Tea Party Time

The girls in our neighborhood all seem to have one thing in common - the only girl - and lots of brothers. So, I decided to provide some extra girly fun for Rosalie and her sweet friends. This is a picture of Rosalie before her friends arrived - she was so excited!

Not sure what this little pose was all about - but I'm glad I snapped it! 

Hannah and Rosalie have been friends since we moved in over 3 years ago. 

All 3 of the girls together! I'm so thankful for sweet friends and neighbors!

The girls were so sweet pouring their "tea" and spreading frosting on their cookies. They were also super careful with the very fancy tea set! We will definitely have to do this again soon!

Rosalie's 5th Birthday

Yes, Rosalie is 5!! She turned 5 in early February. We had a quiet family celebration.  She loves mashed potatoes - so she requested whatever meat (super technical, huh?) with mashed potatoes and gravy. So, I made her chicken and gravy with mashed potatoes. We also had a gluten free marble cake with buttercream frosting - and strawberry ice cream.  Rosalie chose the Olive Garden for her birthday lunch with Daddy. 

It's hard to believe my baby is 5!

Some facts about Rosalie:
Rosalie is super girly. She loves dressing up in princess dresses,  playing tea party, my little pony, and dolls of any sort.
She is super social. She loves playing with other little girls. I'm so thankful for our sweet neighbors. Rosalie would stay outside 24/7 if I let her - especially if the other neighborhood girls are outside!
Rosalie loves going to her class at church. She loves being with her friends and she loves her teachers!
She loves to sing.
She loves to draw.
She brings me several sweet drawings each day.
She is learning how to read and wants to do way more school than I want to do with her at this point!
She can be a huge drama queen - but we are working on settling that down a bit.
She loves going to our church small group. She counts down the days each week until we can go. (all of our children love it)
Rosalie's favorites:
color: purple
food: ice cream
restaurant: mexican
game: Princess Cup Cake
princess: Aurora

"little" moments

LOVE!
My sweet girl feel asleep on the way to the restaurant on my birthday. She stayed asleep when Rich pulled her out of her carseat. She's getting so big. We cherish the times when she falls asleep like this - it's a "little" moment. She is growing up so quickly! We are so blessed by her sweet and happy spirit!

Curriculum Choices for 1st grade and Pre-K

I have thrown Rosalie into our crazy homeschooling schedule this year for several reasons. First, she is able to identify all of the letters both capital and lowercase, she is able to write most of them, and she is so enthusiastic about being a student in the Holland School! Secondly, it's easier for me to include her than to hold her off for one more year. Thirdly, by starting her now, I am able to combine her with Jonathan on History, Bible, Science, and other activities making it easier for me to implement our family schedule. So, we are calling it Pre-K and getting this show on the road. If at any point she shows signs of not being able to keep up with the work, we will slow it way down and re-evaluate. She will be doing the orange Handwriting Without Tears workbook, Singapore earlybird Mathematics, and a couple of Rod and Staff workbooks that will help her with her fine motor skills. (tracing, cutting, pasting, etc.)

Jonathan will be doing the yellow Handwriting Without Tears workbook,  Singapore Primary Mathematics Textbooks and Workbooks 1A and 1B, and a couple of Rod and Staff workbooks that will continue to work on his fine motor skills.

I am using the Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory curriculum guide this year with both Jonathan and Rosalie. So, they are combined on all the history, science, Bible, and read a-louds. However, as you saw above, they have different levels of handwriting, reading, and math.  
History - History for Little Pilgrims, 101 Favorite Bible Stories, History Stories for Children
Science - The World God Made
Bible - The children work on a memory verse each week and have Devotions scheduled throughout the week using Devotions for the Children's Hour
Reading - The Reading Lesson pictured above is the reading curriculum that they are both using, however Jonathan is almost finished with the book while Rosalie is just starting. Once Jonathan finishes The Reading Lesson he will begin reading a large set of emerging readers so that he can continue to practice his reading skills. I did not take a picture of those readers. Even though he hasn't finished The Reading Lesson, he has already started reading the first book in the Emerging Readers set. You may have noticed that the Heart of Dakota Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory is also pictured above. I am using that guide to follow the hands on math plans, the light grammar plans, and the spelling plans with Jonathan. As much as he has struggled in learning how to read, I am surprised at how much he LOVES spelling!

