Life Interfered

Sometimes living life interferes with blogging about life.  Such has been my last month and a half.  I always face the choice between sleeping, cleaning, preparing for church and home school, spending time with Kelly, and blogging and sadly, of all those, blogging is my lowest priority. And I'm really trying to make a habit of never being in bed after midnight so sadly, my blog might continue to suffer.  We shall see.

First off, Bella graduated from preschool.  So cute.  Pretty much the identical ceremony as when Benjamin graduated from the same preschool 2 years ago.  I loved it.  The kids walk down the isle holding hands with a classmate, wearing a sash like a beauty pageant, and then they sing a set of songs as a class.  Then each child gets called up one by one and presented with their diploma as the teacher reads a little about them.  Bella's was "Bella's favorite foods are tortillas and pepperoni pizza.  Her favorite activity at preschool was eating snack.  When she grows up she wants to be a mom."  My favorite was the little boy who wants to be a tiger when he grows up.  Bella and her favorite teacher, Miss Melody:

If you ask Christian, he also wants to be a mom when he grows up.  I was busily cleaning around the toilet the other day (his aim has improved, but it's still a long way from perfect) when he came up to me and said, "I wish I were a mom so I could wear gloves and clean the toilet."
I laughed and said, "Someday soon I'll let you clean the toilet."
"When I'm a girl, right?"
"You will never be a girl."
"But girls are moms!"
"But you're a boy, so you'll be a daddy, just like your daddy."
"But I want to be a mom.  What do daddies do?"
"Go to work."
"I don't want to be a daddy.  I don't want to go to work."
"What do you want to do?"
"Stay home and play.  When I'm a dad, I will stay home and play."

Bella really enjoyed preschool but says she's not sad to be done.  That's kind of how I always felt.  I loved each stage of school but was always happy to move onto the next big and exciting thing.  For Bella that's staying home with me now.  Not terribly exciting, but she's happy about the idea.  We've begun "summer school" as a transition before our next phase.  So, I'm not only home schooling Benjamin, but have added on Bella and Christian for the summer too.  So far it's gone really well.  I combine elements of preschool as preparation for Christian, such as circle time and show and tell, with more advanced activities for the older two, such as science projects and math assignments on the computer.

We do a "daily five" - reading, writing, spelling, math, and social studies/science/art.  I plan an assignment/activity/game per child per section but often they join in on each other's if it looks fun and it takes us 2-3 hours in the morning a couple times a week.  They seem to really like it and get excited to begin.  I never have to force them, which I appreciate a lot.  I'm trying to make the most of the time I have left with Benjamin before he starts 2nd grade at his new school.  He got into the academically accelerated program to which we applied, so we are very excited for him to go there.  Just a little sad too.  I loved having the time with him this past year.  I'm so glad we did that.  It really brought us closer as a family and especially he and I really bonded.  I'm going to miss my boy next year.  Here we are fishing for lettered fish to help Christian learn his letters.  Benjamin is in Kelly's fishing float boat and Christian is pretending the pool table is a boat.  Bella pretending she was standing on the beach.

We tried to get in a few museum and zoo visits before public school officially ended a few days ago.  Sadly, we hit the field trip season.  The places were packed with school groups.  Luckily they usually had to be gone by about 2 and we could then stay and have the place to ourselves.  The three in front of the black bears:

Me and my cutie in front of the rhino:

This summer we're continuing our toddler playgroup for Christian,

 have a park days group for Bella where we meet at a different park each week with preschool friends

 

And we can finally have play dates with Benjamin's friends again now that they aren't in school all day.  We also still have piano and swim lessons.  Sadly soccer is over.  I have loved coaching Benjamin's team.  He's a good player, as were several of the kids on the team.  I loved those kids and really enjoyed being with them.  Christian has requested that I coach him next since I've now coached Bella and Benjamin.  I think that will be a lot of fun.

We've also signed up for Kids Bowl Free.  I don't expect to go too often, but it's but a lot of fun so far.  Except for Bella's refusal to wear the shoes because they weren't cute enough.  She finally came around when she saw she was missing out on the fun.  Next week it's off to Utah!  We can't wait.  It'll be so fun to spend time with family.  Yay for Summer!