Ice Skating!

Over Christmas break we went Ice Skating twice. The casino near us has an outdoor skating rink for the season and even though it's not terribly big, it's FUN! The four of us went on Christmas Eve and we had such a good time ... the sun was shining, they had Christmas music playing and we just had a great time together. There was hardly anyone there that day so we practically had the rink to ourselves. 

Then we went again the following week with a bunch of our friends. 

We have such a great group of kids! We are so blessed! 

And I am so blessed to have these two special friends in my life! After skating we took the kids to get Gelato - it's so fun that the kids all hang out, talk and play together and the Moms can hang out and talk together. Fun for everyone!

As we were getting ready to leave it was starting to get dark and they were turning on all the Christmas lights around the rink .... so pretty! We are looking forward to going skating again, hopefully soon! 

Christmas Break FUN!

Since my girls are in public school I am always SUPER happy when school is out and we get time to be together at home. With Christmas break coming up I knew that I wanted to spend the time with them just having as much fun as possible. So I started a list of things we could do and set aside a little of my paycheck so we would have the funds to do it. 

The true blessing came when through a series of events they BOTH ended up with NO IPODS for the entire Christmas break ... I can't tell you how wonderful it was that they were not staring at those screens all the time! 

The other thing that I was pretty intentional about this Christmas was that they didn't get ANYthing for Christmas that had anything to do with technology ... no video games, no ipods, no phones, no computers, no tablets, nothing! They basically got clothes and creative/crafty items. Now we certainly did a lot of movie watching, most evenings snuggling up together for hours to watch movies ... and they also do sometimes play on the computer {their latest thing is Pinterest} ... but otherwise our break was such a nice, relaxing time of playing and being creative. 

Here are a few things we did:
They have always been wonderful artists thanks to my Father in law who gave them art lessons ... they received some new paints and brushes for Christmas so one day we stopped at Micheal's to get some new canvases and they spent most of that day painting.

One of the days we were blessed to celebrate Christmas with my Mom, her fiance {just engaged on Christmas Day!!}, and my brother Matt and his family ... the girls had fun playing with their cousins and we opened gifts and had lunch together and just enjoyed visiting and catching up. 

{Mom and Wayne}

{Stacy and Matt} 

Jilly also got a MARKER Maker for Christmas, something she had on her list and she was so excited, making markers several different times throughout the break. A couple of the other creative things they got were those LOOM band bracelet things - which they both spent HOURS working on. And Jilly also got a notebook thing where there are stencils and you create outfits and fashion ideas {hard to explain but it's cute}

 One day we needed to make some exchanges so we headed out of the house for a few hours, my hubby was sick that day and although it sounds mean we all wanted to avoid getting his sickness, so off we went. We went to a few stores, stocked up on some crafts at Micheal's, had lunch at Panera and stopped in to drool at Pier One - Haley commented that when she grows up she wants to furnish her whole house from Pier One - sure Haley, don't we all?! 

We also went out to lunch, then bowling with some good friends -- lots of fun with this group!! 

And another day we went Roller Skating with these lovely friends. 

We also went Ice Skating twice, once with family on Christmas Eve and once with friends - those pics will be in a separate post. 

And since the girls had some gift cards we did a little shopping ... after walking around Target for about an hour not knowing how she should spend hers, Jilly finally decided on a scooter! I was so happy she chose it because it was one item I had thought about getting her for Christmas, but just never did. With the cold, nasty weather lately she has been using it to scooter around inside the house for now. =) 

I am so thankful for this Christmas break ... we really had a great time together!! I was sad to see them go when it was time to go back to school. 

Summer Fun Lists & Charts

{{aka - the post about how to keep my sanity this summer!}}

 

every year for the last several summers we have created a summer fun list - just a simple way to check off all the fun things we HOPE to do throughout the summer.

 

now just to be clear, I have NO intentions of following any kind of strict schedule for the summer. it's a time to sleep late, be spontaneous and just relax... but I also feel like the whole house functions just a little bit better if we do have some semblance of order, know what I mean?

 

so here are the charts/lists we made for Summer 2013

 

first up - Bob and I are planning to run our first 10k at the end of August, being our first time I want to be sure to train well enough for it and I'll be honest, I usually slack on exercise in the summer months. so this is my chart to track my miles that I've run leading up to the race ...

 

 

next up is our official SUMMER FUN list ...

 

I am loving this cute washi tape that says 'like it, love it, etc'

 

and since we're lazier in the summer and busy heading off to the beach and other fun places, we tend to neglect our house more ... which is fine, but at some point it must get cleaned or we'll be living like pigs.

so instead of everyone having a chore chart we go by this very basic and loose schedule - each day has a specific chore we all help with - bathrooms twice per week helps keep them from getting nasty, same with vacuuming. then we have the dailies - simple things that help keep the whole house running more smoothly - the basic rule is to pick up after yourself. if everyone chips in with these few basic things every day it only takes a few minutes each day and we never feel like we're spending a whole bunch of time cleaning. I like that!

 

a poster to keep track of books we've read ... as you can see we just put it up. =)

 

and a boredom buster poster too ... because there's nothing I hate more than kids saying they're bored in the summertime ... so if they ask me the age old question of 'what should we do?!?!' I direct them to the poster to pick something ... {stuff on the left is mostly outdoor, stuff on the right mostly indoor}

 

and here they all are ...

I feel like this is the summer command center! hahaha

oh yeah, one more ... dirty clothes somehow always seem to get dumped in the hallway by the basement door and it drives me cRaZy so I put up this sign - and so far, it's been going much better!

 

and that's it! just keeping things loose and fun with just the perfect dose of structure to keep us all sane ... that's my kind of summer!

 

how about you? do you keep a regular schedule during the summer? do you have a daily plan or just go with the flow?