Where has the year gone...

I honestly can't believe it's the beginning of May. Getting ready for graduation parties, Memorial Day and starting to really think about our week at the beach in July. Actully, I've been thinking about that alot. So much so that I'm back to logging food and doing Shaun T's Rockin' Body DVDs according to the schedule, even if it means getting up 2-3 morning a week at 4:15-4:30 so I can workout 6 days a week without sacrificing every evening with JD. I'm even considering Insanity...oh, yes, that Insanity you see on TV. I must be nuts, but I'm not going to beach feeling crummy about being in a bathing suit. I'll let you know if that happens and how it works out...if I haven't collapsed in my basment.

I've been trying to work on figuring out if we'll need before and after school care for JD too. So far, since Reece's schedule is back to 6am-2pm, we may just need before care. However, in order to save money, I may just change my work schedule and come in later so I can get him on the bus and then I'll just have to work until 5:30 or 6. Ugh! So not used to that, but if it saves us money I might. Of course I have no idea what time the bus would pick him up and they can't really tell me since the bell schedule is changing for next year. I still have to get his medical form to his pediatrician and remember to take the dental form to his appointment next Friday.

I know the rest of the school year and this summer are going to fly by. If I figure correctly, he's got 6 more speech sessions left, including today. Then it's up to us to keep his skills up for the summer. I was reading the blog of one of JD's former classmates mom and she was saying how this little boy was dismissed from the program also and was reading at a mid-kindergarten level. Reading?! JD's not reading. I know, I shouldn't listen to other parents about stuff like this and compare JD because all kids are different, but it kind of makes me worry. I need to check into the readiness information they sent home also. I'm trying to work on sight words with him and we still have that "Bridging the Gap to Kindergarten" book to work on. I'm just so worried that we're going to get calls about JD not wanting to cooperate or participate in his class/school work. He doesn't like to be wrong and if he thinks he is, he just doesn't want to participate. That's a habit we need to break.

Another reason the summer wil fly by is that as soon as May rolls around, the weekends start filling up with things to do. As I mentioned we have graduation parties, birthday parties, a few camping weekends, the tubing trip, mother's day and father's day and we still need to get back up to NJ to have the big birthday celebration dinner for mom. I think I need a clone...or more hours in my days.

Kindergarten registration...becoming a Dalmation

I totally forgot to post that JD is all registered for kindergarten at Piney Ridge ES - mascot...the Dalmations. We went on the only day they had evening hours. Luckily I had alot of the paper work filled out from the PDFs online and had all the support documents we needed to take with us. That didn't mean there wasn't more to fill out when we got there. LOL The principal already knows us from all of the IEP meetings (she comes to them since Piney Ridge is JD's home school) and she was happy to finally meet JD. We also ran into his buddy Maxwell and his parents there. Max is still in the program at Carrolltowne and was so excited to know he's going to have a friend at school. Not sure if they will be in the same classroom, but they will probably see each other. We scheduled our kindergarten assessment appointment and also found out that there will be a back to school night before school starts just for kindergarteners. The kids get to meet their classmates, meet the teachers and take a ride on the bus. (The bus is old hat for JD since he used to take it to Carrolltowne.) The only thing left to decide is whether we'll be doing before and after care or just before care. Reece's schedule has changed again and he'd be home in time to get JD off the bus...for now.

We were given a workbook for him also. All the kids get one at the end of the year so they don't lose any skills over the summer. (Summer homework?!) Anyway, the kids turn the book in the first day of school and if they have 80% completed, they get a special prize. According to the principal, the prize really motivates the kids...we'll see. LOL They said to wait til summer to start working on it, but since JD is no longer in school, I might get moving on that with him to keep his skills up. Let the homework begin...hopfully with no struggles and fights!

Another year older...

I'm typing this entry on my brother's birthday...his last in his 30's. Yikes! Of course that means I'm another year older too (11 days before his) and my mom just celebrated her 80th birthday (April 10th)! We spent Easter weekend in NJ visiting with my family. David and Amy had dinner at their house on Saturday for mom's birthday, but we kind of celebrated them all. We went for a tour of the Battleship New Jersey in Camden on Friday and we also visited with JD's godmother, Chris, on Saturday. It was a good weekend. The only thing we had originally planned doing, but didn't, was taking mom out for a big fancy dinner to celebrate this milestone birthday. We're going to make plans for a non-holiday weekend in the near future for that.

I don't know how I forgot to mention this in the last post from March 22nd, but it was our 9th wedding anniversary. Reece and I celebrated at the Melting Pot with a little help from his brother's Christmas gift. Cheese fondue first and then turtle chocolate fondue for dessert. Heaven!

