Maddie at Kindermusik & with her new sand/water table

Playing in her new sand/water table!



See the nice umbrella there?? Well, after the storms that went through this morning, it no longer exists!

Shakin' her shakers!

We play with lots of different musical instruments!

Maddie REALLY liked the hoola-hoop - so much so that she became very irritated when it was time to put it away!

Dancing in a circle!

Clapping our hands to the song!

Close-up!

Marching in a circle!

Pictures - some old & some new!

Maddie wants to eat everything out of a bowl now - she's such a big girl!

Sorry for the sideways pictures, but Maddie thought getting in the jumper would be fun! You should have seen me trying to pull her out of it....it was quite a task!

I believe we were on our way to Grand Bear Lodge....

The short-lived days of our swimming pool....

Bruiser when he was just a little squirt!

Our home-made sled (I believe it's the hood of a car?)

One of my favorite pictures of the three!

Feeling some stress....

Well, the summer is not going as planned as far as my daycare goes. I was pretty excited as the school year was coming to an end because I was going to have a full house all summer long (I lose three families every summer because the parents are teachers so my summers tend to be slow). That excitement has turned to worry and now stress....I'd say the problems with the economy have hit me. I have a handful of families who have either lost their job or have been laid off within the past week so I am now bringing in about 1/3 of what I was. Not good on the checkbook! I could easily take on more kids, but that would put me over the number of children I'm allowed to have once school starts back up because those three teacher's families will be back (not to mention that two of those three families have new babies!). It's sort of impossible to find families that need summer-only care. So we just need to get through the summer......I just keep telling myself that it will all work out. It just stinks to be so ahead of the game financially to being back to worrying about paying bills on time. It doesn't help that we now have braces to pay for and that Kiegan's sessions are no longer covered by insurance and are completely out-of-pocket! But this is life right??

Ok - I'm done with the "poor, poor me" crap! My Aunt Leslie called this morning to let me know that my Grandma's sister - Mary Ellen - passed away last night. This is my dad's side of the family and I have such great memories of Aunt Mary! Before my dad passed, we use to have game night on Saturday nights at my Dad/Grandma's house and Aunt Mary was such a hoot!! She hadn't been well for quite a few years due to Alzheimer's and Aunt Leslie said that she had really taken a turn for the worse here recently so as sad as it is that she has passed, it's also a blessing because she is no longer suffering.

Now that the stress of it all is over - I can talk about the situation with my mom! She recently had a procedure done in Blm. and on the way home she suddenly passed out (my step-dad was driving). So he took her straight to the Pontiac hospital and they decided to keep her overnight for observation. Not sure if many people REALLY know how I handle stuff like this since my dad died, but I don't really handle it well - yet I also don't let people know that I'm not handling well. I just keep to myself and push it all to the back of my head. I have this amazing ability to just ignore situations like this and go on as though everything's just fine or I just crack jokes about it to lighten the situation. Kind of odd....so I've been pretty stressed over this b/c my mom is SO NOT suppose to get sick....ever. While they had her in the hospital, they took some pictures of her heart and did a stress-test or something as well. They found a "cold spot" in her heart that is a possible sign of blockage. (I think I'm getting this all right.) So they let her go home, but wanted her to see a heart specialist who ended up wanting to do an angiogram to check for blockage. Well, that was done today and there was NO BLOCKAGE FOUND! Talk about RELIEF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm just not sure how I would do if something had been found to be wrong with her. She's my bestest friend.

Ok - onto happier stuff now - seriously Heather! This past weekend I took Lexi & Kiegan over to my friend, Shannon Vincent's house. Shannon is a VERY artistic person who is bothered by the fact that our schools are getting rid of art class and has taken it upon herself to provide some sort of art for kids in town. Her first class was on tye dye and Lexi & Kiegan loved it! They were each able to tye dye a shirt for themselves and I also found a couple of Maddie's shirts that were stained and they each took one to tye dye for her too. They look pretty awesome! I'm curious to find out what her next class is going to be about!!

