Academic Team Match

Last year and this year, Weston has been on his school's academic team. He has really enjoyed it!!! They compete against other Elementary schools in the area. Their season begins in November and ends in March. There are 8 kids on the 4th grade team and 8 kids on the 5th grade team. When they compete, it is 4 children from one school's team against 4 children on the other school's team. There are 30 questions for each half of the match. Each half of the match is 10 minutes long.
This is Weston at his last match. I forgot my camera, so I took these pictures with my phone. :) You can see that each child is holding a stick-like thing in their hand. That is their buzzer. They each have a name plate so that the moderator can call on them when they buzz in to answer a question. The score is kept on computer and the time and score is projected on a screen above the moderator and score keepers heads. Whoever buzzes in first gets to answer the question and their name is projected up on the screen with the time and the score.

I wish that I had a better spot at the match so that I could have taken better pictures. At any rate, they ask all sorts of crazy questions about everything under the sun. There are math questions, history questions, science questions, language questions, music, art, etc. Some are quite difficult. There are lots that I don't know the answer to (shh....don't tell anyone!) because they are that hard. Weston loves it. They have a binder that they study out of. I am glad that he tried out for it and was placed on the team. It gives him lots of good challenges for that good brain that he has! :)

I took this one so that you could see the screen where the score and the time were and where they project up the name of who buzzes in. This was at the end of their match. Weston's team scored 24 and the other team scored 8. Our school has yet to loose a match this year. You can see that the time left was 1 minute, 22 seconds. They actually ran out of questions before they ran out of time at this match. The big white strip at the bottom of the screen, just above the moderator and scorer's heads is where the name of the child that is answering the question pops up when they buzz in. I have really enjoyed going to the matches and being able to spend some one on one time with Weston on the way to and from the matches. It must be completely quiet for the match, so no one usually comes with us. (The little ones would make too much noise!) There are just a few more weeks until their Governor's cup competition. That is the district competition. If they place there, they go on to the regional competition. This year for those competitions, Weston will also be taking written exams in Science and Social Studies.

Lovely Morning

We woke up to about an inch of fresh snow this morning (on top of the inches that we already had), but it was so lovely looking out the window. I love it when the snow sticks to the trees and makes the world a white, beautiful, Winter wonderland! It makes me smile. Not only that, but they only delayed school today and didn't cancel!! Hooray! This meant that it was officially our first FULL week of school since Christmas break. :)

Neglect

My dear little blog,
I am sorry that I have been neglecting you lately. You see, I have been busy keeping my house in order. (which occupies the majority of my time!) And you see, if we go to school this entire week, it will be the first time since school got back in after Christmas that we have actually gone the entire week. I read in the paper that this is the 4th snowiest Winter since 1900. We have had a lot of snow lately. I think that I have only seen my grass like 2 days total since it started snowing at the beginning of December. And usually February is the snowiest month. I guess we will see! Please don't give up on me. I promise to be back to my regular postings soon. Thankfully everything is going well over here at our house. The kids are happy. So is my sweet hubby. And so am I!! We are just chugging along, singing a song, side by side! :) Give me another day or 2 and hopefully we will have some more new blogs and pictures!!
Lots of love,
Me

I'm in trouble now!!!

This morning I was finishing up ironing my clothes for church and I could hear that Evan was awake. I told Aaron that he could go ahead and go on up and get dressed and that I would be up in just a minute to get Evan. I started up the stairs a few minutes later to see Aaron and Evan both standing at the top of the stairs. Aaron, wide eyed, told me that when he came in, Evan had his leg up over the top of the crib. And then, as he put it, " He was hanging on with 2 hands and then he got out of his crib with a thump to the ground!" So there you have it! It looks like the staying in the crib battle will begin shortly. I could sit and hope that it is a fluke and a one time thing, but I know my little Evan too well!!! :) He is growing up way too fast. Sigh......

Aquarium

On Monday, since we were off for MLK day, we decided to head on over the the Aquarium. They are having their winter family days special, which means that 2 kids get in free with each full price adult admission. And kids under 2 are free. That meant that we saved about $60!! :) We enjoy the aquarium and used to have a pass before the place changed ownership and the price for our family to get a pass doubled.... Oh well! We had a great time!
When you first get downstairs, they have a round fish tank that has these fun drums surrounding it. All the kids took turns playing the drums, but Evan really enjoyed Aaron playing on his drum.

And even got brave enough to give it a try for himself while the others were looking at some of the other fish tanks.

One of our favorite tanks is the one with the "googly eyed fish" as we like to call them. Not really sure what their real name is, but their eyes can see both under and above the water and look like little air bubbles if you look at them from the top. Even though Amber was tall enough to see into most tanks, she was lucky enough that her sweet Daddy would pick her up any way to look at the tanks. (Don't tell, but she has him wrapped around her little finger!!!)

