School start

Brandon started school two weeks ago and Jessie last week but I am a little behind with all the wedding stuff. This is the first week they will go the full week though. They are starting four day school weeks this year. The bus picks up my kids at 7:30 to be at school by 8. Jessie gets off at 11:30 but it takes her an hour to get home so she is here by 12:30. That is a long time for a four year old and yesterday she was sound asleep on the bus. If I pick her up from school then Brandon will want me to pick him up and that is just too much gas going back and forth ( we live about 10 minutes from the school). Brandon only has about 20- 30 on the way home so it is not as bad. Jessie seems to like school so far but she can't remember what it is she does there by the time she gets home. Hopefully once she gets into it more she will start remembering more, this was only her fourth day today. She looked so tiny getting on the bus and her backpack is as big as she is. Brandon took his responsibility to get her to school a little to hard and he thought he had to watch her there also and got upset when he couldn't keep an eye out on her during school. He was so cute though taking her to the bus for the first time. He enlisted the help of the other boys on the busstop to help her and she was surrounding by three big boys and then little her. It was funny and kept me from crying to see her go.

Brandon was all ready for school and liking it until they did testing last week and he didn't do so well. Now he thinks he is the only one in his class having trouble and that he is dumb. Getting him to go to school now is like pulling teeth. Of course he had a lot of excitement this weekend that could be making things more emotional for him on top of everything too. I am trying to convince him that he is not the only one and that it will get better. I know the four day weeks are hard on a lot of families that all work but I am grateful that I am not working right now even if it makes things more difficult financially but this way I can homeschool them both on Fridays and help get Brandon back to where he needs to be. His kindergarten teacher was not very good for him and he has been behind ever since. Luckily there is a new kindergarten teacher so Jessie hopefully won't have the same issues. I think Brandon is looking forward to homeschooling. Of course I had to promise a lot of field trips, play time, and science experiments in addition to regular work but whatever works. We will see how that goes over once we really get going on that.

kids gone crazy

The kids are driving me crazy. They had trashed their room for the umpteenth time and this time Brandon asked me help clean up the room because he was finding all kinds of toys he hadn't seen in a long time. Now keep in mind that I have tried to make it as easy as possible for them. They have a big toy box for the big toys, and lots of plastic boxes to organize the rest. I have even tried mixing up the toys in the boxes and bringing out a box at a time so they would have different toys all the time, but they always wanted something that was put away. I used to have a rack with different boxes to put their shoes in but they always threw them in front of it and it is right by the door so I couldn't shut the door, so I gave them and old laundry basket to put them in. All they have to do is throw them in but they still put them in front of the basket. Or throw the toys in front of the toy box. How hard is it to put them in the box, even if it is the wrong box. So yesterday we set about cleaning the room. I told them that I would help but they had to do it and decide where they wanted the toys. I figured that if they did it they would be more likely to keep it that way. After the first hour with me yelling at them to help, I finally took a break and told them that when we started again they better help or I was done. By that time you couldn't even walk into the room. I quit after we had the majority of the stuff in the boxes and all that was left was to put the leftover toys that was on the floor in the proper boxes and throw trash away and put Jessie's doll stuff in a pile so I could put them with the rest in the other room. The final straw for me was when they were sitting on their beds eating fruit snacks while I was digging around the closet pulling out toys. I told them what to do and left. When they said they were done, they had shoved everything in front of the toy box so you couldn't get to them, the doll stuff was nowhere to be found, and they just threw the stuff where ever, they even stuffed the trash places instead of throwing it away. One of the bags I had started Brandon threw in the toy box and it opened up so now there is trash in there again. So after a whole day of room cleanup and yelling and Scott trying to smooth things over and mediate, their room is clean if you don't look too closely and it is sort of in order. They seem to be happy with it and I can walk so I guess I should be satisfied. I should be happy that they at least put their dirty clothes in the hamper so I at least don't have to go searching for that. I am not sure if it will be better when we can get a garage and separate them or if I will just have two disaster rooms. At least then it will be more spread out. Maybe all the stress is just finally getting to all of us. Only three more weeks until school starts and I am not sure if that is good or bad or just a new stress.

