Chuck E Cheese Date

Brod and I had a fun date with Kaylee the other night ~ the Bigs all went to a movie so we took her to Chuck E Cheese's for some fun!

Fun for Kaylee.....

And fun for Daddy ~ winning her tickets at basketball ;)

We are enjoying our last bit of warm weather with swimming

Kaylee is swimming in her own!! 

And is very proud of it :)))

And late night bike rides :)))

Loving our beautiful evenings :)))

School Update

So proud of this girl!!!

She has gone from just trying to "make it through" a day without screaming/raging for most of it last school year, to learning routine and doing school work this school year!! 

This last week I began to notice that it may be a bit too much all at once as she was getting frustrated and shutting down ~ so with the awesome advice from my sweet friend, Sharon, I'm going to slow it down and do A LOT more playing :)

Of course we will still have school time ~ we will just be making it much more fun and disguising her work in play! 

We have the big kids' old pre-k teacher coming once a week, which has been great ~ I will just simplify things on the other 4 days :)))

When Sis and I got back from Haiti, Kaylee regressed a bit and went back to lots of screaming.  As I prayed about it I felt like we should do a sticker chart.....7 days of earning her stickers through not screaming (or choosing a Re-do when she did scream/throw/hit) and she could earn a very special mermaid she's been wanting.......well, we worked and worked all week to help her get those stickers and......

She did it!!! It was just what we needed to help her out of that little setback and she's now in the habit of re-dos....yay! 

Praise Jesus for His Holy Spirit that leads us :)))

The big kids are doing great! I absolutely LOVE having them home ~ so many great things about it! Most importantly, is the RICH  time we spend in the Word every day....throughout the day....it is such a GIFT!

But another thing we have noticed is how great it has been for their friendships :))). They've always been great buds, but being home this year has strengthened their friendships with one another even more.

We still have plenty of fun time with friends (like the above picture where we took a late night trip to Walgreens to play a joke on their friend who works there ;). And sleepovers and youth group....it's all fun! 

They do enjoy being home but I wouldn't say they "love" it ;). They like that their work is done in a fraction of the time (we are doing Clovis Online School for Sis and Keeg so same curriculum but 1/2 the time and no HW!) But they do miss seeing their friends all throughout the day ~ and Keeg is still adjusting to being on a computer for 3-4 hours a day :-/. 

Overall, we all know that Jesus clearly led us to try this out this year and we are all loving the increased family time we have :)))

Country Livin'

Ever since we moved into the country about 9 months ago our kids have begged for chickens :)

We do love farm fresh eggs (well, all of us except Brodie, he's freaked out by them because as a kid he used to have to hold the eggs under a light for his grandma and see if it was an egg or a chick :-/). 

But he was a trooper and built us a coop! 

A really amazing coop, if I do say so myself ;). He's one all-around talented guy :)))

And my sister-in-law, Tera (who is our chicken expert!) and her parents went and picked us out some really great hens that are about 4 months old! We got 8 to start out with :)))

We put them in their new coop and they seem to love it :). They are calm and sweet and already letting our kids hold them!

Farm Fresh eggs in a couple months!!