Barth picked up Aaron to see the googly eyed fish from the top too!! Such a nice guy!! :)

The boys hurried on over to the petting tanks where they had a horseshoe crab, some sea stars and some other crabs. (I think- I have such a bad memory!) Weston is going through some sort of phase where he thinks he looks more cool (or something like that) if he doesn't smile when I try to take his picture! He was having a grand time though.

And really, I couldn't ask for a nicer, or better helper than my sweet little Westy Pesty!!! Without being asked, he went over and offered to pick Aaron up so that he could touch the creatures. He was so sweet there with his brother that I just had to snap a picture.

Brian wanted his picture taken touching the crabs too!

Mams thought that the animals were neat, but wasn't quite so sure about the whole "touching them" thing. And Evan, he was content watching the throngs of people pass him by in his stroller. It was quite busy that day!

They have a big theatre where they used to do some cool shows the first year that we were here, but we haven't seen any since the change of ownership. At the front of the theatre was this big area where the kids could sit and watch the fish, sharks, eels, and turtles swim. They thought it was amazing! I had to laugh at one point when we were there and I was sitting back on a bench in the theatre part and these 2 teenage girls walked in. There were 3 sharks swimming around close to the glass wall where you can see the kids sitting here. One of the girls says to the other, "Man! Those are the biggest piranhas that I have ever seen!" I just thought to myself that I hoped that they didn't go to the high school that my kids would be attending, because if they did, I was in trouble and I had better move now!!!

The octopus was quite active this particular afternoon! There is no flash photography, but you can see how cool he looks!! So fun!

This was the only tank where there were not throngs of people because they were all waiting to do the shark movie thingy. Amber looked so sweet there looking at the fish.

They traded out all of the little alligators for this one BIG alligator. He was just like all the gators that we saw in FL. He mostly just sat there and tried to stay warm in the light!!! :) Barth thought that he was awesome! He loves to look at the gators!

Two of my most favorite guys in the whole wide world!!!!

After we were all done, Barth took the kids to the little candy shop next door for a treat. Since places like that are not so good for little hands like Evan's, and since it was a warmer day (all of 35 degrees), Evan and I decided to sit outside and enjoy the light mist of a rain and check out the river and downtown!!

Such a happy little guy! Oh and by the way, he now has his 2 top pointy teeth that have just broken through! He is up to 14 teeth now! Yay!

And since I wasn't in any of the pictures, I decided to take one of me and my sweet Evvy Miester!!! We had a great day! And we have had a good week. We only had school 2 days this week! Yesterday and today we were off for our 6 inches of snow. Today I think that it only got up to 13 outside. Brrrr.... And of course, there is snow in the forecast for all of next week too! Welcome to January in KY. :) Do you think that we will be done with school before mid-July?

Awsome deal!

First of all, I have to say that I am sorry that my posts have been few and far between lately. You see, I have been reading this....

But not just this one. I read all 3 books in the series in just 3 1/2 weeks (this last book was 700+ pages). And I am not a very fast reader. I just have to say how much I enjoyed them. I first started with Eragon. Weston and I had a race to see who could finish it first. It actually took me the longest to read that one, even though it was the shortest because I began reading it around Christmas time and had to do other things (like shop for presents) instead of reading all the time (which is what I like to do!) . I love to read, but don't actually do it all that often because I have no self control when I am in the middle of a good part. I will read into the wee hours of the morning, never quite satisfied with my stopping point, only to be exhausted the next day! :) Oh well! For now, I am finished with the series....that is until the final book comes out. But since I have no idea when that will be, I can get back to real life!!! LOL! Anyhow....... Today Amber went to her friends house to play which left me with a few hours of time with just Evan. Perhaps I should have enjoyed some one on one with him, but I didn't and opted to go fun shopping instead. (I needed to get my fix of getting out before this next big storm hits tomorrow!) So, I headed off to JoAnn's and found these awesome deals......
The blue fabric I am going to use to redo the pillows on our family room couches so that they don't look like they have spaghetti hanging off of them! (They started to come apart right after we got the couch!) I got it on the clearance table there. This week, the clearance fabric there is half off. It was on clearance for $7. Half off was then $3.50, so I bought the rest of the bolt which was just shy of 2 yards. Then, I was looking in the fleece fabric remnants and saw these 2 Cinderella pieces. They were 1.5 yards and .4 yards. The bin said that they were 70% off. I also got the yellow because I like to do baby blankets for others and thought that 70% off was a good deal. And then I got to the register and it got even better. When the lady rang everything up, she said, "And your total will be $10.60!" I told her that she must have forgotten to ring something up because that didn't seem like nearly enough for the 5 yards that I had just bought. She told me that I got an extra $2.50 off for buying the end of the bolt of the blue fabric and that for the fleece remnants, it was 70% off of the sale price of the fleece since it was on sale this week. That means that I paid just over a dollar for the yellow fleece, and about $3 for the Cinderella fleece!!!! I was soooo excited!! I love a good deal. It just makes my day!!! Now I can't wait to get some projects done around here!!! :)

