Finally on the radar!

Well, Miss DCFS finally contacted me last week! Wahoo!!  She said that they reassigned all the reps and the previous rep that was assigned to me seemed to just leave my file sitting and didn't even bother putting it into their system. So she was going to make sure that got done immediately. She still needs some things from me though: well water test completed (got the kit and plan to send it off this week), notes from our doctor stating the kids don't need TB or lead tests (already received those), I have to take a couple of online classes and send copies of the completion certificates (wouldn't you know our printer just crapped out on us so I have a new one ordered that will hopefully arrive this week), and she couldn't find on my high school transcripts what date I actually graduated (I called the high school and they said it's right at the top of the paper so I explained that to her and got that taken care of). It's all easy stuff, but just a matter of waiting for things to arrive so that I can photocopy and mail off to her. Of course she said she can't do her visit until these things are taken care of. Plus, she's waiting on the background checks for Travis, Lexi, my mom & I to come back so that the four of us can then go down to Bloomington for fingerprinting. It's really quite a process to become licensed!  But I'm glad to know that I finally seem to be on their radar. She did ask me what my timeline was for opening. I told her that my original plan was January 2nd (which obviously didn't happen) so I was shooting for February - she said not to hold my breath. :o( Sooooooo, that pretty much tells me that I won't be opening until summer. I could probably open from March to May, but three months just isn't enough for little ones (and parents) to see any improvements. Now my big decision is whether or not to do a daily summer program or just have some one-week "camps"? I have a big book all about summer camp themes so I think I'll look through that and see if I could make the camp idea work. I was also approached by a lady at church who works with the Fugate Woods Nature Preserve. She would like to have some preschool-aged sessions there in the woods all about taking care of nature, earth, ourselves, etc. I thought that was an excellent idea!! So lots of things to still think about, but it's all coming together finally (thank goodness b/c the checkbook is going to be in bad, bad shape by the time summer gets here).  In the meantime, I'm still spending most of my days in the preschool room getting things together. I absolutely love it though!  So much progress has been made....some of the pictures have an orange hue to them. Not sure why?

A lot of my ideas I get from www.teachpreschool.org - she teaches a small preschool class out of her home as well. She is brilliant!

I used the items in this pictures (hair gel from the Dollar Store, ziploc bags and gel food coloring) to make....

These sensory bags! Maddie LOVES her "colors" as she calls them. We've even had to take them out to eat with us before. She makes for a great tester of my ideas....this one was a big thumbs up!

Today, I used these items (tempera paint in different colors, empty small water bottles, makeup sponges and rubber bands) to make.....

These paint dabbers (similar to bingo dobbers)! This is MUCH cheaper than buying them in the store. I just mix paint with water to thin it out, take the lid off, use rubber bands to hold the makeup sponge onto the bottle opening, squeeze it a big to get the paint started and the kids just start dabbing away! Maddie also tested these for me and I'm glad she did b/c some of the colors needed some extra paint added to them to make them brighter, but she loved them!

Here is my home-made Circle Time chart! This chart saved me about $180 - there were 3 or 4 different ones at a school supply store that I loved, but I couldn't afford to buy them all. Instead, I picked from each of them what I loved best, bought a big square of flannel material and marked out the sections I wanted and used a permanent marker to draw/write it all out. I then printed off and laminated (with my new laminating machine which I LOVE) all the chart pieces I would need. So now we can talk about what "today" is (month, day, year), come yesterday vs. today vs. tomorrow (i.e. - Yesterday was Monday, Today is Tuesday, Tomorrow will be Wednesday), the weather and what clothing items we should wear based on the weather that day, the color/shape of the month and what letter of the alphabet we're focusing on that week (i.e. - All About Bb!), an area for practicing writing that letter and an open space to put up pictures of items that begin with that letter. This will be an important part of our every day!

A quick picture of all the laminated pieces we'll be using on our Circle Time chart. I plan to stick velcro hook "coins" on the back of each one so that they'll stick right to the flannel.

This is an awesome chart my mom gave me for Christmas! I'll take a picture of each child on the first day of school and put them at the bottom in the "At Home" area and every day as the children arrive for school they will find their name/picture and put it up in the "At School" area. This will help with name recognition as their name will be printed underneath their pictures! Fun!!

Our Math Bags! Every week the kiddo's will take home a little math bag and with their parent's help they will find five of any item around their home (i.e. - coins, rocks, lids, etc.) and bring them back on their next class day. We will then sort them into the blue baskets, count them and graph them!

Here is one side of our easle - I just put the magnetic paint on it today and plan to put the chalkboard paint on top of it tomorrow to make it a magnetic chalkboard!

