Parenting Genius

Every so often Joseph and I have genius ideas when it comes to parenting our kids.  We had one this week.  Kimball is very smart, but writing isn't something he has much interest in and it is like pulling teeth to get him to practice his penmanship.  Well, Kimball loves the Lego Hero Factory heroes and villains and he talks about them a LOT.   Case in point, when we were out shopping today he gave me a run down of all of the heroes with their different building sets...ie...2.0, 3.0, XL, etc.  We recently discovered that the heroes have first names so Kimball took the time to learn all of the first names for the heroes.  Here is where the genius comes in...we encouraged Kimball to write all of the names down so he would know how to spell them when he wants to look up the building instructions on the internet.  He sat and wrote all 9 hero names without complaint.  Take a look.

For those who are big Hero Factory buffs you will notice that I accidentally misspelled Jimi Stringer and Dunkan Bulk but those were MY mistakes and not Kimball's.  I hadn't seen them in writing until after the above exercise.  

We will save the villain names for another day; we don't want overkill.

Style--the Kid Way

Kimball will occasionally help Rebecah get dressed if Joseph and I are busy or not around.  Such was the case today and I just loved the outfit that the two of them put together.  When I commented on it, Kimball told me that he thought the stripes would go well together.  I just have to smile at the combinations they put together sometimes.  All Rebecah cared about was wearing the skirt so in her mind everything went with the skirt.

Rebecah all smiles in her outfit.

Mom Day

It was "Mom" day yesterday at preschool so I got to go to school with Kimball for a program for all of the mothers.  Last month it was the fathers' turn but Joseph didn't get any pictures of the event, just video.  I prefer pictures for our blog.  

The programs for both the moms and dads were similar...songs and little crafts that the kids had made for their parents.  It was so fun to see Kimball and share the time with him.  He wasn't too keen on all of the singing.  I later asked him about it and he said all of the moms made him feel shy.  The songs were fun to hear and I did watch Kimball as he shyly sang some of the songs.  

After the singing each child gave their mom a pink carnation and we had muffins and cookies.  After the program was over, Kimball and I went to the library and he enjoyed that it was just the two of us without Rebecah.

Ready to leave for "Mom Day".

Kimball walking in with smiles.

More smiles when he saw me.

I was glad I could go to this special program.  I'm so grateful for my kids and that they are in our family.  Our family wouldn't be complete without them.

St. Patrick's Day 2013

Another St. Patrick's Day has come and gone.  I made sure we celebrated the holiday with decorations even though we were still moving in.  I think the third or fourth night in our house I told Joseph I needed holiday decorations up to make our house feel more homey.  He indulged me and I quickly put up our St. Patrick's Day decor.

I did a few new decorations this year.  Nothing fancy, but it added to the green cheer.

Green tassels were a new addition this year.  I love this idea that I
got from Kristin.  I whipped 5 of them out in 5 minutes!

I also made these shamrocks to hang up.  I originally intended these to be a craft for
play group but they weren't as "kid friendly" as I wanted.  I'll just use the extra
shamrocks to make a garland of some sort for next year.

Rebecah and I hosted a St. Patrick's Day play group at our house.  It was a lot of fun and this
was the craft we made.  I love making crafts with my kids because it is fun to see what they
come up with.  Kimball always tries to make his look like mine, but I added the hair and eyebrows
a few days later when I decided the face needed something more.
Leprechaun faces were super easy for the kids to make.

 With St. Patrick's Day on a Sunday, it was a littler harder to find green for everyone to wear.  There isn't a lot of green in our Sunday wardrobes.  Kimball and Joseph managed to get green in their ties.  Rebecah had green in a flower clip and I didn't get green at all.

Kimball's festive tie.  I actually bought this tie for "dress up" at Target off the $1 aisle.
Joseph re-tied the tie so it fit Kimball in length and he was able to wear it for church.

Our green table decorations...cups, shamrocks and table cloth.

Our St. Patrick's Day feast.  Kimball wanted to take a picture.  It turned out pretty well.

Another feasting picture.  We had corned beef, Irish soda bread, kale and oranges.

We departed from our traditional green coconut cake this year.  Kimball wanted a white cake so
I dressed it up by turning it into a jello-poke cake.  I don't care for lime Jello so I discovered
that Jolly Rancher has a gelatin line so we had a subtle green apple flavor running through
the cake.  Joseph really liked it.  It was just fair in my opinion.  It was green though.

Kimball made this hat at preschool and I thought it was super cute.
Maybe a potential craft for a play group next year.

New House

For those that don't know, we bought a house here in New York.  It was a rather long process.  The entire process took almost 8 weeks which is typical for NY, but so long for us since we bought our house in Arkansas in 2 weeks.

We are so excited to be in a house again.  This house is about 300 square feet bigger than our house in Arkansas, but SO much bigger than the tiny two bedroom apartment we lived in for 4 months.  The kids run around playing, screaming/singing and fighting on the first floor, the second floor and in the basement.

The house needed a very thorough cleaning when we moved in, but we have moved beyond the cleaning and we like our house the longer we live here.

Here are two pictures of the house from the real estate listing.  Currently, there is snow on the grown so the pictures were taken last summer.

We love all of the windows and it is especially nice when the sun is shining.

That wallpaper will be one of my first projects.

New Favorite Vegetable

There are many vegetables that I haven't tried but I always love it when I DO try a new vegetable and absolutely love it.  Such is the case with Kale.  I didn't know much about this leafy green until I tried a Sausage Kale soup in January.  The soup was SO GOOD I couldn't stop thinking about it.  I made it for my family and they loved it too.  Since January I buy kale regularly and I could eat an entire bowl by myself if I didn't have 3 other people wanting their fair share.

Kimball was very excited when we read about kale and discovered that it is more of a cool weather vegetable and we might have some luck growing it in New York.  The only down side to growing kale would be that to eat kale 2-3 times a week one needs to have 3-4 kale plants PER family member.  I'll probably end up buying more kale than we harvest.

This is just a shout out for eating vegetables and trying new ones.