Next weekend we're taking the trailer out for the first camping trip of the year. JD keeps telling us "I'm so ready to go camping!" Grandmom and grand-daddy will be joining us this time. Hoping the weather forecast improves a little...right now there's a 50% chance of rain/thunderstorms both days. JD want to go see the painting at the visitor center, so if it does rain, at least there's something to do indoors. When we get home on Sunday we'll have to quick get ready for a birthday party for his friend from school. He's excited because he misses everyone and he'll get to see several of his friends there. Hopefully Lucy, Lilly and Leo will be at the party...JD says Lucy is his girlfriend. LOL

Not much new on the craft front. I did finish the Harley scrapbook in time to give it to my brother Easter weekend. He loved it! Still working on the blanket for April's new little boy, who made his arrival on March 30th, safe and sound. Missed the crop at Karen's this month and will have to wait til June for the next one...gives me time to get out all the wedding stuff so I can start working on that scrapbook. Also still considering what if anything I'll be making for renfest garb this year. Better get moving on that soon if that's in the plan.

And last but not least, the JD Gem. I was waking him up for grandmom's and this was our conversation:
Me: JD, get up we're going to be late...we need to go to grandmom's.
JD: (in a sleepy voice) You need to slap me in the face mommy
Me: I need to do what?
JD: You need to slap me in the face.
Me: Why do I need to do that?
JD: To wake me up.
Me: Dude, you watch too many cartoons.

He's also come up with this line somewhere - "Please do this for your own boy." or "Please do this for your only son."  What a crack up!

Easter Crafts

I finally took some photos of the projects I worked on the last 2 weekends. The first is a plastic egg wreath that I found the instructions for on Pinterest. It was easy enough to do and turned out really well. I used a piece of cardboard cut into a roughly 12-13 inch circle and then cut a nine inch circle from the middle of that to make the ring; 2 packages of multi-size eggs from Michael's; hot glue; leftover easter grass from last year to fill the spaces and hide the cardboard; and a bow I purchased at Michael's.

My next project was Easter cards. My mother in-law got 4 kits for me from the scrapbook store up the street (Photoscraps in Eldersburg, MD) and brought me her Copic marker collection and her stamping inks to use. She also brought a set of Easter stamps she got so I could make additional cards too. The card with the bunny in an airplane and the one with the bunny cacthing butterflies are the kits that I colored, cut out and put together. So cute!!

The next card I came up with, using the bunny in a basket stamp she brought. I stamped the bunny on special cardstock and colored them. The Copic markers are incredible to use. It's best to use them on special paper for Copics, which allows for smooth blending and no bleeding. I used the rest of the stamps in the set to add the words "Good things come in small sugarcoated packages" and "Must Have More Candy" to the front, and "Hoppy Easter" to the inside.

My final project was the paper Easter baskets that my mother in-law showed me how to make. She saw these at scrapbook store also. You trim a 12x12 sheet of medium weight paper to 9x9. Then score it in three inch intervals (so in the end the score marks create 3 rows of 3 squares). Next you score each corner sqaure from the outter corner to the inner corner, which help them fold in to the center of the basket. Punch a hole in each folded corner; run a ribbon through and tie. Use a 1 inch strip of the same paper to make a handle that you attach to the inside. I used a border punch on mine. I'll fill these with some easter grass and put a treat filled egg in each pocket. Plan to make these for family and a few of my friends' children.

Hope you get to do some fun things for Easter. JD even helped grandmom make his cards for my parents and his god mother. 

Nights Under Canvas...

That's what they call a night out camping in our MAC (Mid-Atlantic Campers) forum. Since we have the hybrid with bunk ends, we are sleeping under canvas, just like in the old pop up we had. MAC started as an off shoot of Pop Up Explorer (PUX) and most of us still had pop ups when the group originated. Many in the group have since upgraded to travel trailers or hybrids, like ours. It's pretty cool to see the clever mods people have done to thier pop-ups...adding storage, air conditioning, fridges, etc. One thing we'd like to do is start replacing the bulbs in the lights with LEDs, which would be great for dry camping (i.e., national seashore with no electric hook ups). When we found our Rockwood Roo, we pretty much got everything we wanted and were looking for. It was a deal we couldn't pass up.

