Last day of VBS...WooHoo!!!

Now don't get me wrong; I love VBS. I know Shawn had a blast this week and I think Joshua enjoyed the change. However, I'm so thankful that it is done. My house looks like a tornado touched down. After I got Joshua down for a nap today, I spent some time cleaning up the kitchen (still not done but so much better). I went through all the junk mail that's been piling up on my dining room table. I attempted to vacuum the great room but when I pulled out my beloved Electrolux Pronto, it wasn't working. The light wasn't even coming on when it was placed in the charger. I didn't have time to fool with it so I brought out the broom. Ugh, I hate to sweep. I hate it so much that after I was done sweeping, I pulled the charger apart to see if I could find something wrong with it. Everything looked good; all solder joints intact, no fuses, nothing out of the ordinary. I put everything back together and plugged it in one more time and this time the light came on. I have no idea what I did but I'm so happy it's working again.

Tomorrow is my last class for my 30 hr. child care class and I have my final exam on Monday night. I didn't think the results would be posted for the last three that I took on Wednesday but when I checked my transcript this afternoon, I found out that I passed all three!

Stressed!!!

Today was just a little stressful. Besides spending the day at VBS, I had to stop at the store on the way home to pick up a few ingredients for dinner. That wasn't really the stressful part. The stressful part was that I took 3 exams tonight and I still needed to study for 2 of them. I also volunteered to contribute to the VBS evening dinner tonight. My MOMS ministry was providing the dinner tonight. Plus, I had a sink full of dishes. I definitely needed to prioritize and studying won out. So I studied as best as I could for 1 1/2 hrs while Joshua took his nap. Then I woke him up at 3:30pm so I could drop off my food at the school. Thankfully, Don got home at 4:30pm today so as soon as we got home, I started studying again. I didn't get to study the material for the 3rd test but since we just went over it on Saturday, I was kind of hoping it was still fresh in my memory.

Don did a lot for me tonight so I have to give him props. He finished dinner, did a load of dishes (yes, I had so many dirty dishes it required 2 loads), fed the kids, put the kids to bed (well kind of, they were still awake when I got home and I had to go into their room and set them straight), and made some almond flour pancakes for breakfast the next couple of days.

I have no idea how I did on my exams. The first and last seemed pretty easy but only time will tell. The second one was hard. I knew it was going to be hard and I spent the most time studying for that one. I'm hoping that it payed off but I truly have no idea how I did on that one.

Once I got home and ate my dinner, I had to prepare for tomorrow's lesson for VBS. I had prepared for the first 3 days and thought that by today, I would have an idea how I was going to spend my 30 minute lesson. Of course I'm not prepared so I had to read over the material and figure out what I was going to say and what activities we would do. I had to write out the Bible Verse of the day on poster board, get all the tree top critters of the day out of their bags and put them in my bag for tomorrow so I wouldn't forget them, and put 2 bottles of water in the fridge for tomorrow. I'll just be glad when I wake up tomorrow and the stress will be behind me. Of course then I have to prepare for Friday's lesson, lol.

One down, four more to go...

I took my first exam (Health and Nutrition) for the 30 hr. child care class I'm required to take to get licensed last Tuesday. They don't tell you if you pass or fail; you have to keep checking online to see if you passed. I've been checking since Friday and it was finally on my transcript today that I passed, yay! So now I have 4 more exams to take. I take 3 tomorrow night and my last one next Monday.

VBS went much smoother today except I have 3 boys that are trouble makers. All the kids in the other 3rd grade class are calm and quite. Why do I always get the loud and active ones??? Do they think I have more experience with that? LOL

Here are a few pics I took of my room. They didn't turn out that great but you get the idea.

Happy Birthday to me!

Thank you everyone for the happy birthday wishes! Although it wasn't an ideal birthday (Don had to work), I still had a very nice day. It started with church. The kids didn't get to bed until after 9pm on Saturday because we were at my parent's house visiting with my cousin who is down here on vacation. I didn't want to take cranky kids with me to the 8am mass so I left the kids home with Don. I feel guilty for even saying this BUT....it was absolutely wonderful to be able to actually pay attention in church for a change. I finally felt like I was there in body, mind, and spirit. I had to stop at the store on the way home from church to get a few things. Once I came home, Don and the kids gave me their cards and lots of hugs and kisses. I had to do a little bit of research on the internet and then it was time to feed the kids lunch and get Joshua down for a nap.

