5th and Final Post

Here are some pics of the house we are very interested in. We have a few concerns. We love the house and wouldn't change anything about it. However the 3/4 acre lot's backyard is taken up with an inground pool and cabana and doesn't leave anywhere for a swingset except the sideyard. Behind the house is a 100 acre bean field and Eric doesn't ever want it to be commercialized but that is probably one thing you will never know. It is zoned residential IF the farmer ever sells or Mooresville ever expands so alot of What ifs. It is about a 1/2 mile from Highway 67 so not alot of place to ride a bike but we are only 5 minutes from Hummel Park.

Fun on the trails

We took the kids to the park at Hummel Park, yesterday. They played on the playground and then we brought their bikes and Eric, J, and C rode their bikes while I pushed Soph in the stroller. You will notice Eric did not pack Tootie's helmet because he didn't figure she would ride but for just a minute in the parking lot. She rode 2 miles with those little training wheels. She went down her first big hill sailing and hit a little bump which threw her off her bike pretty far. She jumped up and yelled "I'm ALWIGHT, I AM A BIG GIRL, THAT WAS FUN" J couldn't believe she didn't even shed one tear! I guess making you tough is what big brothers are for! However, Eric stood at the end of the hill and caught Toots everytime she sailed down a hill. Soph lasted about 5 minutes. The path was shaded and she was mesmerized by the bikers and with the wind blowing in her face she passed out!

Afterwards, we went back and drove by the house we are interested in. We stopped and had the best BBQ.

I drove home and Eric's bike was on the roof of the Tahoe which with everything going on, forgot and he was messing with something up the driveway adn I tried to park in the garage, OOPS! Eric's bike now has a crunched tire and I have a dent in my roof. Hopefully, no one will notice when we go to trade in in a couple of months.

Church pictures

The kids got themselves dressed for mass on Sunday and it was so funny because J put on his Easter clothes, Tootie wore a skirt under her dress. Oh well! Tootie's hair is now long enough to French Braid, which is fun! The girls were having a rough morning so we sat in the "batters box" which is a little sound proof room off the back of the sanctuary. It worked out well. Sophi just roamed and the other kids did excellent. Brecken, J's best bud, and his little sister Mason came in and sat with the kids. Poor Brecken, fell off the monkey bars at school the 2nd of school and broke his leg! J told me about this but was talking about the bandaid and how the secretary helped him so we kept telling J that he just got a scrape. Then I saw his mom and nope J was right, he broke his leg. Poor guy is in a cast to his hip and a wheelchair for 6 weeks. He and J had a great time together, though!

Getting ready for the showing

On Saturday, we had a 3rd showing (thank you all for your prayers). They brought their grandparents, parents, and an uncle LOL! We are expecting an offer sometime today or tomorrow. I cleaned for 12 hours on Friday! With the exception of getting J from school, stopping at the store real quick, and going out to dinner. Anyway, the kids were banished to the outside and so was Eric. No muddy shoes on my sparkly floors. I did clean out the basement and all closets and took ALOT of stuff to goodwill which was nice to get done before we moved. The joke ending up being on me since there were red berries in the lawn cart and everyone camed in with stained legs and stained clothes. Those tide stain outs got all the stains out! Tootie also decided to put her sippy cup with chocolate milk in the microwave for 21 minutes while I was not looking and you can imagine the explosion!!!! If I ever stop cleaning up messes, I will know I'm near the end! LOL!

Jupiter Pictures

Well, I'll be darned if I wasn't working on my blog last night at 10:30 when our power went out until 1am. From Eric's police scanner phone application he could get that a drunk driver hit an electrical pole. Therefore, the delay.

These first pictures are of the moon and Jupiter. We had gotten emails saying that Mars was closest to Earth on Aug. 27th at midnight. So we went out and it looked like the moon was eclipsing Mars but it was just a hoax on the internet and it was one of those eye tricks. BUT we looked on earthsky.org and Jupiter is closest to our moon right now than any other time of year. So here are some cool pics of the Moon and Jupiter to the left.

The Butterfly Celebrity

J's class was featured in the Criterion this week, which is the Archdiocese of Indianapolis's newspaper. They did an article about Mrs. B's Kindergarten class who are studying the life cycle of the butterfly. You can see J's buzzed head on the left of the pic with Mrs. B and he is in the red shirt, 3 rows back, with the top of his head cut off on the other picture. It has been fun with the butterfly unit because when we get home we will go for a walk, while he rides his bikes and search for butterflies. Tonight while I was watering plants, we found a bright green caterpillar and we are going to watch him. We are guessing what color he will be when he flies away. I'm guessing yellow with blue wings (we have alot of those around here), J thinks it will be a Monarch, and Tootie is betting a black with blue wings. He also learned how to be a bucketfiller today!

What is a Bucketfiller?
We all carry an invisible bucket. This bucket contains our feelings. When our bucket is full, we feel great; when it’s empty, we feel empty. A bucketfiller is someone who says or does nice things for other people. By doing this, they are filling other people’s buckets and filling their own bucket at the same time. On the other hand, a bucketdipper says or does things to cause other people to feel bad. This simple but profound philosophy applies to every aspect of life
They are teaching the kids that being a bucketfiller leads us to a happy life that God wants for us.

