Visit with Santa 2016

Last night we were invited to a neighbor's house for a special visit from Santa and Mrs. Claus.  We had such an incredible time!  Once Santa arrived, he and Mrs. Claus answered questions from the kids, made magic snow, read Twas the Night Before Christmas, and gave out gifts!  Ace attended the gathering too, but was more interested in all of the toys in the house than anything Santa had to offer.  Santa made Lydia blush when he busted her on all of her chasing and aggravating boys!  He also told her if she couldn't decide on what she wanted for Christmas that she would end up getting a pack of boy's blue underwear! Needless to say, she quickly remembered what was on her list! Santa agreed that Mackaylan has been a good girl this year and took note of the fact that she wanted an iPod 6 this year.  I can't believe that we are one week away from Christmas!  Here's to a week of family, friends, and lots of fun!

Snow Much Fun!

We have had a ball the past few days playing in the snow!  It started snowing on Thursday night, turned to a sleet/wintry mix all day Friday, and then back to snow Friday night.  In the northern part of the upstate we ended up with 7 inches.  That's a lot for SC! 

I always consider a snow to be a success when Mickey doesn't have to go in to work, and he has been home with us for 3 days! And let me tell you... he has been the chief memory maker with the girls! He has spent many hours with them sledding, having snowball fights, and taking rides through town.  I can't wait until next year when Bubsy is a little older and can join in the fun too!  

On Friday night, Mackaylan had one of her best friends and her sister over for a sleepover.  They were staying with their grandparents who live in our neighborhood and they girls had spent a lot of time that afternoon playing together in the snow.  They came over after dinner and we took them back home on Saturday after lunch so they could suit up and all do some more sledding together. They all had a blast!

 

Ace and I came back home before the rest of the crew so I had time to bake some chocolate chip cookies.  When the girls got home with Mickey, we made some snow cream to go with them.  Lydia thought it was so cool that she was eating ice cream made of "real snow!" 

Church was cancelled this morning so Mickey headed over to his mom and dad's to get the "real sleds!"  While we were waiting on him to return, the girls took turns sledding down the front steps of the porch on the disk.  Once he returned, we all had fun sledding down the road.  I love making memories with my family! 

Tomorrow we will enjoy another day at home because the backroads are still very icy and dangerous to travel on.  A Monday at home with these 3 kiddos?  I won't complain! 

Here's to hoping we have a few more snow days in our future this winter!  They are just SNOW much fun!!! 

Welcome, 2016!

It's hard to believe another year has come and gone!  2015 was very good to us, but I am excited to see what all 2016 has in store.  A few years ago I started identifying one word that I wanted to focus on for the coming year.  It is a word that serves to keep me focused for the year.  After much deliberation I feel like my word for 2016 should be....

CONSISTENT

I am very good about starting, but not as good about following through and finishing! ;)   Here are a few areas that I plan to be more consistent in:

1.  Spiritual: I have not been taking the time that I need to to read and study my Bible and spend time in prayer on a regular basis.  For the coming year, I want to make sure that I am carving out time on a consistent basis (everyday) to do my daily devotion and pray.  I'm not sure if this time will be first thing in the morning or after the kiddos are in bed at night, but this has got to be a priority!

2. Physical- I have really fallen off the wagon and it is time for that to change.  It's amazing how much better i feel when I am more disciplined with my diet and exercise. I have tried WW on and off since Ace has been born, but this is the year to get this weight off!  I have debated in my head trying the low-carb/low-sugar thing again, but I feel like WW is a "program" that I can live with long-term.

Also, I am going to be more consistent with my Plexus regimen.  Despite what my hubby thinks, I can tell a difference when I am taking my products regularly and getting myself healthy from the inside out! I am currently using the Triplex (Slim, BioClense, and ProBio) along with the X-Factor multivitamin.  While I am still nursing I can't take the Accelerator, but I'm looking forward to working that back in because I feel like it does make a big difference (for me anyway!)

3. Professional-  This year I have been going through Reading Recovery training.  This is a one-on-one reading intervention program offered to first grade students.  I am loving the training and working with the students, but am looking forward to "graduating" in the spring.  I really want to work hard on keeping my lessons to the 30-minute time frame and doing my lesson planning and paperwork at school.  This will allow me to get in more classrooms during ELA instruction first thing in the morning and keep my time at home with the kiddos and hubby "sacred."

This year I started sending out a Hello, Monday! Memo with important dates to remember, websites to visit, and other teaching tips and ideas.  However, I haven't sent them out as often as I would have liked.  So, for the remainder of the year my goal is to send out 2 each month.  I will create time in my weekly schedule to work on it so I am not still putting the finishing touches on it on Monday morning! ;)

I could write down a few more professional goals, but I think I might save those for a blog post on my professional blog, Lana's Line of Learning.

4.  Personal- On a personal level, my goal is to update the blog at least 1x a week.  I also want to have Mickey add a line in the budget to get the blog books we haven't had printed printed out so we will have them for the girls to look through.  I have said from the beginning that blogging is my way of scrapbooking  and documenting our life together so I need to do a better job of not just documenting the big, fun things, but also different aspects of our daily life.

I also want to be consistent with tedious household chores so that the house and laundry stay in order.  This means taking time each day to pick things up and put them back where they belong and to do a load of laundry at least every other day.  These things sound simple, but as a working mother the last thing I want to do when I get home is clean and fold laundry!  However, when my house is in order every other aspect of my life feels like it is in order too.

Well, I guess I could go on and on with all of my goals for the coming year, but I don't want to have so many that I am not successful with any of them.  I think that is why I like the One Word idea.  While all of the things above are pretty explicit they all relate back to being CONSISTENT in some shape or form.  My next step is to take my word and the list and create some kind of word art to hang as a reminder throughout the year!

I love the start of a new year.  It is full of new possibilities.  New goals.  New beginnings.

2016... Let's do this!