Well, it has come to my attention the last several days that my children have a passion for the dramatic play! Nana and Pawpaw visited us this last weekend and Nana made the comment that C&C loved to pretend and Chloe had a great imagination. I have long felt this way, but to hear it confirmed made me happy! (Of course, does a grandparent count when they confirm our already biased options?)

Halloween was great fun. We had a full day. Christopher had gymnastics Wednesday morning, followed by lunch with Daddy! We took him 'heart healthy' pizza. After lunch we ran a few errands, and then we met up with some friends to go to a fall festival. We ALL had a great time! Cotton candy and Popcorn! Then home (in Houston 5:00 traffic) for dinner and trick or treating. The kids enjoyed time with their friends, and also all the time we spent as a family trick or treating. Life is good!

Back to my rambling about imagination, Chloe asked today if she could mop my kitchen floor. I said, 'sure'. Then she explained that she had to have a bucket and a rag....she wanted to sing 'sing sweet nightengale' and pretend to be Cinderella! How precious! Here are all the pictures:

Chloe and Christopher as "Cinderella" But don't tell Christopher...he was pretending to be Cinderella's friend helping her :-)

Thanks for reading!

As far as Saturdays go, this one was pretty great! We enjoyed our morning with me drinking Starbucks, and the kids playing toys. At 10, we went to a birthday party at a bouncy house. Of course, that was a blast and I even got into the swing of things. That type of activity always proves to me how out of shape I really am! I could barely pull myself up....and of course, I think C&C actually lapped me once because they got tired of waiting for me!

By far, my favorite thing today was spending some time with Daddy at the park after the birthday party. We loaded up and ran through the Sonic drive thru (maybe that is why I am struggling lately with my weight) and headed to a neighborhood park. We took the kids bikes, and Christopher's golf clubs and our frisbee for playing frisee golf. Christopher hit some great golf swings...and I really enjoyed watching Chris instructing him. We have such a great Daddy! Chloe tried her hand at golf too, but unfortunately, she has inherited my attention span, so she quickly lost interest and moved on to collecting acorns.

After the golf lesson, we played an abbreviated game of frisbee golf. Of course, Daddy skunked Christopher and I, but that was no surprise.....

The weather has been wonderful these last few days, and I am so excited about heading into fall FINALLY! My goal for next week is getting back into school with the kids....we have taken about a three week break, so I guess I will start with review and then try to pick up where I left off. Europe was wonderful, and very tiring, so I spent this week just recouperating. I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things next week.

Thanks for reading...hope yall have a great family Saturday too!

It's been a while since I have taken the time to post......life always seems to fly away from me, and before I know it, it has been two weeks.

I am happy to report, I am over my cold, and the kids never caught it. Yeah! That is always good news. We have muddled through school the last two weeks, doing just ever so little, but hey, we are in 'preschool' so it is OK. We have managed lots of fun activites though. As usualy we have had multiple play dates, church, and fun with Daddy. Seems like lately, our big thing is to play 'football' in the backyard. Although, Christopher has taken up golf and managed to hit a ball over the fence the other day. Right now, I am just thankful that we don't have many neighbors with windows facing our backyard.

My big focus right now is preparing to go to Europe. We picked up Mamo at the airport on Friday so I could get errands run this week. I fly out on Monday, and it seems like I scheduled a years worth of doctors appointments for this week. Of course, I cancelled my dentist appointment on Monday b/c of my cold, so I spent the day at the mall with some friends buying those 'last minute' outfits . Shameful, I know.

Today (or I guess I should say yesterday, since it is 3 a.m. on Wednesday)....we spent all day with friends. We met up with our church playgroup and went to the zoo. We got there about 9:30, and stayed until the thunder ran us off. The kids had a ball, but both the baby giraffe and baby elephants were no shows....I am not sure where the giraffe was, the elephant was behind all the construction. After the zoo, we headed to Chick-fil-a for ice cream and more play! The Mommies all sat and ate our ice cream, and then sat some more. It is AMAZING how the kids NEVER slowed down!

Today (Wednesday) we have nothing planned for the morning. I will probably try to do some school work, and then around 11 we have a little friend coming over to play (her Mommy has an appointment). At 2, I am working in a haircut, and then of course, we have church tonight.

Lots of rambling this morning....I guess it's the time....oh NO! That is what I do every day!

Here's some pics of the kids at the zoo! Thanks for reading!

Funny Faces by the Giraffe

A tiny bit more serious!

Hard to believe there is a REAL elephant just feet away, but this one you can climb on!

Time to cool off!

