I Chose My Love and I Love My Choice

For the past few years, I have been saving.
About a year and a half ago, I really started saving.
Cash.
In an envelope. Stashed.


I wanted to surprise Aaron on our 10th Wedding Anniversary with a vacation fund. I know you probably think it is totally lame and unsentimental to give my husband CASH for our Anniversary, but it isn't like that, at all.


It's an act of love, as all $2915 that I have saved, so far, has not come out of a paycheck.
It isn't money that I just moved from one bank account to another and it isn't from my preschool, either. It is cash I have saved from babysitting, our summer garage sale, birthday money, etc.

{See that, HolleeAnn? "never underestimate the power of small change. Cha-ching!" hahaha}

It is one thing to have money in your account. But that money has been spoken for.
Budgeted for living expenses, college funds, retirement, food, new car, whatever. We have a vacation fund. This will just be like icing on the cake and mean we can do extra fun things on that vacation.

"This is found money, Jerry!" -George Costanza

I also had a plan that the money that I end up saving by using cloth diapers would be deposited monthly and added to this little fund. Cuz that way, when Aaron asked 'where all the cash came from', I could honestly tell him 'it is a reward for all the $#!t I have had to deal with!'


So yeah, I have a money stash.
I also realize that this makes me sound a little bit like a granny-with-getaway-cash-under-her-mattress, but whatever.

I wanted it to be a surprise, and if it went into the bank, it wouldn't be.

And weird, tacky, unsentimental, lame, crazy, or not...wouldn't YOU love for someone to give you $1000?

I thought so.

Unfortunately, 5 months early, my Big Secret came cRaShInG dOwN last night, when I was foolishly adding some money from babysitting yesterday to the stash while Aaron was home.

(Do you see where this is going?)

Since I knew I was getting close to my $3000 goal, I (again, foolishly) decided to count it.

(Don't do it, Meg! Don't count the money!)

There I was, counting out the bills, like a little kid does when she is saving up for a new toy, when in walks Aaron.

And I am standing there with an armfull of money.

I think he thought I was planning to run away, or something.

BUSTED.

Happy Anniversary, My Love.

He loves my unsentimental, lame, thrifty, crazy-paranoid-granny of a gift, and we looked at a map and, like we often do, we started talking about where we are going to go on our Big Trip.
And more than the actual gift, he was surprised by my ability to keep it a secret for so long.


He decided it wasn't fair for him to be the only one receiving an early present, and told me he bought tickets for us to go see this, on Saturday!


I LOVE this musical. Can't wait! I hope the roads are clear enough by Saturday to get to Fayetteville!
Happy (Early) Anniversary to him.
Happy (Early) Valentine's Day to me.

"Ain't no Sunshine when she's gone...."

For the fun of it, I typed "kasey" into the search field on my blog.

It pulled up like 50% of my posts, and I noticed a pattern.
Every time I had a mental/emotional breakdown/crappy day (usually brought on by lack of sleep, bad luck, overscheduling, hormones gone haywire, or poop being discovered somewhere in my house other than in a toilet) and I blogged about it, the post that followed the meltdown almost always had a sentence involving the word "Kasey" and at least one of the following words:

rescue

saint

escape

motivate

awesome

love

run

laugh

eat

fun

fix

party

angel

work

happy

give

Well.
That just about covers it, doesn't it?


Not really.
There is so much more that could be said.

If any girl deserves a day where everyone gets together simply to celebrate your existence, it is definitely Kasey.

She is one of the greatest blessings in my life.

Happy Birthday, Bestie!
You are loved and appreciated very much!

aaaaand to the other 5 readers of this blog,

Happy Kasey Day, Everyone!
Actually, it's Kasey Week....and since February is short, we should really just make it Kasey Month.

Sorry, Jimmie. I know your birthday is coming up next week...we'll save you some cake.

Wah Waaaaaah

What?! More snow?

Friendly Frogs: For the Birds

Catch up time.

Check out what the Friendly Frogs did in preschool on the last Wednesday in January.

Literature:

Book: The After Christmas Tree By Linda Wagoner Tyler
Book: Usborne Discovery Birds by Dorothy Gillian
Book: Cardinals, Robins and Other Birds by Golden Books
Book: I Love My Nest by P.D. Eastman

There are so many books about birds available at the library! I picked up these listed and several others and had them available for the children to read in the Peace Center, and as our table activity while we wait for all the children to arrive in the morning. The After Christmas Tree is a favorite of mine that I read with my students as well as with my own children every year in January.

