School Options

Every day after my oldest comes home from school we have lunch and then sit down for an hour to do school work. Mondays she always has homework, which she breezes through quickly. The rest of the week she works on workbooks I have gotten at Costco and The Learning Palace in town.
K is much farther ahead of the other kids in her class. When she started Kindergarten, her teacher told me she was already at the level the kids are expected to be at when the year is over. Not surprising after I spent some time in the classroom helping out and I saw they were working on the things K learned her first year in a private preschool.
K has always been very smart and eager to learn. But I fear she is going to loose that ambition if she isn't challenged. She has already come home many times this year telling me that she is bored at school and learned more in preschool.
We thought about skipping her to first grade, but she doesn't have very good social skills so we were concerned she would have a hard time fitting in. Plus we don't want to get her burned out in school at an early age.
I thought about home schooling her, but it sounds like a lot of hard work and tons of hoops you have to jump though with the government. I hear the tests are much harder for home schooled kids than the ones public school kids have to pass. Plus, I don't have good teaching skills or much patience. I fear I would go insane while making my daughters life at home miserable.
There is always private school, but they are so ridiculously expensive. I can't see spending as much for a year in elementary school as you would for a year of college. It doesn't seem very feasible.
So this puts us back to where we are now. K is already half way through a first grade workbook and is challenged, but not overly so. She can tell time on a digital clock and sometimes on a regular clock. She can do addition up to 20 and some subtraction. She reads at a first grade level and can spell pretty well. Plus she knows what a noun, verb and adjective are. When I talk to other parents they say she is very advanced for her age. I have nothing to compare to, so I really don't know. But I fear that public school is not going to challenge her enough.
So what do we do? Should we just keep schooling her at home while putting her through public school even though she learns nothing other than social skills there? Do we try to home school her and hope we both survive? Private school is out of the question. Or do we have her skip a grade and hope it works out? These are the questions we have been pondering for a few months now. Any suggestions?

K working on her math paper attached to
the dish washer. Keeps it interesting, right?

Animals on Display

When I was little I loved stuffed animals and I had tons of them. There were a few I particularly loved which you could tell by their well-worn appearance. I would arrange most of them around my bed during the day and at night I would sleep with them all around me as sentinels to protect me from the boogie man.
The other day we walked into L's room and saw all her animals arranged around her bed in a similar fashion. It brought back memories of my childhood, though I had easily twice as many. Guess we need to get her some more stuffed animals.

Dressed to Impress

The girls got lots of new clothes for Christmas this year. I stopped by Gymboree at the outlet mall in Woodburn and found wonderful deals on clothes for my girls. Their clearance rack had shirts for 3-5 dollars and pants for 5-7 dollars. That is cheaper than prices at Wal-mart and much better quality. I got several outfits for the girls plus hair accessories all for under 50 dollars. The girls also got some very cute outfits from auntie.

This I got at a second hand store.

These I got from Gymboree.

Another outfit from Gymboree.

Shirt and tights from Gymboree.

Church outfit from Auntie.

From Gymboree

From Gymboree.

Outfit from Auntie.

From Gymboree

Starlight Starbright

L received a package in the mail from her Bahmah for her birthday. She was very excited to open it. Inside she found a Ladybug Star projector. It lights up her ceiling and walls with stars and turns off after 45 minutes. It shines in red, blue, or green. I took her into the bathroom and closed the door so she could see what it did. She thought it was neat. She stayed in the bathroom for a while just looking at the stars and changing the color of the lights. Such a fun birthday gift. Thanks, Bahmah!

FHE-Tithing Jars

We had FHE on tithing Monday. We have decided to start giving our almost 6 year old an allowance. We have been debating a lot of things about this allowance.
How much should it be?
Should she have to do chores in order to get the allowance?
Should she have spending restrictions or can she spend it all on candy if she wants?
How much should she save?
M and I finally worked it all out and had family home evening reminding her about tithing and why we pay it. Then we told her she was going to get an allowance every week. We gave her coins so she could easily take out her tithing and her savings money. The rest she gets to put in her piggy bank and spend however she wants to. After the lesson, our activity was to make a tithing and savings jar. She can fill these up and every month we will help her fill out a tithing slip and give it to the Bishop on fast Sunday. Her savings money we will put in her account at the bank at the end of the year. She was very excited by all of this.

Making her savings tithing jar.

I helped her align the stickers.

Aren't her jars adorable?

Bet you wish you had one:)

Potty Training

We tried to potty train our youngest last summer, however she had other plans. She refused to sit on the potty and when we tried to make her, she would scream at us. It didn't take too long before we decided our hearing was more important than her being out of diapers. So we stopped talking to her about it.
Fast forward to December and she is asking us if she can sit on the potty. "YES!" we say enthusiastically. Sometimes she would go potty but mostly she would just sit there and then get down. This is great; she is getting the idea down.
After two weeks of this, she poops on the potty. We are so excited and we give her the present that has been wrapped and waiting for this momentous occasion since June. It has been there so long, M can't remember what he put in it, so it's a surprise for us all.