Snowy Day Fun

Yesterday morning it began snowing at our house. School was cancelled! Everyone was very excited about that at our house. :) All 4 of the big kids went outside to play while Evan and I watched the fun from our piano room window!
Evan thought it was great fun to climb up and down and all over the couches while the kids were sledding on their new sleds that they got for Christmas (which look exactly like the old sleds that had gotten all cracked and broken). He had fun banging on the window at everyone.
And for once, he actually looked at me when I was taking his picture. These were taken in the afternoon once they had plowed our street. Snow continued to fall all day though and so they cancelled school for today!
So pretty looking outside, isn't it!

Once again, I am so glad that we bought this house! We have an awesome sledding hill in front and a fairly flat yard in back!! It is perfect! Yesterday the boys and Amber sledded for over an hour. It is nice now that everyone has snow gear. They don't get cold nearly as fast!

These last pictures were taken today. Aaron has a sore throat, so he didn't want to go out, and Amber was still sleeping, but the 2 big boys wanted to go out and play and work on their snow fort. I think that all in all we got 4 to 5 inches of snow. I am hoping that there is school tomorrow. And not because I am ready to send the kiddos back. It is more like for the fact that I don't want to be going to school half way through June!

For the fort, Brian shoveled most of the snow over to the right area, and Weston packed it the way that they wanted it. :) I love the snow on Brian's beautiful, long eyelashes!

All the boys for Christmas got this thing that makes snowballs! They are always having snowball fights with each other and Daddy, so I thought that it would be a cool thing to have when I saw it at the Christmas Tree Shops. Here, is Weston showing us how it makes the snowballs. First, you load the snow into the little case.

Then you close it up.....

....and presto!!! Eight perfect snowballs for you to launch at your siblings, parents or whoever else might come near your fort!

Weston thought that it would be very funny to peg me with all the snowballs that he had just made. I was in the garage in my slippers with no coat or anything. I think that he actually hit me with about 4 before I made it in the door. :)

My sweet, big, snow playing boys!

Weston had Brian come back in to get me because he had made a bigger hole/ arch in their snow fort that they wanted me to see. Looks pretty cool it you ask me!

Happy Snow Days to y'all! :)

A very bad, very good day

Indeed I thought yesterday that my luck had changed (see post below) but little did I realize that while I was typing that post last night, I had already left my purse somewhere!!! After Weston's academic match, I had taken him and Brian over to good, old, McDonalds for an ice cream. And I left my purse there. I didn't realize it until this morning when I was getting ready to go to the store. I was frantic! Beside myself because I couldn't find it. I called Barth. He was in the middle of a meeting in his office, but dismissed the people there when he answered and asked if he could help me with something, and I blubbered into the phone a pitiful, "YES!" I told him my plight and then told him I was off to see if someone had turned it in at McDonalds. I promised to call when I was done there. It had been a good 14 hours since I had last seen my purse and there was the checkbook, and the ATM card and the credit cards.....oh I just knew it was going to be bad! I walked up to the counter, skipping past the people in line and asked if a purse had been turned in the night before. All the workers there said no, they hadn't seen anything. And then, from in the back, the manager lady came walking up. I asked again if a pink purse had been turned in. She asked if it was quilted-like and I said yes. She went to the back and returned with my purse in hand!!! I thanked her over and over again before I walked out the door and back to my car with my little ones in tow. I went through my purse to find everything still there!! And then I cried and offered a prayer of thanks. Thankful that nothing had been taken. Thankful that an honest person had come across it and turned it in. Thankful because I knew that my Father in Heaven was watching over me and my family. Thankful that the bad day had a rainbow hiding behind the clouds, turning it into a wonderful day instead! Ever thankful! I called Barth and told him that I had found it, and then cried some more to him. (At least after 12 years of marriage he is fully aware of my buckets of tears!) After I calmed down enough to stop shaking like a leaf, I was able to drive to the store to get the things that I needed for the week before picking up Aaron from school. As the lady at Krogers was helping me unload my groceries onto the belt, she asked how my day was going. I relayed losing and finding my purse to which she replied, "O, thank the Lord! It is always so nice to hear that there are good people in the world!" I couldn't agree more!

