Look at me! Trying to catch up yet again. My goal is to be mostly caught up before Flynn gets here! A girl can try right?
For me, my birthday kicks off the fall season! 2018 was a big birthday. I turned 30! Just looking at that number to describe my age feels a little weird still. My awesome and very nearly Irish twin brother, Scott, called me to wish me a happy birthday the night of my birthday right as I was just about to put the kids to bed. After our call I realized how everything I was doing while we chatted made it so fitting that I was now 30! When he called I was walking toward the garage to collect a favorite water bottle for bed time from my minivan that had been left in there by one of the kids. Then I had to apologize to Scott for calling the dog out of the van because she was busy eating the snacks off the bottom of the car that had been dropped after Jane's gymnastics class earlier that day. (I love having a dog vacuum cleaner!) I kept up the conversation while I put the sheets back on Atlas's bed from washing them earlier. Finally I had to tell him goodbye when the kids walked in the room to read books for bedtime. Can you tell I'm a 30 year old mom with 3 young kids? It sure sounds like it to me! If you would have told my 20 year old self about my 30 year old life now I'm pretty sure I would be thrilled with it. I am basically living my dream! A loving husband of 7 years and counting, having our own house in Kingwood, an obedient dog, 3 kids ages 4, 2 and 0, living 5 minutes from my parents, home schooling, being apart of my old home school group, and great jobs to supply all our needs. Pretty much everything I ever wanted. God is so amazing.
Fall also means the return of park day and going to story time at the library! Jane and Atlas love to sit with the statues outside the library and jump off the concrete steps. I found storytime to be a little bit of a struggle having to help Jane with her craft and keeping Atlas from acting out while wearing Xan or sitting with her. I also realized that when we did storytime the kids were ready to leave the park faster than normal. I guess it was just a little too much activity for the day. So I decided to cut out story time on Tuesday after a month or two of doing both and make staying longer at park day more of a priority. We still go to story time if park day is a rain out or it's just too cold! This was my second season of running park day and I decided it would be really nice to start a weather update Facebook group since I was getting multiple texts on a morning when the weather for park day was iffy. It has worked out great! It's a perfect place to match faces with names, have a reminder that it's park day and find the owners of items left at the park in addition to the weather update purpose. I really think it's helped our attendance! Most weeks we have about 10-15 families and on really good weeks we have around 20!! Amazing!
I don't know who loves park day more, me or the kids. ;) I just love the community of home school mom's we have in our group. So much encouragement and friendship! Most of Jane's best friends have come from Heart park day! Xan has fit right in no problem! She is happy to be in the carrier for the majority of the time. She loves to swing in the baby swing! I bring her bouncer and put her down to nap in it anytime she falls asleep in the carrier. If it's a cold fall day I'll keep wearing her for the extra warmth! Atlas really enjoys playing cars and trucks with the big boys and Jane usually has one of her friends there she runs off and plays with. We all have a really good time. It's always a bummer when we have to miss it for weather or sickness reasons. (When my kids saw these pictures Jane commented with lament on how it'd been ages since we'd been to the park. It's the end of August 2019 now and when I told them we were going back to park day each week again in just 10 days they responded with jubilation! We are all so ready for fall right now. Haha!)
This school year I decided to add a couple of more set play dates to our schedule each month. The first one being at The Woodlands Church indoor playground. I found out this was a good mid point between us and our good friends the McNairs so we could still make sure we saw each other once a month. I also made it a Heart event so home schoolers had a play date they could attend if they wanted to. It's about a 30 minute drive from Kingwood so we never had many people from Heart show up, but I didn't mind since we were really there to see the McNairs. It's a huge playground! two stories high. It's really fun, but it's hard to keep track of my kids! The door to the outside is not very far from the playground and there is nothing preventing them from wondering out there other than the door being too heavy for them. They could also start wondering around the huge church if I don't keep a good eye on them which Atlas did a couple of times since he was still 2. He didn't get far, but still! I really like the playground, but it does end up being a lot of work for me. I could handle it once a month though! A couple of times I was able to meet up with my good friends Katie and Melody there too. It's a great spot. It's pretty awesome that the church allows the public to use it just about everyday. What a great ministry!
I also did a once a month play date at Humble First Baptist since it's so close and such a fun indoor playground. We had better attendance from Heart members from that one. But that's kind of expected since it's way more centrally located for most members of Heart. The Humble playground has much more limited hours, but I like it so much more! It's a little smaller than The Woodlands but it's still really big in my opinion. Also it's enclosed, so they can't just go wondering through the church or try to get outside easily. I can watch all exits from the playground a lot more easily as well. The visibility is so much better too. I can see where the kids are at any point of the playground. We also love the three slides together. They go super fast and we can all do it together. We really looked forward to our Humble playground dates each month. I almost wanted to go more, but our schedule was already full.
