Cindy's Life as She Knows It

Whew!  What a fun week we had!  Dakota and I took a mother/son daytrip to Kings Dominion in Virginia on Monday.  We watched the BMX show, rode some rides, played some games and went to the water park.  Koda got a Bulls basketball and won a Mario stuffed doll.  We had another great mom/son experience and I loved the talking in the van on the ride down. He is his most wonderful self when it's just the two of us and I really enjoy him! Tuesday we both needed a do nothing day.  I had the daycare kids, but we planned little and spend the day relaxing.  I let Dakota hang out in his room watching TV and playing video games all day and then we hung out together Tuesday night having dinner and watching baseball. Wednesday we did normal daycamp things like playing board games, drawing and hanging outside.  We also dyed popcorn kernals for our craft on Friday and he went over his friends house to play basketball. Thursday we took a daytrip to Nottingham, Pennsylvania with all the kids a

Today I just didn't have it in me after such a hectic start to the week to do much, so the three daycare kids I had, along with my son, did a whole lot of nothing.  The older two hung out, played on their tablets and played a game.  The younger two just played with toys in the playroom.  This all gave my older son and I time for a heart to heart and then it was nuggets and macaroni for everyone and naps for the littles. When the younger ones went off to sleep, Dakota and Mariah and I sat around talking about Mother Goose rhymes and I recited many of them for the kids.  They then went out to the table and we did a written scavenger hunt that asked questions about the rhymes such as "what did the dish do in Hickory, Dickory, Dock?"  When they were finished, we went over poetic rhyme schemes for quatrains, reviewing for Dakota and teaching the concept to Mariah.  When they had it down and we did a practice few together, I turned them loose to come up with their own poem an

We continued our busy first week of summer with a trip to Chuck E. Cheese with all the kids today.  We had two babies, 3 preschoolers and 2 almost ten year olds.  We thought that they opened at 10am, but when we got there, we found that they now open at 11.  So we improvised and took a group field trip to Petco next door and spend 45 minutes looking at the cats, guinea pigs and mice.  We even got to pet a very large iguana that a man brought in.  The last fifteen minutes were spent singing the Ants Go Marching and playing London Bridge until the employee finally took mercy on us and let us in.  We ordered pizza and tokens with our gift cards and spent the next 90 minutes having fun and not spending a dime of our own money.  Excellent!  The kids even got to parade behind Chuck E. Cheese himself and got a group picture with him. After getting home and getting the little ones in for a nap, I took the older two to the Arbutus Library and got them into their Nanoscience class.  They did s

Today I thought that we would have a full house, but for one reason or another, I only had my son here and one baby boy.  We met my daughter and her friend and their 4 kids for a free movie in Arbutus, where my little granddaughter told me for the very first time that she loved me without me saying it first.  Usually I say "I love you, Natalie!" and she answers with a hug and "I wuf you , Nana!", but today when she got to the movie she snuggled into my lap and hugged me and told me first.  That little girl melts my heart!  She only made it through an hour of the movie before she got antsy, so we walked and talked and then went and cooled down the van for the others.  I am so lucky to be able to see her almost every day and to be able to watch her grow. Now the house is quiet.  No preschoolers waking from naps or gradeschoolers doing packets.  There won't be the shriek of kids splashing in the slip and slide, but only the sound of the swing rocking the baby boy

Today was an incredibly busy Monday.  I got my usual daycare baby at 7am and then got the house ready for the other daycare kids and the things ready for my summer campers.  We did breakfast at 9:15 and I left the house with the oldest two at 9:40 to take them to the craft class at Michaels Craft Store.  They were the only two since school is still in around that area, but they worked on the layers of the Earth, dinosaur fossils and fossils with clay.  Afterward, we stopped by the library to pick up a few books and then got a soda and headed home. When we got home I put more water in the water table for the preschoolers and the babies were being fed.  The older two watched a show and then everyone had lunch.  We got the preschoolers and babies down for a nap and then it was time to start our weekly unit with the older kids.  We started a unit from History's Mysteries about Mother Goose.  We had a discussion about who Mother Goose actually was and I told them about the theories pe

I am not sure how three months have passed me by without adding a new post, but I'm back and going to try to keep things going again.  Life is very, very busy.  Dakota has finished grade 3 and had a week's break before "summer camp" begins tomorrow.  Summer camp here is when his cousin and a few friends come during the week for me to watch and we have a schedule with a weekly theme, fun classes and field trips, a daily schedule, educational packets, free movies at the theater, library trips galore, daily board games, daily outdoor time and whatever else we can squeeze in.  All this while running a daycare here at the house with my daughter that includes a 12 months old, an 8 month old, a two year old, three three year olds and two four year olds.  We are a busy, loving, chaotic mess, but we have fun and we work hard to keep the kids happy and busy. Last week we did the letter M with the daycare kids.  They were monkeys jumping on the bed, singing their favorite rhym