Last week Chloe found a new friend. We rescued it from drowning in our backyard pool. A baby lizard! She spent over an hour just carrying it around and 'babying' it. She LOVES animals!

Christopher got to hold the baby for a few seconds....of course, he thought that maybe the lizard was hungry, so his job was to pull all of Mommy's leaves off her plants to try to feed it! Ended up they made some kind of leaf soup and neither understood why he didn't gobble it up.

We also made plenty of time last week for 'dance'. Chloe LOVES 'The Barbie Princesses, 12 dancing princesses' Movie. She loves for me to just put on the music to it, and she dances all around. Apparently, the dishtowel was supposed to be her 'area' to dance.....but it is hard to concentrate on where you are standing, and give your best performance. I must admit, this is one of my favorite things to do. Watch her dance! Of course, we don't actually take lessons, I fear that she might give it up if someone was telling her how to do it. Maybe next year, we can get into that.

Hope yall have had a great week too!

London in 6 days and counting!

Well, it seems a virus bug has visited our house. Today was supposed to be a playday for the kids and a dentist appointment for myself. Unfortunately, Chloe started throwing up this morning about 5. Poor Daddy was actually the one she was sleeping with, so he got the worst of it. Around 6:30 we all finally got back to sleep (minus Daddy, he was off to work), and she just woke up a few minutes ago. (9:30ish). She seems to be doing fine, so maybe it was just something she ate. Last night, she ate her weight in eggplant, cheese, and tomatoes....maybe that was it!

Right now, we are hoping for no more issues since we are supposed to be walking in a cancer walk tomorrow morning for Malachi. I was really looking forward to doing it with the kids.

Here's hoping for a great day!

Thanks for reading!

Our second week has started off great. We are learning about the letter 'U' and are still trying to get in our schedule. The kids are doing great, and yesterday we started writing the letter 'I'. It was interesting how quickly Ms. Chloe picked up her writing. Of course, it is such a fine motor skill, it isn't surprising. Christopher enjoys writing the letter 'I', he just doesn't want to do it 'within the lines' so to speak.

Monday after school (10a.m.) we had Ty and Levi over to play. We were a bit heavy on the boy side of things, but I must say Ms. Chloe enjoyed the attention. Since she was the only girl that needed rescuing, she was never lacking in having an escort. The kids were so exhausted by 4, when the boys left, that they crashed by 7:30 without a peep. In fact, they were swimming about 5 and couldn't do anything but hurt themselves, so we took an early shower and they chilled with Tom and Jerry until dinner.

Tuesday is our 'day out' since it is gymnastics day and also playgroup day. I am going to try to get some pictures of them doing gymnastics that I can post. They always turn out too dark. Anyway, after gymnastics, C&C went to play at Kinlee's house, since Mommy had a dentist appointment. I have just realized that life is just busy. Between appointments, school, playdates, etc. We just keep running. It is fun though, and the kids enjoy having so many friends to play with.

After completing a week of homeschool, I think the thing I have realized is, it takes some prep on Mommy's part. I am missing my evenings of 'chilling out' once the kids are in bed. Now I spend my evenings planning the next days lessons. We are enjoying it though, and I guess that is the important part. I must say, it is very rewarding to have them recognize the letter 'I', know the sound it makes and pick it out of the books we are reading. Of course, this is their success, but I celebrate it with them!

Today is another rainy day here, and we have a friend over this morning b/c her Mom had an appointment. We have not done school yet, but we will get to it this afternoon since our swimming date has been cancelled. We are practicing our printing of the letter 'I' and also still working on learning 'U'. I think the kids favorite thing is still Starfall on the computer. They are getting so good at it and I love the way it reinforces the letters.

Below is a picture of an activity from Mondays school. We have the word "Indian" to help the kids remember the 'I' sound, so our activity was answering questions regarding the 'I' sound, Capital and little 'I', etc. for review. With each correct answer they got to move their 'indian' (bear) closer to the teepee until they reached the drum....then they got to bang on the drum. Yeah! Of course, it just so happened that we inherited a teepee from our cousins...YEAH! This activity was supposed to be done on the chalkboard with little pictures moving closer to the teepee that I was supposed to draw, but I think the kids enjoyed this and I enjoyed not having to draw little stick figure indians

Well, I am off to check no my little princesses and my little prince. Sounds like my prince is rescuing the girls from a big 'ol dragon.

Thanks for reading!

This weekend flew by, so I didn't get our pictures posted from our Saturday outing. We got up early (as usual) on Saturday and headed to the zoo with Daddy. We had a great time, and enjoyed seeing the new baby giraffe.

