Awana

I've been meaning to post about Awana for months and I'm finally getting around to it now.  We started at the beginning of the school year when we signed Grace up for an Awana program at a church within walking distance of our house.

If you aren't familiar with Awana it is a national and international program that is designed for kids ages 2+.  As stated on their website, "Awana helps churches and parents work together to develop spiritually strong children and youth who faithfully follow Jesus Christ. Our programs offer a proven approach for evangelizing and discipling kids in the church and community."  One of the main focuses in the Awana program is memorizing Bible verses so Grace has a new verse or two to memorize every week.  Even though we work on them with her she always picks them up faster than I do! 

The church that Grace is attending is open for ages 3+.  Her class consists of 3 and 4 year olds and there are probably about 12 kids in her class.  Her good friend Aubrey also goes with her so it's fun for them to get together those days.  She has 3 teachers and they are wonderful.  Also, her class is called the Cubbies and she has a cute little song about being an Awana Cubbie.

This is my first experience of dropping Grace off for something and not really knowing entirely what is happening.  My knowledge is based on what Grace tells me and the limited interaction I have with the teachers.  I think it's good for all of us to have this experience.  It's teaching Grace to listen and obey other adults in authority and teaching me to trust and let go a little.

She gets to wear a vest and earns patches for scripture memorization.  So below is a picture of her all dressed for Awana.

The French Braid(s)

I love french braids in little girls' hair so I recently decided to give it a try in Grace's hair.  My first attempt was nothing worth writing about but my second attempt turned out much better.  It did fall out before the day was half over though.

Second attempt

Today I tried the pigtail french braid and it worked very well.  Grace rolled around on the floor, traveled in the car and spent the morning at church.  Then I took the picture.  I'm pretty happy with the staying power of these.  Hopefully she'll be sporting this hairstyle more often and hopefully I get faster at doing it.  I'm pretty sure it took me 10 minutes this morning which is a long time in Grace's world.

Double French Braid

Brinner Saturday

2012 was the year of Homemade Pizza Sunday.  As much as I love my homemade pizza I was ready for a break from having it weekly but I love having a set weekly meal.  So, 2013 is going to be the year of Brinner (Breakfast for Dinner) Saturday.  I feel this theme will be fun because I'll have lots of flexibility and what a perfect leftover for Sunday morning! I've already made biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs (cooked in the sausage grease after making it for the gravy), and breakfast casserole.  I'm looking forward to pancakes, waffles, egg dishes, and much more. Maybe I should get on Pinterest again because I'm sure there are some good recipes there.

Fruit is easy to incorporate by having a fruit salad or throwing some blueberries into my pancakes. The dilema I'm facing is should I find a way to incorporate veggies into these meals (beyond onions, green peppers and mushrooms scrambled into eggs that Matt then won't eat) or should I be ok with a veggie free meal?

Here's some breakfast pictures I just found to get your taste buds going....

Hi Anne, I'm Larry

A couple of months ago I reintroduced Grace to Veggie Tales after her first rejection when she was around two years old.  She totally took to it and I'm more than thrilled.  You see when Veggie Tales first came out in the mid 90's and I was well past Veggie Tale age (read teenager) and I was probably one of their biggest fans.  I'm pretty sure I bought every VHS tape, CD, and T-shirt my money could buy.  I even continued my fascination into the first couple of years of college.  At some point it must have dawned on me that I was much older the intended audience and I donated my videos to the kids I babysat for.

When I saw Veggie Tales was available to watch instantly on Netflix I couldn't wait to show Grace but she wasn't interested.  For some reason I decided to try again recently and she really loves them.  Because I loved Veggie Tales so much I think I took it personally when she didn't like them at first!  Now she knows the characters and thanks to the fact that I kept the CD's I bought ages ago she has many songs memorized.

The BEST part of it all is she has her first imaginary friend(s)/alias.  She plays with the Veggie Tales characters all the time.  They hang out together, act silly together and have a grand old time.  It's so cute when she tells me things like, "My Veggie Tales friends came over and sang with me during naptime." (Obviously with all of her friends visiting no nap happened that day.)

