Swimming in January!

The pools at our friend's hotel.

Mr. W and Mr. J chatting at the pool

The girls, ages 3,4,4,2.. they have been having a blast playing together.

My handsome little man... who recently fell for a real life mermaid...the one who lives in the aquarium at Bass Pro... stay tuned for pics and a video of him kissing the tank. It is priceless!

A cold day at the park

Earlier this week, Deanna and I thought it would be fun to take the kids to the park. So we left around 8:30, grabbed a starbucks and headed to Aliante's "dino" park. We were surpised to find the parking lot EMPTY. It wasn't until we unloaded the kids out of the car that we found out the reason why... it was soo cold! Although the temperature was 48, it was very windy and so it felt colder. We stayed there for about 10 minutes and all made the decision to come back on another day.
Notice the triceratops in the background..

Deanna was trying to get him to look at the camera in the picture. I also posted this on my facebook and Deanna's friend Jamie had a good idea for a caption: "Mr. T, I told you to get off the swing. NOW GET INSIDE!" :) Mr. J and I laughed so hard when we read that.

Miss O's cute tights.

Miss M "freezing"

Teriyaki chicken and smores

This weekend, while Mr. J was away, we went to Uncle Tom and Aunt Nanny's house for a delicous dinner of teriyaki chicken. Tom was stationed in Okinawa before coming here and is excellent at making asian food. His sushi is quite delicious. He marinated the chicken and then cooked it on his homemade barbeque/ fire pit. Then we made smores with the kids. They were delicious. Did I mention I LOVE living by my sister? God is good!

Mr. T

Miss M

Uncle Tom cookin

Miss O in her new Valentines shirt. She has worn this shirt 4 days this week along with these new magenta stretch pants with white stars on them. I hid them from her today so I could wash them.

This boy LOVES things with wheels

Sunday Blessings

I thought I would tell you all about a couple sweet little blessings I got today. Mr. J has been out of town at Sandcamp (website conference) and visiting his brother in San Diego this weekend, and I have got to stay home with our sweet, sick kids. On Wednesday, Miss M came down with a fever and an awful sounding cough. Thankfully, despite this sickness she has been her normal, energetic self and being sleeping just fine at night. Miss O and Mr. J started getting this same upper respiratory infection on Friday. I have been feeling fine but if I take a really deep breath I can hear some rattling. Miss M only coughs occassionally now and I think she is almost all better. Anyways, these sicknesses changed my weekend plans a bit. Today we were planning on church, a church potluck (who doesn't love a nummy church potluck?), and AWANAS. Since I didn't feel it would be very kind of me to put my 2 sickest, Miss O and Mr. T, in Sunday School or the Nursery and Mr. J wasn't going to be there to sit with me in the service with them, I had to make the tough decision to stay home. But we had a great morning and afternoon. The kids and I used our extra time to get some cleaning done and take a nap. Mr. T took his first nap outside of his crib in his big boy bed! Isn't that exciting?

So the first blessing I will tell you about is that my super cool sister and Tom came over later this afternoon so I could take Miss M to AWANA's and I could fulfill my weekly commitment as AWANA Trek (middle school) Secretary. I am so glad I was able to go because it was triple buck night and so many of the kids had memorized verses! The best part was, when I came home the table was set and a yummy dinner of spaghetti was all made. Thanks Deanna and Tom! We love you guys! After they left and I cleaned up from dinner, I decided to end my day of cleaning with some vacuuming. I got my small oreck out to do the stairs, when little Miss M, said to her big, pregnant mommy. Oh mom, I know how to do this, I will vacuum for you. Yes, my 4 year old daughter offered to vacuum the stairs! She did a fabulous job. She is very detailed oriented so she did just as well as I would have done. I also think she thought it was super fun.

So there you go, the two highlights of my day. Now I will be praying that Mr. J makes it home safely in his Subaru (aka "the coolest car in the world" by Miss M, who said the reason why is cause the back windows roll down.. unlike our vans). Good night!