Miss Sophi is sick again. I didn't get much accomplished, today since she spent the first 3 hours of her morning requiring Mommy to hold her while she laid on my chest. She has two molars coming in the bottom (her last 2 until she is 5, Yay!) and I think that caused her immune system to be low and now her croupy cough and fever are back. So I had to wait until this evening to get all 6 of my Mums planted, and the flowers and shrubs fertilized and the herb garden trimmed back. Yard is done. Now I have to clean tomorrow and I think we will be ready for this couple's final walk thru on Sat.

The After School Adventure

Yesterday was a trip! After picking J up at school, I had to take my tire to be patched at Tires Plus. Apparently, I hit a large drywall screw. At my PTP meeting at the church, one of the Men's Club members was working on the Parish and noticed my back tire was extremely low. He was a very kind man and told me he had an air compressor in his truck and told me to go to my meeting and he would take care of it; so I did and it was fixed when I came out. However, the next morning I only had 10 pounds of pressure in it and a LARGE screw. So I took it in and apparently the screw did damage to the steel belt. So all 3 kids and I waited an hour to be told that they had to order a tire and I needed to come back the next day! Then we went to open registration at Children's Ballet (Tootie is old enough this year) so I arrived 5 minutes early to find 50 people in line. The kids and I waited another 1hr 45 minutes to register her. They were troopers! Especially poor Sophi, who sat in her stroller the whole time. I thank church for their patience. They are learning to sit very quiet and still at mass and I think that is carrying over!

Today was better, we arrived at Tires Plus after school again and Jason (yes, we are on a first name basis, LOL!) met me in the parking lot. They had the tire mounted and rotated and we were out in 15 minutes. He even turned the lobby TV on "Arthur" for the kids and let Sophi be his assistant behind the counter. I thank God everyday for Kind, Thoughtful, PATIENT people that cross my family's path!!

Everyone please say a prayer. We have a couple coming thru our house for the 3rd time on Saturday. They have already been approved for our listing amount. Their realtor has called ours 4 times this week with lists of questions. So say a prayer and an extra prayer to St. Joseph that we sell. We will be looking at 8 homes this weekend and hopefully will find a replacement!

Playin Ball

Uncle Craig and J playing ball. J was catching some huge pop flies. He will love t ball next summer. The girls were cheerleading from under the tree!

All the great grandkids...until October

Lunch at Mam's

Well we went to Mamma's for lunch today. Tammy flew in from Florida on Friday and so we all went to see her. Everyone was there so it was awesome. Andy was the only one who couldn't make it. The food was yummy!! The kids had a blast and got all sweaty like it should be. Tam bought the kids all presents and the big girls got little doggies in purses, J got a remote control car, and Soph got a baby doll, I missed Elliot's since the kids were wilder than March Hares when they had their new toys. We had a great time!

J's first newsletter

For those of you who are asking me what they do in Kindergarten; here is the first newsletter update:

“Bearing” Good News!
Class News
Saint Susanna School
Plainfield, IN
August 20, 2010
Upcoming Events
KIINDE RGAR T EN
NEWS L E T T E R
This Week’s Highlights
Monday- Today we began working in our reading
learning centers. The children work at reading centers
every day and work on various activities relating to the
language arts skills presented as well as the story of the
week. In the afternoon, we enjoyed going to art class
with Mrs. Savini-Kroger and P.E. with Mrs. Calliotte.
Tuesday- Adios, amigos! In Spanish class today, Miss
Yeftich taught us how to say “hello” and “goodbye” in
Spanish.
Wednesday-Today we went to the computer lab to
practice our technology skills with Mrs. Authenreith.
Thursday- Happy voices accompanied Ms. Magnaye in
music class today.
Friday- We love going to the library on Fridays and also
having our Book Buddies come to room to read to us!
WHEW!! We completed our first full week of school!

This week in religion, we learned that God made
the world and everything in it. We discussed the
things we love that God made and how we can help
take care of God’s world. We also practiced saying
“Angel of God” prayer. Please practice this prayer
with your child. Thank you.
In language arts, we previewed, made predictions,
and read our first story in our reading series The
Little School Bus. We discussed what characters
were in the story and sang a poem that had
rhyming words relating to the story. Also in
relationship with the story, we learned the
positional words first, second, third, fourth, fifth,
and sixth and compared them with the characters
as they were presented in the story.
We reviewed the recognition of upper and lower
case letters and practiced our new popcorn words I
and am. Please review all the popcorn words with
your child as they are presented. The children will
be given assessments on these words, as well as
recognition of all the upper and lower case letters.
After reading Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for
Kindergarten , we made a class book writing our
own “words” and drawing a picture of how we got
ready for Kindergarten!
In math this week, we have been learning about
positions and directions (top, middle, bottom,
inside/outside, above/below) and left and right
directions. Math centers were fun, too!
Letter/Theme
The “Family Times” will be sent home every week in
Friday folders to show you what skills will be presented
the following week. Every Tuesday, your child will bring
home a little book to read and keep. Please keep these
books to encourage your child to read to you orally
every day and stimulate a love of reading. Your
involvement will help your child to become a better
reader! Next week, we will be working on the
recognition of letters Ff-Nn and will be reading Fix-It
Duck!
POPCORN WORDS: I, am.

