Everything Monarch

With moving to first grade came new themes in new units which I’m very excited about. One of them being a unit on the monarch butterfly. Which I have completely fallen in love with! To the point where I brought home seven monarch caterpillars at the beginning of the school year and released seven butterflies. Six were females and one was a male. It was super exciting; my mom and my husband fell in love with them as well. It’s been a great experience and something to look forward to.

At school we have been doing everything monarch so I’m going to share a couple of things with you that we have done along with some pictures of us releasing our monarchs at school.

Work on Writing Paper: Using the clip art as a prompt students write a story and add details to the pictures. Want a copy for your classroom you can find it here, on my TpT site.

Unscrambled Sentences:

Want a copy for your classroom you can find it here, on my TpT site.

Interactive Reading:

 

Click here for Interactive Read Aloud questions for Great Migrations Butterflies.

This one here I absolutely love it’s not one that we read it to our kids but it has tons of great information.

Guided Reading Book:

Click HERE for a Free copy of my lesson plan for this book.

Glad to See Summer End

If you know me you know that I love summer; I am a warm weather kid.  I love the beach and the pool!! This summer has been less than stellar and I am ready for fall and some positive news. The summer started out on a high note with the birth of my twin sons (Garrett and Hunter) but unfortunately from there it hasn't been the best.

In the beginning of July my grandmother passed, this was a blessing but not something you ever want to experience.  She was 87 years old or almost 87 years old. She had dementia really bad, she never could remember who I was and most of the time barely recognized my mom. It was a blessing but she will truly be missed.

A couple of weeks later Jamie's brother passed very unexpected. That week was hard and definitely not something we expected.  He was only 57 years old! Jamie saw him just before the twins were born and he was doing great.  It was very hard for Jamie and something that he still thinks about every day.

In the beginning of August we took our first ever family vacation as a party of SIX. Because the Suburban isn’t towing the camper very well these days we took the truck.  It was very interesting to ride in a car for nine hours with three kids under the age of two but we made it! I hope to blog about our camping trip soon. :-) We had many first on this trip...First time we camped in the camper for a week.  Jamies first time in the outer banks. Boys first time at the beach. Jamie also got to go fishing on a charter boat.  And most importantly our first vacation as #LahockiPartyof6.  We also got got three stamps for our passport book the last one Jamie will tell you that I almost got us shot ,which is not true I just wasn't following directions very well.

Once we got home we had a blessing and also a scary event; my sister gave birth to her son 10 weeks early. It was very exciting and very scary!! I think this is the hardest thing for me to deal with. You hear stories all the time about babies being born early and being in the NICU but it doesn’t hit you until it happens to you or someone who you are very close with. Above all this is what I am having the hardest time with, especially since I am going back to work knowing that I have three very healthy babies and my nephew is not struggling for his life but he is struggling. It will be a very long road for them and I feel horrible and helpless all the same time.

So as you can see we have not had the best of summers. I'm looking forward to going back to work... I'm looking forward to teaching first grade. I know my boys and Henleigh will do amazing things with Natalie and they will grow so much.  Even though I am looking forward to going back I know it is going to be hard, much harder than it was when I went back after Henleigh was born. I can see it coming and I can see myself already tearing up whenever I start to think about it. My hope for the school year is that I learn a lot teaching first grade, my love for teaching grows, my kids thrive at Natalie's. I know that my daily chats with Mechelle will get harder but she will be in my thoughts and prayers everyday. I hope that we as a family can visit Mechelle, Mitchell, and Raylan as much as possible.   I know that everything will be OK and she will make it through this, she is stronger than she knows. One day all of our kids will be running around and playing in the backyard, we will look back on this with very fond memories and can smile about it.

Preserving Memories

The past couple of weeks has got me thinking about memories, I love capturing memories with my camera but also love looking at memories from the past in pictures. My grandfather and aunt loved taking pictures and we have boxes of pictures and even slides piled high in the basement. With the recent passing of my grandmother and Jamie's brother I have again started to think about preserving memories and ways to share them.

To preserve our most recent memories I love using ChatBooks. The app is connected to my Instagram account and is easy to use. By hashtaging my pictures ChatBooks creates a series for each kiddo and mails me the book every 60 pictures. They email 2-3 days before they print the book so I can edit it if I want. I also have a series for all of my Instagram pictures.

The books are 6x6 and are so easy to keep in a basket. Jamie and I often pull the basket down and just flip through them. Henleigh loves to pull the basket off the shelf and will point to herself on the cover.

I love this idea for storing them too. Now if I could just find pineapple book ends all would be complete. 😉

image taken from Pinterest

Want to start preserving your memories with ChatBooks click HERE to get your first book for FREE!!

I take thousands of pictures each year. Not all I post on Instagram, instead of leaving them on my computer to only be viewed by those who log into the computer I create Blurb books that I will then print and add to our book shelf in the living room. I will often put them on end tables when guest come to visit so that they can flip through them and see our adventures. Again each kid has their own book. With 3 kiddos I don't have time to go through every picture at the end of the year and pick which ones I want in a book. Adobe Lightroom makes it very easy to tag pictures when I download them and will sort them into books based on how they are tagged. Can you say TIME SAVER!!! I love these books and love looking back at the memories we made as a family.

