The Zoo Rebecca and mom built

Here is one of the Zoo Keepers.

 The puppies and the kittens share a bed. The Alligator has nobody to play with, so he can play with the Zoo keeper. The Zoo Keepers going to lock the alligator in for the night, because they don't want them to come out. That's the rule! Lock, lock, lock.

The Jaguar, lion and elephant have food, water and something for the zoo keeper to eat and drink. Water and marshmallows. No apple juice, marshmallows and syrup.

Will the lion eat the elephant? No because it's nice.

This is the Zoo Keepers bedroom. They like their bed, rug, table and house. That's all about them.

The zoo keeper with the keys locks the doors. The zoo keeper with the flag says "no people in the zoo at night."

 This is the pool for the Zoo Keepers.

Dictated by Rebecca Lucy Smith

Looks who's 10 years old

Corrine is now two full hands old.

 It's the 1st time being in the double digits in age and it's the last time she can show her age with her hands. 

What a magical, fun filled day today was. 

It started slightly dark and early when we got up to have some yummy cinnamon rolls and open presents before heading to before school Spanish.

Corrine got to open her remote control car and her gumball machine was sitting ready to be play with.

She brought orange "Push-ups" for her snack today and she said they were a hit!! She said the kids said they were the best treat ever and were so excited for them. Funny thing about them is we're expecting a big snow storm tonight and the kids were eating sherbet!

The afternoon was spent driving her car, eating skittles, driving her car some more and playing with Rebecca.

In the evening we went to swim lessons, which ended very early after a kid got sick in the pool. Luckily NOT one of ours. Corrine was beyond excited to find out that she passed Level 3, and gets to move on to Level 4 next week. (She took a session of lessons when she was 3 or 4,  and it was not good timing with Simeon being sick and life being crazy.) So really I consider this her 1st real swim lesson. She real quickly caught onto doing the back stroke and does it beautifully.

We ended the night with some yummy cheese cake complete with another round of singing Happy Birthday and lighting the #10 candle. I don't think you can sing or light the candles enough in on your birthday!

Corrine's 10th birthday edition of "My top 5 things"

5. The "totally"' comfortable" toe socks we got her.

4. Opening her presents. They were "just what I wanted!"

 3. How her door was decorated this morning. 

(It spelled Corrine and had 10 hearts hanging down.)

2. Having dad come eat lunch with her, especially since he wasn't able to last year.

1. Swimming lessons. She passed level 3 on her 1st try!!!

Oh sweet Corrine. I'm so excited that you had such a magical 10th birthday.

How in the world?

This morning Rebecca and I had a few errands we needed to do. We ended up at the Super Walmart in Coralville. As we pulled in the parking lot we saw a white car at a very strange angle. At 1st I thought I was seeing it wrong, but another look confirmed what I saw.

 

How this little car got up onto such a big rock is beyond me. The saddest thing was that the car still had paper licenses on it, so it was brand new.

I felt bad for laughing at this cars bad day, but I laughed, pretty hard!

I LOVE these kids

I LOVE these kids.

I LOVE these kids when their laughing, playing, teasing, LOUD, snuggly, sickly, happy, grumpy, needy, helping, cooking, sleeping, running, praying, silly, rough & tumble, shy, reading, best friends and worst enemies.

I LOVE seeing these kids come in the door after school. 

I LOVE hearing them coming before I can even see them. 

I LOVE snuggling with them before bed, or watching a movie, or reading a book, or just snuggling to snuggle. 

I LOVE cooking with the kids. 

I LOVE hearing them tell me about their day, or their latest book, or an awesome move they did.

I LOVE when they show me something they have created and are so excited to share it with me.

I LOVE hearing about their adventures playing outside.

I LOVE hearing about their Lego creations and the battles the boys their guys get into.

I LOVE seeing the girls dressing their babies and taking such good care of them.

I LOVE when they help each other out with pouring a drink, or getting more toilet paper, or picking up something that fell, or sharing the markers, or passing something during dinner.

I LOVE when they say their prayers and ask for the others to be watched over, or to have a good time at their activity.

I LOVE watching them cheer each other on and be excited when the others do something that's pretty awesome.

I LOVE these kids to the moon and back any day of the week.

Being their mom has been the biggest blessing in my life.

The Amazing Race Kick off

We are seriously some of the BIGGEST fans of the show 'The Amazing Race'. I still remember the 1st time we watched it with the kids and how they were all instantly hooked!

Each season we've talked about having a kick off party and voting for our favorite teams before the race really got started. This year we finally did it. I made a HUGE world map, printed country flags, printed the team pictures and we made our predictions.

Everyone but Rebecca voted for the Cancer Survivors in their top 3. Simeon & Corrine both picked them to win. You can tell cancer is such a big part of our lives.

I love hearing the kids excitement when the teams go to a new country and we get a glimpse of what that country and cities are like. We have all learned so much about different countries through the show. The kids spend alot of time looking at the maps in our hallway and talking about different countries locations and comparing all the different Country flags. We're learning while being entertained as a family!

Valentine's Day

The kids have been so EXCITED about Valentine's day for weeks. Rebecca has been asking to put decorations up and get the house ready. With every thing else going on we didn't decorate until LATE the night before, and Rebecca was wide awake after a long fever induced nap that afternoon.

The kids combined had 67 Valentines to make. I had another 18 to make between my Spanish kids and my little Sun beams.

