Screen time is a hot topic with loads of opinions, research, and ideas. For me it as been a long developing journey. I’ll spare the details of how we got to where we are and tell you where we are at right now with just a teeny tiny bit of background. For the longest time…
Family
Happy 4th Birthday Emily!
We celebrated Emily’s birthday all weekend! In July she told us she wanted to go hiking at Turkey Run State Park, get frozen yogurt, and have a pink cake with purple frosting. Last week when we were finalizing plans she added in having her friends over for cupcakes. Andrew bought the supplies for the Pickler…
September Preschool: Water
Last year we followed the official joy school curriculum with three of our neighbors, meeting twice a week. It was a wonderful experience and the kids loved it. This year we decided to create a simplified preschool option that was realistic for three moms with eight kids (soon to be nine) between them. We meet…
Creating More Music Autonomy with a CD Player
When we were at my family’s home in August I was surprised at how Emily and Nathan spent their time. In a big house with lots of fun toys they chose to dance to music blasting from a kids electronic keyboard. All day long. Listening to a handful of songs on the keyboard all day…
General Conference
One of my focuses for the month of September was to prepare the kids for general conference. We ended up doing a 14 day countdown chain from lds.org. We used the prompt as the topic of our dinner discussion each night. When Saturday morning arrived Emily couldn’t wait for after lunch for it to begin. We…
Nature Fridays
With fall underway (sort of – it has been in the upper 90s here for over a week!) we’ve been developing our new family rhythms. We’ve made a point not to schedule too many things each week, but aren’t heading outside from 8-12am like we did for the months of morning sickness. I think it…
#FunParent
This weekend wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary, but Andrew loaded up the normal moments with fun. I was impressed and loved joining in on the laugher. Andrew came home a little early on Friday afternoon. He was lying on the floor and Nathan ran to join him with a ball and said, “Up! Up!”…
Emily’s Peg Rail Project
Sometime in June Emily ran out of her room with great energy. “Mom! Let’s make a peg rail for my room to hang my dresses on. We’ll hang it right here (running back in) by my bed!” A few times a week she’d bring up her plan. When we returned home from our summer travels…
30 Weeks
First off, we are having a girl!! We think! We had the anatomy scan at the end of June. The tech spent about 45 minutes with us and tried many times to figure out the gender. No luck – we were told we’d find out in November. I went to Utah and three weeks later…
Brain Dump
I’m out of the habit of blogging. I have loads of pictures from the last few months to process and record memories from. I have so many thoughts and ideas to share. Ideas of posts are written out in lists to start checking off. But today, a brain dump about all areas of life, some…