Memories from the past are also dear to my heart. Stay tuned for how I preserve those memories and share them with family and friends.

I think I am addicted...

So it's no surprise that with three kids I have become slightly addicted to caffeine more specifically coffee; Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee the ones in the bottles you can buy at Target or the grocery store. But at $2.50 each it was becoming a very expensive habit.

So I have decided that I'm going to start making ice coffee at home. I mentioned this to Amanda, she told me about this fabulous kitchen gadget. So in the amazon cart it went and it arrived last week. I have made three batches of ice coffee. It is not as good as the Dunkin' Donuts Coffee but it is definitely cheaper.

Here is the recipe I used...3 cups of water in a mason jar. Fill the mesh strainer with 3/4 of a cup of ground coffee. Put the strainer inside mason jars screw on the lid and let it sit overnight. The next morning I added a half a cup of half-and-half and you can do either a third a cup of sugar or I did 3 tablespoons of agava nector. Mix it all together and pour over ice.

Now the first day I had about half of the mason jar. (Don't judge) It wasn't the same as the Dunkin but it was still good. I do have to say that the next day it was better, all the ingredients got to merry together. So I suggest making a couple batches ahead of time. Or use a bigger jar ;-). It keeps for a while when you keep it in the fridge.

First Week Home

The boys were born on a Wednesday night and we were so thankful that by Friday morning everyone had been cleared to go home.

We had spent so much time down stairs getting our living/sleeping area ready for the boys that we didn't remember to do anything on the main level.  So once home Jamie and I brought down the pack-n-play to set up as a changing area/place for the boys to sleep.  Eventually Jamie went to pick Henleigh up from daycare and we started on her afternoon/night time routine.  We were happy to be home and Henleigh was happy to have us home.  Once Henleigh was in bed we realized that we didn't have a changing/feeding area set up downstairs so we decided to sleep on the couch and the boys in their bassinets on the floor next to us.  It is funny how things come back to you, by 5am we had remembered all those little tricks that we used with Henleigh and finally got some sleep.

Monday was the boys first doctors appointment and we got to try out the Suburban with all the car seats.

Then came Tuesday night with a screaming 13 month old, who had a fever.  Tylenol and some snuggles later she was back in her crib (her choice) till morning.  She of course stayed home with us and good thing she did because she started to develop all of these little red bumps on her hands, feet, and around her mouth.  I called the doctor to see what they said, basically they told us Tylenol to keep the fever down and make sure that we wash our hands a lot.  The bumps got worse, she didn't want to eat, and she still had a fever.  I ended up sending a picture of her hands and legs to Natalie. Her guess was Hand, Foot & Mouth disease, which I agreed with after some reading.

So we ended up having all 3 kiddos home with us for the week.  Most days none of them got out of their pj's and they slept for hours.  Us on the other hand spent our days washing our hands and cleaning everything 3 and 4 times over to make sure that no one else got sick.  We were very happy when little miss seemed to be back to normal and we could get back into a routine.

The Second Time Really is Easier

We are over the moon excited for our TWO new additions to our family.  Garrett & Hunter!!  And to be completely honest the second time is so much easier.

Now I wouldn't say that carrying TWINS was easier because towards the end I was truly done (tired and everything hurt), but the whole labor thing was a breeze.  To start I walked around 5cm dilated for about a week and never felt a contraction.  Once they finally did admit me to the hospital at 6-7cm dilated I still hadn't felt a single contraction.  We even stopped at Target and picked Henleigh up from daycare before heading to the hospital.  The dr at the OB was shocked that I was still walking and these babies hadn't fallen out (her words, not mine).

We were admitted to the hospital around 6:30, by 7:10 I had bent 2 needles for the IV and the shift had changed so I had a new nurse and a plan.  Because of my history with pitocin and epidurals they decided to give me the epidural first then pitocin.  Which was fine by me, I still wasn't feeling any contractions.  While they were getting everything set up for the epidural and the pitocin the dr went and delivered the twins next door and said she would break my water when she got back, she broke my water around 8-8:30.  From there it was just a mater of waiting.

Some history for you... My daughter's (Henleigh) labor was 24-25 hours and I was also induced.  Once I was 5cm dilated I asked for the epidural and shortly after my heart rate dropped and so did hers to they stopped pitocin. This happened 2 more times before they could stabilize everything and I started dilating again. With Henleigh I also never felt any contraction during labor which had been a concern of mine for this pregnancy.  In the end Henleigh was born on May 14th.  When we went in for the boys my sister-in-law (Tammy) and my mom thought it would be awesome if the boys were born on June 14th.  The nurse and the dr accepted this challenge!!

At 11pm on June 14th I asked Jamie to call for the nurse, I wanted to be checked again. Sure enough I was 9.5cm.  Since I was having twins they decided to deliver them in the OR just in case their was complications. This was a topic of discussion as well since the dr really wanted to deliver them in the room, the nurse and charge nurse wanted to deliver them in the OR. In the end the nurses won.  I was wheeled into the OR at 11:17pm and Garrett was born at 11:25pm followed by Hunter at 11:35pm.  In total we were in the OR for about 45 minutes, it took the nurses longer to set the room up than it did for me to deliver both boys naturally.