Happy Thanksgiving 2011

Great Grandma with her 5 Great Grandchildren!

Preston loving on Taylor

As we celebrate another Thanksgiving, I'm reminded once again how many things we truly have to be thankful for. At the top of my list is family and friends. We started our holiday early by travelling to Cherryville to see my friend Marie and her family. Marie and I have been friends since middle school and it's always fun to catch up with her. I took the camera and left the memory stick in the computer so I don't have a single picture to share. :( Maybe I can post a few that Marie sends once she's back home in NJ. THANKS MARIE FOR THE PICTURES!!!

Everyone wanted to play with the race car toy!


What a fun morning we had visiting with Marie & her family!

I can't even express how thankful I am for my close friends, those that live here in Charlotte and those that live far FAR away. These are women who have truly walked by my side through some pretty tough times and I am forever grateful for you all!

On Thanksgiving Day we celebrated with my side of the family at Great Grandma's house. What a treat it was to be able to spend several hours with my brother and his kiddos too. We ate way too much and then headed back home so I could start some early shopping. It was a fantastic day spent loving on those we cherish.

Wishing everyone a Happy, Happy Thanksgiving!!

Helen, GA Vacation 11/10-11/12

For years Dave has been talking about wanting us all to take a mini vacation to this little German town in Georgia called Helen. There really hasn't been any extra time in our schedule, but with both kids having Veteran's day off from school we decided to take advantage of the little break from our routine. We left on Thursday right after school and stayed through Saturday afternoon since I needed to be back for my Sunday morning job. Here are a few pictures from our mini vacation.

Since we arrived so late on Thursday night, the fun really started Friday morning. Grammy and Papa drove up to meet us and we all spent the day together. First up, Babyland General Hospital. Savannah loved seeing all of the dolls and we even got to witness a doll being born and help name the baby. Savannah contributed the middle name and another little girl chose Macy as the first name; the newborn cabbage patch kid was Macy Grace! Here is a picture with Savannah holding her.

Savannah and Macy Grace

Next we drove to downtown Helen where we walked around a lot, took a few pictures (until my battery died), and had lunch.

This picture makes me smile. The kids were SO excited about seeing Grammy and Papa. See the excitement on their faces as they walk with Papa?!


After a long day of walking around, we decided to head to Anna Ruby Falls for some hiking. Well, lets just say that Preston didn't quite make it. He fell asleep on the 10 minute drive and I just couldn't wake him up. So, I stayed in the van with him and he slept the entire time everyone else was hiking!!

We then said goodbye to Grammy and Papa and headed to the hotel . . which by the way Savannah's first response when we arrived on Thursday was "this is a dream come true" said as she danced and twirled around. Really, Savannah? Wonder what she'll think when we do Disney if the little hotel in Helen, GA is a dream come true? We figured out later that she probably can't ever remember staying in a hotel since we've always stayed in a house or condo on vacation with them. Anyway, back to our vacation . . . we let the kids go for a swim in the indoor pool and then it was off to bed.

Saturday we woke up and decided to head to the Goofy Rooster corn maze. Little did we know how much fun it would be and just how many things there would be to do there! First up was the huge corn maze. The maze was a big clue game with hidden clues to find throughout the maze. If you found the clues and determined what happened to the farmer then we all got candy of our choice so that was quite the motivation!! It took us 40 minutes just to find our way through the maze (without a map) and then we realized we missed 3 clues. We headed back in for another 20 minutes to make sure we solved the mystery.


Here are the kids before going into the maze

Our own peanut!!

Savannah on one of the 3 bridges in the corn maze

Preston on the bridge, wondering what's below!

After the corn maze we went on a long hay ride up the mountain, let the kids ride the barrel train, had a picnic lunch, and then wrapped up the morning with some playground time. They were exhausted!!!

It was a fun weekend and a nice adventure for our family. Now that they are older and travel somewhat easier I'm looking forward to a few more weekend getaways!

Lots of Progress

I have been so busy with things around here that I have totally neglected the blog. This is a post that should have been posted two weeks ago, but better late than never, right?

Preston:
His speech has just taken off. Now most of his talking is in 3-4 word sentences! Last week I got my first real "I wuv U mama". Oh how it just melts my heart to hear him say it!!! However, our biggest problem is that he continues to drop the ends of words off. For example he calls yogurt "yo" and purple "pur", which also is conveniently his word for pour. The maddening thing is that sometimes he actually slows down enough and we actually hear the whole word, but this is a very rare occasion. The speech therapist (which we are changing next week) says that this is completely normal. She tried to explain that the first goal for Preston is to be able to communicate with us. Since he can basically do that and he is always going at full speed ahead, he probably isn't interested in his articulation. But, she assures me that will come with time. So for now we are loving his new speech. I have to get the video camera out to capture these precious "words" before he becomes a sassy little child.


Savannah:
She is also making progress with her reading and writing. Although I can't really say that she is "reading" at this point, she is doing pretty well at sounding out words . . . but only when she wants to. She is also improving with her writing, both in neatness and in writing more words on her own. I love sorting through her classwork and trying to decipher her words, it cracks me up! I'm afraid she is going to be much like me with preferring math over reading. She loves to do adding problems at the dinner table and always complains when I make her sound out words for her homework.

We had her conference a couple of weeks ago and received her report card last week too. Of course, she is the model child at school according to her teacher. She received all 3s on her report card and even a 3+ on following school rules.

Savannah and Preston have both come so far even since August. We still have a way to go, but it's neat to be able to see progress from day to day with each of them.

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/