Tis the Season for Giving!

The end of the week should always be seen with excitement of what is to come, but this week has been full of a lot of testing and boring work and it had started to drag! Instead of hitting the books at home, we packed up and headed to the local Dunkin' Donuts to not only do our work but to spread good cheer! We arrived armed with coupons and cash for each child and after settling into the booth we began our work and say quietly so that we could listen to each person order and as they were just about done 1 child would spring up, grab their cash and head to the register to pay for them! Spreading good cheer was not only fun and teaching the kids that giving feels so much better than getting BUT it kept them silent and focused on their work too! Double Win!

This morning our Elf Pet, hot coffee, was found in the Elf Club House that the kids made. It's still not ready, they were waiting for the glue to dry, but they plan on making it into some kind of scene. I love when kids get crafty!

THERE HE IS!!! It took a bit of searching to find Charlie this morning, but that could be because he was up high in our mistletoe ball! What a silly elf sending out kisses to all!

The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuvler was our read for this day. I only wish a book this magical could be read on a day when there was real snow outdoors and not a 40* day that has us outside with only light sweaters on!

Look what we found!!! The perfect sled for elves and their friends. This will be gifted to the elf once the children have painted it and made it 'elf ready'. Head over to Joann Fabrics for this awesome craft that will be sure to have your children working together and brainstorming!

Enjoy every minute my friends!!

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Charlie The Elf 2015

It's the time of the year again! Time for you to follow our Elf on the Shelf Charlie and see what he is up to! He arrives on Thanksgiving to kick off the Christmas Season and my kids are beyond excited! Creating a suitcase is as easy as a jewelry box and pipe cleaner and these little details always have the children tickled! I will try and keep this post updated throughout the season, so you can always find all of his antics posted daily in one spot! Please be sure to read the most recent posts that will go into more detail about Charlie's surprises that day, this is just going to be a pictorial with some comments.

Michael's craft stores has a new batch of Christmas sweater ornaments and they fit the elf perfectly! Be sure to check them out, as they are much cheaper than the official elf merchandise and so much more unique! Not to mention they come with their own little hangers!! They have hats this year too and we will see if they fit him.

Use google for Elf on the Shelf stationary and you will find some good stuff! I am predicting that he will most likely show up with this one!

The kids are so excited to be able to read his book and watch the movie again! We save it for the season and it truly makes it more magical! They read the book over and over again and the movie becomes memorized by all in the family by the time Charlie departs on Christmas Eve!

He arrived with a bang and dove into a slice of Gabrie's home made cherry pie! He arrived with a banner of thanks to decorate and bring to Thanksgiving and even hacked into our craft closet to construct some stairs for his friends to join him on his high seat! He brought a movie and letter.

Our elf loves to climb and he usually uses ropes, stairs or ladders but he always finds a way.

He sometimes sneaks rides in the car and brings pajamas every year too!

Charlie's friends enjoy getting carried away with things too and always await his return from the North Pole!

Building things for his friends help the kids keep occupied and stay crafty while always getting along too!

He sent a chain of kisses down from the mistletoe as he hung high above all the heads!

Snow Man Charlie enjoys being a tiny bit messy but always has fun and cleans up after himself when he leaves! Here he is watching to be sure the kids wash their hands and brush their teeth!

Being held  captive by king nutcracker he was inside the popcorn machine and you can't see his gifts but he brought a family movie and a bag of microwave popcorn!

He loves to read as much as we do and here he is reading to all of his friends as they hear the story of Christmas!

 

He and his friends are all hiding around and in the tree as they let St. Nicholas take center stage on his day!

St. Nicholas brought a coloring book of his story and the kids colored many pages as we read, but they thought they left some empty pages....not so! Charlie took over where they left off!

 

Enjoy every minute my friends!

Check out our other ideas:

2014

2013 (we bought a new house and did not keep a document of Charlie's antics)

2012 Ideas HERE

2011 Ideas HERE

 

2015 from arrival to departure:

He's Baaaccckkk! Charlie & Hot Coffee have arrive with a cardboard staircase built to reach a chair so that he can eat a slice of pie and drop off his letter. He also brought the movie Inside Out!