4th of July and Brandon's birthday

4th of July was like most of our others. We picked up fireworks and had GG's birthday party. GG got a cushion for her outdoor rocking chair, some candy she likes, and a gift card to Walgreens. It was a good day and everyone had a lot of fun. Towards the end, the wind starting blowing really hard and shortly after everyone went home it started to rain. At least it waited until the end. We had a really good heat lightening show too.

Then mom took a vacation the week of Brandon's birthday so they had lots of activities last week. Monday Scott's sisters came out and gave Brandon his gifts. Tuesday we went to the library where the kids got their books for the summer reading club and their next prize, then we went to to the park next to the library and ate lunch and played for a little while. Wednesday we went to Applebee's for dinner because it was kid's day and kid' dinners were only 99 cents and they had a special thing with pony rides and a magician called Mister Magic. They rode the ponies and then while we waited for dinner, Mr.Magic did magic tricks and made a balloon dog for Jessie and a motorcycle for Brandon and also 4 swords. He did extra stuff in honor of Brandon's birthday. Brandon also got a free ice cream sundae. On Thursday, Brandon's actual birthday, we went to the zoo. We spent the morning there and the kids bought some small toys and we ate snacks and then I made homemade chicken nuggets for dinner. We also did lots of swimming that week. On Saturday we had his party. He had a lot of fun. He picked out a GI Joe cup, Transformer napkins, firefighter cake toppers,and Power Ranger dessert plates. The dinner plates were green and our glasses were red. Quite colorful. He was hoping to eat outside but it was too hot and windy. He was really happy with his gifts, especially the scooter we got for him. We don't have a lot of places he can ride that is not really rough but he doesn't care, he rides back and forth between the houses and in the house and everywhere around. He even wanted to take it to the store. We will try to get 8 year old pics done soon, hopefully this weekend, and send them out as soon as they are finished. Once I get my house back in order, I can start focusing on other things. It's close to being done (inside anyway).

Brandon With Scooter

Balloon Toys Made by Mr. Magic

New Bike Helmet

Opening Gifts

Wild Birthday Cake

wedding update

Chris and Rachel should be finally getting their invitations sent out this weekend. Two procrastinators planning a wedding is an interesting challenge. If Mom doesn't go crazy by the time the wedding happens it will be a miracle. We finally took Rachel shopping last weekend to get flowers for her bouquet and look for bridesmaids dresses and next weekend we are going to take her again to get some stuff. Scott took Chris tux shopping this weekend so at least everyone should be dressed. Rachel keeps adding bridesmaids, she's up to five, because one she thought was going to bail so she had a backup and then they all confirmed, so now Chris is trying to come up with groomsmen. Then last night Rachel mentioned she wanted to write their own vows and they keep adding to the invitation list. Hopefully it will all come together soon. Mom and I are trying to help out as much as we can without interfering and it is hard on them because they only have the weekends to do wedding stuff plus yard work etc. Chris is so excited to have a yard to fix up again that he is having trouble focusing on other things besides that.

Scott finally got offered a job. It doesn't pay much and is clear out at the reservoir but at least it is some money coming in and maybe our luck is finally changing and good things will start happening. We are hoping one of the other jobs he applied for will still come in but it is a start.

We are still fighting the insurance company for repair work done on the house from the May hail storm. Hopefully everything will be done by the wedding. The carpet and floor will be done Monday. I am starting to wonder if it is worth it now that we have to move everything out the way to replace it. I will like it once it is done but right now I am not.

