My favorite weekend of the whole year. :)

I am looking forward to tomorrow and Saturday because I am attending a homeschool conference in Lincoln.

These are two days out of the entire year that I can have just to myself. I would love to take Megan along, but they have a no-children policy (unless they are breastfed and under a year).  I would love to take her along this year to look at high school curriculum.

I am leaving ALL my children home for the next two days and get to spend my time listening to speakers and looking at all the curriculum and various other books in the curriculum halls.

I am pretty excited!!!!

Potty training??

Lately, we have been working on the sign for "diaper change" at our house. Not because I want to potty train him, but I want to tell him what we are doing.  Well, he has figured this out!! If the little guy is going #2 or passing gas, he signs me "diaper change." We all chuckle because we think it is cute. :) 

Today, we just got home from the homeschool learning center and I had put the diaper bag down on the floor. He went over to it and got out a diaper and the changing pad. He laid the changing pad out on the floor and put the diaper beside it. He then proceeded to look at me and sign "diaper change." I asked, "Do you need your diaper changed??" He just kept signing it to me.

I laid him down and sure enough, he had recently wet his diaper! Smart kid!! (or maybe just a coincidence?)

Half of me thinks he is way too young to potty train, but the other half of me says I should get out the potty chair and see what he does. He is almost 17 months and sometimes kids are 18 months when they are potty trained.  I am definitely not going to push it!

But I think it is awesome that he can tell me when he needs a fresh diaper, at least every once in awhile. :)

Short Week!

My kids will have a total of 2 full days of school this week. (And they think they need a spring break- HA!!!)

We had a full day of school on Monday, like always.  On Tuesday and Thursday morning, Megan is participating in a volleyball clinic held by a local homeschooling volleyball league. Since this meets for only 1 1/2 hours in the morning, I just go do some quick errands. Today, I took the younger three kids over to mall to get Courtney some new tennis shoes. We had school then this afternoon.

Tomorrow morning we will have school again and then we are done for the week. Crazy! Just like every other week, our classes at the homeschool learning center meet on Wednesday afternoons. After that, we will do a few errands, get dinner at Pepperjax, and send Megan to youth group at church.

On Thursday morning, Megan will have another volleyball clinic and we meet for PE in the afternoon. We won't get any schoolwork done on Thursday.

Of everything I am doing this week, I am looking forward the most to Friday and Saturday!! I am attending the homeschool conerence in Lincoln for two days!! I am sooo looking forward to it! I get two days to MYSELF!!! I am thankful to each grandma who is coming in to help us out while I go out of town. Matt is going to be very busy at work, so he will not be able to be with the kids.  We also have basketball games on Saturday for Courtney and Christian, so we will need to work around those. He might have to work Saturday, but he thinks he will be able to get away to help take the kids to their games.

We will be back to our normal schedule next week, and we won't have any sports clinics. We are continuing to work our way through our school material and I am starting to think about what we will be doing next year. And you know what comes after next year?? Megan starts high school!!! YIKES!!

New Basketball Season!

Here we go again, it's time for another eight weeks of basketball!!

Awhile ago, I signed Courtney and Christian up to play basketball through the local YMCA.  To say the least, things have been quite disorganized these last few weeks. Courtney has had two practices already and Christian had none. They had their first game today.

Christian's game was scheduled at 9:30 this morning at a YMCA about 30 minutes away.  We made it there in plenty of time, but since his team hadn't had a practice yet, we didn't even know who was on the team or who his coach was!! After asking each other who was who, we finally found his coach and a few of his teammates. He only had two other teammates there!!! Luckily, one dad said his 2nd grader could play, so they had four kids on their basketball team. Where was everybody else?? 

We spent the first quarter trying to figure everything out, so by the time that time ran out, the kids were organized and ready to play some basketball! Christian got to play the whole game! (obviously with only four kids!)  He tried his best and got his hands on the ball a few times. The other team was amazing. They were making shots from far out and actually had some plays going.  Christian's team lost 25-8.  He will have his first practice on Monday night.