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Hot Spot Helpers!

Happy Thursday! Do you have a spot in your home that is just a magnet for clutter? A hot spot for all the day's junk? Ours is the living room coffee table, it has become the place to just drop everything and go. Sometimes the junk gets so out of control I just let it sit for another day and then it looks like this. I knew I finally had to do something about it and went through my home looking for empty baskets, clutter catchers as I like to call them!

This was not a job that I wanted to buy new supplies for, I just hunted and gathered and grabbed ones that I would need for this and then promptly tucked the others away for another day. I didn't care if they matched or not, this was not something that would be left out when we had company around or even daily.

I decided a basket system is the best way to control clutter in this room! 1 basket holds office supplies and the like, 1 basket holds school books and papers related to school and the floor basket under the table holds anything else that does NOT belong in the living room. Every evening these baskets are emptied in their proper places and then brought back upstairs empty. 3 children and 3 baskets puts each child with a basket, so I can tell if someone is not putting away the stuff or just tossing it in another place. After about 2 weeks of this process, it has been working out really well and the best part? They always know where stuff is! Imagine that.

Enjoy every minute my friends!

 

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Learning While Away...Part 2

Yesterday, I shared our learning while away lesson on how we can always be learning, even when on the road. A lot goes into planning a vacation, why not get some learning squeezed in there too. This has helped so much in this time of emergency, when I didn't have time to come up with a real lesson plan. You can read part 1 HERE!

Today's lesson is a very important one when traveling, it involves a lot of math and all of it is mental math. It is important to know how to do your math in your head when travelling, because you will purchase most items at outdoor stalls and booths, in open air markets and from people that may not be as educated as you wish they would be when dealing with money. Everyone makes mistakes, it is important to not have them made to you.

Today's lesson was on changing money. It is important to only change the amount of money you will need for the day, unless you think it is a very good exchange rate. The rates fluctuate daily and even multiple times during the day. Also keep in mind that not all places pay out the same amount, so keep checking with more than your hotel front desk and houses of change, banks tend to pay out higher amounts but also have longer lines.

1. The first step was to find the days exchange rate, this can be found by a quick Google search.
2. I gave the children the amount of money that would be exchanged and they had to calculate what I would get back if the exchange rate we came across was the exact same as what we found online.
3. We headed out and went to buy PESOS, we went to 3 different places and they had to write down the exchange rate at each place and calculate how much we would get back. Out of the 3 places, they then told me where we would get the most for our USD and we headed back there to exchange money.

Because we were spending most of our time in hospitals, much of our trip was spent eating out at food stalls, stands and some restaurants and our souvenir shopping (if any) was done in open air markets, this was where it was time to prepare the mind mentally as you don't have the time to pull out a calculator, and you should always be prepared!
1. If the kids wanted to buy something, I sent them to several stalls to compare prices, once the best price was found, they had to exchange it to USD at the price we paid and find out if in fact it was a good deal or worth the price.

2. When paying, the children had to show me which bills and or coins to pay with and then they had to tell me how much change they would get in advance of paying, so that they were ready when the change came.

3. At the end of each day, they would look at the amount we started out with and the amount left and then they would calculate how much money was spent and if we were on budget if a budget was given ahead of time. As this was an emergency trip, we were not going on a budget.

I hope you enjoyed this part of our lesson, stay tuned for more on part 3 next week!
Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Summer Bucket List 2015 - 105 fun things to do this Summer!

It's that time of year again! Time to get Summer Bucket lists together! We sit around the dinner table and think of all the things that are MUST-Do's this Summer and then we put them all in a list, along with a few things that we repeat, because we want to do them that many times!

Head on over HERE for the printable check-list version of this list! Share a few things that are on your list or even link me to it in the comments!

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Updates, Information and News...

