officially DONE

tonight made it official.
we are DONE
no more swimming lessons
no more Awana
no more STREAMS (study group)
no more financial class

we are FREE
free to spend time away
camping and at the trailer
free to spend our weekdays no having to worry about lessons and groups

Welcome Summer!

I am so excited...and so are the boys (well CO more than J)

nest week...cottage here we come!

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tonight was the awards ceremony for Awana

it was sweet
CO got his award for completing his book
I took some photos
not as much as I would have liked as I was there by myself containing a 2 year old while trying to capture things with my cameras, no easy task

 silly face, being the line leader and leading in all the Cubbies

 saying the A & C verses

 getting his award

proud of himself

sand sand everywhere

I spent this morning with the boys at the beach. June during the week is a great time to go to the beach.  You get the beach to yourself practically. Today was a nice overcast day so there wasn't too much worry about sunburns and would have been great for photos if I had my camera :(
The boys had a great time for about 1.5 hours and then the wind picked up and it started to rain a bit so we walked up the road for some hot chocolate & a hotdog. CO convinced me that he still had room in his belly for an icecream cone :) 
J fell asleep on the way home and CO shortly after arriving home.
I am looking forward to more beach days in our future this month!

the well is dry...

one of the problems with working weekends and having other people in charge for the 42 hours that I am away, is that they don't know all the rules. This weekend was prime example.
Sunday I asked the babysitter for an evaluation of how the weekend went as I do most weekends. The reply was that it was a good weekend and that CO had lots of fun playing with the hose and it kept him busy most of Saturday RED FLAG and there were just a couple of problems with some disobedience.

So, it seems my son drained the well in all his fun on the weekend. Which means no water for laundry, baths, etc for about 36 hours. SIGH and it means all the filters in the water system have to be changed as they are full of sediment from the bottom of the well, SIGH.

there is now a note in the babysitting manual about NO using the hose for anyreason what so ever.

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on another note I have started the process to find me a house. I have an agent and have started looking through houses. So far I have not found THE perfect house for my family. But I don't expect to right away anyway.

I asked my mother if she was going to call me regularly to keep reminding me of things like she does now once I am in my own house. Like today when she told me to remember to close up my house as it will get hot during the day. (something I do every day through the WHOLE summer for the last who knows how many years), and last night she reminded me to open up my house to let the cold in (they were already open). :)

I think my own house will do great for not only my children's relationship with thier grandparents but also my relationship with them.  That is one of the things I am looking forward to the most.

I am going to see a couple of potential gems this week. One of them is in a local town but it is in a far corner close to nature and low on other housing. Near what used to be the town's pickle factory but is now the town museum. PERFECT kind of area. And it is very close to the local rail trail! and walking distance to the river and swimming ponds. The backyard isn't fenced, but fences can be built.

please add this whole process to your prayer list, as well as childcare. I still have no childcare past the third weekend of July

what's in your pocket???

I do love our days. Spending our days outdoors.  The boys are big into bike riding and yesterday there was a mini scooter on the side of the road for free (best price!).  So mini scooter for J, CO borrowed a set of roller skates and they spend many hours riding around the deck (unfortunately we have a gravel driveway). J then moved to riding his scooter down the small hill from the raised weeping bed beside the driveway, CO used the wagon (good practice for when he is older and a boyscout for boxcar racing).


At one point the boys and I were looking for bugs to feed the chickens and I found a snail. The boys and I spent about an hour waiting for the snail to come out of the shell and then crawl around our hands. Very fun. J LOVED the snail and tried carrying it around in his pocket for awhile. I finally convinced him that the bug catcher was a better idea and he stuffed if full of grass for a bed for it. And then carried it around the rest of the morning.
This evening after supper we hung out in the backyard around the campfire pit. The boys rode their bikes around the trails that we cut with the lawnmower this afternoon. J is amazing at riding his scooter downhill and CO's athletic abilities to off road with his bicycle amazes me.  After a bit they took a break and did some log hopping. I have a bunch of big logs all in a row out there and it is for kids to play on. I was very surprised how well J did.
At the end of the day, CO pulled some worms out of his pocket to give to his chickens (boy am I glad that he remembered rather than them going through the laundry).
The boys were both beat this evening. I dragged them in just before 8, gave them a quick bath, read some stories and they both were asleep within minutes of their heads hitting the pillows.
Not to say our whole day went well. CO is still struggling these days with obeying and being kind and gentle. J's lunch fell on the ground twice...sigh. Neither boy went down for their nap without tears due to objecting over rules being enforced.
I did get our next few weeks of school planned while they napped. CO is doing well with it. We are done most mornings by 930 as he is eager to get out the door to play. We do science outdoors by exploring nature and art outside by painting at the outdoor easel with watercolour or drawing with pastels. The boys get A LOT of physical education (hence the two hours of nap time every afternoon).
We have some tadpoles in the critter bowl in the bathroom. There is also a snail there. There is a magnifying glass on the counter beside it so the boys can explore the changing tadpoles and look at them up close. (Here is to hoping that the tadpoles are the faster transforming ones rather than the slower ones).  CO has asked to keep them once they are frogs but I told him that they need to be returned to their homes by then.

