Bow Hunting

The hunting obsession continues.  Max saw a commercial for a nerf bow & arrow and immediately had to tell us he would like one for his birthday.  Then Grandpa showed up one weekend with nerf bow & arrows for the kids!!  I don’t know if Grandpa Dave knew he wanted one or just saw it and thought of Max and got one for them.

Mallory was so dang cute shooting.  She had such a stance.  I kept thinking of the Hunger Games when I watched her. 

These bullets had little window suctions on them so I drew a target on the patio door and let them shoot the window.

Then Mallory had to draw some more targets and number them.

Max cheats.  He has to put his bullet right up to the target and shoot it… this way he don’t miss.

This kept them entertained for a good chunk of the afternoon!  Then the next morning they were at it again.  Except this time I was way more creative and decided to draw scenes on the window.  So we drew a bear and a tree… with a bird in the tree… I attempted a duck in the sky.

We talked Max into standing a bit further away – and then his bullets actually stick to the window.

A little bit of our picture we drew.  Max got the bear in the ear!

Mallory had to draw animals too.  She is becoming such a good little artist.  She’ll take a picture of something (like from a story book or a sticker) and she’ll draw it.  To me it is amazing that she can do this and it actually looks like the image she is copying.  She gets even the smallest details!!  She has really been on a drawing & coloring kick the last few weeks.  Her color books are just about empty and the crayons are dull.  I sharpened all of them and they are all dull again.

It has been a week now and they are still changing the pictures on the window.  The pictures have changed though from animals to Rapunzel and Flynn.

Creating Spring

I came to the decision that I wasn’t going to have a garden this year.  With a newborn baby – I just didn’t think I would be able to maintain it properly.  I also didn’t want our raised gardens to just grow into a weed garden.  I decided I should plant some flowers in there.  All I have to do (or have the kids do) is just water it.  Let them do their thing and admire the fun flowers.  These gardens are huge though and it would cost a fortune to plant enough flowers. 

We are attempting to grow our own!!

Jesse was snowmobiling last weekend and I was feeling patient so I had the kids help me plant the seeds.

When Max is concentrating really hard he opens his mouth like this.

I took the above picture of Mallory and went… oh girlfriend we need to wrangle that hair! 

It was messy!  But I was so relaxed and was trying really hard to not be a perfectionist about this and let the kids just do what they had to do.

Here are the seeds we picked out.

Mallory is very much Type A personality… she filled hers row by row.

Max is Type B – sporadically filling his.

Each one of them picked out sunflower seeds to plant.

Planting the seeds was a bit crazy.  So I didn’t get any pictures of that.  It required my full attention.

Do you know how tiny flower seeds can be?!  Wow!  They were kind of a pain to plant.  Mallory was really gentle when planting.  Maxwell was really aggressive and I’ll be surprised if any of his sprout!

Exhaustion

When Mallory is not in school – I still give her naps.  She needs them yet.  She just gets really sassy and doesn’t act like the little Mallory that she is – if she doesn’t get those naps.  She of course thinks naps are over rated and doesn’t want them most days.  However, she is sleeping before she knows it.  Every once in awhile I let her skip them – but she still needs to lay down quietly and read her books.

Last week she didn’t get a nap on Wednesday.  Wednesdays are really long days for us because of awanas.  We get home really late.  Then she has school on Thursday and has to get up to leave on time. 

So when I picked her up on Thursday I could just see exhaustion on her face. Max didn’t take a nap that day because I was watching my friend’s little guy and they were busy playing – so no naps.  Max fell asleep in the truck on the way to pick her up. 

I get Mallory – she climbs in and she is sleeping before I know it!!! 

I get home and I think… I’m exhausted too!  I think I’m just going to let them sleep a bit longer in the truck and I’m going to join them!

But I couldn’t sleep. I tried!  I was tired!  I can’t sleep in vehicles anymore!  I use to be like the kids and I’d be sleeping in 5 minutes… now I just can’t. 

So I sat in the garage, in the truck, surfing my phone while they took a bit longer nap.  You have to time these naps just perfect… if you wake them too soon they are cranky the rest of the night.  Too late and they won’t go to bed on time.  It is a risky situation!! 

Pics of Baby Girl–Round 2

The day after we found out we were having a girl – I got a phone call from my mid-wife about my ultra sound results.  Of course my heart stops and falls into my stomach.

She tried to reassure me that she was 95% sure that everything was going to be okay – but I stopped listening and instantly went into panic mode. 