Share: Bring something that is white

Art/Science: A Bird Has...

we learned traits that are common classifiers for birds, and glued them to a poster diagram. I labeled each part for the children.

Dramatic Play: Bird Watcher prop box (bird cage, identification chart, binoculars, an assortment of bird calls, safari hat)

Sensory: feathers

Cooking: Bird Suets

Mix: 1c shortening, 1c crunchy peanut butter, 1c cornmeal, 2c rolled oats, 1c bird seed, and 1c sunflower seeds
Pack into cookie sheet or molds and freeze until ready to use

Math: Guessing Jars

I put 5 colored feathers in one jar, and 12 decorative eggs in another jar. The children sat at the table and passed them back and forth, examining, counting, and estimating how many of each item was in the jars.

Science and Dramatic Play: Puppet Shows and Bird Identification

I now have a huge collection of bird puppets (thanks Mom, Melinda, and Amy...hollah!). I set up the puppet theatre and taught the children about the birds they chose to play with while they let their imaginations do the rest. They learned to identify the owl, peacock, penguin, bluebird, hummingbird, eagle, flamingo, pelican, bluebird, parrot, cardinal, duck, woodpecker, etc.

Language Questions: What do birds eat? Where do they live? What is your favorite bird?

Snack: "bird seed" snack mix (cereal, goldfish, pretzels, mini marshmallows, teddy grahams, dried fruit, etc) and hot cocoa just like the family in The After Christmas Tree enjoyed

Music and Movement:
Way Up in the sky, the little birds fly.
Way down in the nest, the little birds rest.
With a wing on their left, and a wing on their right,
The little birds sleep all through the night.
Shhhhh…..they’re sleeeeeeeping!
The bright sun comes up, the dew falls away.
“Good Morning! Good Morning!” the little birds say



Gross Motor: Hide and Seek Egg
I borrowed this rad Egg toy from my friend, Darcie. You push a button on it and it makes funny noises to help the children find it. They loved it, and ran excitedly through the house searching for it, pausing frequently to listen for it's silly sound effect clues.

I Have 5 Senses: Smell

February is here!

Letter: V
Shape: Heart
Number: 7
Color: Pink

Literature: Book: Smelling by Robin Nelson
Book: The Respiratory System by Judith Jango-Cohen
Books: Scratch and Sniff Tea Party and Scratch and Sniff Bake Sale
Share: Bring something to smell

Art: Scented Watercolors!

I usually make scented watercolors by mixing sugar free Kool Aid in a little bit of water. When the paint is dry it is scratch and sniff! Unfortunately, with the snow last week, I didn't make it to the store to get kool-aid. I read online that you can do the same thing with Jell-o, so the kids enjoyed painting letter Vv with peach jell-o scented watercolors. It was much more fragrant in liquid form than kool aid paints are, but I don't think the color or consistency of the paint made with Jell-o is as good as the kool aid paints, and it was sticky when it dried. I will definitely stick with kool aid watercolors in the future. The children loved that they could smell their paint, though! Quincy kept saying, "this paint is made from orange popsicles!"

Sensory: Smelly Canisters

My sister sent me a bunch of the containers that her diabetes test strips come in. They look those little black canisters that camara film used to come in (or maybe it still does, I just don't know because everything is digital these days) and were perfect for this sensory activity.

I scented several cotton balls with candy flavoring, spices, perfume, and essential oils (orange, vanilla, banana, peppermint, almond, warm cookie, lemon, watermelon, tea rose, and fresh linen) and stuffed one cotton ball into each canister.
The children took turns smelling the cansiters and guessing the smells. Some they got right away (cookies, banana, lemon, peppermint ("candy cane!"), and some they insisted were to stinky to smell and guess (linen....LOL I guess clean laundry is only a smell that appeals to adults!)

This was a great activity to help develop descriptive vocabulary words, as they had a difficult time coming up with words to describe what they were smelling. (I imagine that for an adult, it would feel like trying to describe salt with a word other than "salty"), but a few they came up with were, "yucky, spicy, delicious, sour, candy, christmas, good, yummy, and bad"

Peace Corner: Sound and Shape Matchup File Folder Games

I decided to try putting something new in the Peace Center, this week. Peace Corner activities usually include books or a silent activity that a child can take to a quiet place and work on during open centers time. The file folder games were a hit, and took just long enough to complete to create a smooth transition from one center to another.

