Monday, April 26, 2010

1st Grade Costumes

Over the last couple of weeks I've been helping to make costumes for the first grade music program "Frog & Toad."  I kept them very simple since we had quite a few to make and didn't want to spend a bundle.  I had 2 other moms help make a few of the costumes, but I took a picture of Sophia in all of them.  I think they turned out pretty good for as simple as we were making them.  We made:
 2 Bumblebees
3 Birds

1 Frog (excuse the jammies underneath!)
1 Toad
3 Squirrels
and a lovely little snail!

Sophia will be a squirrel in the musical tomorrow night.  She is very excited to get to wear a costume!  Hopefully the other kids will be too.  A few of them were a little tricky and it took me several evenings to figure out how to attach the squirrel's tail and the snails' coil, but with Chris' help we finally figured it out.  I did realize a little too late that I should have pointed the eyes downward a little more due to the way the visors sit on the kid's heads.  Live and learn!  Here's hoping the kids behave, remember their lines, and do their best.  It's always fun to see which ones like to show off for the parents and ham it up.  It always makes me smile to watch the kids! 

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from the Moon Crew! 
We had a great Easter weekend.  Everyone except Sam.  The kids were outside Saturday morning playing and I ran inside to unlock the door for company when I heard screaming.  Obviously not a good idea.  You see where this is going?  In the 30 seconds I was gone, Sam left his favorite toy and wandered too close to his sister swinging.  She nailed him and he face planted in the dirt.  Not fun!  So as I rushed my bloody and dirty boy inside, the doorbell rang.  Of course, the timing could not have been worse!  So I answered the door with a baby covered in blood and a mouthful of dirt.  Welcome to our house! 

So my careful planning for Easter pictures went down the drain.  Not really.  I don't mind when a picture prominently shows my children's "ouchies."  That's part of childhood and it's part of the many memories I will always have of them.  The, good and the bad!  So I accepted that Sam's face would be swollen and scabbed on Easter Sunday.  What I didn't know was that he would get very sick later that night.  Throwing up all night long so he was certainly not going to church in the morning.  That really devastated me -- for all the wrong reasons. 

You see, I had found these cute matching dresses for the girls and searched everywhere for something for Sam to wear.  This year all the boy's Easter outfits were pale blue, green and purple.  That would clash!!  So, I found an awesome store on Etsy where a lady in NC makes ties out of tons of different fabrics.  I found this polka-dot tie and was so excited!   I tracked the shipping on-line and was so worried it wouldn't make it in time.  It came Saturday afternoon, just in time!   But then, my baby was sick and not going to church.  So here's a picture of my girls!
Sam felt well enough to go to Papa's house for lunch and an egg hunt.  He was just really drained and exhausted.  Monday he had to go to the dr. just to check since he was super-fussy.  Besides the scraped face and the throwing up, he also has fluid in his ears and it looks like we're going to have to get tubes replaced soon.  Geesh. (I won't even go into details about how he then threw up in the car on the ride home).  But the moral of the story is I had the wrong focus for Sunday morning.  I had been thinking so much about my cute little kids in their matching outfits, that I wasn't focussed on the true reason for being at church on Sunday -- the celebration of Jesus - risen from the dead!  WOW!  I felt like such an idiot!   But, luckily, God used the weekend's events to really remind me where my focus should be!   Church was great, the music was awesome!  And my wonderful husband stayed home with Sam so I could go....usually he's teaching Sunday School and I ALWAYS stay home with the sick ones.  What a great blessing!  

Friday, April 2, 2010

Chapter Book Party

This year we've been trying to encourage Sophia (1st grade) to read more.  While the Pizza Hut Book-it program was always enough of a reason for me to read as a child, it isn't quite inspiring Sophia as much as I would like!  Honestly, free pizza still works for me...sad, but true!!  Sophia has really transitioned into a great reader this year coming a long ways from Kindergarten where she would cry when I forced her to sit down and read.  I have spent months slowly buying her "Junie B. Jones First Grader" books in preparation for when she was ready to read chapter books. 

She, on the otherhand, has spent months nicely stacking the books on her desk in her room.  She can read them.  She has read the first 2-3 chapters of most of the books.  They just don't capture her attention the way non-fiction books do, specifically, animal books.  She LOVES reading the facts about the different animals and is constantly asking me to find pictures on the internet of very specific critters.  Needless to say I did not enjoy her short interest in all things spider-related.  We're currently interested in sharks, which somehow, I don't mind as much!  But someone please explain to me how to Google "the shark with teeth that look like hair." 

This last week she started reading one of her Junie B. books.  She'd read a few chapters at a time and was getting past her normal cut-off point of chapter three.  So I told her if she actually read the entire book and saw how the story ended, then we would throw her a party.  That was all it took!  She suddenly couldn't put the book down.  And I'm proud to announce that Sophia finally finished her first chapter book, cover to cover.  "Junie B. Jones, Boss of Lunch" we'll always remember you! So, we had cake to celebrate.  (Please don't judge the way I frosted it.  I know I should have put more effort in, but it was a little last minute!)

Update:  A few days later she has finished her 2nd book and started on her 3rd.  Who knows how long this will continue....but I'm excited!  Not to mention we finished her Book-it requirements again this month and now get to head to Pizza Hut.  Happy first grader, happy mom!