Baby Girl had two cysts on her brain. Which is a normal part of development – however they are typically dissolved by 20 weeks.  These weren’t.  Again she was 95% sure that they would dissolve and that I should not give it another thought.  There were no other red flags on the ultra sound – which is a wonderful sign.  They have to call me and inform me and schedule a second ultra sound to check on them.

Well my pregnancy hormones kicked in and I was hot a mess.  I couldn’t stop crying!  Jesse came home and I took one look at him and burst into tears!  To which he got on the computer and started researching and found out that yes, 95% of the time the cysts dissolve and there is nothing wrong with baby! 

We had to wait 4 more weeks until our next ultra sound – which was last week.

She is checking around on baby then grabs another ultra sound tool and says, lets try this one.  It was her 3D ultra sound!  She said, we do not do this for everyone!  However baby is in perfect position and I just want to see her.

Here she is with her hand/arm over her face.

The ultra sound tech wanted her to move her arm away from her face – so we poked and wiggled… and she finally moved it and put her hands under her chin.

She was super wiggly that morning!  When we first started the ultra sound she was way up by my ribs on the right side.  Within 3-5 minutes she was way over on the left side!!

Then we got a picture of her whole leg stretching out!

At the end of the ultra sound I asked the tech if she knew if the cysts were gone.  She said, “I know – but I can’t tell you.  I will tell you though – that you shouldn’t worry about it anymore and do not expect a phone call.”  Whew!!!  They were gone!  And I have not received a phone call!!  No call – is good news! 

Mallory & Maxwell came to this appointment too.  Mallory was so excited and had to get dressed in full girly attire.  She wore a skirt & lip gloss & her paper princess crown!  She skipped every where she went! 

We get to the waiting room for the ultra sound and there are three elderly people in there.  They see the kids and they get big smiles on their face and are watching them find a chair to sit in.  They look at Mallory and say, “Are you the queen?”  To which she replies, “I’m a princess.”  They ate that up!!

Then Max was looking for a hunting magazine.  Max is totally into hunting right now and he knows there are hunting magazines here (because he looked at them last time we were here) and they were over in the rack by the three elderly people.  So I go with him to find it and Max tells them that he is looking for the hunting magazine.  They start laughing and asking him questions about what he likes to hunt.

We get called back for the ultra sound appointment and when we are done and we are coming back the three elderly people are still in the waiting room and when Mallory & Maxwell enter they say “Oh here comes the princess and the hunter!”

I am pretty sure we made their day!  And I’m so glad because I really have a hard time letting Mallory dress herself like this and let her leave the house.  She was totally not matched!  She had on a black & white stripped shirt with a brown & pink flowery skirt… with gray leggings underneath… with her pink and white tennis shoes!  I don’t even remember what her socks looked like but I am sure they were just as bold and I so crazily bought her fluorescent socks!  And then to top it all off with her paper crown that she made at Awanas!

I just have to bite my tongue and tell her she looks beautiful and let her wear it!  And I’m glad I did!  She truly felt special!

40s Never Felt So Good

A couple weeks ago I heard on the radio that we were a few days away from breaking a record.  The record of having the most below zero days!!  We were close to 60 days below zero!!!  And we all felt it!  The cold was definitely wearing on us!

So when Monday came and it was upper 30s… and then upper 40s… we spent lots of time outside soaking it up!

Jesse had scraped all the snow/ice off our driveway the day before so we had a real blacktop driveway again.  Mallory couldn’t wait to get her bike out.

She remembered how to ride!  : )  I kept teasing her that she was going to forget because it had been so long since she rode her bike.

It was kind of hard to ride in all her snow gear so she didn’t ride very long.  Plus I think we need to move her seat up this year – she looked very crunched on it.

They thought it was so much fun to dig in the snow underneath the pine trees and find the branches that fell off.

Maggie even dug with them.

Then they attempted to build a snowman.  But I couldn’t help them because I didn’t put my snow gear on.

Max was over here torturing my struggling baby tree.  I yelled at him.  To which he replied “Our snowman needs arms”.

It was so funny watching them build this snowman by themselves.  They would literally throw on another snowball and the whole thing would crumble and fall over.

Then she would make another snowball.

Then she would get stuck!

Max found the arms off our old snowman that has melted and fell over.

They couldn’t get it and got mad.