A few hours later, we had Courtney's first game. She has had two practices already, so she knew her coach and who was on her team. There are seven girls on her team, and two were sick today, so just like Christian, she played the entire game.  They played against a team who had ten members, so they switched out every four minutes. By the time the game was over, Courtney was red and blotchy from playing so much! She did a GREAT job! The coach's granddaughter and Courtney are pretty matched up when it comes to skill level, so it was fun watching them both play and work together. Courtney has a friend who is playing with her too, so it was a great game to watch today.

The score was 12-6 and Courtney scored 10 of the 12 points!! She will have practice again next Friday night. Her coach has also asked if she can practice Tuesday nights with him and his granddaughter. We think it is a great opportunity for her, so we are going to try to get her there too.

This is going to be interesting!!

(And after asking around, other parents said that the Y is always this disorganized when it comes to basketball. UGH!)

Saturday Afternoon Bike ride

We attempted to go on a bike ride last Saturday with all 6 of us!!! I haven't been on a bike since before I got pregnant with Micah, and Micah is finally old enough to fit in the bike trailer behind Matt! Christian can ride great without training wheels, so we thought we would try it. I told Matt I didn't want to go far incase Micah didn't like it, so we didn't. We actually stopped at a park about a mile away and played awhile. After we were done playing, we continued on down the trail, but Micah wasn't happy, so we turned around and came home. I thought we all did very well! I just wonder what some people thought as they saw us all on the trail!

Getting ready to get on the trail. 2 adults, 4 children. 5 bicycles.

Here we got down the trail!

Playing at the park. Courtney did great on the monkey bars!

Coming down the slide together!

Yes, I forced this picture. Micah was not too happy!!

Why I am still up at 10:45 pm??

I don't like to be up this late. But why am I? MICAH!!

He had a late nap today and he slept for over an hour, so that usually means that he won't be as tired as usual when it comes to about 8 pm. This is when he has been going to bed in the past.

Tonight, we hit about 8:20 and he was asking to nurse. I assumed he was ready to go to bed. I changed his clothes and we settled down to nurse and go to sleep. But did he go to sleep?? NOPE!!

He sat up when he was done, and he was wide awake! We rocked awhile, we read some books, and we checked email and Facebook. About 9:30, he gave me the "milk" sign again. I have a rule that I really TRY to enforce, but sometimes I don't. My rule is that once I have nursed you, I don't want to nurse you again for at least three hours. If you didn't go to sleep while you were nursing, you need to figure out another way to go to sleep. (I don't usually follow this rule if it is 3 am!!)

He was signing "milk" to me and I just kept shaking my head no. He wasn't quite getting it. Finally I said, "All done" and he threw his head onto the side of the chair and had a fit. Obviously he figured out I wasn't going to nurse him again! I told him we could get a drink and he went along with that.

But between drinks, he continued to have a fit. The poor boy is obviously tired now and doesn't know how to go to sleep without nursing. He has done it though, so I know he can!  I was looking up YouTube videos for school and he eventually fell asleep in my arms at about 10:15! I am sure the kids upstairs heard him screaming, but he is going to quit nursing eventually and needs to be able to go to sleep without nursing.

I say tonight was a lesson on what was to come! Honestly, I just about put him in his bed to see what he would do!

(After I get Micah to bed, I usually stay up a little bit longer just to have a few minutes to myself. It is usually when I get school stuff ready for the next day. Hence, why I am still up at 10:45!!)

New basketball teams

I have been waiting for awhile now to get information about the YMCA team that Courtney and Christian will be playing on for the next eight weeks.  Practices were supposed to start this week, so I was getting nervous last weekend. I even called the YMCA a couple of times to ask and they told me to keep waiting.

Finally, earlier this week,I got an email from Courtney's coach.  He told me that practices were on FRIDAY night from 8:30-9:30 PM!!! What??? Who has practice that late on a Friday night?

Apparently, there are only so many gyms around this area that the Y can use for practice and this certain gym was open at that time.  Her coach must have also been the last one at the coach's meeting because once I asked him about why they were so late, he responded with, "It was the last spot open on the piece of paper." GREAT!!!