Handwriting/Phonics: Letter Vv is for Valentine

I gave the children scented color pencils, and the kids began the process of writing the letter V on lined paper with pencils with scents like cherry, orange, lemon, green apple, blueberry, grape, chocolate, and black licorice

While they practiced, I gave them each a Valentine to glue on their page.

Math: Separate good smells (air freshener, dryer sheet, perfume, lemon, lotion, cinnamon) from stinky smells (skunk, onion, diaper, garlic, garbage, gas station) on a chart

Science: The Resipiratory System this book has great illustrations and diagrams of a nose and made it easy to explain how we smell in terms that a 4 year old can understand. (smells are in the air. We breate air through our nose. Our nose helps our brain tell us what the smell is.) We talked about the uses of our nose (cleans and warms the air you breathe in, smelling, breathing, and holding up your sunglasses)

Science: Skunks use their scent to keep away predators (show photos of a skunk)

Language Question: What is your favorite thing to smell? What is something that is stinky? Why do you like/dislike these smells? What is Valentine's Day? I often ask the children questions related to our unit study, and record their answers. At the end of the school year, I type the answers and give a little booklet to the parents on graduation day.

Snack: We'll be eating on heart shaped plates this month (below is Max giving a "Sour Face")

Music and Movement: 3 Valentines, The Hokey Pokey, and The Number Jump Song

We missed you, Jace and Jacob! Hope to see you on Wednesday (if it doesn't snow again...eek!)

"Don't you forget about me"

Every time I mistype my email or blogger password and have trouble logging in, I have a slight panic that my blog has disappeared.
Ok I have a total panic.

But seriously, what if that happened? We've had our little blog for like 5 years, and while I've continued to keep a private journal, and have a baby book for each of the kids, this blog is really it as far as record keeping of our family happenings are concerned.

I just heard a story recently from my sister about her friend who had someone steal her blog. Like her family blog! Why? I don't get it. The internet is so strange, and there are so many weirdos out there. It got me thinking (paranoid) about how crushed I would be if our blog was just gone one day.

Without my blog, how would my family remember funny little moments like this one? Days with young children in the house can be long, but the years are SO short. What happened in the last 3 years (other than Quincy finally growing some hair)? Our family blog is stuffed to the muff with posts about ordinary days where nothing really significant happened, but it seems unfair for them to be forgotten, because we lived them...and that is significant enough.

I really want to have my blog printed and made into a book...or a series of books/journal things so I have one for each year.

Does anyone have a company they'd recommend? Did you have to go through and edit every post, first? I can handle all of my grammatical errors and poor sentence structure in blog form...but on paper? It needs some hard core editing.

I'd love any suggestions/advice.

Have you printed your blog or thought about having it printed?
Did you edit, first?
Did you include every post? every photo?
Do the comments get printed as well?
If you include recipes or hobbies, do you separate them into a different book than the family book?
What company did you use? How much was it? What size is your book?

Do you ever fear that your blog will disappear, or am I the only one with attachment issues?

Also, scrolling though old posts has made me realize a few things:

A) I used to be a lot funnier.
2) I have sported a lot of really bad haircuts. Thank you for still being my friend.
D) Seriously, why didn't my daughters get any hair until they turned 3?

Team Loyalty

Behold, one of Aaron's prized posessions:

His 1 share of the Green Bay Packers.

Given to him as a gift from Rob in 1997, this is something that Aaron loves and is proud to own.

He also cherishes an enormous framed poster of Vince Lombardi: What it Takes to Be Number One, that once took precedence over my roller blades and a television in a battle for packing space during our move from Boise to Green Bay. Both the roller blades and the television were left on the side of the road in Rexburg, when our Honda Civic couldn't bear the weight of our belongings piled up in the back seat. Roller blades, gone. TV, gone. But Vince? Oh he stayed there in the car, securely wrapped in his brown packing paper, not even considered as a source of dead weight.

Aaron is definitely a Packer fan.

I, on the other hand, am still not 100% sure of how football is actually played, and still have my doubts that they aren't just making up rules as they go along. But, I did become a bit of a cheesehead when we lived in Green Bay. You kind of HAVE to be a fan if you're going to live there.