Don had to go into Lowe's at 2pm. My parents were coming over to watch Joshua so Shawn and I could decorate my room for VBS (we were doing a rainforest theme). There was supposed to be 3 group leaders decorating our room but only one other girl showed up. We had no idea how we were going to decorate the room. I brought a bunch of brown paper bags (the kind you get from the grocery store) and that was it. Trista brought a bag full of stuffed animals. We were able to acquire some construction paper and we used it to cut out a bunch of leaves. I cut the bags open and rolled them up and twisted them to look like vines and then we stapled the leaves to the vines. When we first got there I felt a little overwhelmed because I saw all these other people bringing in lots of plants and greenery and other things to decorate their rooms with and all we had was some brown paper bags, lol. I just didn't have the money to go out and by my own decorations for VBS so we did the best we could. We were only supposed to decorate a small area and I have to say that by the time we finished, it didn't look half bad. I forgot to take my camera yesterday to take pictures. I took it today but there was mass confusion and I didn't have an opportunity to take a picture. I'm going to try and get there extra early tomorrow so hopefully I can post pictures tomorrow. I found some rainforest sounds and copied them to a CD to play in the room while we were doing our small group time.

While we were at the school decorating, I started walking around the other rooms to get ideas. I found the 1st grade class (my aunt is teaching 1st grade) so I stopped in and saw my friends Heather and Meredith. Heather knew it was my birthday so she yelled to everyone (they had a lot of youth helpers) to sing happy birthday to me, lol. Then when Trista was leaving (she is the evening 3rd grade teacher) she gave me a small gift. I thought that was very thoughtful of her since we only met about 2 months ago.

So after leaving the school, Shawn and I made a quick stop at Publix to pick up a rotisserie chicken for my parents and then came home. I found out that Joshua didn't take a nap. Holy cow, he didn't fall asleep on Saturday night until 10pm and still woke up at 6:30am and he didn't take a nap??? As soon I got in the door, I immediately got Joshua's dinner together and fed him, changed him, and put him to bed. He fell asleep in about 2 minutes, lol. That was at 5:30pm. Then the rest of us ate dinner. My mom made us an SCD legal spice cake with legal frosting and it was soooo good. The kids loved it! I didn't get my present from my parents because my mom ordered it online but she did have it shipped to me. She sent me the tracking number and it's supposed to arrive on Wednesday so I will have to let you know what I got and how much I love it (at least I hope I'm going to love it). My parents left a little before 7pm because I wanted to get Shawn to bed early to make up for the lack of sleep. Joshua woke up about 8:45pm (I guess he thought he was taking a nap, lol). It took me about an hour but I finally got him back to sleep.

So that was how I spent my birthday. Of course after the kids went to bed, I had a ton of stuff to do to get ready for VBS. I didn't get to bed until about 1am. I hope to make it to bed earlier tonight.

Where did he go?

My little boy is not a little boy anymore. Shawn has always been into cartoons and still is. He's never been into the tween shows but this past week, he's wanted to watch iCarly, Hannah Montana, and the suite life of Zach and Cody. He saw that Camp Rock was coming on tonight and asked to watch it because the Jonas Brothers were in it. Umm, who is this kid and where did Shawn go? I didn't even know he knew who the Jonas Brothers were, lol.

Stupid Thunder!!!

Stupid thunder woke me up this morning. I hate being woke up before I need to. I need all the sleep I can get, lol. In all fairness I should have went to bed earlier. Thankfully, it didn't wake the kids. I'm not sure how though because it shook the whole house! I'm a pretty heavy sleeper too.

I told Shawn he was taking a nap today. He swam a lot in the pool yesterday but didn't get to sleep until after 9pm. He normally goes to bed at 8pm. He probably would have slept in this morning but I had to wake him up at 6:30am. I know he's going to be up late again tonight so I told him he needed to take a nap today so he can catch up on some sleep. Surprisingly he didn't even complain.

Summer Time...