country life...and reasons to celebrate

I was born for country life...and I think my boys were too (more the older than the younger but he is catching on).
We spend much of our days with critters. Last week we caught us some tadpoles. And spent a morning just exploring the waterway, the goal was to catch some frogs but it wsan't the best space for the boys to be in the water as it was muddy, the kind that is really slippery and sucks you in. So I was in the water, CO along the edge and we tried many times to catch frogs. If nothing else CO is working on his observation skills to see the frogs as they are really good at blending into thier environment.
I am tempted to pack up all the inside toys for the summer so I have less housework and can be outside even more. The boys love to help cut grass, collect sticks, climb trees, feed the chickens, etc.
We collect bugs, we dig for worms, we just explore and watch. The boys are learning to be quieter and slower when on these adventures so that the critters don't hide. Today we found a killdeer nest. We looked at the eggs and marveled at the spots. This is the life!

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I got off yesterday early. I am SO glad I did. The boys sang in church (I didn't know they were going to but it was lovely!). I spent the day with my boys and it was the best way to celebrate Mother's Day. They made me crafts in Sunday school. Lovely. I got lots of hugs.

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Yesterday was my Aunt's birthday as well as Mother's Day. Today is my three year anniversary with CO. Wednesday is my one year anniversary with J. A great week. Full of reasons to celebrate and love on my boys.

I often forget...

it is so easy to fret and stew about something and forget to just trust God to work it all out in His time. Childcare is a BIG stress for me. My support network for childcare is MUCH smaller than I anticipated going into motherhood. My parents like being grandparents but overall would prefer to not be on my list for childcare. Which is fine. Hopefully when I am on my own with the boys, they will be in a different place. It is hard because they are grandparenting daily. Up until recently we ate most suppers together as a family. If either of my parents are doing anything outside, more often than not CO will shadow them.
Rarely will I ask my parents to watch the boys. Usually it is just for a staff meeting while the boys or napping or occasionally my father will watch J while CO is at swim lessons.

So I often stress about childcare and get myself worked into a tizzy only to have it all work out by the time I need it to. My pastor's wife has been great at helping me locate someone in a time of need.

I am happy right now knowing that my weekend childcare needs are filled until the middle of July. I am trying not to stress about time beyond that...
This is something that will always be an issue as long as I am employed and the children need someone to watch them. But I also know that I am doing what God wants me to, and that he has blessed me with the job that I have that enables me to be able to support my children with a full-time income and enables me to be a stay at home mom 5 days/week.

Please pray for me. And if anyone knows someone who is willing and able to be a nanny and is in my area, please feel free to pass along my contact information.

today was a day...

today was a day...where many of my buttons were pushed. It was a day of testing and more testing. It was a day of a battle of the wills. There was good in today. If I look closely back I can remember it. It was a fairly good morning. It seemed to go downhill fast after naptime and then right off a cliff.

He lost the priviledge of playing outside unsupervised for three days. For getting into something he got into yesterday and I told him that it was off limits. Yet today he decided to choose his own way instead as he knew I was busy cooking supper. He is not thrilled. But the consequences need to be bigger than just a time-out. Time-outs don't really seem to be all that effective. He loves the freedom he has to go in and out of the house to play during his 'free' time. He is an outside kid. So the fact that he will be only able to go out when I am free is going to be hard on both of us for the next three days.

right now if I had a bottle of wine, I'd pour myself a big glass.

today is a day that I told my four year old at 615, that I was done for the day. I dragged him off to his bedroom kicking and screaming, put his pjs on and put him to bed for the night. He is NOT impressed. He is NOT thrilled or the least bit happy about the idea. He has tried EVERY excuse he can think of to get out of his bed. Thirsty, need to pee, wants a bedtime snack, bedtime story etc. He has tried negotiating. He has tried applogizing and everything else. Yet I stick to my decision. I am done for the night.

I love him dearly. It is days like today where I wish that I had someone in my life that I could tag off with. So I could go for a long walk and pray or curl up in a nice hot bath with some worship music blasting. I wish my MIL was home because talking to someone who understands 'him' is so encouraging.

Things have been going so well lately. I haven't used his behaviour charts in a long time and so I took them down last night. sigh. Maybe they are destined to hang on my wall forever...I guess they are back up for tomorrow. He saw me take them down. I guess I should have thrown a talk to him about how they were coming down because he was so much better at making good choices as of late.

Atleast now that it is 6:55 the wailing has stopped. He has accepted his fate. And is quiet on his bed. Not to say he won't still try some more testing and negotiating this evening but atleast the house is quieter. I need a bigger house! :)

I'd like one with an upstairs and a finished basement. With a yard but where we can still have our chickens and anyother critters we may wish to aquire in the future. It doesn't have to be fancy. It can't have carpet (if it does it will be one of the first things that gets changed, mostly due to allergies) And it most importantly it needs to be affordable for my one income family.

My other blessing is out of the tub and ready for some pjs, snuggles, stories and his 'pancake' (his blanket)

 here is CO doing his favorite thing these days. Climbing HIS tree.