My adorable "niece"

My friend, Mrs. M over at Memoirs from Narnia, has a very adorable daughter named Miss B. She is 10 months old now and I am a very proud Auntie! You can all join us in praying that we would get orders over to Germany so we can spend more time with this sweet little girl (and her parents too!). When Mrs M was pregnant with Miss B, she came and visited us here in Vegas and we went through all of the girls baby clothes (this is when I was giving them all away since we thought 3 was enough). Mr. and Mrs. M were our closest friends in Spokane, and we got to see them pretty much every day... so Mrs. M remembers a lot of the outfits the girls wore when they were babies. It was so fun to give her the outfits knowing Miss B would get to wear them. I really enjoy seeing pictures of her wearing them. So below are a couple of pictures of Miss B and then ones of Miss M when she was a baby wearing the same thing!

Miss B's Christmas picture, 9 months old Miss M, 6 months old

Miss B reading in these cute jammies.. she is probably 8 months here? Miss M at 3 months (the Jones babys are always quite large) reading Fuzzy Bee and Friends.. a favorite book of hers. She loved this book so much! I still remember some of the lines, since we read it so much. Unfortunately, one day I made the mistake of washing it in the washing machine and it lost all of its great color. Oops
I love this pic of Mrs. M and Miss B! Miss B is 9 months here

Here is Mrs. M and Miss M (9 months).. notice the cute hair (which is very similar to Miss B's). Mrs. M was very good at doing their hair in the cute bows.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

I have had a lot of people ask me lately about the book I am using to teach Miss M to read, so I thought I should do a blog post about it.

Miss M has always been a very verbal kid. She caught on quick to signing and to speaking. This summer I noticed she seemed very eager to learn to read, but since she is my first, I had no idea how to teach her to read. I really felt like there was a window of opportunity and if I didn't fill it soon, it would go away.

I began asking moms I knew what they had done when they had preschoolers. A lady by the name of Mary, who is a homeschooling mom at our church, told me she had done a lot reading to her kids (as much as an hour a day!) and used this simple book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. So I decided to check out this book and found it at our local Borders (the first place I looked). The title does a great job of describing it. The 100 lessons in the book are easy! We only spend 15-20 minutes on it a day and do 4-5 lessons a week. The book tells the parent what to say verbatim which is really nice since I have never taught anyone to read before. It also gives practical tips, such as correcting minor mistakes early with your kids so they don't continue to make them. Miss M has really excelled and I am so blessed to watch her learn. She just completed lesson 60!

Below are some pictures I took 2 weeks ago of the story she read, and the picture that accompanied it. Miss M found this story to be quite hilarious.

The picture that accompanied the story

We practiced writing letter P that day and here is the picture Miss M colored with P words

Miss O colored the D page while I did Miss M's reading lesson. This is the first time she colored in the lines. All coloring prior to this have been scribbles. It took quite a bit of concentration but she did it. And today she drew a picture of Mr. J and I and he had a head, eyes and a body!

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Paperback)by Siegfried Engelmann (Author), Phyllis Haddox (Author), Elaine Bruner (Author)

Inauguration Day

On Tuesday morning, we had an Inauguration party (we love any reason to have a party around here). We enjoyed overnight rolls and watching all the festivities of the morning. Deanna and my friend Laura's kids were here (Laura had to go do her dreaded Glucose test since she is also pregnant). It was great having our resident kindergarten teacher here to help explain to the kids the events of the day. We explained to the kids about how this man would be the president of our country and live in the white house. My friend Laura's son who is six had an interesting question... he wanted to know if the old president and the new president had a fight to see who would be president. It was cool to be able to tell him that this is the 44th time our country had peacefully transferred power. The significance of the first African American president was kind of lost with them. The nice thing about living on a military base is they have the opportunity to play with children of many different backgrounds. This is different than how I grew up in our small Washington town, where we mostly played and went to school with kids that looked just like us. Miss M's first friend she played with in preschool and who is now one of our neigbors is african american. To the kids, they are just like any of the other friends they have. I remember last year Miss M telling me that her friend had such beautiful brown skin and hair and she wished she could have the same. We discussed how God made us all different but still loves us all the same. So although Obamas politics are not my own, I am glad I got to witness the events of this day. I appreciated some good blog posts that reminded me of what the Bible teaches us about our duty as Christians...

