Early Mornings Make Me Happy

As crazy as it seems, I love early mornings.  I'm not sure if I'm legitimately a morning person, or if I've just been conditioned to be this way after spending my childhood in a house where "sleeping late" on a Saturday meant 7:30am, but whatever the cause, here we are today: 6:22am typing a blog post in a quiet house, just me, the cat, and the hum of the computer.  It's peaceful.

When I first had Ollie, I was always struggling to fit a shower into my schedule.  It became a stressful fight to make her nap (especially when she got to be older and didn't want to nap) so that I could shower and take care of my vain hair-related needs (a woman's gotta straighten her hair now and then, come on!).  I was grouchy and it wasn't fair to Ollie that I was being a sour-puss just because I hadn't taken a shower.  Finally one day I realized that I needed to treat raising Ollie and being a stay-at-home-mom for the summer months as if it were my JOB (because it is, basically), and if I wouldn't go to my job and expect someone to take over my duties so I could shower, why should I expect that at home?  Since then, I wake up at 5am, shower, do some household chores (dishes and laundry, yay!), and feel nice and awake by the time the kids wake up....except for those days when Charlie wakes up at 5:30....but no one is ever ready for THOSE days!

Basically, I do my best thinking in my 5am shower, which is why it's become a necessity not only for my own vanity and sanity, but also for my school career.  Many a lesson plan has been formulated while I shampoo my hair!  The few things I've been up to lately haven't really been brainstormed in the shower, but they're cool nonetheless.

Last night I worked some more on my writing notebook, where I added a few days about Thanksgiving to the mix.  We'll read an article about the Mayflower and the pilgrims, analyze it for word choice (a review of previous lessons) to assess the author's tone and the mood of the piece.  The next day we'll spend assessing the facts and opinions in the article and then decide if it is a persuasive piece or an expository piece.  And day three we will spend making a class T-Chart about the pros and cons of sailing on the Mayflower, all so they can use their writing station time to write their own short paragraph about whether or not they would be a pilgrim and take the risks involved.  It's a lot to fit into the few days before Thanksgiving, but I'm glad I can give them some immersion into the history of the holiday instead of just glossing over it.  (But sorry Columbus Day...you're getting the shaft again!)

So what else have I been up to?  Let's see...

 I made a mental math stick game to play at school when the kids are just waiting around, lining up, or to start off math RtI time.  On one half of the stick is the problem and on the other end is the answer to that problem.  That way I don't have to test my OWN mental math skills!  I saw something similar to this on Pinterest, but it was more of a station game where the sticks had to go in a certain order because the answer to the problem was written on the next stick.  That was a cool idea too, but I wanted something that I could just as a time filler rather than a complete activity.  Plus, don't you LOVE the colored sticks?!  I snagged them at the LeRoy True Value - 500 of them for only $8!  Based on the layer of dust on the package, I'm pretty sure no one had even looked at the box since the store opened, but their loss is my gain!

 I also used a few of my clothes pins to make a Math Chain Game where the answer to the problem IS written on the next pin in line.  One side is green and the other is pink, so for 10 clothes pins, I have 2 games!  I also thought that I could clip them onto the kids and they have to line up in the order and that way it becomes a whole group activity rather than just a few kids at centers.

 

I finally got my no name paper board created, too!  Thanks to my awesome father in law, John, who came and trimmed down some scrap board and drilled the holes for the ribbon, it took hardly no time at all!  I'm planning on making a few more boards like this to hang in my own house, but instead of no name papers, I'll use them to display the kids' artwork or new pictures that I have printed.  Thankfully, John has left a lot of scrap wood at our house (supposedly for the fire pit!) that I've been itching to use, and now I have an ideal project for it all!

Besides school work, I finished Charlie's birthday banner:

We're doing a super hero themed party for him in December, but while I was in banner making mode I got busy and finished it.  Again I used the dollar store curly ribbon to attach it all, but rather than waste my time with glue and cut out letters, I got smart and formatted it all in Microsoft Word.  I love that you can type words upside down in text boxes now - that's a huge upgrade to the program and I've used it a million times already.  LOVE IT!

And, because my life isn't all work and no play...Alex was home from Korea for a few days, so once I pried the kids off of him, we got to hang out.  We actually pubcrawled Farmer City, which was a hilarious adventure because there are only 2 bars in town - that was kind of the point, and we had a good time without getting too ridiculous.

 I finally got some hang out time with my girl, Jordan, too.  Here we are outside of Panera where we had a pretty good dinner of mildly healthy food choices, so yay for us!  We hit the mall (a place I NEVER go with the children), got my hair cut, did some shopping, and had some dinner.  It was great to hang out again, and I'm definitely going to miss her next year when she's at her school and I'm at mine. 