Then we attempted our first walk of the season.  Which was an epic fail.  It was too close to lunch time.  And melt downs happened.  Mallory literally sat on the side of the road and cried.  Her legs were tired.  Max was being pushed his car… Max knows he is not much of a walker so he is taking the easy way and making us push him.  Well he refused to give Mallory a turn in the car so that she could rest her legs.  She cried.  Then we finally convinced Max to give her a turn and then he cried.  We made it home and went straight for lunch and then a nap to quickly follow!! 

After nap they started running around my kitchen island.  Which drives me crazy!  But it has been a hard winter and I know they need to get that out – so I let them do it for awhile.  Then I remembered hey – it is super nice outside… go get your water boots on and run outside! 

This time I just threw them in water boots, jackets and hats.  It was even warmer out then earlier. 

Mallory wanted to make hopscotch… and she is old enough this year to draw it herself and write the numbers in order!!!  So fun!  Yet so sad because she is growing up!  I had to help her with the number 2, 5 & 6.  Which she told me what number to write – I did not help her with what number came next. 

It felt so good to spend most of the day outside and remember what spring feels like!  We are ready for warmer weather to stick around for awhile!

Bear–The Mini Cow

Jesse’s Dad recently got another miniature cow.  The kids LOVE going to see this cow.  The last two they had the kids named them… but this one Grandpa named.  He named him Bear. 

It was finally warm enough this past Sunday that I finally went out to the barn to meet Bear.  There is something about barn pictures!  Can’t get enough of them!  Especially with the kids dressed in their church clothes in a dirty ‘ol poop filled barn!  Love it!

It was the middle of the day but I was having lighting issues with my phone – but I still got some fun shots.  Plus I was shaking so bad because I was still cold that I couldn’t hold my hands still enough to get a non-blurry picture. 

Grandpa dumped a special treat for Bear in the blue bin but Bear was taking his sweet little time coming to get it.  That Jesse and Mallory went to check on him to see if he was coming.

There he is!!  Sneaking around the corner!

Bear looks like a tiny buffalo – he is really cute!  I kind of want to change his name to Buffy – short for Buffalo.  He also has some massive spikey ear hair!!  When it gets warmer I’ll have to bring my big camera over and get some better pictures of him.

Frey Academy–Winter Style

I can’t take it!  I can’t take it!  I’m so done playing toys!  I don’t want to play toys for another day! 

Now my kids are super great players and are not bored with playing toys and pretend.  But I am!  And they want me to play with them sometimes.  But I’m so bored with it!

We have another month to two months left of this being locked inside.  So I took the plunge and ordered a school kit for us to do.  I follow a lot of homeschool blogs (homeschooling fascinates me – in a good way) and the one lady has preschoolers and she talks all the time about Mother Goose Time.  I’ve been on the website a 100 times and I think about buying it… and then I don’t.  Well – I did it this time! 

I re-arranged the playroom and moved some toys out so that we could have a Mother Goose Time Corner.  The kids were so excited – but mostly I was the most excited!

It arrived yesterday and I went to town during nap assembling my little space.  Mother Goose Time is a monthly subscription and it is a theme, a color, 2 letters, a shape, 2 numbers, a country, and a feeling each month. 

I went ahead and ordered the March one even though it is very much spring related and we have 9,000 feet of snow on the ground and won’t know spring until May.  But we are learning all about the pond this month!

The best part is all the crafts are planned.  The supplies are all there.  (I just have to have tape, colors, markers, glue, stapler, paint, etc on hand.)  They have games for you to play.  It comes with music cds – which is a huge hit for Max.  He loves to sing the silly songs.  It has science projects.  It is has everything.  A lesson plan even!

We did our first day today.  The kids called me Mrs. Hauser (Mallory’s teacher) the whole time.  They thought we were playing pretend school.

It was all about turtles today.  They got to make a turtle.

Their finished turtles!

The turtles were a HUGE hit!  They loved them and played with them the rest of the day! 

We also learned about the color purple and diamonds.  Here they are pretending to be in a pond and the diamonds are bugs.  They have to catch a bug with the tweezers and feed the animals we have around the pond.

We had cards with animals on them – but Max put a duck in our pond.  Then they got to the end and realized that they never fed the duck any bugs.  So Mallory fed the duck a bug.

Max was loving this!!  They also had to sort the bugs by color and put them with the animal that was the same color as the bug.

It took maybe an hour to do a full days projects that they have planned.  But we are moving pretty quickly.  This is basically for daycares… but they sell to moms too. 

When it was all over they wanted to keep going – so we did another day and learned about snakes.

It was a huge hit!  For both the kids and even me!  I’m looking forward to the next day already!