As for Christian, I still haven't heard from his coach. There is a YMCA website I can get on and check things out, and I was able to find his time and he has a lady coach, which will be interesting with a bunch of 1st grade boys!!! I am sure it is a mom of one of the kids.  I am assuming that team will not be practicing this week since I haven't heard from anyone! I would sure like to know their crazy practice time.

As for games, Courtney's coach said all her games were on Saturday morning (practice late Friday nigh and games Saturday morning). I have no idea where or when though. They use a lot of school gyms around this area, so Courtney's games could be at one school and Christian's at another!

This could really get interesting!!

Another Upward Basketball season has come and gone!

My two middle kids just had their awards ceremony for the Upward basketball season tonight. This is a basketball league ran by a local church and along with playing basketball, they also learn about Jesus. :)  Courtney and Christian both learned a lot and it gave us something to do at 8 am on Saturday mornings!!

Christian tried his best and at times, he struggled with keeping his hands to himself, being good on the bench, and not stealing the ball away from his teammate, but he was out there learning how to play basketball and having a good time! He even made a shot in one game, only after getting hit in the head with a ball and ending up on the bench because it hurt!

Courtney got moved up a level this year, so she played on a 4th and 5th grade team. She definitely met her match and now she needs to move her skill up another level.

Here are my basketball players! These were taken last Saturday during their last game.

 What do you do when you sit in the stands and you have a camera? You take selfies of course!

 Everybody gets to run though the "tunnel" at the beginning of every game!

Micah says, "Go Courtney!"

I signed both of them up to play basketball in the spring at the YMCA. I hope it goes as well as Upward did the last two months!!

I have a screamer and an escape artist!

There is one thing we have worked on in our house this week. Micah and his screaming!! He has learned that if Christian is picking on him, if he can't get to what he wants, or if just can't have what he wants, he screams!! And he screams loud!

At first, I thought it was  Christian always picking on him, so I got mad at Christian quite a bit in the beginning of the week. But sometimes, Micah was screaming and Christian wasn't doing anything! Then I changed my ways. Now it was time to get mad at Micah. (Even though Christian was still teasing him 50% of the time.)

In order to get what he wants, we have been working on the sign language for "please" and "more." He can do "more" really well, but we are definitely still working on "please." 

Today Megan, Micah, and I were in Walmart getting a few groceries. Grapes were super cheap, so I picked up three bags and put them in the cart. Mr. Micah decided at that moment that he wanted those grapes! He turned around and started pulling them out of the bag! I said, "You can't eat those yet, we haven't paid for them!." The only thing he understood was that I was pulling the grapes out of his hands and taking them away. This did not settle well with him and he proceeded to scream at me in the middle of the store. And of course, I could see people staring at me!

We made it to the checkout and had the cashier ring up the grapes. Now, we have a rule in our house that you don't get your way by crying, but in this case, I knew I had to do something. Once the grapes were rung up, I got one out of the bag and asked Micah if he wanted one. Of course he did! Once I let him bite it off, he turned the crying off and was fine. Until that one was gone! Then he started back up again!! Megan sat there and fed him grapes until the groceries were paid for and we were ready to leave. Luckily, once we got to the car, he was calmed down and didn't scream at us anymore. Usually I wouldn't do this, but I knew it was a pretty easy solution.

He is definitely going to keep us on our toes!

(Here is an example. This afternoon, we were all in the kitchen looking at something on the computer and last I knew, Micah was just wondering around the kitchen like he always done. Pretty soon, we heard him talking and it sounded kind of muffled.  I looked at Matt and asked him, "Do you know where Micah is?" He looked at me and said, "He was just here."  The noise was coming from the bathroom/ laundry room/ garage area.  I looked over there and saw that the door to the laundry room was shut, so I thought he was in there and accidently shut the door and couldn't get out. I looked in there and no Micah! But I could still hear him. The bathroom door was open and he wasn't in there. The only place left was the garage. Matt opened the garage door and there was Micah on the step- out in the garage!! He had a soccer ball in his hand and was saying, "ball, ball." Little stinker!