Praying for our President - by Ligon Duncan

A Prayer for President Obama - by Al Mohler
"Christians are, first of all, citizens of a heavenly kingdom. The followers of Christ know no allegiance of ultimate rank to any government or earthly authority. Yet, the Bible clearly teaches that God has given us the gifts of law, government, and ruling authorities for our good. We are instructed to pray for "rulers and all who have authority" and to be faithful in praying "so that we can have quiet and peaceful lives full of worship and respect for God" [1 Timothy 2:2]."

Disney's Armed Forces Salute

We have been enjoying this nice, quiet three day weekend. We really had nothing planned, so yesterday, the girls and I went to the mall. While I used to frequent the mall quite often before I had kids, I rarely go there now. But the girls are well behaved enough now that we can go there and it is actually enjoyable. We mostly just looked around in the kids clothes stores. I was hoping to find some good deals on clothes for them... but didn't have much luck. We did, however, find the Disney store. They were pretty much in heaven walking in there. I let them each pick out a special cup (they were on sale for 2.99) and they were so excited! I snapped a few pictures of them outside with their cups. The weather here has been wonderful. It feels like late spring in Washington. High 60's, t-shirt weather. Mr. J even wore shorts today!

For my military friends: mentioning the Disney store reminded me of an email I got at work the other day. Disney is offering some great military deals! An active duty member gets a FREE five day ticket and can buy up to 5 5-day tickets for family/friends for only $99 a piece. If you click here, you can read all the details. We benefited from the military deals offered by Seaworld last year for military members, which was great. Their deal is free admission for the military members and up to 3 dependents one time a year. Click here to check that one out.

Enjoy the pics!
Sisters are so much fun! They call each other their "best friends forever."

Here is Miss O in some cute tights. I love fun, colorful tights and so do the girls. They try to wear them daily during the "cool weather" season!

Mr. T and his dump truck. Mr. J bought this a couple years back for the girls.-. in hopes that they would some day have a brother who would use it. He got his wish and Mr. T plays with that truck all the time. He pushes it to the playground every day to fill with bark dust and rocks.

Dress Up

Thursday Morning the kids decided they wanted to play dress up. We spent a couple hours putting on lots of different outfits and dancing. Here are some pictures of all the fun.

Miss O.... complete with a bruised forehead. She learned the hard way why twirling around with your eyes closed is NOT a good idea.

Miss M in the sailor hat

Mr. T watching the action

The girls are wearing the tap dance recital outfits my sister and I wore to perform "Popeye the Sailor Man." Unfortunately, my sister had the chicken pox on the day of the show and wasn't able to tap. I still remember the routine... "shuffle ball change, shuffle ball change, scoot, clap, scoot, clap." Wearing the tutu my stepsister gave them

Miss O with her blue eyes, blue dress, and blue forehead...

The chef/football player holding a soccerball

Miss M wearing one of Mr. J's old football jerseys. She made her self shoulder pads using kitchen towels.

Mr. T admiring the necklaces...

Future firefighter?

You can fly, you can fly, you can fly....

Yesterday, Mr. J got rewarded for his hard work for the Air Force by getting to go on an hour long incentive ride in an F-16! He had a great time and I am so glad he landed safely.

Sunday Afternoon

Yesterday was a great day for our family. We enjoyed going to church where we praised God and were blessed by a great sermon. Then after lunch at In -n Out (a nice little gem here in Vegas), we came home and the kids got a chance to play outside in the sunshine. I thought you would all enjoy some of the pictures I took. Miss M's glasses are hilarious. After that we headed to AWANAS where Miss M had fun being a Cubbie and Mr. J and I helped lead the middle schoolers (Trek). I remember a lot about middle school and it doesn't seem like that far away.... until I do the math. The age of the kids we work with are 12 and 13 and I am now more than double their age! Weird!
The sweetest little guy ever

I am still getting used to his shaven head, but it is growing on me.

Quite the handsome young man

The girls love taking turns pushing each other on the swing.

Miss M looks kind of like Elton John in this picture... there is a picture taken when she was just a few months old where she also looks like Elton John. I will need to find that and post it

Sweet Miss O

Sisters

All 3 of them making special "Batman soup", complete with water, bark dust and leaves. Yum