Halloween 2011

Another masterpiece carving by Dave. Blue from Blue's Clues

This year Savannah and Preston dressed up in true form . . . Preston was a peanut and Savannah was an angel (so sort of true form for Savannah).

Savannah and Preston with their friend Katie

Some of the neighborhood kids before trick or treating

All I have to say is candy overload already!

Time for Preston!!

Our little Preston has had quite a week! His cough continued through the weekend and seemed to be getting worse so after he woke up Tuesday morning laying in throw up (from coughing so much) and being soaked from wetting the bed I wanted to throw in the towel! I made an appointment and was thankful to get the first appointment of the day with our favorite doctor on Wednesday.

I knew the throw up was from the awful cough and since he was acting fine and otherwise symptom free, I sent him to school on Tuesday. However, I probably should have kept him home. Apparently shortly after arriving at school some little nasty kid took a chop on sweet Preston's arm!! By the end of the day the same kid bit 4, yes FOUR, other children in their class. Craziness! Preston now has a bruise, but thankfully the bite didn't break the skin.

Wednesday we went to the doctor only to find out that Preston just has a cough from an old cold that could last weeks. Fun times. At least now he is resting better at night.

Thursday was his school Halloween party. I enjoyed bringing in a story to read to the class and seeing Preston so excited to have me there.

Here he is enjoying his cupcake snack . . . the second one.

Craft time

Just a funny little look into our house for those of you that haven't heard . . our peanut is obsessed with money. He always has to have a coin to hold or he whines/cries/throws a fit until he gets one. It has been going on ever since he witnessed our conversation with Savannah about allowance, savings, and tithing ~ at least 3 weeks now. It's getting super old because the money goes everywhere with him: grocery store, church, school, car, dinner table, etc. He often drops it and then the cries begin. "Mo e, I drop mo e". One time a sweet lady in the post office actually gave him a quarter because I didn't' have any change! So you can imagine how excited he was to get 5 $1 bills from grammy and papa yesterday. Although dollars have no value to him and he still cried for money, today I went to the bank and got one of them broken down into lots of coins for him to have! He was so excited to have his own money to put in the coin bank that Savannah graciously passed down to him. We'll see how long he can hold onto $1 of change!

Fun School Events & Another Tooth

This week has been jam packed with excitement for Savannah at school! On Tuesday she got to go on her first ever field trip. The entire kindergarten class went to Riverbend Farm and I was lucky enough to be able to go with them. I met the buses at the farm after WEE school drop off and had a blast all morning. Mrs. Hindman had assigned each parent a group of 5 students to keep up with, which I thought was small . . . until I tried to keep track of all 5 of them! Whew! They were fast and full of energy.

Here is Savannah with one of her favorite friends, Sachi.

My little group of 5. Thankfully, Mrs. Hindman said she separated the "zesty" ones and I only had one boy to keep up with. Funny thing is that it was one of the girls that wondered off TWICE!!

After a morning full of sliding, seeing farm animals, picking a pumpkin, and lunch these kids were ready to head back to school!

The fun continued at the Bachmann house as after dinner Dave pulled Savannah's second loose tooth!! It was all twisted and barely hanging on so he reached in and gently pulled it out. Yuck!! Of course the tooth fairy came again, but this time only brought one gold coin.

Although I hate the process of pulling teeth, I found it very cool that both permanent teeth were already coming in. You can seem them in the picture above.

The next big event was on Thursday when Savannah's class finally got to complete the Challenge Run at school. The PE department has organized this cool event where each kid runs for a set amount of time in the Fall and again in the Spring to try to beat their previous record of laps completed. They take it super serious with color coded numbers for each kid, music blaring, water afterwards, and even popsicles!! Although it was 42 degrees at 8am on Thursday, every kid still had to have their popsicle!

Preston was super excited to see Savannah at school!

Here is Savannah running with some of her friends and one of her teachers, Mrs. Gomsak.

Preston and I ventured out for the run to cheer for sissy. He LOVED going to "big school" and seeing sissy. . . I wish I could say that he loved leaving as much. At least I didn't have to hear him whine all day as I drove him right to his school.

Mrs. Hindman's Class after the Challenge Run

It's been a week full of excitement and cooler weather. We are enjoying a nice weekend at home and trying to recover from the craziness of the week. The weather is beautiful so I'm sure much time will be spent playing outside this afternoon and tomorrow.

Wii Repair

For a couple of months now we have been without a working Wii. We first noticed that it wasn't reading our discs and thought that maybe the kids had just been too rough with the discs, causing them to be scratched and unreadable. But it was about a month ago when we realized that it wasn't reading ANY of our discs and that we had a bigger problem. After doing some searching online Dave discovered that it was probably a laser issue and we'd have to send it off to be repaired since we were just outside of our warranty. Nintendo wanted $79 to repair it. Not going to happen.