My highest priority for Kindergarten and 1st grade is not reading, writing, or math, it is teaching the children how to listen well to read a-louds, and be able to retell/narrate back to me what they heard. This is a pretty difficult skill to learn! Rosalie is not getting the gentle introduction to it that the others got since I have combined her with Jonathan, however, she is getting the idea from listening to Jonathan retell the readings back to me. She is going to learn a lot from him this year. She is already a pretty good listener and probably doesn't need as gentle an introduction to it that Jonathan needed. I started slowly with Jonathan using books that were smaller and had pictures, and eventually ended the year reading chapter books to him ... and he was able to narrate back to me in excellent detail. I love having the two of them together this year. They are already used to doing everything together anyway that it seems perfectly natural for them to do school together too.

Go Play Outside Now

We love this place! It's called Go Play Outside Now and we had so much fun! We went with a group of good friends and had a blast! 

They have a beach area with pools of water and tons of water guns and barriers for fun water gun battles. They have 2 big slides and they hook one of the slides up with water and make an incredibly fun water slide!

Rosalie wouldn't go down the waterside, but she had fun going down the slide without the water.

The chickens came begging for some lunch.

They also have a huge area set up for laser tag. They had so much fun playing laser tag! 

If you haven't had the chance to visit this great place. You'll have to make your way down there. We were there for more than 5 hours and my children still didn't want to leave when it was time to go!

Girl's Night Out

We ha a very busy Saturday morning and afternoon playing at a park for several hours and spending time with good friends. She fell asleep on the way home and stayed asleep when Rich got her out of the car and laid her down on the couch. I tried to wake her several times, but she was just not having it!

So, we took advantage of her long nap by going out on the town for a girls night out! The boys stayed home and watched "The Hobbit". Both Martin and Aaron read the entire book in preparation to watch the movie once it came to DVD.
Rosalie and I had a little snack at Panera Bread and enjoyed some fun one on one time together. I am so thankful for this joyful girl of mine!

Cloth Diapers for the Baby Dolls

I promised a while ago and just didn't have the time to do it, but I finally did it! I made cloth diapers for Rosalie's baby dolls. I made about 9 of them. It only took about an hour. They were super easy to throw together and I had lots of scrap materials and supplies left over from my real cloth diaper making days.

Now she can get plenty of practice changing diapers!

Rosalie's Birthday

Better late than never - here is Rosalie's 4th birthday post about a month and a half late.
Can you believe she's 4?

She had a very special day and got presents from all of 5 of us, plus her grandparents too!!

I made chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting, a few polka dots, and some minnie mouse fun pix to go in each cupcake.

She got this keepsake treasure box that she was able to paint and decorate. She LOVED this! She had so much fun painting and decorating it!
I am so enormously grateful for this sweet girl of mine. She is so full of joy and has brought so much crazy girl drama into our family. 

My almost 4 year old

This girl. She really is a bundle of joy. She is enthusiastic and happy.  She is a pleaser who is easily saddened if I am not happy with her.

She loves her big brothers. She loves to sing, run, and play outside.

Last Sunday morning while she was eating breakfast, I told her that she needed to eat and then get dressed because we were going to church. Her response gave me great joy!
She simply said, "Thank You!"
She loves going to church - she loves going to her class and she loves coming to the worship service - especially the music!
So thankful for this special girl and can't believe we are in the last week of her 3's.
It's just going by so quickly. I pray that I will not forget to cherish all these sweet little moments as she and the boys grow up. I'm so blessed!
Praise God! He is worthy to be praised.

Sibling Love

While, my children argue with one another just like every other family out there ... I am thankful that they are best friends and love each other the way that they do. I love the sweet bond that they have with one another ... and how each of them have distinct and special relationships. It encourages my mother's heart to see special hugs and pats of comfort. 

Sickness, sickness go away!

This is how we started the week...happy, playing and enjoying dressing up like Minnie Mouse!

