or for the first time depending on which point of view you're taking.

Yesterday we were preparing for the missionaries to come over for dinner. I was in the kitchen, Nathan was vacuuming the living room and the girls were "cleaning" their bedroom. After they were done I walked past to at least throw my hair in a ponytail (we went swimming just before this) and I looked at the lovely, freshly vacuumed room and saw this...

That's right. They'd stuffed everything under there bed. I went to go get the girls to fix it and Nathan told me the rest of the story. He'd told the girls to clean up so that he could vacuum the floor. Well, they made it so he could vacuum and were so proud when he walked into the bedroom. "We did it, Daddy! We did it!" He just couldn't get after them, but he did tell them that they couldn't stuff their stuff under the bed again.

Easter Egg Coloring

So, I told Nathan that I really didn't want to color Easter Eggs because nobody eats the eggs after we're done. So, while I was taking my Sunday Afternoon nap (the only nap this pregnant woman gets all week) he made sugar cookies for the girls and I happened to have bought an egg shaped cookie cutter for Easter last year. We didn't use it last year, but we won't go there. Then we had 4 seperate bowls of different colored frosting. The girls loved it!

Then, we were able to immediately enjoy our efforts.

The 2yo really just wanted to eat the frosting.

This picture is from later in the week. Meredith has been actually needing a nap lately. Completely surprises me because at one point she dropped her nap and I let her because she stayed happy throughout the day and it was nice to have her go to sleep immediately instead of wandering. She even fell asleep with her favorite thing we got the girls for Easter.

*I just love pictures of my beautiful, sleeping girls. They just look so peaceful and beautiful.

Conference, Lessons and Teaching my Girls

*Note: The following is a list of my garbled thoughts. I'm still working on organizing them in my head. There just seem to be an overwhelming number of them. Does pregnancy contribute to this?

Conference was wonderful. We loved it. The week before conference I had been really studying what to teach my girls. I've been reading a TON and teaching Emily how to read. I started searching through for the "best" books to be reading my children. Not just randomly going to the library and grabbing what I thought looked interesting. After spending quite a bit of my time researching what I should be teaching my children I was interested in noting what seemed to be the theme of the conference, Teaching Our Children. One of my favorite talks (how can one possibly choose just one favorite) was the first talk of the Saturday Afternoon Session. http://www.lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1207-11,00.html

I then spent the next week looking into the things I had found the week prior to conference a lot more closely. We've implemented a few things in our home for this week and I'm eager to implement more. We're keeping up with Emily's reading lessons, which she is doing great at. But this week I added a "scripture time" where the girls color while I read the Book of Mormon for 10 minutes and quiz them periodically about what we're reading (we have not replaced this with our Family Scripture time in the evening with Daddy. We just concentrate a lot more on reverence with Daddy because that is a 4-handed-parent lesson ;). We've also added, "scripture memory" (see my links at the bottom of the post for the system) and we've been working on the 1st Article of Faith. Emily has it down and Meredith almost has it down as well, so I'll probably stick to it for another week and let her get it before I move on. The one thing that has surprised me is how much clarity Emily has gained in saying the scripture by memory. It sounds wonderful! And is music to her mother's ears. We are also continuing to read our "Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten" book. Meredith loves it. She's learned her left and right hand, she knows all of her capital letters and their sounds, most of the lower case letters and most of her colors and shapes. Emily has upper/lower case letters and sounds, shapes, colors, and quite a few numbers (although numbers is what I will be focusing on for the next few weeks, including telling time.)

Anyhow, here's my list of "favorite links" that I've found.
simplycharlottemason.com, but in particular the Scripture Memory System found there.
http://simplycharlottemason.com/timesavers/memorysys/
Also, there's a book list, or a "book finder"
http://apps.simplycharlottemason.com/
But, I think my favorite book list I found was here, http://www.amblesideonline.org/index2.shtml
The Ambleside website I'm still digging deeper into and love what I see.
And then, more websites for handwriting worksheets
http://www.writingwizard.longcountdown.com/multi-word_handwriting_worksheet_maker.html
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/

Speaking of handwriting, I need to search for a book like this next one to improve my own, less than desirable, handwriting.
http://www.pennygardner.com/italicsbk.html

Easter 2010

Saturday, between morning and afternoon conference, we had an Easter Egg hunt with some of our friends. Here they are before. (I knew I wouldn't be able to get them altogether looking at me with their baskets if they got their candy first.)

Here's a picture of the actual "hunt". Meredith in her cute braided pigtails. :)

Here's the girls Easter morning. You can sort of tell that I've been really focusing on teaching them. We got them the "Let's Get Ready for First Grade!" because we've loved the Kindergarten one so much. Of course, they took it around with them and plopped it down in some water they spilled which promptly ruined it, but we're still going to use it. They've also LOVED listening to Peter and the wolf. The candy jewelry was great at keeping Meredith quiet during conference. (Must keep note of that for October.)
She's thankful for Easter, or at least the candy. We try to explain Easter, but how much do the girls actually understand?
The whole day Meredith was saying, "Jesus is Resurrected." So cute!
It was wonderful to celebrate Easter and to have Conference. It was a fabulous weekend.

What We're Up To

Today is a wonderfully rainy day. (Rainy days are wonderful as long as you don't end up with a week of clouds. I am completely addicted to the sun!)

So, we are doing some of my favorite rainy day activities, like reading. And making homemade, hot chocolate pudding. Nathan doesn't like "hot" putting. He only likes the store bought stuff. So sad. So, we made it while he was gone.

I also went looking for a list of books I can read to the girls, but don't necessarily involve the pictures. The list is for books to read to children or for them to read at certain grades. I'm reading "Through the Looking Glass" to the girls, basically, Emily. (Actually, it's on the 7th/8th grade reading list, but Emily is sitting down and enjoying it with me. There is a picture every other page, and it's just enough to keep her interested in the book to look at the pictures and get to turn the pages. And hey, I'm interested in reading a lot of these books too.

http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/timeless.html

I'm excited because I've been collecting a lot of the books on the list, and some of them I'm going to start reading to Emily. She's also been working on reading all by herself. I have the book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and so far, I LOVE it. I think it is perfect. Meredith isn't quite ready to sit through one of the lessons, she will sit through all of two parts (and there are typically 8) of a lesson. She does ask for it to be "my turn." It makes Emily want to learn more. :) I'm not really eager to start Meredith anyway. I'm teaching the girls the sight words together though.

Helpers

While I was making lunch Meredith was helping the bear with his lunch.

"Eat your rocks, bear. Eat your rocks." As she's taking rocks out of her purse to put on the table in front of the bear. Then...
"It's not yucky, kid."
(hmmm. That's something I hear coming from me. Especially to my very picky eater, Emily.)

Then, while we're eating lunch Emily says, "Mom, I want a baby brother."
Me: We're having a baby sister
Emily: I want a baby brother, Mom. (not anytime soon kid!)
Me: Are you going to help me with baby sister?
Emily: Yah.
Me: Are you going to help me feed the baby?
Emily: I'm not mommy, I'm Emily.
Me: Are you going to help me hold the baby?
Emily: I can't. Baby is big. (As she holds her hands out for a 35" baby. I certainly hope not!) And I'm thinking, "what a helper."
Me: Are you going to play with the baby?
Emily: Yah.
(great. Come 8-9 months I will take her up on that.)