She also switches back and forth between Larry the Cucumber and Grace.  Her voice gets a little goofy when she is Larry, she holds her arms to her sides and jumps a lot and she calls me Anne.  Most days she is Larry for a small amount of time at least 3 or 4 times.  Love it!

Do It Self

I keep meaning to put this post up before this stage passes in Caleb's life but I'm not sure if it is ever going to pass.  Over the last several months Caleb has incorporated the phrase, "Do it self" into his vocabulary.  This child is WAY more independent than I am used to and it can be tiring for both of us at times.  I love that he wants to try things on his own.  It's frustrating when he is trying and can't do it but won't except help.  In the end this will probably aid in learning independence quicker but it's frustrating in the moment.  And it's exhausting when we just don't have time to let Caleb do things himself.  As much as I value Caleb learning to do things on his own I place a higher value on other people's time so he's not allowed to climb into the seat and buckle himself for 20 plus minutes every time we go somewhere:)

Here's a list of things Caleb consistently says, "Do it self" to (whether or not he can actually do them is another story)...

• brush teeth
• climb into car and into carseat
• open the fridge
• get his milk out
• open doors
• close doors
• put toys and blankets in crib
• climb into and buckle high chair
• put Duplo blocks together
• turn on the TV (UGG!)
• eat with a spoon and/or fork
• pick out clothes
• take shoes and socks off
• take jacket off
• turn lights on and off
• load the dryer

DumP Truck

Apparently I had a big typo in my last post.  I claimed that my dad made a dumB truck for Caleb.  It is by no means dumb.  It is actually a very awesome dumP truck.  I just felt like I needed this post to clear things up. Here's one of my 3 pictures to prove it.

Truck hauling and dumping Grace's princess dolls

And here's the Lego table.  The base is actually Lego but the blocks are Duplo and fit
 perfectly on it.  Hopefully one of the kids likes Legos too because it can be grown into.

Christmas 2012

I'll just warn you know this will be a wordy post without any pictures.  I failed epically and only took 3 pictures the whole entire Christmas week.  Fortunately for me everyone else has digital cameras and takes lots of pictures.  One of these days I'll get around to collecting all of the pictures and put up a separate Christmas Pictures 2012 post.  For now, I'm just going to log everything we did so I don't forget what we did.  We had a wonderful week celebrating Christmas and the New Year with friends and family.  Even though I'm tired from it all I'm feeling incredibly blessed by the people in my life!

Sunday, December 23rd - Sunday we headed over to my parents' house to celebrate with my family.  We got up early to an already loaded car and were there by 8:30.  The major mistake we made was we didn't feed the kids breakfast since my mom had breakfast casserole in the crockpot and fruit available.  Caleb pretty much screamed for half of the one hour car ride and I'm assuming it was because he was hungry.

After breakfast my grandparents arrived at my parents' house and we proceeded to open presents.  Some gifts that were fun to give were and Ergo carrier for my sister and her hubby (they're expecting a boy in April), a huge purple purse for my mom and some star gazing books/calendars for my dad since he's really into that.  We got a great pile of gifts but the most special ones were the homemade ones.  My dad built me an end table to complete my made by dad family room furniture set, he made Grace (and really Caleb too) a lego table, and he made a dumb truck for Caleb.  My mom also made a cool quilt for Caleb that he requests at bedtime now.

We finished off the day with lunch, napping, playing with our presents, and ham and potatoes for supper.

Monday, December 24th - We all woke up a little tired on Monday morning after a long day at my parents' but Christmas was only beginning:)  I still had to finish one of my sewing projects (I need to post about this one soon) and unpack, put stuff away and repack.  We also wanted to open gifts from each other all before church at 4:00.

I had ordered a couple of stocking stuffers online at the last minute so we waited for the UPS man to come and then I quickly filled stockings and the we opened our presents right before lunch.  This year we got the kids each a pair of fuzy Crocs.  We got Caleb a Little Tikes basketball hoop and Grace a super cool co-operative game called Max.  I was worried I would have to return the fuzy Crocs for Caleb because every time we put them on for the first two days he would yell, "Yucky shoes!"  The highlight of the stockings were flashlights and a Little People Belle figure for Grace and a Beast for Caleb.

