Alexey - almost 8

Alexey is adorable.  Alexey loves to laugh, loves to have fun, loves to be with everyone. She is a yellow personality.  She likes to try to kiss Dave on the lips to be funny. Everything is a game. She makes friends easily, she is fearless, will talk to everyone, loves everyone.

Lexey looks up to her big sister Clare.  Recently Clare started playing tennis and now tennis is Lexey's newest passion.  After Lexey started, Clare decided to switch classes to be with more kids her age but Lexey is still really liking her class and has made a new best friend there. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that this girl lives around the corner from us. Amazing!

Lexey takes jazz dance class on Mondays. She is in the upper age for the class (class is for kids k-2 grade), which has been nice for her since she is able to master all the moves in the class and gain confidence.

Piano is going really well for Lexey. She is a quick learner and does really well at practicing. She rarely complains or cries about practice and 90% of the time can get all her practicing done by herself without me sitting with her. She is awesome.    In spite of how much she loves it, she sometimes gives Holly Franz a hard time saying "piano wastes my whole day". Then she pulls out a book and says, "oh, I love this song." so we are hardly convinced. She is very dramatic!

Lex is super helpful around the house. She will read to jo, put things away for me, go get things, clean up after herself, etc. She is cheerful and happy most of the time, occasionally a little grumpy and then on an extremely rare occasion will completely lose it (usually due to excessive hunger).

Speaking of hunger Lexey loves food! She is a good eater. Here are some of her favorites: Breakfast - eggs and toast, egg mcmuffin, french toast, crepes, oatmeal with brown sugar, instant oatmeal - brown sugar, peach, strawberry.  Lunch - peanut butter on bread (no jam), oranges, ham sandwitch, pasta and sauce with meatballs, yogart. Snack - cheerios and yogart, bagel pizza, apples and peanut butter, carrots (she'll go to the fridge and get a carrot out, peel it and eat it). Dinner - spagetti and meatballs, mashed potatoes and meatballs, tacos with meat, ham, toast with butter.  In-n-out cheeseburger!
least favorites: beans, peas

School is going well for Lex. She has some good friends on the playground, she has been buddies with since K, and also some new friends from her class this year. She loves her teacher Mrs. Ramin, who reads wonderful Kate DiCamillo novels in class and does a great job of creating a save school environment for the kids. Lexey is great at math. She gets 100% on all math tests and is a wiz. Maybe she got Dave's math genes.

Lex loves Star Wars and Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken.

Lexey loves her dad. She likes to spend time with him when he's home  -- watching TV, playing ticket to ride, going to Calvin's basketball, daddy daughter dates, or anything.

This is what our mornings look like. PJ's and piano before school. Meyer has started to like sitting under the piano bench while the girls play. He makes a good foot rest.

 Lexey LOVES her daddy!

 Lex got a game TENZI for her birthday a few years back. It is her favorite! She plays as often as she can.

JoJo - 4 1/2

It's update on everyone time. Let's start from the bottom.

JoJo is adorable.




 She is also very determined and can be demanding.  It is hard to fathom being pushed around by someone with a voice that sounds like Elmo, but it can happen, believe me!

Jo goes to preschool 2x/ week. She has an adorable group of preschool friends and moms who teach. We are so blessed to have such a great group. It is her favorite part of life. Every day she says, "mom, how many more days until preschool?" she is always bummed on Friday when it is 4 more days until preschool day.  She loves bringing something to share that correlates with the letter of the week.  Her preschool class is Reef Meacham (mom Hillary), Jenna Wilde (Heidi), Zoe Law (suzanne), Eve Sabin (amy), Afton Simpson (Melany).

Jo is loving her dance class in Fridays. Some days she says she doesn't want to go, but then when she thinks about it, she decides she does want to go because she loves dance.  She is also expressing interest in trying other sports next year so it will be fun to see what she grows to love most.

Jo has known all her letters for a while now. She can write most of them and knows all the sounds. I thought maybe she would be interested in learning to read since she seems pretty ready. She loves looking at books and sometimes says she wants to read them, not just look at them!!  So, we've started the book Teach your child to read in 100 easy lesson. She is loving it. She does great. If we keep up she will be reading by May 1st. That will be fun for her.

Jo spends a lot of her non-school time doing my chores with me. We love our morning walks with Meyer and our friends - Gabby and Zach (Meadows) and Holli (Ewell) and dog Teddy.  We go to lots of school meetings, dr. appointments, grocery shopping, etc. and Jo is almost always a great buddy.  When she's not on errands she likes to ride her bike, play at the park and go to the beach. At home she likes play doh, legos, coloring, writing letters and notes to people, playing on the tablet, watching movies. Lately her favorite is sound of music. We've watched the first half of it 6 times in the last few weeks. It is a favorite of mine as well.

Jo wears footy jammies most of the time. If she needs to go out she will put on tennis shoes over the feet of her jammies.

Jo likes to say funny things like, "Mom, I am so hungry. If you hadn't made such a yucky dinner I would have eaten it." "I was awake all night and didn't sleep at all."

Jo is a delight. I am half heart broken that she is going to K next year and won't be home with me all time, yet I am super happy for her. She is very excited to learn more and be growing up like her sisters.

Speaking of sisters, probably Jo's most favorite thing of all is being with her sisters. She plays whatever they are playing and likes whatever they like. She and Lexey are especially good buddies. At night they read each other books, play made up games, giggle, laugh and have a great time! Jo will not go to bed without lexey. She will cry her eyeballs out if we tell them we are going to separate them if, for example, they are being too rowdy.