In September, just shy of Jane's 1 year anniversary of starting gymnastics at Rowland Ballard, Jane was invited to be apart of their Kinderstarz program. It's a program for young girls who are showing promise with their gymnastics skills to be able to have a more challenging class and be apart of practice meets if you chose to do so. I was really excited when she was invited! But we really loved the people in our Wednesday class and all the available class times for Kinderstarz were later in the day, like right at dinner time. I decided we would try it and see how it went. If I didn't like the time or it seemed like Jane stopped having fun we would go back to our regular class. But once Jane went to her first class she was hooked. She seemed to really enjoy the challenge and the extra attention paid to the details. I really did not like the class time. It was after school was out so the gym was extra busy!! There was barely enough seats for the parents to sit in. It messed with dinnertime and Jane was more tired by that time of day. But I decided to stick with it since Jane really liked it so much better. We ordered the meet leotard and decide to try out at least one meet to see what Jane thought. I was not going to push her into competitive gymnastics. As much as I am a proud parent, she doesn't show any Olympic type promise. Honestly, she's about average. But if she thinks it's fun we'll keep doing it! I have really enjoyed watching her improve throughout the year. Meet season didn't start until November so I'll come back to that later!
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| A whole fall set up was put up while we were at the woodlands playground. The kids loved running in this little maze! |
Around the same time we started Kinderstarz, I decided to try out Awana for the first time. I had really loved going to Awana when I was a kid and I would love my kids to get to experience it too. Of course I didn't start until 3rd grade but I thought we would try to see what we thought. The only problem is Awana is on Wednesdays around 6ish. Which again is right during dinner! And my kids are all very tired by then. When I was growing up Awana was at 5 or so and on Sundays. Sooooo much nicer. So the time was already a problem. When we showed up it felt so busy! I went to a small Awana group where just about everyone knew everyone else there no matter the age. I wanted to volunteer in Atlas's Puggles class while Jane did Cubbies. Alexandria was only 6 months at the time so I figured I could just wear her while I helped in Atlas's class since she was such an easy baby! At first when I offered to help out the woman in charge was so pleased. Well, I filled out the paperwork for the background check and when I went to give it to her I mentioned that I would like to have my baby with me in my son's class and I stressed just how easy she was. She looked bewildered said "Oh, we don't encourage that kind of behavior." It was something about her tone and the way she worded it, but I was super offended. I don't get offended easily. I said, "Ok, well, I'm not comfortable leaving her with someone else I don't know at this point." She seemed so confused by my answer. I decided right then we wouldn't be back. In fact I would never go back to that church. I didn't understand why me wanting to have my baby with me was such a foreign concept. I stayed near Atlas's class so I could hear what was going on and I did not like what I heard. They all sounded so angry in their corrections to the kids. Seriously, I don't care that you are part of a church and passed a background check. It means NOTHING to me. I don't know you. I don't trust anyone with my kids before my kids can explain to me with words exactly what happened when I wasn't around. You can call me crazy, I don't care. Sam and I are the same way about this issue and we aren't changing our minds. Atlas saw me during playground time and tried to come out to me, but they didn't even give him the chance they just kept dragging him back off to play again. I would have happily taken him out of the class and just hung out with him until Jane's class was over. Everything about the experience was bad. I hated it. Jane came out and said she loved it. Of course. She's a social butterfly, I knew she would love it. Sorry kiddo, it's not worth it. Maybe when everyone is a little older and we find a club with a better time and attitudes. I didn't take any pictures while we were there. I was super uncomfortable and all I could think about was leaving. One of the longest hours of my life.
Back to happy times! We love our friends the Combs! It's so nice to have friends so close to us and are planning to home school too. Living just two doors down from my parents makes it really convenient to have play dates! As long as neither of us have anything planned the day I go visit my parents we stop by the Combs house first to play. Jane and Paige look like they could be twins even though they are a year apart. They have been mistaken for sisters a few times. They both love Elsa! ;) The boys share a love of vehicles. It's pretty perfect. Here's to many more years of friendship!
My cousin Amanda got married in the summer in Punta Cana! So happy for her!! But unfortunately most of the family couldn't afford the trip out there. So we had a family reception for Amanda and Jonathan at my Aunt Lisa's house in October. We all picked out songs beforehand and my Aunt created a playlist. We had lots of fun dancing and enjoying the music together. When a new song came on we tried to guess who's pick it was. Fun was had by all! This blog post is so behind I can wish my cousin Amanda a Happy 1st anniversary! :D
For a couple of weeks we drove by a local pumpkin patch two or three times a week. Every time we went by the kids could ask if we could go! So in mid October I finally found time to stop by. They loved it! They happily sat in the photo op spots and Jane really wanted her picture with the ghosts. I let them pick out a small pumpkin that we could paint or decorate in some way. As we were looking around it was sprinkling but then it started to really rain! We ran over to the covered area to pay for our pumpkins and wait it out. It didn't seem to be stopping anytime soon so the sweet ladies that were working there helped us to our van with their umbrella.
