Jersey Shore

We love Ocean City, it's the perfect family vacation. You can ride bikes or a surrey in the morning, grab some apple cider doughnuts (soooo good) or freshly squeezed lemonade. This year was extra special because Memaw AND some of our best friends all came as well. Gram, Pop, aunts, uncles, cousins were all there this year too.

Kate had an interesting way of transporting the water to her sand castle this year. Yes, that is a tablespoon and she took more then one trip to the ocean to sprinkle water on her creation.

Pop, Gram, Kim, Dan and Nicole all spent more then their fair share of time helping the girls "jump" waves. Aunt Kim took quite a spill with Kendall on the boogie board, Kim ended up with a stiff neck and Kendall still has a little bruise on the side of her face. 

Jack had a blast. I remember Kendall's first year in Ocean City, her feet wouldn't touch the ground. She spent all her time in SpongeBob chair not letting her feet touch the icky sand. Jack was a bit different. He was everywhere and into everything. He had to taste each bit of sand, crawl through the waves, check out every nook and cranny for something to get into.

He also took his first merry-go-round ride with Dad.

The girls ventured out of the kid's ride area and tried some of the bigger kids rides. The climb/slide "ride" was a new favorite.

And Gram even went so far as to ride the "belly ride" with the girls. Of course, I didn't get a picture of that. They're lucky that I didn't see the ride going before the got on or they wouldn't have been allowed on it. Basically they were laying on the stomach flying around in the air. Kendall and Kate BOTH loved it. Me, not so much and I only watched!

We also celebrated Gram and Pop's 40th anniversary while we were there!

This is How We Do It

That blog title brings back memories of 90s music, am I the only one?

I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the vacation photos right now so I'll save those for a later post. Here is a short little post on how we've been handling chores lately.

 We have these cute little jars with popsicle sticks in them. Each stick has a chore written on it and a colored sticker on one end. At the start of the day the colored ends are all on top. As the girls finish each chore they turn it over so that the colored side is down in the jar. To have the jobs listed on the sticks is nice because I can switch them between the girls' jars or just flip one over if it doesn't need done that day. It's also easy to add in another chore if needed. These were made with things I already had on hand. We've tried dry erase chore charts with magnetic "stickers" and they were way more of a hassle then they were worth. This seems to work well for us at this point.

The girls work on them throughout the day and I'm trying not to remind them. Usually if there is down time in the morning I suggest they start and then I let them do it on their own time. Once they finish all the chores for one day I've let them add a sticker to their chart. This chart is pretty massive and I use it to encourage them throughout the day. If I notice especially good behavior we'll add one or when they finish a day's worth of "mommy school" they get one. We plan to do a fun activity once it's full: movie, golfing...

Kendall's (6 years) chores each day:
Clean room
Clean sinks in kids' bathroom (she uses little Lysol wipes)
Dust Family Room
Empty dishwasher (she is only responsible for silverware and kid dishes) this is by FAR my favorite of the chores because it really does help me a lot
Mommy's Choice --I pick anything that needs to be done. Sometimes it's cleaning her desk, other times just random things around the house that need to be done.

Kate's (4 years) chores:
Clean room
Clean step stools in the kids' bathroom (there are three so this is no small fete, ha)
Dust foyer
Dishwasher (sometimes her job)
Mommy's Choice

Jack doesn't have his own jar but he's anxious to start helping

Telling Our Story

Do you have any idea how desperately I want to have a written blog every single day? Badly. I want our story recorded. Two things stop me 1) Exhaustion. Pure exhaustion. I go go go all day long, especially now that school is out and Jack is crawling. I was so thankful for rain today because we were trapped inside. Usually it's breakfast, fast house clean up, pack a picnic, gym class, pool all day, "Mommy school," cook dinner, clean up dinner, bath and bed. If I don't fall asleep when the kids go down (I'm not kidding, sometimes I don't even come downstairs after putting them to bed) then the last thing I want to do is think of something witty to say on here. That brings me to part 2) Perfectionism. I want it all--an accurate story, a couple chuckles and nicely edited photos. It just isn't going to happen. Then I think of something I want to tell but I remember that I still haven't blogged about all the field trips and the end of school parties and surely I should cover all that before I mention the silly thing the kids said today. So instead I do nothing. But I miss it, not the doing but just having it all recorded. There are so many stories I want told.
I'm not here to make promises or even set a goal for myself but I am here reminding myself that I want it written, this story of their childhood, this story of our craziness and this story of exhaustion. Pure exhaustion, pure fun filled, baby chasing, pool splashing, mommy schooling exhaustion. Plain and simple.
Just to feel a little caught up here is a quick recap with some unedited, imperfect photos.