Simeon wanted to do something more grown up, so this year he gave cans of Izzie sparkling juice out. Corrine gave pencils and lifesavers. Ammon gave out pencils and Rebecca gave her preschool friends a bubble wand.
For Spanish I gave them Valentines in Spanish with a few treats. For my Sunbeams I went a little over board and gave them a bigger goodie bag with a bracelet for the girls, or desquise for the boys, bubbles, goldfish, fruit snacks and a sucker. April (we co-teach) Rebecca and I went and delivered them. Rebecca also gave her friend Kinsley a matching heart sweatshirt as an extra gift. Those 2 have so much fun playing together!

I was asked to make heart strawberries on skewers for Corrine's classes Valentine's party. I think they turned out so cute. Corrine said all the kids really liked them. Their not hard to make, you just have to figure out how to make the 1st cut correctly. I learned the fatter strawberries were the best to use.

Our teacher gifts this year were Valentine's dish towels I found on clearance at Kohl's the day before. I wanted to do something that didn't involve food. All 3 of the big kids are taught by 1 amazing teacher, so they all gave her a set of towels even though she isn't any of their homeroom teachers. All the teachers really liked them!

Valentine's Day was our normal busy Thursday. I did get up and make breakfast before we all left for Spanish. Since Rebecca was recovering from her fever she didn't go to dance class. We all went to Taekwondo, then went to Panda Express for our Valentine's Day dinner. The kids loved it, I didn't have any dishes to do and it fit perfectly in before swim lessons.

It's kind of sad to think that this is Simeon's last year of giving out Valentine's. His teacher had a really fun party for the kids. They all made boxes to collect their valentine's in. I'm so glad she did that and gave those 6th graders one last Valentine's exchange. I'm not ready for Simeon to go to Junior High. He's grown up was too fast.

Animales y colores Bingo

We've been in our Spanish class for 2 weeks and have covered both colors and animals, so it was time to play a game of Bingo to review what we've learned.

Making the bingo card took quiet a chunk of time, but now that they are done, I can use them  time and time again.

To make them I took the Oso Pardo animals that I traced and copied them at 40%. I also made square pieces of paper in all the colors we've learned.

Making sure they were all different wasn't as hard as I thought. My 3.5 year old helped me put different colored squares and animals on each card. We had more animals and colors then squares on the cards, so it made it easy to make them all different.

I used the same pictures and colored squares for the calling cards.

The kids had a good time playing the game. Some knew the animal names and colors better and didn't need to look at the calling cards, but others looked at them every time.

The next step is to laminate all the bingo cards and calling cards so they will last the test of lots of hands playing with them.

A little Rebecca question

Today we were driving home and from the back seat I hear "Mom, how are babies made?"
I swallow hard, she's only 3.5 year old and asking me this question already!
So I start in with the answer. "Well when a mom and dad love each other."
Her little voice interrupts me talking and says "No mom, not real babies, baby dolls! How are baby dolls made?"
I breath a sign of relief that I just got out of the "how are babies made question' with my 3.5 year old and answer "They have a machine that makes the head. Then they make the body out of material and sew the 2 together."
Rebecca "Oh they sew it together. They sew the head to the body.
She's talking about sewing the baby doll together for a minute. Then I hear: "You don't sew real babies together do you?"
Me "No sweetie, we don't sew real babies together."
Rebecca "Oh good."

This sweet girl loves her baby dolls and had one sitting in the back seat with her that I couldn't see as I was driving.

Stars for a Skylander

Ammon is so full of life that he struggles to settle down and go to bed. We were needing to help him learn to settle down and sleep better, so the star chart was born.

Everyday he could earn up to 5 stars. 

1 for getting ready for bed (getting pj's on & brushing teeth).

1 for getting into bed and happily saying his prayer.

1 for staying in bed all night. Which means no reading after lights out, getting up and no talking with Simeon.

1 for getting up in the morning quickly and happily.

If he gets all 4 stars then he earns a BONUS star for the day.

It took him 4 full weeks to earn his 100 stars. Week 3 he figured it out and earned EVERY star he could that week!!! Week 4 wasn't a perfect week, but he still did good. 

His prize he wanted to earn-a Skylander Gaint. He decided on getting Swarm and earning another 100 stars for another Skylander.

Ammon has made some very good habits this past month and it has helped not only him be happier since he's getting better sleep, but has also helped our family be happier and calmer.

Dance Marathon 19

This was our 7th Dance Marathon and the kids excitement for it has only increased. 

This really is the party of all parties.

Some highlights from the weekend.

We were group 7. A large part of our group were 1st time dancers. One was a friend of Simeon's, high school sister.

Our Family Rep Nicole from last year flew from Florida to be here. Corrine LOVED having her around.

Simeon pillowcase was on the bottom row this year, so we could get a picture of him standing by it.

This year the neon green screen was such a hit for the kids. We danced behind it and took lots of videos and pictures of the fun.

This year there was a Dance Marathon wall with all the shirts and stats from the years.

The family room was of course a BIG hit. Rebecca liked dressing up, but the soft comfy corner was the most loved area.

Twister got the kids twisted pretty tight with each other! 

We spent lots of time with Jan & Denny. Their daughter Becky and Simeon became instant friends, as did the rest of us. Becky passed away just over 2 years ago.

We danced in the ball room with the students. Friday night Rebecca was the star of the show and got lots of attention.ing video games in the Best Buy room.

Simeon and Ammon spend ALOT of time play

Saturday Rebecca feel asleep during Power hour and slept through the loudest, biggest, craziest motion packed hour!

We cried when the pictures and names of those gone too soon were read. 15 new children were added to the Dancing in Our Heart Quilt this year.

Becky had a new picture of her . It was beautiful. 

We stayed until the very end. Corrine & Ammon collected hundreds of glow sticks as per our annual tradition, then we all got our DM 19 bracelets.

And over $1.5 million was raised For The Kids!!!

FTK