Saving on birthdays and Christmas

I shop for b-days and Christmas throughout the year. When I find toys that Alex wants or would love on clearance I get them without him knowing. Right now I have 3 sets of Bob the Builder tools that I got for less than $6 each and a Bob the Builder truck that I got for a dollar cheaper, among other things.

I also get the b-day party stuff, (plates, cups, table cloths…) on clearance or from the dollar store. Several times throughout the year I go to the party store just to see what they have and if anything that Alex would like is on sale or clearance. Last year I got Bob the Builder stuff for a dollar each on clearance. (Since it was just family for his b-day last year I’ll reuse the Bob the Builder stuff next year.) For this b-day I got dinosaur stuff from the dollar store and some more on clearance at the party store. Well, I planned to use the dinosaur stuff this b-day, but Alex asked for firefighter decorations. So hopefully I’ll be able to find some on sale.

How do you save on b-days and Christmas gifts?

Marie-Anne

Preschool websites

Alex has discovered preschool websites. He loves Barney, Thomas the Tank Engine, Bob the Builder, Clifford, Sesame Street, and fire fighter websites. He asks to be online 2-3 times a day. He is pretty good at most of the preschool games. He has fun and is learning at the same time. The bad thing is he usually throws fits when it’s time to get off.

More on lapbooks

We have completed 5 lapbooks and are working on the 6th. Since Alex is only 3 they are pretty simple using things like connect the dots, mazes, worksheets, coloring pages, and simple experiments. Alex loves making these and he shows them off to guests. Several have games included and he loves to play the games. We have done one on Rainbows, Nutrition, Ocean Animals, Zoo Animals, Knights and are currently working on Farms. Along with each lapbook we watch kid documentaries, check out websites on the subject, and read books.

Marie-Anne

Baby shower at church

Sunday was the baby shower and potluck at church. It was a lot of fun! We had over 30 people there and everyone had a good time. We got a beautiful baby swing, a bouncer, bottles, clothes, diapers, wipes, pacifiers, a beautiful blanket one lady made, toys… Everyone was so sweet. We brought Alex a big brother gift of a couple toys and a book about becoming a big brother. Not too much longer!

Marie-Anne

Baby Shower at Frank's job

Today was the baby shower at Frank’s work. It was wonderful and a lot of fun. One lady made a beautiful and yummy cake. We got so many things for Sabrina that I couldn’t list them all. We got a Pack N Play, Diaper Genie, high chair, baby bathtub, clothes, gift cards, rattles, bowls, hooded bunny towel, diapers, wipes, swaddlers… One lady made an absolutely adorable rag doll that I’ll keep for Sabrina’s kids when she outgrows it. Another lady made a beautiful sweater, bonnet, and booties set.

Alex wasn’t forgotten either. He was the life of the party in his fire fighter costume. We got him a toy pump action fire hose that’s made like a backpack. He also got two puzzles and a fire truck that makes sounds and came with a fire fighter.

(On the way home we visited a church member who gave us a crib.) Isn’t God great?

Marie-Anne

Alex the fire fighter

I got Alex a fire fighter costume so he’s been a (very cute) fire fighter, (even more than usual) most of the afternoon and evening. I was planning on waiting until after Halloween, but it was only $5 and Frank had given Alex some money so Alex agreed to give me his money to pay for it when we got home.

Our red car has been a fire truck almost every day for months. We are fire fighters who are going to fight a fire almost every time we go somewhere. And Alex gets calls on his toy cell phone from people whose homes are on fire. “Hello. Is your house on fire? Ok. Is everybody out? Ok. We’re on our way, bye.”

For the past few days Alex has played games in the kids section of a fire fighters’ website. When we were in Phoenix I took Alex to a fire fighter museum and he still talks about it and asks to go there. I am planning on scheduling a time to tour a real fire station in a few weeks when we start the firefighter lapbook.

Alex says he has to grow big and strong so he can be a fire fighter when he grows up.

Marie-Anne

Las Vegas Zoo

Today I took Alex to the zoo. Las Vegas’ zoo is the smallest zoo I’d ever been to. It didn’t take long at all to go through it, which was fine with me because I was hot and tired.



We went inside the gift shop to rest in the air conditioned building and then walked around again, this time going into the goat’s pen. This was our second time being there.



Marie-Anne

Lapbooking

I recently discovered lapbooking- using manila folders as a portfolio of a child’s work on a certain topic. To see an example of a lapbook go to- http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SchoolinRhome/Lapbooks/

Alex and I started our first one yesterday on Rainbows. Yes, I got the idea from the blog I mentioned, but since I’m new at this I’m making it simple. I’m only using one manila folder; on one side I have the water cycle, on the other side are some worksheets that I shrunk to fit, (two are the color wheel, one is a color by number, and the other is tracing the letter R with a picture of a rainbow. In the middle I have a mini book on Noah’s Ark and a Bible verse. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of it.