J learns about butterflies

J is doing a section on butterflies in his science class and it was so cute; he memorized a poem:

I found a little bug crawling up a tree
It wiggled here
and it wiggled there
and then it wiggled right at me

I put in box,
"Stay Right There", I said.
But when I opened it up,
A butterfly instead!

I couldn't do it,
even if I tried
only GOD in heaven
can make a butterfly!


It was so precious, especially seeing all of his hand motions. We read stories last night and then we read a Bible story and J chose the story of when Jesus picked his disciples. It was kind of short so I said that we will recite the "Lord's Prayer". He said "Oh I can do that all by myself" and he recited it from memory word for word. I asked him how and he said that Mrs. Keith (his principal)recites it over the intercom every morning before the Pledge of Allegiance. I love his school!! And I am SO proud of him.

Tootie and Sophi Groovin to Grover

Tootie and Sophi LOVE "Play with Me Sesame" which is a spin off of Sesame Street that features Grover, Elmo, Abby Cadabby, and Bert and Ernie. Sophi adores Grover and Tootie Elmo and Abby. As a matter of fact, she sits with her Elmo and Abby dolls while watching it. The girls were watching today and Grover started a dance. The girls got up and were dancing with Grover. If you were wondering, Tootie is wearing Jackson's "Woody" pjs. They have gotten into the habit of wearing matching costumes. So if J wears Buzz to bed, Tootie has to wear Woody. And if J wears Batman, Tootie wears her Superman with the cape of course.

Kindergarten Parent Night

Well, Thanks to my amazing mom and dad, I was able to go to J's parent night and thoroughly enjoy myself. Eric had to work a little late so I was just going to take the kids to Parent Night myself but Mom and Dad insisted on driving over and watching them while I went to enjoy myself.

Luckily, Eric made it just a few minutes late. The K-4th grade parents came to school tonight. We met in our kids's classroom. Mrs. B started by thanking all of us. This is what she said "Thank you all for making the sacrifices to send your chidren to school here. I know it is not cheap but I assure you that God is in everything we do. I have to teach academics and state mandates but our first priority here is you child's spiritual well-being. Even the butterflies we talked about today had God in them. The kids were mesmerized by how God made each butterfly beautiful but different". I looked at Eric and I knew we had made the right choice to send our children to St. Susanna's. It was eye opening to see the kids are already working on sentence structure including the punctuation at the end. They are also working on adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Seriously by Kindergarten I was just trying to learn how to put together a 3 letter word but the state expects more from our kids now. They have centers, Spanish, art, music, buddy reading day, PE, and DEARR time (Drop everything and read and relax) which J loves going to the library by the way. Eric's favorite part was seeing how much she loves the kids and you can tell she puts them first in everything she does. She is VERY organized and STRUCTURED (which I love with all my heart!!) It was a great experience and we definately made a very wise decision.

P.S. Aunt Cin you are invited to family day. She would love you to come and visit with her and share stories!! She had been teaching Kindergarten 26 years and taught 2nd grade for 6 years.

J and C had Nene and Pop playing the Wii, watching Spiderman 3, printing out color pages, and who knows what else. LOL! Soph chased them down the drive waving with both hands and screaming "Bye-Bye, Bye-Bye". I think she thought she was going to jump in their car and be a little stow away! Tootie kept yelling "Come back soon, come back really soon!". All in all we had a great night.

It was so sweet listening to J and C tonight. Caroline asked J why she can't see God and J said "well you just can't because he is so far up in the sky. But you can hear him" She said "No I can't" and he said "Sure you can. You hear him in your heart when you pray". It was sooooo touching! It is so cute to listen to them say prayers. J prays that Spiderman and Batman fight crime safely. LOL! And Tootie prays for her Weebles, Buddy, among everyone they have ever known. So sweet! J has been praying diligently for someone to buy the house so he may have his own room. Now that their are people interested. He jumped up and down and said "Thank you God for answering my prayers". I told him that they may not buy it if it not God's time but God is just showing Jackson that he is listening. It is a really good lesson.

Meteor Shower

Well, Eric and I have so much going on right now that we couldn't sleep so finally at 12:30 we looked at each other and said let's go outside and watch the meteor shower. It was beautiful the bands first were like a rainbow all the way around our house and then they got higher and circled and by the time we could get the camera to catch it somewhat, they were low and almost gone. It was hard to get Auto Focus off, the iris of the camera to lag, Eric got a great pic of a falling star in here. It was amazing. Don't forget on Aug. 27th at midnight you will be able to see Mars as clear as the moon and this only happens every 110 years!!!!