Soccer!!!

The Soccer Season is well underway and Aiden is loving every minute of it. He still really wants to be goalie I think but that still makes me cringe. At his age, they take turns being goalie and no one wins any games. They are just out there having a great time.

He loves playing on the team with his "best buddy" Nathan and he has a crush on a little girl on his team (who is also in his AWANA class).

Aiden gives us a "thumbs up" before the game starts!!

Pregame stretches! That is Aiden doing the splits! WOW!

Aiden and Nathan (his best buddy) waiting for their game to start.

Game time! Aiden is ready to go and the little girl in pig tails in front of him is Emily, his "girlfriend" although she doesn't know that cause he is too scared to talk to her! HA!!

*MY* School Project

This week part of our studies include the importance of learning history. We starting with discussion of how God gives us the history of the world right in the Bible. He lists geneologies and tells us how long people lived. He tells us of important Historical events. So we looked at a simplified Biblical Timeline (they are only 6 and 4 after all) and found Creation Week, Flood, Tower of Babel, Birth of Christ, Crucifixion, etc. Today we were supposed to learn how even we have a history. To learn this I had this "totally cool" idea. It was gonna be SO much fun and they were gonna love it. Why, oh why, do we set ourselves up for such failure!?!?!

I found and had printed photos of our family history and the plan was the put them in order and glue them on a big sheet of roll paper and label what was happening in each photo and the year (or date for birthdays and such) that it happened. OK, these were all pictures of them when they were little except for a few. The "Cessna Family TimeLine" turned out as cool as I thought it would but they would not listen, colored on it where they weren't "supposed" to, and got a little crazy with the glue a few times. It is done but I'm afraid I did most of the work. :( Maybe they still learned something.

Here are some pictures. It wouldn't all fit in one shot so it starts on the top left and then continues in the second picture...

On a positive note, Aiden started addition in math this morning and did VERY well, both Aiden and Maverick did a great job reading me a story this morning, and they are doing a good job practicing their AWANA verses. So all in all it was successful morning I suppose!!!

Another Day in the Life...

I've been waiting to post till I could get some pictures uploaded but due to internet nightmares that isn't going to happen just yet...

So we've had one birthday and are having another tomorrow. Maverick is officially 4 and Aiden turns 6 tomorrow. They are getting so big. They also started AWANA and just love it! And I love that they love it! We've gone 2 Wednesday nights so far at a different church than we attend on Sundays (because our church doesn't have AWANA). Maverick didn't even cry last night. He still cries every Sunday when he goes back to class at our church. I am SO glad he likes AWANA! Aiden is learning memory verses and doing so well. There is a little girl in his class that is also on the same soccer team as he is. After the first night, I asked if he talked to her and he said "No mom! I just looked at her face. It is soooo pretty!" I laughed and thought oh my, he has his first crush. At least he is too shy to talk to her. HA HA!!

School is going alright although today is not going well due to the fact that the boys apparently are on speed. They've had to actually stick their noses in the corner today. And I'm about ready to lose my mind. However, the last 3 days have been simply wonderful. They were good listeners, did their homework well, and were just a pleasure. I should have been more ready for the crashing of that dream world.

But today something that made me LOL happened at lunch. It has shown me that even when the day is not going as I had planned God still does send little rays of sunshine (and I'm not talking about the real sun since it has been raining ALL morning). If we keep ours eyes and ears open, God is there to continually teach me how much fun it is to be a child with childlike ideas.

We were eating lunch and I was dreaming about naptime when Aiden said "Mom we should turn our house into a restarant."
Me: "Really, why do you say that?"
Aiden; (very excited) "Because then I could work in a restaurant!!!!" After this statement he told me where people could sit and how it would all work.
Me: "What job would you have?"
Aiden: "I'll take the money and put it in the bucket."
Maverick: "I'll bring people the food."
Me: "Who will cook the food"
Aiden: You
Me: We need someone to do the dishes and fill the drinks
Maverick: I'll do the dishes
Aiden: I'll bring the food AND take the money. What will we eat?
Me: You won't be eating. You will be working. You want to work at the restaurant.
Aiden: When do I get my day off?

I absolutely cracked up!!! I was laughing SO HARD! All the boys started laughing and we all just laughed till I cried. I think we will have a restaurant for one night and have Nanny and Pappy be the customers. Aiden is working on a menu which he wants on a chalk board by the door and not on paper. I've tried to encourage him to narrow it down to make it easier on the cook...but we still need to do some more "fine tuning." Right now I think it will be a "burger joint" since we can have hamburgers, hot dogs, and cheeseburgers without much difficulty. Gonna try to get this to work by the middle to end of next week. I'll let you know how it all goes! I wonder if he will still worry about his day off when the "restaurant" is only open for one meal!!! lol

Well, I have lacked horribly in the "blog update" area of life. It just doesn't occur to me most of the time. But when I looked and it has been nearly 2 months I thought...Man that is SAD!!!

So I'll give a bullet point rundown of the last few months/weeks.

