Bullet Points and Pics: First Week of March

I am so behind on updating the blog this month and the reason?  Honestly, March has gone by too quickly.  I thought we were still in the first week of March until about 3 days ago...

So let's catch up quick with some brief bullet points and pics.  Below is a summary of our
March 1-7th. 

• Lent started! We are going super simple, lean into Jesus style this year. 

• Hanging and reading and sleepin'

• Sunset!

 

• loving our new Shaklee natural cleaning products.  The kids can help!

• Kolbe's 6 month cuteness

 

• Elise has made leaps and bounds reading!

       

• Kolbe is everywhere.  He rolls every which way and can scoot backwards.

 

                

• Sophie cracking herself in the tub

• Went on my first run post pregnancy....took the girls too.  They did pretty well actually.  Below is our pre-run stretching caught by Chris. 

                          Ok, time to go make dinner for TODAY and stop reliving 2 weeks ago.... 

7QT Friday- Bits and Pieces

Another Friday (or as I keep seeing all over social media FriYAY!) is here. 

1. Vacation Box- PARIS, France

You may recall that we found a neat way to involve the girls more actively in the works of mercy by making a vacation box to Hawaii for a couple near and dear to our hearts.  It was such a fun project and such a neat way to spread love to others, that we have completed another vacation box.  This one for a dear woman whom we decided would enjoy a trip abroad to the lovely, fashionable, and romantic city of Paris.  

The trip took her to Paris where she "visited" the church of the Miraculous Medal, Sacre Coeur, and even attended a ballet while enjoyign some French cookies of course and learning a wee bit of the French language.  

The girls also arranged for her to "journey to" the Arc de Triumph, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and they designed 3 very fashionable ensembles for her to wear on her trip.  And of course some macaroons.  One could have much more fun with the food aspect of a "vacation box" if you live near to the recipient, but we've had to make ours somewhat simple in that regard because our recipients live out of town.  

And a note to explain a little and just because.  :)

We already picked our next recipient and decided we'll be taking her on a trip to the Swiss Alps.  Stay tuned...and share ideas if you send a vacation box to someone you love.  :)

2.  Due Date

Today is Kolbe's due date.  It's so weird to say because he's been with us for a whole TWO weeks.  But this is technically the day that he was "due" to make his way into the world.  He chose a pretty awesome day to surprise us though (Mother Teresa's birthday). 

Happy two weeks, Little Man!  

3. Library trip

One of the first outings I ventured out of the house with 5 littles in tow for was a trip to the library to refill our bag with fresh titles.  The effort to make the trip was well worth the quiet and peace that comes for several days after a trip to the library.  We have many little "readers" in this house for which I am very grateful.  

I found these two like this just a couple days ago.  My heart melted.  Not even kidding.  

4.  Chapel Veils

My sister in law, also Laura, makes custom chapel veils and has just started up a shop on Etsy.  Check out her work and grab a veil for yourself, a loved one, or even your child making their first communion.  She has done some lovely work and she can work with you to make your veil (or a gifted veil) just what you want.  

(picture used with permission)

5. Little Bro

In case you were wondering the girls are still completely in love with their little brother and they ask me constantly often if they can hold him.  

 

Daddy loves his snuggles with Kolbe too when he returns from work.  

6. First Day of School pictures

We started nearly two weeks ago at this point, but it's been busy around here, so I haven't got all these cute shots up on the blog yet.  Enjoy. 

This one cracks me up.  I told them to squish closer together.  Sophie wasn't enthused about the idea.

7.  School

It's been a breeze so far.  Kayla has been so responsible and comes and takes care of her school work almost on her own each morning.  She reads like crazy in the afternoons and is gearing up for her first ever book report.  Elise (and Ava too) are working with me each morning and are doing a great job with letter sounds and numbers currently.  We are having a lot of fun and can't wait for lots more throughout this school year.  There have been some tantrums some days too, but that's to be expected.  I'd want to play all day too....

How was your week, friends?  

Link up with Kelly from This Ain't the Lyceum with your 7 Quicktakes for the week.  

Letter Y and Letter Z Crafts

Our letter Y projects that we completed a few months ago must have got lost in our move, so we re-did them in a very simple way.  I just drew some pictures of a little baby yelling and yawning and we colored in huge Ys with different yellow hues for Y is for yellow.  

We completed two Letter Z projects recently which were really cute.  

1. Z is for Zoo

All you need to do is cut out animal pictures from magazines, glue onto paper, and then we made construction paper cages around them.  Cute and easy and some practice cutting and gluing too.  

We colored our background green so the animals who like to munch on and walk around in the grass would feel right at home.  

Contrary to what that plate looks like, we didn't use paint.  We just reuse plates and that one is currently being used for glue.  Because it's time to glue on the animals!

 
Finished products!

2. Z is for Zipper

This project was simple.  Just some rectangles and I let the girls draw on their zippers.  Kayla's looked most like an actual zipper, of course, but Elise and Ava did good work and creativity, people--not perfection!  Then I cut out some small and smaller rectangles which they glued together for the actual piece of the zipper that you hold to open and shut it.  I helped the younger two with cutting one "zipper" open half way, but Kayla did hers.  

Making their zippers look like the letter Z

That's Ava's that you can see best in the foreground there.  

Finished products

And that completes our ABC crafts books....

except that Kayla is the only one who is actually done.  Elise is through the second half of the alphabet and Ava started doing the craft for the last 5 letters or so.  So we'll begin the alphabet again and re-do many of the projects that Kayla did in the past 3 years or so with her younger sisters instead so they can complete their own alphabet book filled with their own artwork during preschool/Kindergarten as well.  

It should go a lot faster now that I don't have to look up crafts on Pinterest and/or make up my own.  We can just look at the crafts we've already found/come up with and re-do them for Elise and Ava.  The girls have loved doing our Alphabet Saints and our ABC craft book over the years and it's a great teaching resource plus it's filled with memories of fun crafting that we've complete together.  Looking back at Kayla's this morning after we completed it was pretty emotional for me.  She's grown so much in the time it took us to complete this book and seeing projects that I remember her doing when she was just 3 or 4 years old was making me tear up (not that it takes much...).  

Letter X Crafts

We take a long time in doing our letter crafts these days because we are now juggling so many different learning stages and subjects between the 3 gals who are old enough for school and crafting.  But we completed a few letter X projects to add to our alphabet books and they were really fun.  

1. X is for Xylophone

 

Simple set up.  All you need is two long black construction paper rectangles and shorter different colored construction paper rectangles for the xylophone keys.  Two more smaller black rectangles for the mallets (that form your "x") and two colored circles for the tops of each mallet.  And glue.  

For extra fun and learning, You can cut the strips all different lengths and have your kiddo put them in order from smallest to biggest.

Finished products

2. X is for X-ray

 

All you need for this craft are a few simple items: white/gray crayon, black construction paper, glue, and Q-tips.  

First, trace your child's hand and arm with the crayon.  Let them color with the crayon all around the hand print if they'd like.  Then use your Q-tips as the "bones" and glue them onto the hand x-ray.  

 

Finished products!

And finally time to move on to letter Y!