New Wedding Plans

Back In 2010, Cayce and I were planning our wedding. I just had Ariana and we had so much planned. We were going to have it on the beach at Tybee Island. My bridesmaids and I were going to be barefoot with foot jewelry. My colors were hot pink and blue. We had shell bottle stoppers for favor. Message in a bottle invites. Beach magnet save the dates.

Last week, a girl I despise, STOLE ALL my ideas. So now, I have to redo all my work. We have some things picked out and new colors. We still have the same date. We plan on tying the knot FINALLY on September 14, 2016.

It will give us enough time to save enough money for our wedding. Cayce cancelled the first time because we wanted to have our own house first. Now, we are done having babies, we have our own house, now save money and get back down to my pre baby weight BEFORE Samantha.

Adalyn's Room Makeover

Ever since we moved into this house, Adalyn's room has been the storage room. The clothes that Sammy and Airy has grown out of, everything. So I got in there and started going through clothes. It was TIRING!

BEFORE:

The basket full of clothes were clean and a catch for clothes that are never worn from Sammy and Ariana.

yea, lazy.

 

AFTER:

The two piles of clothes on the black shelf are long sleeved. They will have to stay there till I get another set of drawers for those and hats and shoes.

I got rid of her receiving blankets and got her clothes hung up. Now I just need to finish the floor of her closet, so I can stick her new set of drawers in there when we get it. We also put wall decals up on Sunday in both rooms and the girls bathroom. That will be a separate post.

Weekly Menu

Here is this week's menu

Monday: Philly Cheesesteak Hamburger Helper
Tuesday: Chicken Tacos
Wednesday: Tuna Mac
Thursday: Chef Boyardee
Friday: Spaghetti
Saturday: Hotdogs
Sunday: Lil' Caesar's Pizza

SC Festivals

I was browsing websites for local festivals and I found a few that we will be attending in August and September.

1. The Pelion Peanut Party
2. Jubilee Festival of Heritage
3. Aiken's Makin Festival
4. Columbia's Greek Festival
5. Raylrode Daze Festivul (not typo's, this is how it's spelled)

I really want to get the kids interested in these things, and have fun. I know the Peanut Party will be fun, and it is so close to our home.

I will be doing another post in October with more festivals we will try to attend.

Toy Story Workshop #2

Today, Samantha and Ariana had their 2nd toy story workshop. They built the RC car today. It is so cute.

I'm so happy that these weren't that ugly yellow

trying to figure out where I wanted their patches ironed.

Thanks to our pastor's wife, the girls aprons are being decorated. LOVE IT

my girls are absolutely adorable. can't wait for Addy to be able to go.

posing in the newly decorated aprons.

To Do List for the Rest of the Year

I have revised my New Year's to do list. I got a couple things finished on that list, but not too happy with it.

I have to finish the kids countries binder. I'm not even close to finish with the printing of the pages.
I have to finish Samantha's letter curriculum binder.
I have to get Ariana's preparatory binder started and completed.
I want to finish our 1st cookbook and start on the 2nd cookbook
I'm done printing everything from the summer reading challenge, now I have to put it all in a binder.
I want to do a homemaking binder to keep the house more organized for when the girls get older.
I'm definitely going to do a 101 days to Christmas binder this year.

For the house: we are going to rearrange the living room again.
I have to get the closets more organized.

Now family wise: we are going to start planning our vacations
Start planning our holidays
Get ready for tax season.
Spend more time as a family.

White Cheddar Mac and Cheese

I made this recipe as a side dish last week when we had porkchops, and I'm seriously considering making it into a meal itself. It is so delicious and it got a 9 out of 10 on my kid rating.

Ingredients:

1 pound farfalle pasta

2 tbsp. unsalted butter

2 tbsp. all purpose flour

2 cups milk

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 pound white cheddar cheese, shredded

1 package (10 oz.) frozen peas, thawed

½ pound finely diced smoked ham

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350F. Coat a 13X9X2 inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Cook pasta in lightly salted water following package directions, about 12 minutes. Drain.

2. While pasta is cooking, melt butter in a medium size, heavy bottom saucepan over medium heat. Stir in flour until well blended; cook 1 minute. Whisk in 1 cup of milk and cook, whisk continuously, until smooth. Whisk in remaining 1 cup milk and continue to cook, until thickened and smooth, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Whisk in 2 cups of the cheese until smooth.

3. In a large bowl, mix together the pasta, cheese sauce, and 1 cup of the remaining cheese. Stir in the peas and ham. Pour into prepared baking dish. Scatter remaining 1 cup cheese evenly over the top.

4. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes or until bubbly. Remove from oven; allow to cool 10 minutes. May be served warm or at room temperature.

July 22-28, 2013 Menu

Monday: Leftovers
Tuesday: Chicken Alfredo
Wednesday: Spaghetti and Meatball soup
Thursday: Breakfast
Friday: Manwich and fries
Saturday: Honey glazed chicken wings
Sunday: Fish

We are definitely going to have to pick up some groceries for this menu.

Sports/ Activities for the Girls

A couple months ago, I posted that I was thinking about putting the kids in some sort of sport. well I have came up with a short list and found places close to where we live.

