Dyslexic?

Our Hannah will be four at the end of July and has never been in preschool although she will be starting pre-K this coming year. Sadly I haven't worked on teaching her much because I was in school full time taking 16 credits and then I student taught. I finished Student teaching just in time to celebrate Christmas and welcome little Emily into the world. I have really felt guilty that I haven't worked with her very much, so I sat down a couple weeks ago and showed her how to write her name, she has been writing her first letter "H" for about a year now, but I wanted her to be able to write her whole name in the right order. I just wrote her name down and she copied it on to her own paper. I thought she did pretty good, although her "N's" were backwards and her "A's" were sideways even after several attempts. I was still impressed at how well she did on her first attempt to write her name by herself. Anyways, life got busy and we didn't work on it again, but about a week later, she comes out of her church class and says mom look I wrote my name and she had (sideways A's and backwards N's and all). I was so impressed that she remembered.  So yesterday after primary, her primary teachers were telling me that they were impressed with how smart she is. They said she knows all her letters which surprised me since I haven't worked with her too much. Then this morning I was sitting down and watching Super Why with her (don't judge, you know you wanna watch cartoons too)and she knew all the super letters they found and most of their sounds. I knew she knew some, but I didn't realize how much. So I decided to see if she still remembered her name and sure enough she did. Here it is below,  sideways A's and backwards N's in all it's glory:

It may not be stellar, but for not having been in preschool and having a mommy that didn't work with her enough, she is doing pretty well. I am happy to see that my child has picked up a lot on her own and I haven't totally failed her. I just hope she isn't dyslexic =)!

Comforts vs. Pampers

Okay I feel stupid posting about diapers, of all things, but I change a lot of diapers (I know, I know, not as much as you Amy, blah blah blah).

Anyway. recently we discovered that Kroger has introduced a new brand of diapers called Comforts for Baby. Stupid name, decent branding, but the diapers are awesome! They don't have the plastic feel of the cheap ones, but they cost almost half of what the Pampers cost, and they are almost as good. We have tried Huggies, White Cloud, and various cheap diapers, but they never measured up. So if you shop at Fry's and like Pampers, try them.

For my first post I have . . . chickens!

Thanks to the Chicken Whisperer (my brother-in-law Ryan), we now are the proud owners of 6 chickens. We have 5 Americaunas who will lay green eggs when they're big enough to squeeze 'em out, and one little tiny frizzy or whatever she is, cute as a button. Mesa city code says that on an acre or less we can have up to 10 chickens, as long as the coop is so many feet away from other houses.

So the plan is to add 4 or 5 more Barred Rocks (they'll lay brown eggs) to the brood so we can be fight the man and be corporate-egg-independent . . . Nah, I'm too lazy for that, I'm really just doing it for fun. So any of ya'll who'll want eggs, just holler, we'll sell them for the low, low price of $20.00/dozen. Primo grade AAAAA eggs ya dig?

Any takers?

Oh and in two or so years we get to eat 'em. And then start all over again. Yummy. What could be more fun?

P.S. To add to the experience, I visited the Mesa Feed Barn, which I thought was defunct, and it's weird because it's a farmy-oasis-thing in the middle of downtown Mesa. And for anyone who cares they sell chick crumbles for $0.40 per pound.

Lovell—out.

Jammin' with Ammon!

Thanks to my awesome friend Katie, I learned about Bountiful Baskets. When ordering my basket, I noticed they had a case of blackberries for only $12.00. So I decided there was no time like the present to attempt my first jam session. I was a little nervous making jam with all my munchkins, so I waited until night when Ammon and I could tag team. Let me tell you, it rocked. I loved making goodies with Ammon. It is way more fun to do it it together. We even decided to buy a water bath, so we can start making our own jam. It is perfectly spreadable and taste terrific. I am so grateful for a husband who likes to rock the kitchen with me and last night we had an awesome Jam session. Ammon, you are the best.

 

Kid grown carrots!

So anyways a while back, we decided to plant a garden. We didn't do any research, we just planted everything according to the package. It was such a fun family project and we all planted together. The kids even ended up dumping extra seeds all over, but we really had a good time so it was all good. Needless to say not much started growing, and everything that started growing didn't survive long. Then one day we noticed some little plants growing, we looked it up and found out they were carrots. They weren't where we planted them, but where they had been ever so nicely dumped. So it turns out our kids our better gardeners then we are, at least they got something to grow. We did some research and decided to give it another shot. Who knows, but we hope to have a whole bunch of good looking carrots in a couple months.