Counting with Carrot Coins

We began our day by reading and looking through The Carrot Seed. We started "rowing" this book on Saturday, when we used the carrots from our own garden to paint with. In the last three days we have read this book at least a dozen times and we will continue to read it several more times throughout the remainder of the week. Typically, when you "row" with a book, it's for about five days (hence the name Five in a Row) but ultimately, you get to choose. 

After reading the book we looked at some cooling pictures that all began with the letter 'C' and then we colored those pictures. I also sang the Letter 'C' song that you hear on Leap Frog. Vada really enjoys those shows and the songs from them. She really seems to pay attention as well as to try to imitate the sounds that I sing, when I am singing to her.

The activity pages or "lapbook activities" were downloaded from a homeschooling site called Homeschoolshare.com.

After coloring the pages I had Vada put them into our letter 'C' pocket that we made, which was kind of hard since the papers were pretty flimsy for her little hands but she did a good a job.

 We continued coloring using the color's brown and orange.

And then we size sorted with carrots and pasted them to a folded booklet.

We also pasted the brown paper crayon and the orange paper crayon to the outside of the coloring pages that Vada and I colored.

Next we went to the Farmer's Market. Well, we brought one here to us. Lakeshore Learning has a wonderful color sorting game called Farmer's Market. I've used ours many, many times and I can't say enough positive things about it. Vada recognized the carrot right away, which just goes to show, she is learning!

We only used the green and the orange color baskets of fruits and veggies and we went through them twice.

We finished up my using carrot coins for counting. 

Vada stayed very focused on counting and followed the instructions I gave of taking one carrot piece at a time for counting. 

I cut twenty pieces to count and we went through the pieces almost three times before Vada became bored, once she was done, she was done and it was apparent! She picked up the bowl of remaining pieces that needed to be counted and just poured them into the opposite bowl. My silly but cleaver girl.

And then, of course, she snacked on those coins but I was really proud that she waited to eat them until she was told to. Im not for sure that she would have done that in the past or if we were using Goldfish Crackers!

Bubble Baths and Randomness

Right now I am in the bath, a bubble bath actually! I know, I know...a little more information than you probably needed or even wanted to hear but it's the second time that I have been able to take a bubble bath this week! Both times I have consider each bath a gift from my husband who just happen to top off this bath by bringing me a tall glass of iced Organic Easy Now tea, which I plan  to sip on as I melt into the water and the aromas of Eucalyptus and Menthol (No, I'm not sick, I just enjoy the scents). Justin has even told the girls that they could not come into this particular bathroom until I came out. For all of you Momma's out there I am sure that you can understand how sweet that restriction is! Children seem to need you more when your trying to do something, like talking on the phone, cooking dinner any yes, even taking a bath.

Being a parent is a constant jog! This week alone, I am accompanying my girls to five days in a row of swim lessons. They also have activities at church once during the week. Kiliegh has a dance class. Jasmine has two soft ball games, Karate classes and then on Saturday, were taking her to camp, in Wisconsin, which I might add is a minimum six hours of driving! Therefore, something that seems so small like taking a bath (for mere relaxation purposes) seems like a luxury to me.

Even though things are crazy busy, I am really enjoying this time with Justin and the girls-where were doing things as a family. It's nice to not have to worry as much as I used to. It's even nicer being able to incorporate Vada in our every day activities verses finding someone to take the older girls somewhere or needing to have someone come watch Vada so that I can.