Here is my supermodel showing the other side of the easel that will have dry-erase paint on it to make it a dry-erase board.  :)

A little welcome poster by the front door and then an attendance chart below. The children will put a little stick by there name at the end of every day and on the last day of class for the week, they can pick a little "prize" from our Treasure Chest!

Well, who is this cute little girl (with her goofy brother behind her)?

A picture of our Circle Time area! I had Travis cut all of my rug pieces in half so that they're not so big for their little fanny's and we can all fit in this area better.

Our cozy reading corner! I have so many great books and I plan to have books that pertain to our topic that week on the racks available for the children to read/look through.

Journals! The 3-day/week class will keep a daily journal so that we can see as the school year progresses how they are improving with the drawing/writing skills. I'm sure it'll be awesome to compare the first few days of school entries to those they do at the end of the school year!

My home-made graph! I bought one of those window shades that rolls up/down and drew some lines on it to make a re-usable graph. This way when we graph our weekly math bag items (or anything else), I don't have to make a new graph each time! I think I'm going to use some of the dry-erase paint on a bunch of notecards so that I can stick them on the graph and use them over and over again.

A box! YAY! Actually, this box has a coffee table in it (a cheap one of course) that Travis is going to put together and then cut (hopefully) two holes in the top of so that I can set a couple of white wash tubs into to use as my sensory table. Sensory tables are SUPER fun so I know this will be a popular spot!

So much fun stuff planned! I'll be sure to post more pictures or videos as the progress continues.  :)

It took me forever to get these pictures loaded so I think I'll head to bed now. The appraiser is coming tomorrow to appraise the house now that the addition is pretty much complete. Oh and tomorrow is Patrick's 10th birthday so an early Happy Birthday to him!!

Darn dentist!

Sooooo.....the kids and I got our teeth cleaned yesterday.  Kiegan - who in my opinion doesn't brush his teeth NEAR as well as I think he should - went first and came out with zero cavities. He was sort of bummed to learn that he still has two baby teeth (molars) to lose before he can get braces.  Yes, the ding-dong WANTS braces! I decided to go second to get it done and over with. Maddie wanted to watch so Lexi came back into the room with her and they sat in the chair next to me and watched.  Thankfully, I have zero cavities BUT I have stress fractures in my teeth from clinching them when I'm stressed out. You think I can sue those daycare parents that were so nasty to me and DCFS for causing me so much stress that I ended up cracking my teeth?!  No????  Darn......  So that's what I'm dealing with right now. BOO. Lexi had her teeth cleaned after me and she also had zero cavities, but her gums are pretty sensitive from having braces so she has to do warm salt water rinses and floss more to toughen her gums up.  Last but not least it was Maddie's turn! This was her second time getting her teeth cleaned and I wasn't real convinced that she'd be cooperative because...well....she was just being uncooperative that day as it was!  She surprised the heck out of all of us by hopping right up in that chair, holding her hand out to me to hold it and letting Nancee not only clean her teeth but polish them as well (something she didn't let happen the first time)! I was SO glad!! Nancee said that she probably had the most well polished teeth she's seen on any three-year old. I told her that I was pretty sure it was because the girl brushes her teeth multiple times a day. Maddie even let Dr. Handler come in and check things over without a fuss and walked out with a new Spongebob Squarepants toothbrush!  Overall, it was a cavity-free appointment but I'm the lucky winner of some fabulous stress fractures.  Yay. I haven't had any work done since 2005 so I'm bummed.  :o(  The funny thing is that now that I know I have cracked teeth, I'm extremely cautious about things. I think I slept with my mouth hanging open the entire night last night because I know for a fact that I have a habit of lying awake in bed, stressing about things and then falling asleep with my jaw clinched shut. So my throat was REALLY dry this morning!

I received yet another phone call tonight from a parent wanting to be put on my waiting list for fall classes. SO EXCITING!!  I also finally have quite a few of the items I needed to make a bunch of stuff for the preschool so I will be busy tomorrow! I was able to make my flannel board tonight so that's checked off the list. I also received a text message that the coffee table I ordered from Walmart is ready for pick-up. It was just over $20 and Travis is going to cut (hopefully) two holes in it for me to put a couple of buckets in to use as a sensory table. I was planning on bringing my sand/water table in to use, but it's SO big! This coffee table sits nice and low and is a good size for a couple of kids to play at. I have a LIST of different sensory tubs that I plan to use in it to go with our different themes/holidays. I'm sure it'll be a favorite play spot! I'm still waiting for my laminator to arrive - once I get a bunch of stuff laminated, I can put them up on the wall and the room will really start to come together. By the end of the day tomorrow, I'm hoping to have LOTS checked off my list! Cross your fingers that a certain little girl is cooperative!!