About two weeks after our rainy trip to the pumpkin patch our home school group had a Story time event at that same pumpkin patch. They were so happy to go back and with their friends this time! Some of the little attractions were covered up last time because of the rain, but this time they got to play. There were pumpkins to hammer golf tees in, a corn box with prizes and a water pump ramp with rubber duckies. They also enjoyed walking through the creepy maze with their friend Paige. They have asked me many times when they can go to the pumpkin patch again. And since I'm writing this almost a year late I can finally say it's very soon!
At the end of October it's time for Fall Festivals! Jane looks forward to it all year long. Last year we went to a three church wide festival called Fall Festival on the trails. They have it the weekend before Halloween.and basically you can walk the greenbelt trails to get to a fall festival at three different churches. The movement of everyone helps it not feel too stagnant and claustrophobic. But the crowd from last year to this year was a huge increase! Even with everyone moving around it still felt super busy and kinda hard to get around. It was still doable though. We had a great time. Jane wanted to be an Ice Skater Princess after I found this outfit at the thrift store for 50 cents. She wore fuzzy slippers for ice skates and of course she had to have a crown. I let her put on make up for the first time to complete the look. Atlas's costume was also 50 cents and perfect because he loves transformers. I got to pick Xan's costume and I got this princess Leia costume for just a couple of dollars. She was just too adorable in it!! She got a lot of attention. We even found another Leia to take a picture with. The costume is roomy enough I can probably use it again next year! I don't think I'll be able to resist getting to use the cuteness again!
It was a warm Halloween! I kept worrying that the kids were too hot in their costumes. But they all seemed to do just fine. I was very thankful my mom was able to come and help me keep up with the kids. We got some candy, jumped in a few bouncy castles, played a few games and Jane got her hair colored. We only had time to visit two of the churches before the event was over, but we did run into a few friends while we were there and caught a picture with our old neighbor and good friend Whisper. Next year I plan to get there like 15 minutes early to try to beat the crowd. Hopefully it's not even busier!
Our home school group was invited to take part in a Halloween parade at a senior living center. I found out "parade" meant walking around in a circle collecting candy and prizes from the citizens, which was perfect. It was great to see the smiles on their faces, both young and old. The young for getting the fun treats and the old getting to watch the kids in all their adorable costumes. This time Jane was wonder woman and Atlas was Buzz Lightyear. Xan was Leia again because it is just too cute. She got a lot of attention again and a couple of people asked if they could take her picture. A week or so later someone saw us at a playground and recognized Xan out of costume as the baby Princess Leia! She's famous! Haha! Anyway, we all enjoyed the parade and hope they do it again next year!
Halloween was a total bust. We had planned to go to another fall festival with a friend, but it was raining. They had moved the festival inside and the line to get in the church was super long!! We ended up getting into the side building that had the bounce house without any wait. We only stayed like 30 minutes or less. It was so packed and hard to get around. We got like two pieces of candy. We met up with our friends, the Combs and decided to just go home, we said goodbye and went by the chickfila drive thru for some ice cream as a consultation to the kids for having to go home.
Going to the fall festival on Halloween was not my original plan. I'm not a Halloween person. Honestly growing up I would count down the days until it was over, so I wouldn't have to see the decorations everywhere anymore. I am not into anything spooky or scary. I extremely dislike that sort of "thrill". I don't believe evil should be celebrated. The spiritual war is vastly underestimated. My family's tradition on Halloween was to turn off all the lights and watch a movie. Basically we were hermits on that holiday. We did go to a few fall festivals when I was young and I liked them well enough. Recently I read an article about being lights on Halloween instead of hiding and being the best house on the block. We have nothing to be scared of if we have the power of Jesus with us. I thought about it and decided sometimes a good offense makes the best defense. Now being the best house doesn't mean the best scary decorations or anything. To me being the best house on the block is having the best hospitality. So I thought holding a small fall festival of our own in our front yard would be really cool. Like having great candy and a few games and maybe even offering some grilled hot dogs, water and caprisuns. It might take some planning, but I was excited about the idea. I presented it to Sam and he wasn't against it completely, but for some reason he felt like it just wasn't the year to get started. He couldn't really explain it, but we decided to listen to his intuition. And of course it ended up raining all evening on Halloween and it wouldn't have worked anyway. Maybe next year!