Chris and Kids with old Crape Myrtle

Christopher and Chloe at the Splash pad

New Baby

Kids in the fish tank...

Today was just plain FUN! With capital letters!!! We woke up early, early to make Daddy his oatmeal, but that ended up getting us on the right foot. I was able to get both kids fed, dressed and teeth brushed, and myself fed, exercised and shower and ready for the day, with all the beds made and breakfast cleaned up, all by 9:00 a.m. This is my goal time for starting 'school', so I felt pretty successful for being on schedule.

C&C had another tough day of learning 'I and i'. Our lesson was short and sweet, so we had a little time to play a 'game' to reinforce our learning, then we were off to 'reading' time. Today we started out reading in the teepee....which was fun, but I am not as young as I used to be, so I quickly headed the kids to the couch for our remaining books.

After reading time, we ran a quick errand to the grocery store, and then we were off to gymnastics and then playgroup. Of course, I found out after gymnastics that there was no playgroup, so we crashed a friends home and hung out there an hour or so. The kids hadn't seen any friends in a couple of weeks, so it was great fun for all of us. I always enjoy getting to catch up with my friends too!

On our way home, we had one errand left....HAIRCUTS! The kids both did great....of course, SUCKERS are a great motivation for any child. Chloe got about 2 inches cut off her hair, but it looks great! We are both looking forward to no ponytails for a while.

When we got home, Christopher was REALLY asking to play STARFALL again, so he and Chloe both took turns on the big computer again....what fun that is! They both did amazing with the mouse.....still such a strange thing. To think, my generation didn't even have a computer in our home when we were that age....hummmmmm

Here's a shot of the addicts at work:

Notice how Chloe is 'sitting' beside Christopher...paying attention, and trying not to distract him?!

Now, notice Christopher laying on his side, hanging onto the table....BOYS WILL BE BOYS!

Here's a picture for Ruthie....the kids with the t.v./computer in the background....pretty cool, huh?!

Now, notice, Chloe is doing the letter 'i'....

Christopher finished 'i' and wanted to do three more letters.....he even played the games for each letter. I was pretty impressed....OK, so I know I am the Momma, but still.....

Thanks for reading about our day! Hope yall had a great one too!

A-

Well, today didn't get off to the early start like I had originally planned, but since it was officially a holiday, I have decided to cut myself a break.

We slept until 8:30 (late, late for us) and then had breakfast, and played with our toys. C&C were so excited to see all their toys after our 10 day vacation. At about 10:00 I started 'school'. It was a little hard on everyone, I think. C&C could hardly sit still,  and I was a little of a nerve wreck, but we muddled through.

I know they aren't used to me just sitting down and trying to 'teach' them something in a 'formal' type setting. We spent most of our 30 minutes talking about how we should pay attention and listen to instructions. We managed to discuss the letter 'I,i' and then sing our little song. Chloe was more than happy to 'teach' Christopher and I the song after I had gone through it a couple of times. That was sweet. Later in the day, she came and asked if she could use the alphabet cards to 'teach' her babies. She had pink bear, blue bear, baby, and two baby dolls lined up in front of the oven learning. Did I mention she was sweet?!

Christopher didn't seem at all scarred by my teaching...although, a rainy day does play havic with a little boys need to run and play.....he seems to bounce off the walls when he doesn't get to get those wiggles out!

All in all, I guess I kind of felt like a failure since my kids still couldn't remember the name of the letter 'I,i' after my first lesson, but then I decided we ARE supposed to spend all this week on it, so maybe by Friday they will have it. Of course, I had a glimmer of hope tonight when they were bathing.....they started singing, 'The i says i,i,i, etc.' so I guess some of it did sink in.

Well, off to bed, it is early, but I feel like we have had a big day, and I guess we are all adjusting to being home again.

One quick shout out....Thanks uncle Joel! Daddy worked all day and FINALLY got the Mac hooked up to our T..V. C&C both got a turn on Starfall tonight before bed. Daddy was really impressed with Christopher's ability to manuveur the mouse. (A skill he learned last year at pre-school). I think he could quickly become addicted.

Last, but not least....Chloe in her new nightgown Mamo bought her....she wanted Mamo to see her in it.

Family and Friends,

Welcome to C&C Academy Homeschool Blog. In an effort to keep family and friends from far-away up to date, I will be posting our school progress throughout the year.

This blog is our official 'electronic' bulletin board for pictures, activities and school work. If you have received an email you will be automatically notified when I update my blog, if you wish to be removed from my email list, please let me know. Hopefully, this will be fun for everyone!

Feel free to post messages of encouragement or positive criticism.

Love you all!

A-