Thursday is upon us and I must say that this week did go by quickly! I am sure many of you heard about those tornadoes in Northern IL two weeks ago, well those all happened in and around the area I live in. We were blessed enough to be in the library at the time and I have never been more impresssed with a group of people, than I was with the librarians there. My children were of course scared but they settled them down with chocolate chip cookies, books and even played board games with them!

My kids were on the local news media pages, when they donated their own money to the tornado victims. I was so proud when they came to me and asked if I would drive them to donate their money.

My kids have their first race this weekend and have been training like mad. My youngest son is not crying here, he is mad because the sun was in his eyes and we were taking photos when they should have been getting stretched out for their timed run. They are all so excited and I am just so happy to see that they have found something that they enjoy and can all do together.

My middle son has been impressing me more and more with his robots. He is in the process of trying to figure out how to work one into his science fair project and while thinking, he likes to tinker. While he was working blindly, he managed to make a robot that picked up and lifted a bottle of water and moved it to another place and then put it down and released it. It was so cool to watch him program it as he tested where he wanted to to be picked up and where he wanted it to go. I love how much he enjoys creating.

I've been gathering new nature guides and the ones we have owned for awhile and put together a outdoor explorers basket. I will photograph the entire thing for next weeks post, after we use them tomorrow on our nature hike. I like keeping things in groups, so that they get used more often!

Get out there and enjoy every minute of RIGHT NOW!

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My Dinner Is Cold...

Hello mothers out there, this one is for you! We have been overwhelmed with activities, field trips,classes and so much more all culminating right now. It has been exhausting for everyone involved but kids tend to be able to bounce back so much quicker. My body wants an extra hour in the day to sleep but that extra hour could be spent catching up with everything else that is going on around the house.

Why is it that when we sit down to dinner, I am the last one to sit? Someone needs something and I jump up, as though I were a yo-yo...they know what they need, they all know where to get it, but for some reason it's okay, I can do it. Sometimes I eat standing in the kitchen because I don't get a minute to sit. By the time I finally sit down to enjoy my meal, it's cold and most everyone is done and chatting away. I love those moments after dinner, that I usually push my plate away and laugh and talk with them...my food long forgotten.

There is nothing I wouldn't do for these 3 and my husband. They want to try something, join something or learn something and we are all doing it with them or cheering them on. It means work done in cars, lines, waiting rooms and libraries but they think of it as an adventure. I look at it as living in my car! Sometimes we are gone from early in the morning until dinner time and even though it makes for long days, they are loving every minute and laughing and learning...what more could a mother want? Everything I have to get done for school and around the house will keep my husband up until the wee hours of the night, but it's all worth it.

I broke my glasses the other day and my husband offered to take me to replace them straight away...instead I put on my emergency pair with so many scratches they are a mess and I told him I would go later...I know I won't go, I know I will make excuses and want to spend the money on something else for the kids. Why do we do that? Why do we put aside what we need and sometimes want, for kids that already have more than enough? Because that is our job. I was at my parents house last weekend and my mother made dinner, she served everyone around the table and ate while standing at the stove. I didn't even notice until I was done eating...it was so good. I asked what she used in her dinner and my dad stood up straight away and pulled out all the spices and supplies and packed them in a cooler for us to take, even though it was all brand new! My husband loved a new Disney watch my dad has just ordered and he promptly took it off and gifted it to him and would not take no for an answer...he said he had too many as it was. We surprised my parents by stopping by, because we had been in the area and they were on their way out. My mother to a meeting with friends and my father to see my grandfather, instead we all went to a movie. Why do we do what we do? Because we can, because we WANT to, because we love our children and want them to know that. I do what I do, because it's all I know. I have parents that went to college in the evening hours on opposite days, so that they could be home with their family. I have parents that worked 2 jobs so that we would always have what we wanted and needed. I have parents that sacrificed their own happiness to raise me in a way where I never thought I was different from any one else. They walked a fine line financially and I never knew. They have since done so well for themselves that they only want to give and share but it's amazing how much we don't notice as children and it's because we don't want our children to notice. We want them to be happy...I better go, my lunch has been waiting on the counter and is getting cold.

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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