Maddie also had her first Kindermusik class on Saturday - she did so great! There were probably 10 kids or so in the class and I'd say she was one of the youngest there. The whole class is based on dancing or moving to the music with meaning. The class started with an opening "Hello" song where we went around and sang hello to each child and did a different movement (tap your legs, clap your hands, etc.). The theme is "Zoo Train" so that day's class focused on elephants and we had to march like elephants and swing our trunks (arms) to the music. We also had to all walk in a circle and do certain movements, the instructor had boxes of musical instruments for the kids to use and at one point she put a blanket in the center of the room for the kids to sit on while she read a story. Maddie participated in every bit of it! The only problem I had with her was that she kept wanting to whip her musical instruments across the room. I'm excited for the next class though!

We also had Jake Dronenberg & Brianne Harris' wedding to go to Saturday night. We didn't make it to the wedding, but we went to the reception and waited and waited and waited which is not easy to do when you have an almost 18-month old with you! Travis was going to give the bridal party 15 more minutes to show up and then we were going to leave. Of course they showed up! So we stayed to eat....or should I say throw our food down our throats and then we headed home. Maddie had been patient long enough!

I think in a couple of weekends we are going camping at Jellystone Campground in Amboy with the Blaetz's. Of course I am having a very difficult time thinking that this is an ok thing to do given our current financial situation this summer, but I can't always convince others to see things my way! I know the kids will have a BLAST - they have so much there for them to do! Three pools, waterslides, paddle boats, fishing, crafts, etc. I'm just having a hard time with the fact that we are bringing our own camper to stay in yet we have to pay almost $60/night to camp there. Oh well....I can't be a Debbie Downer! LOL

I finally found the memory card for my camera and there were some great old pictures on there so I'll post some on here!

Good night all! It's 10:00 and I'm heading to bed....

Picture time!

Here are a few shots of Maddie's rash from the Fifth's Disease....the pictures really don't do it justice b/c it was BAAAD!

This is what happens when I go to the bathroom for two minutes:

And this happened in the van! I gave her a pen & a piece of paper to keep her entertained and I guess her leg worked better than the paper.

Riding in the tractor with Daddy!

I made some apple dip using marshmallow fluff and I think Maddie REALLY liked it!

This was how she fell asleep one day! The full story is that I was sitting on the floor in front of the chair while she was sleeping and she suddenly let one rrrrrrrip right at the back of my head.....she didn't budge an inch, but I decided to move and sit in front of the couch instead. :o)

Future Diva!

I've been able to put a pony (or two) in her hair pretty much every day now!

Here is the new outdoor play area!

This is a new wall locker I bought with some of my grant money so now the kids can hang their own coats and put their own shoes away.

My mentor that I had for the project was able to get me this big bulletin board for free from her church. I love decorating it to match whatever theme it is we're learning about each week!

Here is the new book shelf that replaced the tub I use to have the books all piled in.

Here is what the toys looked like BEFORE:

And here they are AFTER! This cabinet was my biggest purchase and I LOVE it - I can close & lock it whenever I don't want the toys accessible. It's also on wheels and moves easily around the room.

Time to update!

You know - I always intend to get on here more often to update, but although life is ALWAYS busy it's just not always exciting enough to talk about (which is ok - we've had enough excitement to last awhile).

Lexi had her spacers put in last week which was Step #1 of getting her braces on and has survived them just fine. So far she's taking the rule about not chewing gum to heart! She was suppose to go back today for bonding (whatever that is), but it was rescheduled to the 22nd b/c Dr. Unterman was going to be out of the office (I see a trend starting with this constant rescheduling that's been happening, but I'll take that over putting her through the stress of Dr. Carly any day!!) This news will not going over well with her dad who has been moved to Georgia with his job. He is expecting her to come and stay down there for six weeks over the summer - good luck to him with that happening! We do NOT think that's a good idea for many reasons and if anything, she MIGHT be able to go for just a handful of weeks. She's also too busy! Obviously we're in the middle of getting these braces on and I'll be damned if she's going to miss an appt. for that, she's joined 4-H so she has those meetings to go to and the fair to prepare for, and we're getting goats that she wants to be the caretaker of and the Billy Goat will be coming soon from what I hear (baby goats won't arrive until the fall). So like I said....she's too busy! I'm sure the news of her ortho appt. being rescheduled will cause him to put another nasty message about me on his Facebook page. I made an attempt a few weeks ago to come to an agreement with him about the $12,000+ back child support he owes me. I explained to him that at the rate he's paying it back to me that he'll still be paying on it when Lexi is in her 20's so I suggested he increase the amount he's paying each month. I guess that was a bad idea! He became extremely ticked off and then put on Facebook that he wanted to tie bricks to me and push my fat a** over a ledge. THAT'S the kind of intelligence I'm working with here people! LOL So if he still wants to be paying me money in 10+ years then so be it!