It’s fun, but takes some planning. I’m already looking for ideas for other lapbooks, but we will finish this one before we start another one.

Marie-Anne

New Creature Butterfly craft

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new 2 Corinthians 5:17

For Sunday School our craft was a butterfly mobile. I found some cute butterfly coloring pages that I copied and pasted into a Word document to get 4 to a page. I printed them on colorful paper and had the kids color them with markers. I used long lollipop sticks from Wal-Mart’s craft section as the cross. Then I used embroidery floss to tie the lollipop sticks together and to tie the butterflies to the sticks once I hole punched them. All the kids loved them.

Marie-Anne

Louisiana

While Frank headed to Florida Alex and I went to Louisiana. Monday and Tuesday we mostly visited at Mom’s. I thanked them several times for getting electricity back just in time for my visit. The hurricane came through the week before and they just got electricity back as Mom was driving us from the airport.

On Wednesday we went to lunch with Dad and a few minutes from the house we saw a box turtle crossing the highway so we stopped to get it. Alex had never seen a box turtle, (though he has seen a desert tortoise). He was very excited and watched it crawl around in a box for a while and kept picking it up.

After lunch I took Alex to Adam’s Pest Control to see their amazing collection of bugs. Alex was very excited and ran from display to display and back again. You would have thought it was the greatest museum in the world instead of a lobby. I was impressed with their collection too. I had never seen so many butterflies.

We left there and headed to Colfax to visit my Nana and Jimmy (my dad). While we visited Alex let the turtle crawl around on the floor which was fine until he decided to push the poor thing like it was a toy car. The turtle’s traumatized for life. When Courtney got home from school she drove Alex in her dune buggy. I told her not to go too fast, but what’s too fast to a 17 year old? She came right back and said Alex started crying. He said it was so fast he got dizzy. Then Alex kept going on and on about on the way home until I told him he’d be in trouble if he mentioned it again.

After we showed the box turtle to Mom and Mamaw we let it go near one of Mom’s flower beds.

Thursday Mom, Dad, Alex, Amelia, and I met my friend Tiffany at Chuck E. Cheese.This was Alex’s first time there and of course it was Amelia’s (she’s one). Both of them were excited and really enjoyed every bit of it. Alex even ate some pizza, (unlike at Peter Piper Pizza).

Later Mom and I took Alex to the Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum at Camp Beauregard. We didn’t actually go inside the museum, we will do that next time. Outside they had tanks, a helicopter, a plane, hummers, and several other pieces of military equipment that I’m not familiar with. Alex of course loved every minute. We didn’t stay long just long enough to see it all and for Mom to get some pictures.

All in all it was a real good trip, but I’m glad to be home.

Marie-Anne

Zacchaeus craft

This craft is very cute, but time consuming. Be sure to give yourself time to cutout the leaves and people.

Have blue construction paper as background. Trace each child’s hand and part of their arm for the tree. Draw in a few clouds and glue cotton balls to it. Print simple leaves on colored paper, (I used fall colors). Have kids glue leaves on tree.

Copy a Zacchaeus coloring page to a Word document and shrink it to the size you need. Do the same with a coloring page of Jesus and a crowd. Print as many Zacchaeus and Jesus pages as you need. Cut out Zacchaeus and the branch he’s on. Cut out Jesus and the crowd. To be sure Zacchaeus can be seen you may want to add him last.

Marie-Anne

Labor Day

We were going to go to the fish hatchery, but they were closed so we decided to go to the Valley of Fire. We turned at the sign and drove forever without seeing another sign- kinda weird considering it’s a state park. We ended up just stopping at a closed boat launch and hiked to the water. Alex had fun throwing rocks in the mud and Frank and I threw them in the muddy water. It was a nice little hike, though not at all what we had planned.



On the way back we stopped at a pullover next to some red rock formations. We got out and took a few pictures. We were going to stay longer, but as Frank took a picture I noticed 3 hornets flying around him. We decided we were too close to their nest and we left. Though nothing worked out quite as planned we enjoyed getting out and doing something different and just being together.

Marie-Anne

One of life’s hard lessons

Today Frank saw a little boy in our back yard taking one of Alex’s toys. Frank went out and told the boy to put it back, which he did. Then he had Alex move all of his toys away from the fence so they can’t be seen from the street. As Alex did that he realized that his toy digger is missing. As you can imagine he took it quite hard.