Till next time!  :o)

Inspired....

I love feeling inspired! Sometimes I'm inspired by certain things that I read, see or hear or simply by things that others do.

This past Sunday, I was inspired by Pastor Donna's sermon at church. She was talking about how God doesn't require us to pass some sort of "test" in order to be a follower - he simply wants us to be open-minded to what it is that he's preaching. We all make mistakes, we're all out there "searching" at one time or another in our lives and our job is to be the best person we can be! God doesn't expect perfection from us - he just expects us to give him our best. I feel like I need something to hang on a wall in every room of my house reminding me to "be the best person you can be". It's so easy to fall into that hole of negativity where I'm judging everything and everyone or letting the smallest things make me angry. I don't like being like that!  Tonight, for example, Travis gets home and asks me why I'm so grumpy. I just flat out told him that I didn't have a reason to be grumpy.  I just was! How silly is that? That's certainly not being the best person I can be. So I somehow need a constant reminder to be the best person I can be or basically to be more like my mom - she is always being the best person she could be, in my opinion!

Another moment of inspiration has to do with my preschool. I find myself getting very frustrated with the fact that I'm waiting on DCFS to give me the thumbs up. I also find myself still dwelling on the negative reactions I received from past daycare parents when I made my announcement (something I REALLY wish I could move past).  But when I stop and think about what it is that I'm building, the fantastic school that I'm going to be providing families, the fun learning that will be happening - I can't help but be inspired by myself! I also have to admit that receiving totally random phone calls or emails from people inquiring about my preschool is TOTALLY inspiring! That tells me that even though I'm unable to advertise right now, it's still getting talked about. That's definitely a good thing!! I've even started a waiting list for little ones that are not yet old enough to attend preschool but their parents want to make sure they get a spot for when they are - now that's a great feeling!!

Finally, I'm catching up on some blogs that I've lost track of for awhile. One in particular has always been enjoyable to read and I spent a good hour tonight just catching up on her life. She writes so effortlessly and with such ease that it makes reading her blog a true joy. I love how she can keep her blog entries focused on one main topic or at least make her seperate thoughts somehow tie back to that topic. Mine are always all over the place and more or less a re-cap of my day or the past few days. I suppose if I would write more regularly, then I'd be able to write about specific topics. This particular blog writer is also so very open and honest - she has no problems discussing her fears, her downfalls, things she wishes she were better at. I love that too. I struggle with those that are one way online (or on paper) and then act completely different in person or behind closed doors. Be true to yourself! Either people will love you or they won't - that's what I try to tell myself. I'm a natural people-pleaser so I struggle with being honest about my thoughts. I'm great at hiding what it is that I'm really thinking so that I don't get into an argument or tense conversation with someone. Plus Travis says that I talk too much and talk in circles when I'm trying to make my point! Darn him....so now I'm always paranoid about that too and try to talk less and in triangles when in an argument. LOL - that was a totally dumb joke. Sorry.

Anyway - here's to what will hopefully not be my one and only blog posting that actually focused on ONE topic! I'm heading over to Pinterest (just a warning: it's addicting!) to see what else I can be inspired by....

An early tour of the preschool room!

Not sure if this will even work - it's taken me half the day to figure out my new video camera and then the other half of the day to download this five minute video!  This is obviously an early tour of the preschool room since there's nothing up on the walls yet. Assuming this video works, I'll be sure to post more as the room comes along!

Happy Birthday, Travis!

Happy 32nd birthday to my hubby! Jeez he's getting old..... Yeah - I'm still older (and wiser), but he's creeping up in age too. No big plans tonight other than watching the Season Premier of ONE TREE HILL!!!! We've been waiting for MONTHS for this final season to start back up. Of course I'm gone most of the evening, but he knows better then to watch it without me. :)

Maddie has her 3-year check up today. I've been telling her about how we're going to go see Dr. Stalter so he can check her eyes, nose, ears, etc. She's not real excited about it though and keeps telling me that he's going to my owies. I really hope she cooperates when we get there! She's always been really, really cooperative for Doc, but now that we're at the "Independent 3's" stage I suppose she'll be a little booger about it. If I remember correctly, she was 35 pounds and 36 inches at her 2 year appt. last January and I KNOW she's grown quite a bit over the year so it'll be interesting to see how she measures up today!