Jack was a big hit at the field trip

The water table and hurricane wind simulator was fun too

We went skating. In short, it was hilarious and awesome. Sadly they don't even make regular skates small enough to fit my little nuggets feet so she had to sport these plastic kicks.

Actually, we found out that Wednesday night is free family skate night and you can bet your bottom dollar we'll be back. Cause, you know, I'm not exhausted enough.

We toured the firehouse. When we got there Kate marched up to the fireman and declared, "My sister is six." 

It is now 7:30pm and I may have just drooled on my computer when I dozed off while waiting for that photo to load. 

Celebrating Kendall

We had Kendall's Tangled themed birthday party today. Luckily we had our party photographer handy to take lots of pictures. We had hoped to have the party outside but this nonstop rain kept us indoors

Guests were directed to a "photo booth" where they could choose from a variety of props and take a picture with the birthday girl (who choose the tiara every.single.time).

Some of the guests preferred to have their picture taken alone.

We decorated princess crowns and swords while we waited for the everyone to arrive.

Next we had a yummy lunch of grilled hot dogs, veggies, fruit salad, and chips. The kids were so incredibly cute sitting at the table chatting about various things--primarily Tangled related things.

Next we tried to play a funny little game. Last night we spent far too much time blowing up sooo many balloons, we also attached rubber bands to each one and at the party we put one on each of the kids legs. They were supposed to pop each others balloons while keeping their own intact. My fear was that they would all be too timid to pop a balloon. However I was wrong, the kids jumped in without a problem and attacked each others balloons with gusto. The lesson is that next time I will buy really cheap balloons because we just could not pop the things!! The game went on far longer then I had planned until I deemed that there were multiple winners!

We had better luck finding a winner in the next game: Pin the nose on Flynn Rider. If you haven't seen the movie then this makes no sense to you. This was a game we decided on at about 11pm last night so I drew this Wanted poster and created various noses for the kids to pin on. We actually had three winners! Luckily I had purchased extra "prizes."

We finished up with opening presents. 

Then we had to immediately open some of the presents of course.

The kids left shortly after. The girls with their bubbles and pansy flowers and the boys with bubbles and swords. Uncle Jeff, Pat and Great Gram stuck around and we were able to visit with them.

They were subjected to the photo booth too :)

Finally Kendall and Kate spent a little bit of time outside on Kendall's new bike.

What a fun day!

Book Love

We love going to the library. Something about all those books stacked together and they’re all FREE! Every time I check out I feel like I need to pull out my wallet. After the girls make their selections they settle in at the craft table while I continue to browse. Jack enjoys the smells and sounds of the library too.

Today our library basket held:

Bringing up Girls by James Dobson  

Healthy Family Meals by the American Heart Association—always looking for new recipe ideas

This Book Made Me Do It by DK Publishing—planning activities for our days

Ed Emberley’s Great Thumbprint Book –not the first time this one has come home with us.

Each of the girls pick out four books and one movie. Kendall found a cute one called Scuba Bunnies

 and Kate chose Little Ballerina Dancing Book.

 I usually go around and pick out a children’s book or two as well. I like to pick from the award winners, the list of 100 best picture books or, most commonly, based on the illustrations.  As much as I love a good story, or the cadence of a well written book I think the illustrations are what help a child to loose themselves in that different world. It never hurts if the pictures will inspire a project at home.

The best part of going to the library is seeing books strewn all over the family room, seeing my girls looking at them, and anticipating time with my own stack.

Amazon Wish List

I wanted to take a quick minute to share with you one more thing that makes life flow a little more smoothly. In the past I have faced a holiday or a birthday with absolutely no idea what to get my kids and no idea what I wanted either.  I know that throughout the year there are things that we come across and want but when it comes time to get them I can't remember! Recently I started using Amazon.com's wish list. I downloaded the little button for my tool bar (see below on the top left of the screen shot it says "wish list") and now when I come across a cool gadget or toy I can just click that button and it adds  to our wish list.  Now when I face a birthday I can browse through the items that I marked through the year and either load up my Amazon cart or make a list to carry to the worlds most fun place...Target.

Fun things you would find on our list would include:

Pottery Barn Daily System

See the picture, the sun is shining down on it and the angels are singing, can't you hear them? 

Even I could be convinced to drink milk if I could have it out of this glass:

Anything that would make grocery shopping easier:

I'm curious, what's on your current wish list?