• We had VBS at Scott Avenue and it was great!!! I love VBS!!!
• Shane, Maverick, and Aiden were picking blackberries and Maverick got into a nest of hornets. Eight stings, 1 ER visit, and a dose of steriods later, he was fine.
• Griffin got a mild dog bite on his face. Mild only because the dog didn't break the skin. It goes from the corner of his eye to the corner of his lip. He saw the dr during normal business hours. On antibiotics for a week.
• Maverick fell and put two teeth COMPLETELY through his bottom lip. Another ER visit, and x-rays later he is fine again. On antibiotics for a week.
• Aiden got his first 2 "big" teeth. Unfortunately, they came in behind his baby teeth and the baby teeth did not get loose. One trip to a oral surgeon and laughing gas later, he has 2 less baby teeth and $2 from the tooth fairy. We are praying those adult teeth move forward like the dr. said they would.
• We started Kindergarten. We are on week 4 now I think...I've kinda lost track in my mind. We are doing well and learning a lot and having fun! I am glad we didn't do public school. The very first week Aiden would have missed 2 days for this whole dentist thing.
• Aiden started playing soccer. Shane is assistant coaching the team with our youth minister. The first practice was last week and Aiden did well despite not having shin guards (shame on mommy) which he said he desperately needed. We have practice tonight where we will also have shin guards!!!
• Our garage is finally coming together. We are getting the roof going this week. I'm "hoping" by the end of labor day weekend it will be all enclosed. There will still be a lot of work to do but it will be weather safe and it shouldn't blow over.

So that is the excitement of the last few weeks/months. It is never dull around here which is maybe my excuse for not posting a note as often as I should. I kinda wonder if anyone is still looking in on my lonely little blog here.

For the next few weeks, the boys and I are continuing to study the Tower of Babel Story found in Genesis. From this perspective, we have studied cities, architecture and building (great with the garage project), and now we are studying languages of the world and hearing. Phonics and math are going well also. Well, off to read play snakes and ladders with Maverick, read some story books to Griffin and get ready for rest time before reading another chapter in "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" to the big boys.

Aiden's Rainbow!

This isn't a great copy but Aiden drew my a picture of a rainbow this morning. He was the only one up (he is up around 5:45). He even got all the colors in the right order. He is such a little artist!!

Monday Posting!

First a disclaimer, I am TIRED so you're just gonna have to deal with any typos or grammatical errors.

Shane and Aiden took the train up to Chicago on Saturday for a Father/Son weekend for Father's Day. They kept very busy from the stories I heard this morning at 1 am. (that should explain why I am tired). They went to Navy Pier, a short stop at the zoo, a Cubs game (the whole reason for the trip) and up the Sears Tower. Aiden had a blast and Shane said it was a wonderful trip! They took pictures but I have yet to upload to the computer. Maybe tonight....maybe not.

While they were gone Maverick and Griffin got to spend the night with Nanny and Pappy. They spent the entire day down there on Saturday and I went to a 12 hour crop (think scrapbooking-not corn) with a good freind. It was at Daisy Lane in MAttoon which is a wonderful place. My goal was to get caught up on Griffin's book since if you looked at it he was still in the hospital. I got 20 pages done on Saturday and the book is at Griffin's first birthday. Woo Hoo! Sunday while the boys were napping Cherish (the scrapbooking friend) came over and we did a few more pages. I did 9 more. So the scrapbooks are getting caught up. I shoud take some pictures of my really cool pages and post them. Maybe tonight...maybe not.

The scrapbooking made me even more excited for the garage. In the rec room upstairs I am going to have a little crafty corner so we can go up there and I can do a page here and there when I have time. It will be set up so I don't have to put everything back into crates all the time. However, due to the fact that we have had T-storms every day for the last week that isn't looking promising. Last night it rained almost 2 inches (1 9/10 to be exact) in 25 minutes. Our building site (the yard) isn't just wet...it is ankle deep with water. We just can't concrete in with that kind of water. We did get the rock laid so that *should* help...it won't have to be as dry. I need to contact our concrete guy and let him know that it is just too wet again. Maybe tonight...maybe not.

The boys are still doing some "school" work most mornings...we just have better days with some structure. Lots of Alphabet coloring sheets, and tray work. Not really *school* but time spent at the table. We are also seriously playing games and doing puzzles. I am not such a fan of games but I LOVE doing puzzles iwith them.

Well, things are getting a bit out of hand here so off I go to play referee and lunch lady. Oh the joys of being a stay at home mom...at least I don't have to wear the black and white striped shirt or the hair net. :)

Skirtchasers 2009 in Chicago

It has been a long time and I never really think that anyone has been reading anyway so I never post. However, someone asked Shane today if all is ok since I hadn't posted in several weeks. So I am going to try to keep things updated better.

We are all doing well. I think that Maverick is doing better after starting to eat less processed food. Not everyone agrees but it doesn't really matter much to me anymore. Our previous diet was not bad but because of the brands we were buying we were still eating a lot of nonsense. As an added bonus, I am not getting headaches as often anymore either.

But this is not related at all to the title of this post. Last weekend, 6 friends and I went to Chicago for 3 days to run in the skirtchasers race. It is a 5k (3.1 miles) and all the women get running skirts and a 3 minute lead on the men. The men then "chase the skirts" to the finish line. Whoever crosses the finish line first, regardless of gender, wins $500!! I wish I could say that one of us won but we weren't even close. But, man did we have a great time!! Mom, Heather (my sister for those who don't know), my best friend Cherish and I went up early on Friday. It was a leisurely drive and we had a BLAST on the drive! It was a great start!

Saturday before the race, we went to IKEA for the first time...It was AWESOME!! It was a good thing Cherish brought her van since Heather got an area rug! And I did a bit of damage in small stuff.

Then came the race. I finished 2nd in our group with a finishing time of 33:41. Not my fastest time but I'm pleased with it. Heather was 3rd in the group and finished in 36:56. Mom finished in 46:19. We are all happy with our time. This was Heather's first race and she has "caught the bug." We had such a wonderful time!!!

Here is our group before we ran. From left to right...
Mom, Heather, Cherish, me, Nancy, Jamie, Robin!

Me mom and Heather pumped post race!!

All the single "skirts" and "chasers" could get a sticker to mark them as wanting to be "caught." Heather stuck hers on her butt!! Is anyone surprised?!?!?!

Cherish and I before the race started!