A few weeks went by before I finally did some additional research to find a more reasonable price . . . I mean for $80 we could almost buy a new Wii! Best Buy wanted $79 just to diagnose the problem and the only other local repair place I could find was going to charge $50, but it came without a warranty and the place wasn't exactly convenient. I finally found a place online that would repair the Wii for $49.99 and they included free return shipping and a 1 year warranty. I checked them out with the BBB and they looked great so I packaged up the Wii (mailed it free with a USPS mystery shop) and hoped for the best. Yesterday our package arrived and this is what I found:

Yep, duck taped to the top of our Wii was 3 gold play money coins. I guess the real problem wasn't the laser but that our curious 2 year old decided to cram these coins into the Wii!!! Oh well, the service was super speedy so if you're ever in need of a Wii repair, I'd highly recommend http://gophermods.com/

First Lost Tooth

We've been waiting for this day for some time now . . . and I've been praying that Dave would be here to handle it. But of course, it happened while he was at work today. It all started with Savannah's homework assignment of eating an apple and counting the number of seeds inside. They have been talking about apples all week and this was the last homework assignment for the week. She was super excited to dig into the apple, but soon realized that her tooth was quite loose and she needed me to cut up the apple. So of course I did,not wanting to disturb the loose tooth until Dave got home. It was while eating the apple that she suddenly went upstairs and said she needed to brush and floss because she felt something stuck in her teeth. At this point I knew the tooth was coming out, but I begged her to wait for Dave. I just cannot handle a bloody tooth. Yuck! So I started folding laundry and not five minutes later I hear "MOM, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS". Luckily, she worked the little bottom tooth right out with minimal blood. Of course she ran straight for her tooth pillow to put the tooth in. She is SO excited to see what the tooth fairy is going to leave her . . .

Check out her tooth fairy pillow. It was the one I used as a child and before mom got sick she had Savannah's name added to the pillow.

Let the Volunteering Begin

Today was the first day that I was able to volunteer in Savannah's class. Although I'll admit that I wasn't too sure it would be a worthwhile experience, I now can say that Tuesday mornings just became my absolute favorite part of the week!! What an amazing opportunity I have to see Savannah learning first hand in the classroom of a master teacher. I'm not sure what impressed me more . . . that Mrs. Hindman had so many different things going at once and expects the kids to actually do the activity on their own OR that the kids were actually doing it and learning!! Coming from a middle school background where kids are given hardly any freedom, I was amazed at how efficiently Mrs. Hindman runs the classroom of 19 students in at least 7 different stations at once. Several times she was across the classroom and could still handle behavior problems at a completely different station AND help me too! She is beyond impressive, really unlike any teacher I've ever seen. I'm not sure how she plans so many things, gathers the materials, and handles regular teacher stuff (all the while being so calm, loving and patient), but I'll sure do what I can to help make her life easier. :)

I can't wait for next Tuesday!!

Learning to Love Change

It has been awhile since I updated our blog . . . which means life around here has been insane lately! Between two consignment sales the same week (volunteering, tagging to sale, and shopping at each of them), Harris Teeter triples, mystery shopping, GROW at church, homework, meetings and lots of other things, I have barely had time to read a blog, much less update one. Anyway, we are chugging along and are learning to love our new routines.

Savannah has been doing amazingly well at school! She has stayed on green every day, received a fabulous progress report, has been able to choose from the treasure chest twice for "getting a moveless" which I assume means she was where she needed to be without wandering all over the classroom, and has made a few new friends. We are finally over the morning tummy issues and, although we still are challenged with getting to the bus on time in the mornings, things are going fairly smoothly. We also have a good afternoon routine with snack, homework, and a little down time before dinner. Whew! What an adjustment it has been, but also what a joy it has been watching my little girl learn and get so excited about school.

Preston, on the other hand, isn't learning to love change at all. All of a sudden he SCREAMS every time I try to drop him off at school. I have never seen him like this as he has always loved going to church and school. But he has realized that life without sissy isn't as much fun. He wakes up every single morning whining/crying for his sister and continues to cry for her though out the day. It's sweet to know that he loves her so, but honestly I'm over hearing "sissy" whined all day long.

This weekend was a fun break from the routine as we had Dave's sister and her girls here for the weekend. It was fun watching the kids run and play all weekend long. We spent time at Sports Connection on Saturday and all went to church today.

I'm hoping this week will be uneventful so that I can work on the never ending to do list!