I'm so excited this year to be able to use it alot more. It was hard to plan camping weekends when Reece was out of work. We didn't have a whole lot of extra cash for booking a bunch of weekends early in the year, like most peoople do. If you don't do it early, then you get what's left, if you can find anything at all. Since there was an extra pay period for my this month, I decided to use the extra from the first paycheck to do just that and be able to get out camping at least once a month, which I mentioned in the last post. We've got many nights of camping planned and that makes me happy. Gettysburg will be the end of April and mid-October. Elk Neck will be in May and Cunningham Falls in June. July is our trip to the beach and then the annual WV tubing trip at the end of July. I think we're still trying to plan a Lancaster/Strasburg Railroad trip for sometime in Sept also.

I think only one trip so far we'll be alone. One or possibly both Gettysburg weekends will be with Reece's parents...others will be with our MAC friends and our week at the beach will be with the Magees. Hopfully my brother and Amy will make it for a weekend out with us and if we can get Lancaster in there, maybe mom and dad will come too.

Happy trails to all our camping friends out there. Here's to a great season of nights under canvas!

March-ing on...

So, has March come in like a lamb or a lion? I guess we'll go with lamb, because of the sunny days, but the wind was roaring over the weekend. If it's planning on going out like a lion, I'd appreciate it being back to nice weather before we head to NJ for Easter. Also hoping for a warm Easter day so I can wear my favorite blue summer dress. :-) I'm looking froward to our NJ visit, becasue we'll be celebrating mom's 80th birthday too. Now we just need to decide on a place for dinner....some place nice that accomodates mini monsters, ah, I mean children. LOL

Well, other than having the inspection done (keep your fingers crossed for a good report) the new truck is at home in our driveway. That made for a very long week last week. We did get alot done this past weekend...laundry, cleaning, clearing the dining room table of junk, getting rid of some baby toys, taking out trash and recycling from the basement and taking care of a few errands that needed to be done. Whew!

We've been getting some additional camping dates on the books. If we don't do it now, sites will be booked full and we won't get anywhere. So far, we've got Elk Neck State Park in May and the Ocean City trip in July. Trying to get spring and fall weekend in Gettysburg also and possibly Cunningham Falls SP in June. Looking forward to doing some more camping this year!!

I haven't posted too many craft things lately, but there are projects in the works. I'm currently working on a baby blanket for my friend April. She's having a baby boy this month. For years now I have collected Harley/motorcycle theme paper and embellishments with the thought of doing a book for my brother. I plan to try and get that done for his birthday in April...I hope. I started my Christmas and Vacation scrapbooks at the last 2 crop days at Karen's. The vacation one is a Milestones album, which I've never used before. It has pages that hold 5 photos/papers (3 horizontal and 2 vertical), instead of the full 12x12 page. So far, I like it for the vacation stuff. I also have on order the scrapbook that I'm going to do our wedding photos in, again a Milestones album, and have ordered copies of wedding photos I didn't have printed. Now I need to get in the closet and get the box out for hings like programs, invites, stuff from our honeymoon, etc.  I also found a pattern on Pinterest for a small purse I'd like to make using fat quarters. Something for spring. Speaking of sewing, I need to consider anything I want to make for faire this year and maybe get a move on that before August (trying to not have a last minute, down to the wire, finish it for final day of faire project this year).

Time Flies...whether you're having fun or not...

Wow! It's been a while since I posted anything. Everyone in the house was sick at some point this month. First JD, then Reece and then me. Ugh! Now JD and I have our allergy thing going on. That is the only complaint I have about the unseasonably warm weather we're having...allergies. The daffodills are coming up and the hydrangea and our cherry tree are getting buds. I've already been thinking about spring planted bulbs for the deck pot and for around the mail box.

We have a new addition to our house as of the first weekend in February...her name is Samantha, Sami for short. She's a torti we got at the Small Miricles Cat Rescue where we got Bobo. She'll be a year old in March and is sweet as can be. I love when I'm in another room and hear JD talking to Sami..."Hi pretty girl...hi sweet girl". So adorable. Believe it or not, she had a cold too. The only one who hasn't been sick is Bobo. LOL

By the end of this week, we'll have somethiing else new...well, new to us. We found a Dodge Ram 2500 SLT...it's a Cummins diesel, already has a cap for the bed and is perfect for towing. The truck we currently have pulls the trailer, but we'd never go very far with it...just wouldn't trust it to haul the Roo on trips to places such as Maine or Tennessee, both places we want to go. I already warned Reece I'm gonna be stressed out over this for a few months until we get used to the payment and get it through inspection and registered in MD. Then I'll get all excited about it. JD will have so much more room too!

And, last but not least, all the paper work was approved so that JD can start his speech therapy today. He's now in what is called the Itinerant Preschool Program, but will be going to Carrolltowne ES, where he was before, for the services. So hopefully he'll be able to see his old teachers on occasion.