End of School

Okay it has finally calmed down a little so here is some information on Brandon's last days of school. First they had field day. I hope it gets better as he gets older, because they don't put much effort into the younger kids. It was chilly and the kids froze during the water sports but they seemed to have fun anyway. Scott and I took Jessie and she did pretty good but got cold and tired towards the end. Then the next week was their final field trip. They went to City Park to ride the rides for an hour, then ate lunch in the park and played around for awhile. I stayed the whole time but Scott just took Jessie to the park to meet us for lunch and she played on the equipment for awhile with Brandon. He was so worried that she was going to get hurt playing with the other big kids. After the park, Scott took Jessie home and I went with the kids to the library for a tour and story time. Trying to keep 56 first graders quiet in the library is real fun by the way. They split us into three groups and we took a tour of the library, visited the Infozone, which tells the history of newspapers, and then had story time. The kids got very bored because they were tired and it wasn't enough action for them. Last year the first graders got to go ice skating and we got the library. I think the best thing for them was the glass elevators. The final day, the kids had their final assembly in the morning where they got awards. Brandon got awards for spelling, knowing 200 site words, and the helping hands award for always being willing to help everyone out. He also got a special award for the AR reading program for being in the top 3 in his class. The first grade also was noted for helping to get the most chain links on the Rachel's challenge. Rachel's challenge is when the kids are challenged to do acts of kindness. When they do an act of kindness a paper chain link is made. The chain was pretty big by the end of the year. The teachers seemed pretty sad to lose this group. After the assembly we could take the kids home, so we met mom and dad at the park for lunch and fed the ducks and played around. When we got home, shortly after is when the storm hit. Nice ending to a good school year. Also Jessie got into the preschool program at school so she will be starting school next year also. It will be interesting because they are going to a four day school week and also contracting out the bus services to a company instead of the school district, which will add re to the usual start of school year confusion. I guess I'll worry about that closer to time.

hailstorm

I was going to do a blog about the end of the school year and all of Brandon's activities, which I will still do soon, but yesterday we had a massive hail storm that did a lot of damage and it is too hot to think much right now. We had everything from pea to golf ball size hail. It not only trashed the trees pretty good but mom and I both lost most of our flowers we got for Mother's Day. (Everyone buys us flowers to plant in our planters for Mother's Day). A few may still survive but most didn't. Our roof is going to have to be replaced and the siding on the house as well as the gutters and the worst part was our skylights broke and allowed water to gush into the kitchen and bathroom. Today some guys came out and put in giant fans to dry out everything so it won't mold and we can't run the air conditioner and of course today was almost 90 degrees and about a 100 in the house. It is really miserable right now and everyone is sleeping in our room because we have a window air conditioner to try to cool down that room at least. And of course everyone thinks I am some super mom that can do six things at once and do everything as soon as they ask and with the heat I am not handling that as well as I probably could be. Mom and dad had a lot of damage to their roof also so now we all get the fun of the insurance and roofers game. I will try and do the end of the school blog as soon as we get the fans out of here and some coolness back in.

Easter

We had a really nice Easter this year. It started with egg decorating the night before. The kids love decorating Easter eggs and so do the “big kids”. Dad and Scott really get into it. They have their traditional decorating they do every year. Dad always makes one look like a green olive with a stuffed pimento and Scott always makes an elaborate fire scene. I enjoy it too and mom usually ends up taking pictures and video instead of coloring eggs.

The weather was nice enough for once to hide the eggs outside (plastic ones, not the real ones). It’s so much more fun doing it outside where they have more room and there are more places to hide them. After the egg hunt Grandma, Chris and Rachel showed up for dinner at around 1:00. We had a really nice ham dinner with our traditional deviled eggs and then we all went back outside and the kids had a treasure hunt for another Easter surprise. We had gotten them some audio books that have the book with it so they can read along and it was too big for an Easter basket so we thought we would do a treasure hunt. A couple of years ago for Brandon’s birthday Mom and I made up pictures of various places in the yard that we use for clues and had bought a box that we used for his birthday gift bags that was the treasure, but we like to play this game with the kids in the summer and bought some small dollar toys that we put in the treasure box. They get a kick out of it. Anyway…we used the clue cards for them to find the books. They had fun with that and then they hid some eggs for their Uncle Chris to find. After that they played with the toys they got in their Easter baskets. It was so nice out no one wanted to go back inside, but we did finally go in for dessert because Chris and Rachel were due to go have dinner with her mom soon too. It was a very memorable day and I hope all of you had a great Easter too.