We had her birthday party this past weekend and it was all PURPLE! The girl loves herself some purple.... She had her purple tutu on, we had a purple table cloth and purple plates and napkins. I baked up some white and chocolate cupcakes and tinted a container of frosting purple (plus I made a quick batch of rice krispie treats for people like myself that don't care much for cupcakes). It was great to see Grandma Sancken at the party too. She's definitely lost a lot of weight during her ordeal (but she did say that she put back on 20 pounds so that's encouraging!). Aunt Peggy and Kurt even made the celebration so we had a nice turn-out. Everybody got the memo on bringing purple-wrapped presents and she received a lot of great gifts! In fact, I spent Monday morning (before she got up) finding a way to fit all of her new stuff into her toy corner. One of her favorite gifts is her Fisher Price iXL that Grandma Joanne gave her. She plays her "puter" all the time and it's amazing to see little people get the hang of technology so quickly! She's always playing on my phone and knows how to turn it on and get to the games she wants. Same with the iPad - she doesn't need a bit of help on that either!

Last weekend, in general, was pretty busy from a baby shower to Maddie's birthday party to dinner with my friend, Katie, Saturday night. I love going out to dinner with friends minus little people. Don't get me wrong - I love my little person - it's just easier to relax and enjoy adult conversations without her. :) We ate at DeLong's so of course I had to get the fried pickles - I love those things!!

No big news on the preschool - I was told by another daycare provider that the DCFS chick told her they were not coming back to this area until winter was over because they didn't want to travel in the nasty weather. Ummmm.....unless I'm seeing something different out of my windows than she is - THERE IS NO SNOW!! In fact, I know she was in the area on Monday because she finally did a re-licensing visit for another daycare friend of mine who's been waiting since September. So I might try calling her yet again to see if I can convince her to come this way before the bad weather REALLY gets here. If this whole process keeps getting delayed, I don't know if it's going to make sense for me to open for just a few months or not? I don't know how many parents would be interested in sending their kids from February to May or March to May?? I could justify a January to May "school year" in my head, but beyond that I just don't know. Depending on how much longer this waiting game goes on, I might wait for my summer classes or I suppose I could still open and see how much interest there is. How frustrating! In the meantime, I'm trying to get different things checked off of my to-do list (which currently has 62 items left on it!). I started re-painting a big easel I got from a school in Blm. that was closing down. I just re-painted it all white and plan on painting one side of it with magnetic paint and then chalk paint on top of that (so that it's a magnetic chalk board) and then paint the other side with dry-erase paint (so that it's a dry-erase board). I also printed out all of my alphabet animals that I want to put around the classroom along with the alphabet letter they go with. I need to get them laminated (in fact, I have a big stack of things that I need laminated) and it's not exactly cheap so I broke down and bought myself a laminating machine and 200 laminating pouches to do it myself. It was a fraction of the cost of having a printing place do it for me and knowing that I'll probably be doing LOTS of laminating, I'm sure it will come in handy quite often. I've also decided to make my own Circle Time chart to talk about the date, days of the week, weather, etc. so I put all of that together and printed it all out (and of course that all needs to be laminated as well). I just need to get a big piece of flannel, mark it off for all the sections I need to make on it and put some wall grommets on it to hang it with. Hopefully it turns out ok! I'm trying to make a lot of the things myself to save on money. For example, this Circle Time chart - if I were to buy all of the charts I want it would cost me around $180 so I picked the sections that I wanted the most and am combining them into one home-made chart that will basically cost me paper, ink, flannel and my time. Much cheaper!

It's almost 8:30 and I haven't had any breakfast yet so I should probably get something to eat. I love when Maddie wakes up in the mornings - she sits at the top of the steps and hollers down at me, "Mom....MOM...." and when I finally peek around the corner, she says "Mom, you missed me." LOL She's right....I did miss her!

Welcome 2012!

I think that's only the second time so far that I've had to write (or type) 2012. Give it some time and I'm sure I'll slip and write 2011 at least once.....