Future projects?  Always.  Here are my kitchen cabinets...tilted on their sides because I didn't change the orientation of the pictures before I uploaded them....oh well.

 Anyway, I'm planning on painting the inside square with chalkboard paint so I can start keeping lists on the doors.  I think I'll do the drawers too, just so there's some continuity with the built in.  And then the kids can scribble away to their hearts content!

I'm also working on spending more one-on-one time with Ollie.  As the oldest, she sometimes gets the shaft I think, especially with Jonathan working 2nds now and me being the only bedtime person in the house.  I'm usually so tired by the time I get to her (because rocking Charlie makes me sleepy!) that she doesn't always get the attention to needs or deserves.  So there's my home improvement goal AND my parenting goal.  BAM.

And the #1 Reason I'm Glad We Don't Live in an Apartment Building is.....

....because sometimes bedtime sounds like a death march, and any self-respecting person should probably want to call DCFS.

But let's face it, as parents, we've all had to grin and bear it while our children scream at the tops of their lungs, usually the same phrase over and over again, until everyone's ears are bleeding.  Today we suffered through two "I DONT WANT TO GO TO BED" blow outs, one at nap time (which wasn't worth the battle) and one at bedtime (which obviously I won....by the grace of God...), and thus I'm sitting here with some liquid relaxation reflecting upon my day.

First things first:  a huge round of applause to the fine people at Yellow Tail Winery for putting their wine in screw top bottles, because getting a cork out of a bottle was NOT on my list of things to do tonight.

Excitement of the day: two finished craft projects, a trip to the park, and a successful video chat with Nonnie (the kids kind of turn into crazy people when the camera turns on, but we made it work somehow!).

I finished Ollie's birthday banner today!  Here are some pics:

 I made the triangle template in Word and added the colors there, which allowed me to make some fun patterns without wasting my hard earned scrapbook paper.  In retrospect I probably could have formatted the white circle and letters onto the banner template as well, but I didn't think of that until just now.  Doh.

 Oh well, it was fun using the Cricut with Charlie to cut the 2" circles out of white cardstock - he was fascinated by the moving parts on the machine!  Then I cut the letters out as well (1 1/2" size), and Ollie got to help glue the circles and letters down, so she was part of the magic too.

 The first and last triangle on the banner has a small picture of the My Little Pony group on it, so if the color scheme works for next year I could always reuse it by gluing a new picture over it.  I say this now, but of course I'll probably make a new one next year anyway.  I punched little holes in the corners and attached them with curly ribbon I bought at Dollar Tree for - you guessed it - $1.  It worked really well, and I like it uncurled best (I tried it both ways, and even Ollie agreed on straight being better.)

I also have some 5" circle cut outs to glue together and then hang from the tree outside when we get ready for the party, which of course isn't until August 31, but I'm one of those plan ahead kind of girls, so here we are!  I may even start on the Superhero banner for Charlie's party tonight if I can't get motivated about school stuff!

My second craft victory today is my "Becoming a Bride" layout for my wedding album.  Honestly, it turned out exactly how I pictured it would and so I'm not sure why I had such a hard time finishing it, other than I didn't know what I wanted to write on the page or how to make the perfect title for it.  I'm not much of a perfectionist (just as my father in law about all the hideous cakes he's gotten for his Cake of the Month Club gift Ollie and I gave him at Christmas!), but when it comes to scrapbooking, I really become OCD about everything being perfect.  Maybe I don't want people to see things 60 years from now and think I did shoddy work!  Anyway, here are pics of the finished layout:

I was inspired by this original page that was in my Scrapbooks, Etc magazine (that used to come straight to my door until Better Homes and Gardens decided they didn't want to print it anymore.....but I'm not bitter or anything...), and just sort of tweaked it a bit to fit my own needs.  I hand-cut the title out after formatting it as a Word Art in Word.  (I really like Word, can you tell?)  I didn't use my Cricut because I'm cheap and only have one cartridge that doesn't cut pretty swirly fonts that I needed.

 I went over the title with glitter, because everything is better with glitter.

 I think the scalloped/lace trim adds some interest to the page without overwhelming all the other things I have going on...like the glitter!

This is some sort of fuzzy snowflake self-adhesive trim that my dear scrapping buddy Sam donated to me several years ago before she moved away, and I was stoked to finally use it!  I really loved how it looked over the aqua glitter.

So there are my two craft victories for tonight.  On the horizon.....

• As God is my witness, I will force myself to work on this writer's notebook!
• Homemade sour cream....it's gonna be big.
• Maybe the start of a new wedding album page...we'll just have to see...