This is how the rest of the week went. Rosalie started with a fever last Wednesday(early in the morning around 2 AM) and it hovered at about 103.9 for over 24 hours. I slept next to her on the couch that night, so that I could monitor her fever throughout the night.Thursday her fever was about 101 throughout the day and on Friday it was about 100. Saturday she was completely back to normal.
She did a lot of laying on the couch and a lot of watching television. We'll have to detox from that now that she is healthy again!
I did not bring her fever down. I stayed with her and monitored her carefully while her fever was that high, but I intentionally did not bring it down. This is a great post on why a fever is your friend. Even though, I almost always refrain from bringing down a fever and know all the reasons why I shouldn't bring down a fever ... it's not the easy thing to do. I battle it out in my mother's heart about what I should do. On one hand, I know that if I give them a dose of tylenol, they will feel so much better. On the other hand, I will be inhibiting the immune system response and confusing the healing process. It's a hard choice to make, folks! It's also been my experience that when I bring a fever down, my children start feeling so much better that they start running laps around the living room. The problem with that is that they need to be resting - and the meds have fooled them into thinking they are all better.
If I have a child that has a high fever with severe body aches and a very bad headache that keeps them from being able to sleep, I will give a dose of tylenol. However, we try not to do it and just let the fever run it's course. 
So, whatever virus it is that has been traveling from person to person in our home is hopefully coming to an end. Rich started with a fever on Saturday and I'm hoping that this will be an end to this craziness!
Have you all been staying healthy in this crazy wave of sickness going around the last month?

Oh My how she has grown!

I was just recently looking back at old photos and was struck by how much my "baby" has grown! I am thrilled with each new stage and so thankful for my little girl ... but when I look back at pictures like the one above I cannot help but be reminiscent of days gone by! Rosalie sure is full of joyful energy!

She doesn't hesitate to pose for the camera!

And while she can throw a temper tantrum like the best of them ... she really is as sweet as this pictures looks! Her big (almost) black eyes melt me every time I look into them!

She is also every bit as sassy as this picture indicates!  I love how she can dig in the dirt and run as fast or faster than any boy her age ... but is as girly as you can imagine when she is playing doll babies with her sweet friend, Hannah. She never stops talking or singing. She sings as much as she talks, and I will admit we have to ask her often to stop talking so that someone else can get a word in edgewise. Martin often suggests duct tape for her mouth. (no worries ... it's just a running joke!)
Rosalie has recently started writing her name ... on her own without help! We are amazed at how finely tuned her motor skills are at this age. (it's very different from what we experienced with the boys) She spells her name R O S A L E .
She forgets the "I" almost every single time ... but she's starting to catch herself.
She is a JOY! I am so thankful for my precious girl!

My budding artist!

Rosalie handed me this sweet picture the other day. The figure on the right is Daddy and Mommy is on the left. I was incredibly impressed with the detail! 

Sweet Friends

We are so blessed to live where we do! We have wonderful neighbors, lots of children running around, and a great culdesac for lots and lots of play! Rosalie and Hannah are such sweet friends. Rosalie loves Hannah to pieces and always wants to go outside so she can play with her Hannah!

Hannah's Mommy has 2 boys and her youngest is a girl ... and I am so happy that these two little girls have each other since they are both growing up with lots of boys!

A Rosalie and Papaw Funny

Rich and I recently went away for a few days to celebrate our 15th anniversary. We left the children with my Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad came here to our house to stay with them. If you have spent anytime at all reading my blog you must know by now that I am very particular about food. So, I pre made several meals for the children and made a detailed list of what the each child likes to eat and even how to prepare a couple of those things.
Rosalie woke up bright and early Monday morning saying that she was hungry and would like to eat. So, my Dad asked, "What would you like to eat?" She said, "An egg on toast!"
So, my Dad scrambled her up some eggs and put them on top of a piece of toast.
He put it in front of her and she started shaking her head and saying that she did not want those eggs on her toast! A very confused Papaw said, okay, and helped her to get the eggs off of the toast.

Rosalie did eat every bite of what Dad made her and it was fine. When my Dad started telling me the story ... I had a very good laugh and asked him if he even bothered to read the detailed sheet that I left him that had very precise directions for making an egg on toast. We all had a good laugh after that.

You may have guessed that he never looked at the sheet.

You see ... I am my Dad's daughter. I left a menu plan with them, pre-made meals, and a detailed list of what each child likes to eat for lunch and breakfast. My Dad likely would have done the same thing. (only his list would have been much fancier ... probably in spreadsheet form and color coded for each child.)