The balancing act between everything that the girls have lined up in a day/week and then the things that I need to do leaves me very tired. Therefore, any extra interests of mine I keep putting aside, like blogging. I have however, begun sleeping in my bed again which makes falling behind on hobbies well worth it! Up until about a week ago all of my nights ended with me sleeping on the floor or on the couch because little V had her sleeping schedule messed up. We co-slept with her, which I think is wonderful to experience together. Now however, putting her into her own bed has become somewhat trickier than it may have been if I just put her there when she first came home. I loved cuddling with her while we slept and when she was less mobile and I love the bond that her and I have so I dont regret co-sleeping with her one bit. Having her sleep with us made my nerves less of a mess. I knew she was breathing and doing well through the night when she was next to me and it also made night time feedings much easier. Now, however, she is all over the place and even with a guard rail up I am nervous that she'll crawl to the foot of the bed and fall off (and our bed is high up). Since I have been so tired I am scared that she'll crawl past me without me waking. So, it's time for her to sleep in her own bed and for the most part once she is asleep, she doesn't seem to mind the transition. It's harder on me probably because I wont let her cry herself to sleep. I don't like the idea of it. So getting her to sleep is a little time consuming than it may be if I did do the "Cry-it-out" method-which is fine.

I have also been focusing a lot of my attention on nap times. I am hoping that if I get Vada's naps figured out the sleeping through the night, (which hasn't happened since she was around five and a half months old-prior to her seizures), will follow. Either way, I feel as if were on the right track to getting blissful full nights of sleep, for V and I both!

It's been a week since the "quarantine" has been lifted and boy oh boy have we made our rounds with Vada. Well, sort of.

We went to the Farmers Market again. There the girls tried some fresh peaches, watermelon and even Vada had a small taste of fudge.

We walked through every part of the market as well as the inside portion. When we ventured to the far back of the outdoor market we found a tent where a nice couple was spinning wool straight from a live (and fully comfortable) Angora rabbit. It was an impressive sight to see. The girls however, were more impressed with the animals themselves.

Before leaving the house on this particular day Kiliegh had emptied her whole piggy bank into her purse. I bet the thing weight at least five pounds and not once but twice Jasmine helped her count out five dollars in loose change for two separate jewelry purchases. (I haven't seen the braclets since.)

One night we met our church's youth group, their parents and some of the church staff at Happy Joe's and we all hung out, ate pizza and caught up on each other lives a little. I realized again during this get together that my social skills are shot! Being house bound for the last two years has done something to my abilities with interacting with others. I now have no idea what to say to people, what to talk about or even how to start a conversation let alone carry one. I guess that just means that I need to be around people more. Either way, it was nice being surrounded by this group of friends, we all have a past together so the conversations were lighter and more care free.

Heidi's daughter Hailey is actually the reason that we go to FUPC-of Moline. "Hail's" inviting Jasmine, my oldest a few years ago to youth group with her. Jasmine went several times with Hailey and her family before I became interested and the rest is history.

Heidi and I as well as Jen (one picture below Heidi) were all in the same "small group", Sunday school class and even Women's bible study class when I was going on a regular basis (before my pregnancy with Vada). Also, Heidi was Kiliegh's reading teacher for two years.

Jen (below) like I already mentioned is in a lot of the same functions for church. She has two sons who are both Jasmine's and Kiliegh's age and they live four blocks away. Joe (her oldest) and Jasmine have spent a lot of time riding through the neighborhood on their bikes this summer. I like that Jasmine has nice boys to play with.

During my pregnancy Jen kept me well stocked with Dvd's and Panera. She constantly offered to walk our dog, take the girls to church amongst many other helpful things. She is a good friend and neighbor.

This is Rusty. He came to our church a couple of years ago from Texas. He works with the youth and does an amazing job! He is patient and kind and a strong leader to our kiddo's. He also brought with him his wonderful wife and two children. Just recently they had their third child Lylah.

This is Vada and Lylah interacting together.  The head on the left is Sarah, Rusty's wife and then head on the right is me.