After naps we headed to church at 4:00.  It was nice the service was early this year because then we could get the kids fed and to bed at a reasonable time.  Matt also had to help with teardown so he was even able to get home in time for bedtime.

After bed Matt when out and got Chinese carryout for us.  In the past we have enjoyed Chinese food with friends after church but this year the Christmas week was feeling a little bit full so we felt it wise to cut something out.  It was nice enjoying carryout with Matt at home.

Tuesday, December 25th - Christmas morning didn't feel like Christmas morning because we got the kids up early and left at 7:30 for Wisconsin.  I was sort of dreading the drive but I actually ended up loving it. NO ONE seems to drive anywhere on Christmas morning so even in the Chicago suburbs there was no one on the roads.  We made a quick potty stop at Matt's parents' house and let the kids play for a bit before we got back in the car and finished the drive.

Once we got to Matt's cousin's house in Wisconsin we had a nice day with Matt's extended family, eating yummy food and enjoying each others company.  We even had a silly white elephant gift exchange.  Neither of the kids napped that day so needless to say both were sound asleep by 6:00 on the drive back.

We only had to drive to Matt's parents' so we were home before 7 and the kids were tucked in bed early so we had a relaxing evening with John and Jane and Rachel and Rollin.

Wednesday, December 26th - This was our day to celebrate with Matt's immediate family so Jared and Yvonne and kids showed up around 10.  We got right to opening gifts by letting the kids go first and then the adults exchanged.  Some highlights to give were the quilts and placemats (that's what I need to blog about) that I made.  We got some stuff on our wishlists (mostly for around the house for me) and Rachel made a cool wreath for our front door.

After gifts we had a big lunch and spent the rest of the day watching HGTV and taking naps.  Rachel and I were thrilled that we got to watch Property Brothers as opposed to the usual staple football.  We felt kind of lame watching Property Brothers for 4 hours but I think it was much needed veg time for everyone.  After dinner and when the kids were in bed we just sat around and talked until the adults went to bed so it was nice not to have the TV on then.

Thursday, December 27th - Thursday was a laid back day.  Matt's Mom, Rachel, Matt and I went to Kohl's in the morning while Matt's dad and Rollin stayed home with our kids.  Then we watched a little more HGTV:) and had lunch.  After lunch we headed home.  I spent the afternoon unpacking and organizing but it was nice to be home.

Friday, December 28th - I honestly don't remember what we did this day.  Probably more cleaning and being lazy.

Saturday, December 29th - We packed the car and headed out again on Saturday.  Matt and I were invited to our good friend Renee's wedding so we were super excited to attend that.  Fortunately the wedding was right by my parents' house so they agreed to watch the kids.  We even took advantage of that and booked a hotel room at the reception sight so we didn't have to get up early with the kids in the morning.

The wedding ceremony was beautiful, the reception food was pretty good and we had a nice time.  After the reception we went back to our hotel room (which was like a suite with a living room) and hung out with some friends.  We got a few beers and ordered a pizza at 11:00pm.  I don't think I've done that since I was 24 years old.

Sunday, December 30th - Matt and I managed to sleep in until 8:00.  Boo!  But at least we didn't have to deal with the kids and could just take our time getting ready.  By the time we were ready to go it was almost 10.  We headed to Flattop Grill for breakfast and it was delicious.  Then we stopped at Gordman's to do a little shopping and finally headed back to my parents'.  We just spent the day with them watching football and capped it off with chili for dinner.

Monday, December 31st - By Monday morning I was exhausted and my to-do list was super long (well mostly my laundry pile was super huge).  My friend Sonya was supposed to come for the day and next day but had some car troubles so she didn't end up coming.  I was really sad and wish she could have made it but I did take advantage of her not being there and got some good rest.

In the evening we went out for dinner with a few friends and a lot of kids.  Then Matt went to see The Hobbit.  He was planning on going since Sonya was going to be there and I wouldn't be alone.  I ended up watching TV by myself for 3 hours and it was great.  He made it home by midnight and we still spent the first minutes of 2013 together.

Tuesday, January 1st - We spent the whole day taking down Christmas decorations and doing chores.  It was a great way to start the year!  Because now that Matt is back at work I'm not feeling behind.

Great end to a great year!  Merry Chirstmas all if you made it this far:)