L with her gift

After this, she goes poop on the potty every couple of days, but she refuses to pee. At first I am disappointed, but then realize if she is going to choose only one to do, I would prefer it to be poop. It's so much nicer to change a wet diaper than a messy one.
By the new year she is doing all her business on the potty. She is wearing underwear during the day and a diaper at night. She still has a hard time waking up to go to the bathroom and when we try to wake her she is GRUMPY! But she has has no accidents and is great about telling us when she needs to go potty.
This experience has been, by far, much easier than with our older child. For those of you who are trying to potty train and are going nuts trying to get it done, I say stop. Completely stop and wait until they come to you. They will eventually be potty trained, you can be sure of that, and if you do it on their terms, it will be so much easier on all of you.

An Artist in our Midst

K is an amazing artist. She has been doodling and drawing since she was 2 and you could always tell what they were pictures of. When she was three she drew a picture and mailed it to her grandma. One of her grandma's friends, who is a teacher, thought it was a drawing done by a 5 year old. She was amazed to find out the artist was only three.
One of K's gifts from her Bahmah at Christmas was fabric markers. They came with iron on pictures that you can then color. Bahmah ironed on the dragons and K colored them in. She even added on the beards herself. I think she did an amazing job with the details. She definitely gets her artistic skills from M's side of the family.

One for K and one for L.

The girls wore their shirts today.
Aren't they adorable?

Now I just need to find a nice desk to put in her room so she has her very own artist studio to work in peace whenever she wants to. Gotta get one that locks though, otherwise her sister will be doing murals on the walls and carpet. Though I am sure she would think it was pretty, I am not so sure it would be something I would like.

A New Year with Infinite Possibilities

Every year we invite a few families over to help us ring in the New Year. M and I always make enough hors d'oeuvres to feed an army and our guests bring food as well. We end up with an array of yummy treats to nibble on all night long.

Spinach dip, sushi tray, tri-tip steak bites, cheese tray,
cheese ball, veggie tray with humus, cheese dip...

7 layer dip, bacon rolls (not pictured), shortbread, pie,
cream puffs, chocolate covered cookies, and lots of chips.

We let the kiddies run around, play, and watch movies upstairs. They come down every once in a while to fill up on goodies from the buffet. Aren't they cute? Not sure where L was for this picture.

The adults played games most of the night. We started out with Taboo which is a fun "think outside of the box" game. The boys were stomped hard by the girls, we tried not to rub it in too much.
After that we decided to let the boys play a game they would be good at, so we played Paradise City on the PS3. I got this game as a Christmas present from M this year. And before you say anything, just know that I have wanted a game like this since we played a similar one at a friends house over a year ago. It's a great racing/crashing game.

Our friends the V's.

Our friends the W's
Our friends the H's were unable to make it due to sick kids.
I forgot to take pictures of the hosts, silly me.

We had a lot of fun playing that for a while; the boys lit up like Christmas trees when it was their turn. After the racing, we played bowling, tennis and boxing on the Wii console.

Randy sitting while bowling.
He got some pretty good scores from his seat.
Becky looks great in this picture.

M lit off fireworks throughout the night and the kids
loved it. The kept asking for more and more.

About 15 minutes to midnight, I poured out some sparkling apple cider for everyone to toast in the new year. We tuned in to one of the local tv channels and watched the ball drop. I was surprised they didn't sing Auld Lang Syne but someone mentioned that most people don't know the words to it any more. I asked if anyone had any resolutions for the coming year, but no one had any. Guess it's just M and I working on ours. Although, not having resolutions makes it easy to keep them. Whether you have resolutions or not, I hope this year is full of wonderful experiences and blessings for you and yours. Happy New Year!

Christmas Highlights from 2010

We had a wonderful Christmas with our family this year. We started out with my family a week before Christmas then spent Christmas Eve weekend with M's family. We all had a wonderful time and the girls were spoiled. After Christmas we went home to enjoyed our own Christmas. Here are some cute and fun pictures from our holiday.

I love the look L has here.

Goofy looks from K and Uncle Mark.

Aunt Karen, L and Mik.

L with her Mik and Nathan.

Kim, Luke, N, M, Kendra, L, K, and Mel.

K leaving her gift for Santa along with some cookies.

L with her blue bike from Santa.

K with her pink scooter from Santa.

I love this picture, too cute!

L definitely is a girl of many faces.
I love this look when she opened her toy.

Home to Call Your Own

We were invited to our neighbors house to make gingerbread houses. L was unable to go because she had made bad choices all day. She stayed home with dad and I took K to make her masterpiece. There were five families total working on their houses. It was a lot of fun and the kids filled up on candy. Here is K's creation, all I did was put on the icing.