Well, it's definitely summer time here in the Taylor household. We have been to the pool 4 times in the past week. That's a lot for us since we don't have a pool in our backyard. Today we met with one of our friends in our neighborhood and Shawn finally got to play with a boy. It was really good for him too because Zachary is a really good swimmer so it challenged him. The first time Holly brought her girls to swim with us, Shawn pretty much stayed by the steps. The second time Holly met us at the pool, Shawn was jumping in the deep end with Erin and Maggie. Today, Shawn was all over the place. I think it's really good practice for him so now I'm thinking it's a good idea to keep going as much as possible so he can get lots of practice. It's good exercise and it's cheap too. Joshua is also starting to relax a little in the water. I can't afford to pay for swim lessons right now so I'm just going to try and work with him myself this summer and see how it goes. Hopefully by next year, we can get him swim lessons.

Shawn stayed with my parents this past weekend and my dad took him fishing for the first time. They didn't catch anything though. Here's some pictures my dad took:

Election Time

Now that the primary's are over, it's time to start thinking about the next president. If you are unsure of where your candidate stands, check out this site. FactCheck.org is cool because it will tell you if a candidate has lied or stretched the truth on certain topics and then post the facts.

BzzAgent

I went to my BzzAgent home page and was surprised to see that I'm now at a level 3! I'm so excited because now I qualify for early invites plus I have a Golden Key. I'm waiting for a really good campaign to use the key though. I'm liking the new reward system. Before it kicked in I was only at a level 1 although I think I was only .5 pts away from level 2.

If you have no idea what a BzzAgent is and want to learn more, just click here.

I don 't want to judge but....

Ok, so I'm taking this 30 hour child care course that is required for me to get licensed. Most of the girls in my class are around my age (some younger and some older but basically around my age). I can't believe the ignorance when it comes to basic child care. For example: the Back to Sleep campaign has been around at least since Shawn was an infant so it's not new. There was more than one person that asked the instructor if it would be better to put the baby to sleep on their stomach because what if the baby threw up in his sleep. You'll love this one Karlise - when the instructor was going over child safety seats, she said the law was that any child under the age of 6 had to be in a child safety seat/booster. A girl said that when her nephew just turned 4, he weighed too much for the safety seat that she had for him so she called the police to ask them if he still needed to be in the seat and they told her that he was old enough to use the cars seat belts. The thing that really got me was when the instructor was going over child abuse and talking about discipline and what was considered discipline and what was considered child abuse. Most of the women there could not believe that they couldn't spank a child if they were being disciplined. I guess they didn't understand because they grew up getting beat as a child but you would think that if that were the case, they would understand why you wouldn't spank a child. It's kind of scary knowing that these women are going to be caring for children. I guess it's really good that they make this class a requirement, lol.

Last day of School

Well I for one am glad that school is done. No more rushing around in the morning trying to cook breakfast and make Shawn's lunch before the bus got here. Yesterday, Shawn's class had an end of the year awards ceremony. The kids sang a song for us then their teacher presented the awards. Each student got a special award that was unique to them. I'm very pleased that Shawn didn't end up with the Energizer Bunny award or the Chatterbox award, lol. Last year, Shawn's EELP teacher put him into Mrs. Errity's class to help him integrate into Kindergarten. Shawn had a tough time transitioning and cried every time he had to go to her class in the beginning. I'm not sure why he acted like that. He's not normally like that but for some reason, he did not like to go to her class. So the award that Mrs. Errity presented to Shawn was the Coming Out of His Shell award. Here's a few pictures from the awards ceremony:



Here's a picture of Joshua that I took today. He was being silly. He was turning his head side to side and pretending his pj sleeves were his ears.

Scattergories

I've been tagged by my friend Karlise.

SCATTERGORIES. . .It's harder than it looks! Copy and paste into a new blog. When you are done, post a comment on my page.
Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following... they have to be real places, names, things...nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question. -->-->-->
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What is your name? ..........................................Karen
4 Letter Word.....................................................Kill
Vehicle..................................................................Kia...sorry, I couldn't come up with a different one.
City.......................................................................Knoxville
Boy Name............................................................Kevin
Girl Name............................................................Kelly
Alcoholic Drink....................................................Keg of beer
Occupation...........................................................Key Maker
Something you wear...........................................Khakis
Celebrity...............................................................Kelly Clarkson
Food......................................................................Kielbasa
Something found in a bathroom.......................Kleenex
Reason for Being Late........................................Knocked down
Cartoon Character..............................................Krypto the Superdog
Something You Shout........................................Kick-Ass!
Animal.................................................................Kangaroo
Body part............................................................Kidney
Word to describe you........................................Kind hearted