Our New Year's Eve night out was a success! We headed over to our friends house around 6:30-6:45 I guess it was and just had a lot of fun chatting with everybody. We took our usual Busch Light, but my dear friend, Amanda, brought along some 100 proof Root Beer  Liquor for everyone to try and that stuff was DAMN GOOD! She filled a shorter glass about 1/4 of the way with the liquor and then filled it the rest of the way with Root Beer pop and it tasted just like those hard root beer candies!! My original plan was to just have one and get back to drinking my beer, but three glasses later it hit me and hit me HARD!! I was done...ready to go home....NOW. I was a pukey, hung-over mess most of Sunday morning but by late morning Travis made me a grilled cheese sandwich and I was pretty much good to go. I told him that even though that stuff was awesome I don't plan to ever drink it again! He said that I need to learn to pace myself, but I've NEVER been able to pace myself with any drink......ever. As long as one's in my hand, I'm constantly drinking it - that's why I use to be able to drink 12+ cans of Pepsi a day. If I have a drink I'm a'drinkin it! So we'll see....it'd be the perfect drink concoction to take camping with us so maybe by the time camping season hits again I'll be ready to give it another try. :o)

Overall, a lot has been accomplished this week! We got all three of Travis' pictures hung up in our living room plus some curtains put up as well. It's looking good! The preschool room is REALLY coming along now....it's pretty much ready for stuff to be hung on the walls. I used my video camera to do a little tour of the room and hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to figure out how to put that video into a blog. I really, really need to get crackin' on my to-do list of items that I would like to make (instead of buy) such as my Circle Time chart (I have a wish list of four separate charts that I found at Lakeshore Learning, but they would cost around $180 if I bought them all! So I'm trying to pick and choose the parts of each that I want the most and am hoping to combine them into one homemade chart - good luck to me!), flannel board, bingo dobbers, geoboards, sensory bags and boy does the list go on. Travis also put up one set of mini-blinds in the preschool room for me (Walmart only had one on hand - will pick up another set next time I'm there). My mom stopped by to help me empty out all of my craft tubs and figure out the best way to organize them all. I was becoming VERY overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I had and the extra help was needed!

Today, we took Maddie to The Children's Discovery Museum. What a fun place! At first she didn't know exacty what to do with all that was there, but once she got into it she was having a lot of fun. There's three floors of "stuff" for the kids to do, but I'd say her favorites were the floor piano, the painting area, the grocery store and the pizza kitchen. We were there for about two hours or so and then headed out for some lunch at DQ.

Oh my gosh - how could I forget this story?! Yesterday, Lexi had an ortho appt. at 4:30 and then we both had hair appts. at 5:30. Kiegan and Maddie went to hang out at my mom's (b/c her house is more fun than where we were going!). We were heading out to pick them up around 7:15 or so and as I'm walking off of my mom's porch (carrying Maddie), I guess I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk! It happened so fast, but at the same time it was like in slow motion b/c I remember doing what I could to make sure that I didn't land on Maddie and that she didn't slam her head on the concrete. Thankfully, she was fine but it scared her and I knew that I was hurt, but I just wanted to get back home. My right knee hurt really bad and I couldn't use my right hand so Kiegan had to buckle Maddie in and Lexi had to buckle ME in. When we finally got home (and it seemed like the longest ride home EVER), I went straight to the bathroom where I carefully took my jeans off (with one hand) and just tossed them in the garbage b/c the knee was torn out from my fall. Sure enough - my knee was a bloody mess! My right hand was even worse though and even right now I'm not so sure if my thumb is broken or sprained b/c it's about twice the size of my left thumb. My thumb nail also apparently bent backwards (you can see the line in my nailpolish where it bent) so my thumb friggin' KILLS and I've got blood and puss all underneath the nail. Plus my palm is all tore up too....I did quite the job on myself! Sleeping last night was interesting with trying to keep a blanket off my knee, but keep my leg covered at the same time b/c I was freezing. Plus I had to keep my right hand safe so that nobody/nothing would bump into it! Today, I can hardly bend my thumb (typing right now doesn't bother it a bit - I suppose b/c I use the side of my thumb?) and it's amazing how much I use my thumb for that I can't right now! Not to mention that I'm right-handed so doing things with my left-hand is SO HARD. My right arm muscles are also super sore today too. Boy, that fall quickly ruined a good day!

Tomorrow we're getting a new mattress delivered which will be GREAT! The one we're sleeping on now is broken on one side and I'm sooo tired of trying to balance myself on it (b/c of course that's MY side now even though I'm not the one who initially broke it). Maybe I'll finally get some good sleep! Even though the mattress does have one busted side on it, we're giving it to the boys to sleep on. Right now they each have their own futon which worked out fine at first, but apparently the mattresses on them are really thin so after awhile they started to be really uncomfortable b/c they can feel the bars through the mattress. So hopefully they can get some better sleep too until we break down and get them REAL beds.

We've got a busy weekend ahead including Maddie's birthday party on Sunday! Everything's going to be purple and I even found a picture of purple ice cream on Pinterest. I was hoping it'd tell me where I could find some purple ice cream b/c that would be totally cool, but so far I can't figure it out?

Until next time..............