This week has been a busy one - Kiegan has four trips to Blm. which thankfully my mom has offered to help out. We also have a SUPER busy Saturday coming up! A friend of mine, Shannon Vincent, has taken it upon herself to have some art classes in her garage/house to somewhat make up for the fact that the kids are losing out on art class beginning next school year. So Saturday morning is her first class about tye dye and I have Lexi & Kiegan going to that at 9:00. Then at 10:30 is Maddie's first Kindermusik class which I'm SUPER excited about! I know Patrick has a baseball game at 2 or 2:30 that afternoon and we also have a wedding & reception for Jake Dronenberg & Brianne Harris at 4:00. It'll be nice to have nothing to do on Sunday! Hopefully I can get my weekly Walmart trip out of the way tomorrow (Friday) night, but that means I have to get my list made during the day tomorrow.

I have all of my stuff in place from the grant and I LOVE IT ALL! The outdoor play area looks awesome thanks to Travis' help. We still have more to do to it, but I'm loving it so far! My days have really slowed down now that summer has hit b/c I lose a handful of kids whose parents are teachers. Sure the slower days are nice, but it's not so nice on the checkbook! It'd be nice if I could find some families that ONLY needed summer care for their children. I had a high school student contact me about co-op'ing in the afternoons next school year. I told her that I would love to have her out here, but I'm not sure how it will work. The afternoon's are slow b/c we have quiet time from 1:00-3:00 so there's two hours I'd be paying her for doing nothing - can't exactly justify that! So we will see.... Then I was contacted earlier this week by a college student who's taking some summer child care courses and needed to observe a home daycare for four hours so she was out here for a couple of hours yesterday and today. Very nice girl! She wants to be a 3rd grade teacher. :o)

Oh and we have a new member of the family: Doc! Doc is a German Shepard mix who is about two years old and has one ice-blue eye. We adopted him from an animal rescue who even offered us $50 for taking him, but we just gave that back and instead they used it to get Doc fixed which was fine with us! Doc is an AWESOME dog and Travis even admitted tonight that he loves him which is so funny to me, but I'm glad! Travis is building him a new dog house that will hopefully be done soon. He has a TON of energy and we're working on him with his manners b/c he likes to jump on people. One of us takes him on walks around the perimeter of the yard almost every evening and we even let him off his leash to play fetch with him which he is SO GOOD AT! Travis has even put him in the back of his truck to take him on rides to check the field. He said he's teaching him to be a good farm dog and Doc does great - never once has he tried to jump out! He also doesn't even attempt to chase cars that go by, but we're not so sure how he'll get along with Bruiser. He tested good with big & small dogs, but he's so excited when he sees another dog that I think it's overwhelming and it makes us nervous with Bruiser. So Bruiser only goes out when Doc is on his leash!

That's my latest update for now - I'm glad tomorrow's Friday! Oh - I forgot to mention that Maddie had Fifth's Disease last week which is just a super awesome all-over body rash and fever. She was COVERED in red spots! Thankfully they're not itchy and I kept my daycare open except for the one day that I took her to the doctor, but all of my families but two were scared of us and the one family that still came was hit with it too. It is VERY contagious, but it's nothing very serious (except to pregnant women b/c it's known to cause miscarriages). So she's over that now. I think I've got some pictures of her rash and some before/after pics of my daycare grant items that I'll put in a separate posting.

First ortho appointment!

Lexi had her first ortho appointment yesterday afternoon. It was just for records so they took xrays of her mouth and took impressions of her teeth. She said it sorta hurt when they did the impressions.....I just wanted to tell her to prepare herself for what's coming, but I didn't. The next step is to wait for them to call me to set up her next appointment which is when they start putting on the "hardware". I figure I'll keep taking pictures of her as it all progresses so here is her before shot (she just got out of the shower):

This week hasn't been too bad although I feel like I haven't really got much done around here. I ordered my final item for the grant money and it's the one that I'm most excited for and I think will make a HUGE difference with the organizational issues I'm having with all of the toys in the dining room. I should do before/after pictures of that too! I'll get on that.....