I want them to try:

• Soccer
• Softball
• Gymnastics
• Pageants
• Cheerleading
• Modeling

I have found close to home organizations for each activity listed.

We will be participating starting next year.

Letter Curriculum: Week 12

It's the "J" week. We are starting to get our lessons down to 45 minutes. Now to thrilled that we are completing work in that time span. I have to make it 1 hour long. I'm definitely going to go back to reading 2 books a day, instead of one. Samantha got her reading medal today for completing her summer reading.

This is one of the books we read this week. I loved this book growing up. I have a feeling that it is Samantha's favorite too, but she would tell me to be quiet and she would say some of the sentences. So cute.

On Tuesday, her math lesson involved jellybeans for counting, adding, and subtracting. We didn't have any jellybeans, so we used m&m's. I did a index card of the word jellybean and included it in her theme word stack. The color for the week was jungle green.

On Wednesday, her science lesson was on jaguars and jellyfish. She immediately knew what a jaguar was because of Dora the Explorer, and the jellyfish from Finding Nemo. For breakfast on Wednesday morning, we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and she learned that jelly started with the letter J.

 

On Thursday, her social studies lesson was my favorite part of the day. I chose to do jazz with her because I knew she wouldn't like janitor or learning about a country. For the jazz lesson, I used The Princess and the Frog. I printed off a coloring page of Louis playing his trumpet. I chose one of my favorite songs off the movie that had a lot of instrumental music in it and played it for her and we also watched the movie. That was a successful lesson.

On Friday, we reviewed everything and we did jumping jacks for our exercise lesson. She looks so funny doing it. We need to work on her coordination.

Samantha has completed 12 weeks of school. 60 days down, 120 more days to go. Next week she has a break, but we are going to do letter review in her off week workbook.

 

Ready for the Weekend

I have been ready for the weekend since Cayce went back to work on Monday. I have been doing things all around the house all week and Cayce got the grass cut so we wouldn't have to do it during the weekend.

Tomorrow, the girls are going to go to the library and get their summer reading checked off. Samantha's summer reading is complete and will be approved tomorrow and hopefully get her reading medal. Ariana will be getting her second week approved and I am praying that she will get her baseball ticket. My dad might be able to take them to the game. Cayce and I won't be able to take them because it is on a Tuesday night and Cayce can't take off work.

On Sunday, I'm hoping we can have a family day at the Congaree National Park. I want Sammy and Airy to become junior rangers. I also want to go on a guided walk with the kids. The past few weekends that I have wanted to go, the weather was not on our side and there were also flood alerts.

I have been printing the summer reading challenge that education.com put together for this summer. It includes crafts, games, online activities. I just have to make my own book lists for the kids to read.

The grass in the yard is looking fabulous and now we just have to clean the debris out from around our HUGE squash plants. I have to finish Addy's room makeover, but will be taking a little break this weekend.

1 YEAR OF BLOGGING

It's hard to believe that I have blogged for 1 year. I didn't think I would keep up, but the decisions I have made so far has helped me keep up. I have a lists of things I want to do with this blog for the rest of the year. I am working on a blog planner and I'm taking blogging classes to get my blog out there and have millions of readers and maybe I can make this my income.

It will still be my personal blog and homeschool blog. I am going to post a list of things I want to get done with my blog at a later date.

I know that my 2nd year of blogging will be a GREAT one!!!

Friday's Library Trip

Last Friday, I had Cayce take Sammy and Airy to preschool story time at our library. Cayce always works Friday mornings, so we can never take them to story time. Since it was vacation week, we got the opportunity to take them. When they got there, they waited 15 minutes and the story teller was a no show. She ended up getting sick. I was disappointed, but glad that the woman decided to cancel and not get our kids sick.

So, Cayce let Samantha and Ariana play with puzzles and have a little puppet show before bringing them back home.

They had so much fun, I just wish that they got to have story time. I'm thinking of doing a park day and have story time there along with playing.

Menu

We are going to have some meals that I planned last week this week because we kept it simple last week for Cayce's vacation.

Monday: leftovers
Tuesday: porkchops
Wednesday: oven baked chicken
Thursday: hamburger helper
Friday: tilapia and french fries
Saturday: country back ribs
Sunday: Ham shank

Toy Story Workshop

Yesterday, Sammy and Ariana went to Lowe's for their toy story workshop. They built pizza planets trucks. They are so cute. It is by far, their favorite craft yet. The only thing I was upset about was that Cayce lost their completion certificates. I will be sending a bag with them to put everything in from now on. I made the decision to keep the instruction booklets as well. here are some pictures.

They worked hard for this little bit of play time

applying the stickers

I love their patches.

Letter Curriculum: Week 11

Cayce was involved in the lessons this week and it made it more fun for Sammy and I. She did the letter I.

The composer and the bible story didn't start with I, but the composer was from Italy and the bible story was based in Israel.

She did this page completely on her own. I was so impressed.

Daddy helping her do math.

On Wednesday, the only thing Sammy could do for school was her workbook.

The lowercase I is not easy for her to do. She wants to put the dot right on top of the line.
On Thursday, she had her science and social studies lessons. She had fun on Thursday because she got to do more than a workbook page. In science, she learned about iguana's and indigo bunting. In social studies, she learned about Indians.

I was glad to see Friday for the school week. It was a long tiring week.