Well, I can hear a fussy baby in the background calling for me, so I need to finish things up and attempt more "catch-up" on another day and time. Before I call it a wrap, I want to make sure that I mention  My cousin Terrie. She is around my age has struggled with weight issues for quite sometime now. She is a working mother of two beautiful babes and a wife of a pretty great guy. Recently, she started the Weight Watchers program and for the first time in a long time (maybe her whole life), she is seeing some pretty substantial results! She has decided to start blogging about her journey through the up's and down's of weight loss-blogging can be so therapeutic. Her blog is not intended to promote or endorse Weight Watchers in any way but since she is a active member in the program it is one of her primary topics in her writing. If you are interested you can check out her blog here.

Another new blogger is my Jazzy girl. She is my oldest daughter, an eleven year old sweetie who happens to have a lot of sass but a lot more heart than anything. She thought after watching me for some time that blogging sounded like a fun thing to do. I have no idea where she is going with it or even if she'll stick with it but I thought I would share her link anyway.

Kiliegh, my middle daughter saw that Jasmine, her big sister had started a blog and decided that she too wanted one. I'm still contemplating on that one but I did open up a typing program on the computer and told her to get in some practice and this is what she decided to write about. Cute huh?

 

The Market

Today was the grand re-opening of one of our local Farmers Markets. This one is open year around and is an indoor out door market. It's been re-located due to flooding which was why today was the Grand re-opening. As soon as we started walking from our car towards the market we were greeted by a marching band, which was just the beginning of a good time!

We arrived around noon, giving us a little over an hour to look around and shop before the market closed up for the day.

Our first stop was the Pappardelles pasta stand. My mouth is watering from thinking of this 8th wonder of the world! This was by far my favorite stop! I'm eager to come back and to try the different pastas, which I plan on doing over the course of the upcoming summer! We actually have a check list that was provided at the stand. All of the noodles that Pappardelle's offers is on this list so we plan on checking off as we go. Its seems kind of fun. The only problem is making up our minds for our next purchase!

Today, from Pappardelles, Justin and I picked out Spicy Thai Linguine and the Cracked Pepper Fettuccine. Tonight, Justin will be making us Grilled Chicken with Tamarind Orange Glaze with Spicy Thai Pasta. It's the recipe that was given with the pasta. Were going to make each recipe that comes with each pasta that we try. It'll be fun too. I am excited to buy The Roasted Red Pepper Lasagna. Doesn't that sound delicious?!? I think however, it may be something that we have to order verses picking up from the market. Justin and I mis-understood what was being said, so we're unsure if they were just out of these noodles when we came, or if they didn't carry them a the market. We shall see. I plan on going back quite a bit over the summer... especially for this stand!

I'm looking forward to later in the season when all of the vegetables really start coming in.There were quite a lot out there today but none really stuck out. That would have been that we came later in the day after everything had already been picked through or it could have been that it is still early in the season. Either way,  I want fat juicy tomatoes, big squashes, cucumbers and all of the colored peppers. I want juicy fruits too and soon.

Another fun stop was the jelly/jam stand. There were tons of flavorful favorites of Justin and the girls. I personally have issues with dipping from community dips, so I tried nothing but lived vicariously through them Unfortunately, everything that they likes was already sold out. Again, the risk you take when coming late.

One dip stand that had Justin and the girls excited was The Dip-Orium. They had like twenty different dips ready for our sampling pleasures. There were sweet dips, veggie dips and even hot Hot HOT dips. We purchased Garlicky Garlic, Veggie Patch and Tomato & Horseradish. I personally am looking forward to making and eating all of them!

Since the sampling didn't fully fill Justin and Jasmine up they decided to try some of the other food that was being sold. Kiliegh and I were happy with our lemonades.

On our way out this was one of the last stands that we walked by... Looks good doesn't it?!?

Have I mentioned that I had a great time? Well, I did! I soooo enjoy doing stuff like this. I like seeing all of the vendors, the crafts and the homemade foods. I like talking with the people and seeing the different people and I enjoy purchasing our foods locally. Its something that I also enjoy doing with my family. The only thing missing was Vada. I know that keeping her away from everyone right now is whats best but I missed her. I look forward to the opportunities we will have in the near future.