The door to the garage has a spring on it, so it will automatically shut when somebody opens it, but sometimes it doesn't latch. It must not have latched, and he opened it, saw the soccer ball, and proceeded to go get the ball. He even had to sit down and go down a step INTO the garage. Then when he tried to get back into the house with the ball, he couldn't get the door open or up the step. And that is where we found him.  Little stinker!!)

Keeping me humble!

We had a great day yesterday! Courtney and Christian both had their basketball games in the morning, so we were done by 10 am. We had the entire rest of the day to do what we wanted! This has not happened for seven weeks!

We spent the day playing outside, raking the leaves, cleaning the house a little, bike riding, flying quadcopters, etc. It was nice and relaxing!

When I was cleaning out the desk drawer, I found two gift cards to Cold Stone Creamery and the girls wanted to GO! (I am back on dairy, so of course, I wanted to go to!)  I already had plans for dinner, so after dinner, we head out to Cold Stone. It was 7:45 pm.

I was kind of concerned about Micah at this point because he usually starts nursing and starts to go to bed around 8. Of course, he fell asleep on the way there. When we arrived, he did not wake up, so he slept on Matt's shoulders while we all ate ice cream.  We got him back in his carseat and when we got home, I just put him right in bed. I didn't feed him or put his pajamas on. I was hoping he would sleep all night! This was about 8:45 pm.

WRONG!!!!

I went to bed about 10:30 pm and he was still sound asleep.

Around 2:38, I heard a baby crying. NOOOOOO!!! I let him cry awhile because I always think he is going to go back to sleep. He would often stop crying for 5-10 minutes, but then he would start back up again.

Around 3:30, I was wide awake and he was still fussing on and off, so I decided to go in there. He was sitting up in his bed eating his blanket. Obviously he was not going back to sleep!

I picked him up and he immediately wanted to nurse, so I fed him. That settled him down, but not back to sleep. Since he was awake, I decided to put pajamas on him since he was cold. He only had a onesie and pants on.  After he was situated, I said, "Ok, Micah, now what? Are we going to play or go back to sleep?" He looked at me and said, "Ball?" as he looked at his basketball hoop. I guess playing it is!

We played on his floor until around 5:10 am or so. I could tell he was starting to get tired again, so I picked him and his blanket up and sat back in his rocking chair. Of course, he signed "milk" to me and I knew this would get him to sleep, so I nursed him again. He went back to sleep almost immediately and I was able to get him laid back down in bed. I arrived back in my bed at 5:30 am.  Both of us have been up for almost three hours by now.

I was really hoping for 2-3 hours of sleep before I had to get up for the day, but at 6:37 am, I heard the same baby crying AGAIN!! What was going on with him?? I let him cry a little bit, but then had a plan. Matt was already up, so I went and got Micah and took him downstairs to Matt. I said, "I just got back to bed after being up for three hours with him. Here, you take him. I am going back to bed!" He was perfectly ok with taking him for awhile!!

I went back to bed again and around 8:15 am, I hear, "mamamama" and Megan is bringing him to me. It was apparently time for me to get up.

Hopefully we will get some sleep today.

And that is what I get for thinking that Micah is doing a great job sleeping through the night! Just keeping me humble!!

Yellowstone National Park in July??

Matt and I are trying to figure out a summer camping trip, and we would both like to travel out to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

This sounds great and all, but the timing is not working out like we would like it to. This year, it looks like Matt will have vacation time during the months of July and August.

Do you know how many people visit Yellowstone National Park in July??? Over 900,000!!!!! That is crazy!!

They also have about 1400 campsites, and they are already sold out!

I asked Matt if there was ANY way we could go in September or in the fall sometime. He said, "No, not really. This is when my vacation is falling this year."

I REALLY do not want to fight the crowds in July!! Or the heat! Or pay for very expensive campgrounds outside of Yellowstone like we did when we went to the Grand Canyon! If there are even sites available!

We may need a plan B!!