We have a lot of dirt in our front yard right now, and a bunch that came down into the front of the driveway with the recent rain/muslides!  Jo loves to play in that dirt. She is adorable.

We love to go feed the ducks at Lake Poway.

In her footie PJ's (without the top button done)

Helping me make lemon bars

playing memory with daddy

Showing how she can read words. When we have "sharing a talent" time during FHE each week she demonstrates how she can read.

Playing a game with the girls

Playing in the dirt

pictures of the weekend family was together

Isn't this the sweetest?

 Madison learned what it is like to not have any personal space!  Abbey and Madison always had my three little girls following them around because they love both Abbey and Madison to pieces!

Matching white hair!  haha. They kind of look alike.

 Great shot of the group!

 Silly faces

 The group again with me (Kari taking the photo)

 My "baby" next to a real baby. They are both so beautiful.

 When Lexey holds the camera she takes lots of awkward pictures. This was one of twenty and is the least awkward.

great weekend

We had a very nice weekend with lots of out of town visitors and family get-togethers.

Wed Feb 10- Calvin's 13th birthday. I let him sleep in so he could ride to the airport and get a ride to school, rather than wake up early and get on the bus.Scott, Abbey, Lance and Madison arrived around 9:30am. We picked them up from the airport and then dropped off Calvin at school.   Then we went to the beach with Meyer and the kids. (Lexey was with us and Jo).  Lance got right in the water and enjoyed body surfing. The girls ran around in the sand and got a little wet as well.  It was a beautiful day - 75 degrees and very sunny.

I dropped off Scott to rent a car on the way home and then we came back to the house to get everyone washed off and fed. Scott picked up wings and things for lunch. There is always an abundance of delicious food when Scott comes to visit.

Wed after school I took all the kids to Nickel City for Calvin's birthday. The kids had a really fun time. I think that was Jo's first time at an arcade.  Calvin plays games where you get tons of tickets and then spends lots of time choosing his prizes.    We stopped at Dominoes pizza for dinner, Calvin's choice.  We had pizza and trifle. The girls got Calvin a air hockey game for his birthday.

Lance stayed the night with us all weekend!

Thursday - Calvin, Clare and Lex went to school.  Lance, Jo and I went to Lake Poway to feed the ducks with Jo's preschool friends.  Clare was dissecting owl pellets in her class so I stopped in to check that out with Jo.    For lunch, Abbey and I met Kari and Dave (met us from work) for Indian food at our favorite spot Tandori express. Scott was going to come but baby Madison had fallen asleep so he stayed home with all the kids where were not excited about indian food.

In the afternoon Joyce and Shauna arrived and visited for a bit.

Friday- Calvin had no school so he got to spend the day with Lance. The girls had school as usual. We went to Jo's dance at the RB swim and tennis club. The boys swam for the hour jo was dancing.  Then we met Bob, Kari, Joyce and Shauna for breakfast at Pancake house. Calvin  didn't want to eat so I dropped him off at Target and he looked around for the hour we ate breakfast.
Scott was at meetings and Abbey went up to Corona to see some family there. Lance stayed with us. Calvin had basketball after school so we went our separate ways until Joyce/Shauna came back for dinner around 7.  I made pot roast.


Saturday- Dan landed around 9am. We picked him up and then went to ocean beach with the kids and the dog. They had a good time. We came home for lunch, baths, etc and then took dave to the airport.
Dave left for Reno about noon to spend the weekend visiting family and a day skiing.
By afternoon Scott and Abbey were back and Joyce and shauna came over to meet Madison for the first time and to hang out with everyone.
Saturday night Bob and Kari brought  China Fun for dinner and joyce/shauna brought some pies. Everyone devoured the chocolate pie and the banana cream. Those are the family favorites for this particular crowd!
After dinner we played Apples to Apples. Jo was on my team, Lexey played on Grandpa Bob's team. It was a lot of fun. Lance and Clare played along with all the adults (minus dan). Denise and Jo won the game!

Sunday - Scott and Abbey stopped at Petersons doughnut store, then came over to visit with Grandma and shauna before they had to leave.  They were here from about 10-1, Bob stopped by after church at noon to say high as well.  We squeezed in another game of apples to apples with Abbey who had missed playing the night before!

In the afternoon we went to the park for a couple of hours and then Abbey's grandma, uncle and aunt came over for dinner (sweet pork taco bar) for dinner at 4.

Monday - Scott and gang left at 6:45 am (came over and picked up lance) and then drove to the airport in their rental car.
Me and the kids took Dan to lunch at 11 at souplantation and then went to the airport to drop him off. Yes, I have been to the airport a bunch this week and tomorrow we need to go back and pick up Dave!

notes in the lunch box

The kids love it when I put notes in their lunch. I maybe do it once a week because most days I am so rushed, flustered, grouchy or otherwise occupied in the morning. I have been thinking for a while that I should just sit down and write a whole bunch of notes and then have them ready to go. In a way it seems kind of not as sincere to do it this way, but why not? It's better to get it done. So the last couple of days I've been writing a lot of them. I do three of each note (Calvin, Clare, Lexey).

I have really enjoyed this little exercize. It for sure has made me think better thoughts about them.
I have googled: encouraging words for kids, praise for kids, etc. to find some ideas of what to write.


Here are a few things I've written:
I love you to the moon and back
You are my favorite 13 year old 10 year old and 7 year old respectively
will you be my valentine
I'm proud of you
You are smart
You are a superstar
You  make me smile
I love you
You are my sunshine
 Be kind and have courage

I loved this blog post:
http://creativewithkids.com/100-ways-to-be-kind-to-your-child/