It's funny the things we notice with Kiegan and his improvements. He came downstairs tonight to read us a funny part in a book he's reading and he just zipped right through it and read it so quickly without struggling a single time that Travis was like "Wow - that was really great reading!" And if you know Travis - it takes a lot for him to notice stuff. :o) Kiegan apparently didn't realize that he would still be going this summer to his Blm. sessions, but I told him that they think he could be done by the time school starts back up so to focus on that.

I guess Patrick is playing baseball again this year. I'm sure I'll miss it all as usual, especially with these Blm. trips going on. I'm debating telling the kids that starting this next school year they have to play at least one sport, but like Travis said - there are just some kids that could care less about sports and I think Lexi & Kiegan are like their mother and just don't care!! Which is really fine with me - I would just like to see them more active.

Lexi has been given the responsibility of mowing our yard which she LOVES!! She said that next year for her birthday that's all she wants is to be able to mow. That's easy enough! She needs to work on mowing in straight lines and turning, but overall she's really doing great and I think she likes having that responsibility.

I'm working on Mother's Day gifts for the daycare kids to give to their mom's. With the help of a friend, I found an awesome website that showed step by step how to make fingerprint necklaces. How perfect for Mother's Day! So we've been working on those. I was also hoping to make paper roses with real flower seeds inside that the mom's could then plant and have real flowers grow, but those didn't turn out so well so I scratched that idea. I'll post pics of the necklaces when they're done!

Weekend Update

Another weekend has come and gone! This one wasn't near as busy and hectic as the last few have been which was nice. Friday night I got my Walmart run done and out of the way because I knew Saturday was going to be busy: garage sales in the a.m. and bachelorette party in the p.m. Sunday I didn't have anywhere to go and I was able to get the house caught up on (somewhat anyway)!





I'm hoping we don't get as much wind this week as we had last week! Our poor bunny foo-foo went for a ride last Wednesday when the wind picked up the shed she's in and completely flipped it on it's lid! I just happened to look out of the dining room window and noticed it and went flying outside to make sure she was still alive. The poor thing's cage was a crazy mess, but she was sitting in it with what I would consider a panicked bunny look on her face (not that I've ever seen different looks on a bunny's face before or anything - LOL). I called Travis right away and he was with Joanne buying her new Spyder motorcycle (she's a motorycle mama now!). The kids & I were heading to Blm. so when they got home, they came down and flipped it back over. Here's a picture of it still flipped over:





I'm starting to have stuff delivered that I ordered with my grant money! I think it's going to take a full weekend to get everything put together and re-organized. I'm super excited though!!! Hopefully this weekend we can zip to Blm. and price out some stuff to mark off the play area out back. I think all of these changes will make such a difference - especially when it comes to inside the house and getting all of these crazy toys organized better. I'm so jealous of those that can use their basement or have a separate building/area to have their daycare - that would be so ideal! My daycare seriously fills my every waking moment b/c there's so much I want to do, but I can make the best of it with what we do have. :o)

It's hard to believe that the school year is coming to an end. This summer is going to be different with Lexi being gone for a good portion of it. Her dad's job is moving him to Georgia for 2-3 years so she's going to be spending some time there this summer. I'm not real sure how I feel about that, but I don't have much of a choice I guess. He already has her in a panic b/c he told her this past weekend that he signed her up for softball down there. Lexi is just NOT into that kind of stuff - I think she has like "stage fright" or something. She hates being in front of people doing things (reminds me of how I was when I was her age!). So this summer could be interesting.

It sounds like Kiegan might be done with his Blm. trips by the end of summer! It all depends on how quickly he moves through this reading portion, but right now he's going through it so quickly that they're thinking about bumping him up a level already. So that's good news, especially since he may not be receiving as many services next school year b/c of all the cuts that are being made. Everybody cross your fingers for him!!

Lexi goes to her first ortho appt. tomorrow - I guess this first one is just "records" where they take impressions of her teeth and stuff. It's suppose to be about an hour and a half long appt. so I have to close my daycare early for it. I'll keep everyone updated on it all and will hopefully remember to take pictures of her as she gets her "hardware" put on. :o)

Maddie - oh she's a bully. I have a very light day today and she is bullying everyone that's here by pushing them, taking their toys away, hip-checking them to move them out of her way, etc. Has she figured out already that she's bigger than all of them and is using her size to get her way?? Gee, that could make for some fun days!