A better day

Thankfully I had a better day today! What a week this has been for me. Since I was tired of looking at my bad day post, I found some pictures from a while ago of the kids with their milk mustaches at lunch time that I thought I would post as well as an update as to what each one has been up to. Weston is happy as always. He and I had a race to see who could finish the book Eragon first. He won, but only because he would take the book to school with him so I couldn't read it while he was gone. The funny thing is that Weston has read all 3 of the books in that series, but in reverse order. :) Academic Team season is in full swing and he is loving it once again. He did awesome at their match tonight. They have yet to loose a match!!! :) He just got his report card again and was happy to report all A's again. (For those not from here, an A here is 94 or above and a B is 87 to 93) He also came home today to tell me that he had won his class spelling bee!! (He must get that from his Daddy because we all know that I am an awful speller!!) He will be competing in the school bee here in a few weeks! Go Weston!
Aaron is happy and is getting the hang of reading! He is getting very good at sounding things out in the books he is reading! Yeah! He loves school and always talks about his friends at school that are in his "fan club!" It makes me laugh. He is excited that now that it is second term at school, they changed from going to computer lab to library instead. We just found out that one of Aaron's eyes is far sighted which, left untreated, can lead to a lazy eye. Luckily for us, it should be 100% fixable. :) Aaron loves to write and color. His favorite thing to play is doggies with Amber! He loves that he gets to be home everyday at lunch time and then gets to stay up extra at nap time to read with me while everyone else is in bed! I love the one on one time with him!
Don't you just love that milk dripping off Brian's chin? :) Brian is happy and energetic as always. He is enjoying 2nd grade. He loves to read, just like Weston, and has decided that he wants to join in on reading the Eragon books too! He also is reading the Narnia books and loves those too! Brian loves being in scouts. He always has his book open, looking and working on things and wanting me to pass off different things. Brian enjoys playing the piano and doing anything and everything that Weston does! Those 2 are the best of friends. When it is warm enough, Brian likes to be outside climbing the trees. He has discovered his inner monkey and prides himself in being able to climb higher than anyone else in our family. :) Most of our trees in the back have branches that are way to high to climb, but there are a few smaller ones that he really enjoys climbing.

Amber is a little ham bone! She tends to think that she is every one's mother and likes to try to tell everyone what to do, much to their dismay. :) She loves dressing up and wearing her princess dresses. She says that her brothers call her "your highness!" She also loves to color, read and play with play-doh. She recently became a sunbeam in primary but is sad that she doesn't get to be in Aaron's class. She loves to help me with Evan and often follows him around, mothering him! She is so sweet though when she is in a sweet mood. Her favorite phrase right now is, "You're my best friend!" She tells me that over and over, and then, when Daddy gets home, she runs up to him and tells him the same thing. Five minutes later, she says the same thing to Evan, or Aaron, or Weston, or Brian. At least we know she loves us. :) She gets excited everyday when it is time to go to school to get the boys. I actually think that it is her favorite time of day. She loves it when everyone is home.

I didn't include Evan in this one since I just did a post on him. We are good and happy! Busy as always, but good!

Enough bad luck

I am hoping that tomorrow goes better than the last 2 days have gone. In the last 2 days we have:
*had a bad eye exam for Aaron
*had Evan knock over a stack of very lovely, large, expensive glass bowls at Hobby Lobby (they shattered into a zillion little pieces by the way!)
*had a vase full of marbles spilled into my lovely new piano (all into the action part!)
*found that my children had broken the kitchen that my Daddy made for me when I was 4 years old
And those are just the big things that went wrong. I swear that I ate my black eyed peas!!! I even ate more than anyone else in my family. I guess that things could have been worse. (I have visions of Amber getting red and gold glass from those big decorative bowls at the store in her eye or all over her or something of that sort.) So, perhaps those black eyed peas were luckier than I thought! At least that is what I am going to think until the next bad thing happens! Let's just hope that the other bad things wait a few days until I am recovered from these last 2 days!

My dear little Evan,

Sweetheart I do love you so! You are a smart and funny boy but you are making me tired!! Could you please give me some of your energy?!? And sweetheart, I know that you like to break things, but please don't. I have things that have last through 4 other children that you have broken in like 2 seconds flat. And you can climb like no ones business. You love to climb the table. And the stove. And you can even get out pots and pans when you can't reach something on the counter that you want and then climb on those to reach what you want. And I even had to put the straps back in the high chair because you don't want to sit to eat your meals. You want to stand on the tray and then try to climb from there to the table. You are soooooo busy! But your sweet smiles, they melt my heart. And I love that you come up behind me with a comb and try to brush my hair like your siblings do. And I was so impressed when you lost my watch a few Sundays ago at church by putting it in the trash can and then a half an hour later when I realized it, you went strait to the can and continued to bang on it until I figured out that you were telling me that my watch was in there. And I love that you brought me the camera today so that I could take your picture and then were mad when I wanted you to stay in one spot so that you didn't come out as a blur. (that is the picture below) And I absolutely love how much you adore your brothers and sister. And how you think you are one of the big kids and head on down to the basement to play with them even when I am not there. You are turning into such a big boy! Where has the time gone?!?! Evan, I love you my little Mr Miester! You are a wonderful addition to our family!!

Love, Mommy