In November we took our first trip as a family of 5 and in our van! We had been trying to plan a trip to my cousin, Stephanie's house for a few months and rescheduled a couple of times. Finally we made it out! It was so awesome to have the van. Sam drove and I sat in the back with Jane so I could reach Xan and Atlas easily. It went pretty well, but Xan doesn't like long drives and fights naps in the car seat. Her nap only lasts like 45 minutes in the car seat too. So she was kinda tough, but the other two did great. It was worth the trip! Steve and Sam have similar personalities and Sam has an easier time hanging out with him than most people. My cousin and I have similar ways of doing things too. Growing up we weren't very close since she was a good amount older than me. But now we both have kids similar ages and she's become my closest cousin. :) They have one of the coolest houses I've ever stayed in. Their heated infinity pool with a view of the Austin skyline is always a treat to swim in. The kids love it! It was great to get to swim in November! They worked hard to be able to have their house. They own and operate 2 (almost 3) 24 hour coffee shops in Austin, Bennu Coffee. Check 'em out if you're in the area. Also Chameleon Cold Brew is their creation. You can buy it at HEB. When the brand was sold to Nestle they had the funds to buy the house of their dreams. I was so thrilled for them and we love to go visit! They are super generous and hospitable people. We love the Williams!
The kids love to play together. Of course there are always the regular squabbles of what to play or someone not sharing, etc. between kids of their age. But they usually find a way to play together happily. Jane and Atlas keep talking about going back to Colin's house! Atlas has asked for it to be his prayer many nights. While we were there Scott and Anna were able to come join us for dinner one night since it's just about a 30 minute drive from their house. Steve grilled up a delicious dinner and I was so stuffed I couldn't even try everything! Stephanie ordered some tiff's treats to be delivered which I had to find room for since they are my favorite cookies!! Before Scott and Anna had to leave to get Ellis to bed we caught a quick picture of all the Daugherty Great Grandchildren. 6 and counting!
On our last day we headed out right after breakfast and decided to go by Scott and Anna's house before heading home. We chilled for a while, played some soccer in the backyard and then Scott took us down to see the river and the kids enjoyed trying to skip rocks like Uncle Scott. We left to head home from the river and to try to catch naps on the way. It was a great trip and good practice since we had already planned trip to Dallas for Christmas. Which is a longer trip. Hopefully Xan is doing a little better with car trips by then.
This fall marks one year since Jane started going to gymnastics at Rowland Ballard! It's been a great year and so much fun to watch her learn and develop through the year. Coach Shelton is our favorite coach, he's also the kindergym director. He's pictured here helping Jane with her form on the balance beam. He really cares about each of the kid's improvement. When Jane gets something down she's been working hard on for the first time he'll be so happy for her and then try to catch my eye and see if I was watching too. He really cares if the parents are interested too. He had so much confidence in them and I saw Jane's confidence grow because of it. I'm usually more nervous with a male instructor, but he made sure he was very intentional of being respectful of their personal space and only touching them when they definitely needed help with their technique. He's made the whole experience exceptional. Unfortunately someone forgot to let me know about the group texting app that I needed to have to know the information about the practice meets Jane could be apart of. I knew when the first meet was(In November), but I was never informed about how to sign up. So finally when I figured out I needed to sign up on the parent portal coach Shelton informed me it was too late to get Jane in. :( We were all looking forward to it. It was kinda a bummer. But I realized it was probably good because Jane could use another month to practice before she did a meet. I made sure I had the app right away so I wouldn't miss the next one! (missing the team app must have had something to do with not having a smart phone and just an iPod touch. The invite was probably texted to me but didn't come through on my dumb phone. Haha!)
Back in my summer recap I wrote about our first attempt to kick Jane's thumb sucking habit. You can read it here. So in November we decided to try again. This time I told her she needed to not suck her thumb at all for at least two weeks. We did our calendar again to count the days and this time she stopped sucking at night too. She started holding her lamby instead of sucking. I asked her what she wanted to earn this time and she said she wanted a big beach ball. So that's exactly what I got her! She was so excited. She did awesome. This time it worked for good. Because at the time of writing this it's been almost an entire year and she has never reverted back. And I am pleased to report the beach ball is alive and well with no leakage. So if you're looking for an affordable, sturdy, fun, big beach ball this is the one to get!
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| All my cuties ready for Christmas! |
That's the end of fall 2018 for us! We were all so excited for the holiday season! I bought them all Christmas jammies in November and they wanted to wear them all the time. The polar bear jammies Atlas is wearing in that picture became his very favorite. Even more than paw patrol and Cars jammies. I have no idea why, but I do find it pretty cute. ;) Finishing this post at the very beginning of September 2019 makes me so excited for what's to come for us this fall. I love the different seasons and all the fun each one brings. Here we come fall 2019!
Isaiah 40:7-8
"The grass withers, the flower fades,
Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.”