We are learning about the 10 Commandments in Sunday School so we used this as a teaching point on how stealing hurts those who have been robbed. And how we should not steal.

Good news is Alex got an even bigger digger from K-Mart when we stopped to buy a lock for the gate.

As we were pulling up to our driveway the same boy was sitting by the road with another of Alex’s smaller toys that Alex overlooked. Frank told him to return it. He did, but came back with his grandma. He claimed it was his, but I knew it wasn’t and she knew it wasn’t. So both boys got a lesson.

Marie-Anne

Documentation

Even though I won’t be officially homeschooling Alex until he’s almost six, because he wouldn’t enter kindergarten until then, I started documenting our preschool. I started documenting coinciding with the start of the school year. I’m doing this for several reasons; there’s a push in some states to make preschool mandatory, we may move to a state that requires more documentation than Nevada does, (though we have no plans of moving), it is good practice for when I do have to document our lessons, and it’s a way to keep up with what Alex has learned.

For now our lessons are very short and normally end when Alex gets bored. He is three after all. Some of our lessons are things I plan out and some of our lessons are answers to questions Alex asks or based on his interests.

Marie-Anne

The Twitch

I have never gotten a diagnosis on the twitch. Thank God, for the most part it’s gone though it still happens from time to time. It’s not the all day every day occurrence it once was. Sometimes I even go months without it now. For those of you who don’t know, when I was 22 the twitch started in my right leg only at night. Originally we thought it was restless leg. Then one day it was continuously twitching during the day. After months of this sometimes for a few minutes sometimes all day it progressed to the other leg, arms, hands, feet, and head. Now it can be any combination of these at any time.

Unfortunately it has come back since I’ve been pregnant, though not as severe as before. If it continues I’ll get it documented. I really do not want to go through all of that again, so for the most part I ignore it and hope no one notices.

Marie-Anne

3rd trimester!

I’ve now entered the third trimester! WHOOOHOOOO!!!! Okay, too much excitement- I need a nap.

Marie-Anne

1 Year Anniversary!!!!

On Sunday we celebrated our one year anniversary of being a church in Las Vegas! We decorated with balloons and streamers. We had ice cream, cup cakes, fruit, and cakes. There were 25 people there to celebrate with us. Everyone had a good time. And tonight we had 20 people in attendance, which is the most we’ve had for a night service.

Marie-Anne

Fishy Family time

During the day while Frank was at work I decorated the dining area with the fish cutouts and the coloring page of an empty fish tank. I decided that wasn’t decorated enough so Alex and I made fish out of coffee filters. We scribbled on the coffee filters with markers then wet it to blur the colors. After it dried we cut it in the shape of a fish and added eyes and hung them from the ceiling near the vent.

When Frank got home we went to the library and got books and a kid’s documentary on fish. We went to PetSmart to get a fish. Alex chose a reddish blue beta he named Alex. At home Frank and Alex set up the fish tank and fed Alex the fish while I cooked.

We played put the fish in the fish bowl, which is the same as pin the tail on the donkey. We each took turns and all had fun. It was Alex’s first time playing anything like this. Frank and I took turns reading the fish books from the library.

http://www.first-school.ws/activities/crafts/animals/ocean/five_fish_bowl.htm

Marie-Anne

Cheap, but good curriculum

Today my wonderful husband watched Alex while I went wherever I wanted-so sweet! One of my stops was the Dollar Tree where I found some great pre-k and 1st grade workbooks. Unfortunately, a lady just got the last pre-k workbook, but I did get 2 copies of all of the 1st grade workbooks.

Later I went to the other Dollar Tree and was able to get all of the pre-k workbooks. They also had some awesome Planet Earth workbooks and flash cards. I spent over my budget getting the other workbooks so all I got was a pack of sea animal flash cards. I prayed that they’d still have them when I go back. And I will be back ASAP!

I’ve looked at some packaged pre-k and Kindergarten curriculum and I decided that I can give Alex and Sabrina a quality education using the dollar store workbooks (among other things) until 1st grade for a whole lot cheaper. Then I’ll look into the packaged curriculum again and decide if we will use it.

Marie-Anne

Seven pounds

My doctor told me she only wants me to gain seven more pounds. I gained that much in the last month! Well, if I’m to only gain seven pounds and if I’m serious about losing weight once Sabrina is born I need to make some changes. I need to give up the junk food that I’ve been eating lately and start exercising again.

Today I walked on the treadmill for 15 minutes, I did 20 reps of 10 with my five pound weights, and I used the exercise bike for 10 minutes. I have to confess I also ate junk food.

Marie-Anne