No joke. It's like, a requirement for social acceptence in that town.

Then, we went to church with and became friends with one of the players and one of the coaches, so we kind of became real Packer fans, eventually.


I do think that it was my lack of football interest that actually attracted our friends to us. I actually had no idea they were like little celebreties until after we'd become friends, and Aaron pointed Darrell out on tv. I was self conscious until I realized that Tammy was just happy to have a friend that never asked her for football tickets, or wanted pictures/autographs/paraphanalia from Darrell. Tammy has an extraordinary personality and ended up being one of the most influencial people I've ever known. I watched many games with her in her basement, and finally became a "real" football fan just in time for us to move to Arkansas, and the Bevells to move to Minnesota to coach for the Vikings.
(Tammy with her daughters, Hailee, Morgan, and Kylie, and her family friend Kristin who was Reese's first babysitter)


The Packers are the only NFL game I've ever been to, and probably the only football team I could name more than 2 players on.



Our first home was down the street from City Statium, which was the Packers' playingfield from 1925-1956. Our house there, on S. Baird street, was an American Foursquare built in 1924 and had so many windows, it was like living in a fish bowl. Reese and I spent many many days in the first year of her life just sitting at the front windows of the house, watching the world on the busy street hustle by. I imagine the original owners of the house sat watching through those same rope and pully windows as crowds walked down the street to the Packer Games at City Statium, years ago.


I only went to one acutal game at Lambeau Field, but we ate dinner at the restaurant there, several times during the 11 months that we lived in Green Bay. You haven't lived until you've had the deep fried cheese curds and a big fat bowl of BooYah at Curly's Restaurant/Pub. Yum.


Anyway, I'd forgotten how nostalgic Packer fans are.
They have a sort of kind passion that other sports team fans don't have. It's driven with love and wackiness for not just their team, but for the entire city of Green Bay. I was reminded of this unique camaraderie until I braved the roads and headed to Walmart (Yes! I finally got out!) wearing a Green Bay Packers beanie on my head.


Now, I'm aware that I'm a freak magnet and total strangers have an uncontrollable desire to talk to me and tell me their life story, but today was more than that. Wearing a Packers hat the day before they play in the Super Bowl was like holding up a giant cardboard sign that said,



"Hey everyone in this store (which is a lot, because you've all been snowed in all week and now you're here, like me, because it's the only place you can go with the roads in this condition)!
I love football! I love Wisconsin! Come talk to me about it! I can't wait to hear about the business trip you took to Appleton 12 years ago. No, I have never been to the Madison Zoo. That's cool that you've been to Wisconsin and that you have been to the zoo in Madison. There are only 50 states, and Wisconsin is a fairly big one. You have pretty good odds of making it there at some point in your life, but really, don't let that stop you from telling me about it. It was clearly a significant moment in your life. You should talk about it to total strangers who are being held captive in front of you by the supermarket line more often. I am wearing this hat, so obviously, I want to know everything about you that is at all related to the Green Bay Packers in any way at all. Oh, and if you don't have anything to say about the Packers, Wisconsin, or the Super Bowl, we can play 6 degrees of separation, and somehow link the Packers to whatever you'd like to talk about. Oh, you see that I am buying cheese cubes? Yes, I know that they call Packer fans "cheeseheads". Yes, I have eaten Wisconsin cheese, I'm wearing this hat, aren't I? or Yeah, it is snowing outside. Yeah, it's been cold alright. Oh? It gets cold in Wisconsin? Wow AND the Green Bay Packers are from Wisconsin? Well then we should talk about that, and how cold it is in Wisconsin, and let's talk abotu how that's why they put their logos on ski hats instead of ball caps. I should know this, since I am freaking wearing one. I love football. Let's talk about it."

All from one hat.

I can't even count how many thumbs up and pats on the back I got. During my 45 minutes in Walmart today, I was touched more times than I heard people talk about Jimmer after the last BYU game. Good grief!



It was as if I, personally, was on the team, and every Packer fan there wanted to touch me or talk to me about the game, or tell me about their personal attachment to Wisconsin, or why they are rooting for the Packers.



Huh.

Sort of like I did to you in the first half of this post.



I guess I am a Packer fan, after all.

Go Pack!