Sunday, June 22, 2008
Father's Day!!
For Father's Day the boys made E cards and framed pictures for his office. They had a great time making them for him and giving them to him also. I got him tickets for the whole family to go to the Slipnot Mayhem Fest in July. It should be intersting!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Homemade
Ok, I have decided after reading a few different blogs about being green to start doing more than we do and to try to do what we do on a more regular basis. So, I think the best way to start is to list what we do and what we want to do. Since there are a lot of changes to be made in this house I want to start slow. I think the best and quickest things we can change right now is food!
Why food? We deal with it everyday and yet we waste so much money on it (and food itself). We (people in general) don't think about the food we buy or the food we eat. All we tend to do is complain about it. I would like to stop being one of these people and do something about it. I have been starting to stockpile things and it is helping a lot but there are other things I would like to do. Some of the things I would like to do is make more homemade things; both food and other things.
Why food? We deal with it everyday and yet we waste so much money on it (and food itself). We (people in general) don't think about the food we buy or the food we eat. All we tend to do is complain about it. I would like to stop being one of these people and do something about it. I have been starting to stockpile things and it is helping a lot but there are other things I would like to do. Some of the things I would like to do is make more homemade things; both food and other things.
*******see The Finer Things for updates on this*************
Locking down life...
Ok, we have never been a family that restricts things, for we have always felt that restricting things made the tempation worse. This is why we never thought to limit: TV, computers, internet, etc. This was all fine and good until recently....
Our house is two levels...upstairs (main level) is the bedrooms, bathroom, living room and kitchen. The adults spend most of their time up here. The downstairs has a music room, family room, playroom, and school room/laundry room. This is where the children spend most of their time; don't get me wrong we all spend time as a family a lot but where as most kids go to their room to play ours go downstairs.
The family room downstairs has a TV, DVD, XBox, Wii and 2 computers (one for each kid...dh works in computers). This has never been an issue for the children are well aware that they must ask before using anything in the family room or risk losing it forever. This rule has always worked in our house even with visitors until recently.
We have a 7yr old boy that is advanced for his age and a 3yr old that is also advanced for his age. Given that the 3yr old is the second child he wasn't as "watched" as the first one was and has been allowed to "go play" on his own since he could make it down the stairs alone (it is child proofed). Over the past 2 months our 7 yr old has found I Carly and Hanna Montana, along with a few other shows of this level. Where we don't care so much if the 7yr old watches these shows it isn't ok for the 3yr old.
D just doesn't get the humor or understand what is happening so he ends up saying things he saw on the shows and it is never good. Most of the time D only remember half of what was said and when he tries to repeat it, it comes out totally wrong making it sound like he was watching something very inapproprate for children in general.
To stop this from happening I decided to activate the V-Chip in the downstairs TV. This was not a happy day in our house. For niether child was happy and niether was I. I didn't want to do this but I can't have the 3yr old watching those shows with out us there with him. We explained this to J and he suggested just not watching those shows around his brother. We thought that would work but it didn't for J doesn't pay enough attention to who is and isn't in the room when the TV is on.
Now, we have the V-Chip on and set so only things rated TV-Y and G are allowed. This kills most shows they like but oh well. I have told them if they want to watch things that are blocked you will need to do it in my bedroom or in the living room with mom or dad. They don't like this so much but are getting use to it.
What is the downfall????
Just like we thought before...limit people and they will try harder to get it. We locked down the TV just to find J going to the places on his computer instead. Again...don't care if J goes to these places but NOT with D around and J never pays attention if the computer is on. SO, now I"m trying to find an ok program to limit the web. All I really want to do is block a few sites but the things I keep finding limit so much more than that.
I don't know maybe I should just stop all of this and go to a rule of NO ELECTRONICS unless mom or dad are in the same room with you. Not sure that will help things since then we would always hear...."will you come watch me on the computer?" or "can we watch .... together?"
Not fun at all...maybe there is another answer that just hasn't come up yet!
Our house is two levels...upstairs (main level) is the bedrooms, bathroom, living room and kitchen. The adults spend most of their time up here. The downstairs has a music room, family room, playroom, and school room/laundry room. This is where the children spend most of their time; don't get me wrong we all spend time as a family a lot but where as most kids go to their room to play ours go downstairs.
The family room downstairs has a TV, DVD, XBox, Wii and 2 computers (one for each kid...dh works in computers). This has never been an issue for the children are well aware that they must ask before using anything in the family room or risk losing it forever. This rule has always worked in our house even with visitors until recently.
We have a 7yr old boy that is advanced for his age and a 3yr old that is also advanced for his age. Given that the 3yr old is the second child he wasn't as "watched" as the first one was and has been allowed to "go play" on his own since he could make it down the stairs alone (it is child proofed). Over the past 2 months our 7 yr old has found I Carly and Hanna Montana, along with a few other shows of this level. Where we don't care so much if the 7yr old watches these shows it isn't ok for the 3yr old.
D just doesn't get the humor or understand what is happening so he ends up saying things he saw on the shows and it is never good. Most of the time D only remember half of what was said and when he tries to repeat it, it comes out totally wrong making it sound like he was watching something very inapproprate for children in general.
To stop this from happening I decided to activate the V-Chip in the downstairs TV. This was not a happy day in our house. For niether child was happy and niether was I. I didn't want to do this but I can't have the 3yr old watching those shows with out us there with him. We explained this to J and he suggested just not watching those shows around his brother. We thought that would work but it didn't for J doesn't pay enough attention to who is and isn't in the room when the TV is on.
Now, we have the V-Chip on and set so only things rated TV-Y and G are allowed. This kills most shows they like but oh well. I have told them if they want to watch things that are blocked you will need to do it in my bedroom or in the living room with mom or dad. They don't like this so much but are getting use to it.
What is the downfall????
Just like we thought before...limit people and they will try harder to get it. We locked down the TV just to find J going to the places on his computer instead. Again...don't care if J goes to these places but NOT with D around and J never pays attention if the computer is on. SO, now I"m trying to find an ok program to limit the web. All I really want to do is block a few sites but the things I keep finding limit so much more than that.
I don't know maybe I should just stop all of this and go to a rule of NO ELECTRONICS unless mom or dad are in the same room with you. Not sure that will help things since then we would always hear...."will you come watch me on the computer?" or "can we watch .... together?"
Not fun at all...maybe there is another answer that just hasn't come up yet!
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Downloading the Camera
Ok...I have been posting for a bit now but I don't post pics often so today I'm adding pics to the posts that are already here (I had pics I just hadn't downloaded them yet...can we say lazy)
Monday, June 2, 2008
Rearranging again
This weekend we started packing up things we don't use and moving things in the house around a bit. In the process we have found a lot of things to get rid of (who would have guessed :)). While we were doing all of this we created things for the kids to do in each room so they could spend more time closer to us (normally all their play stuff has been downstairs).
Now they have AquaDoodle and paint to do at the kitchen table while I cook or clean (picture shows Aqua Doodle in D's room instead of the kitchen). This works out much better since better they didn't get to paint that much since I had other things to do besides sit downstairs and watch them paint (got to make sure the 3yr old keeps the paint on paper). Now, we throw the plastic table cloth on the table and set out the paints and they paint while we do whatever close by. This is also how they play with the AquaDoodle. They both love the thing. I'm amazed how much they use it. We now have two of them so that they cover the whole table.
In J's room we put books on CD, coloring books, activities books, and general reading books for them to do together. In D's room we put music stuff, blocks and general reading books for them to do together. This way they have a few different things they can do upstairs.
We also changed the downstairs again. I didn't like where the school stuff was or how the computers where setup. We moved all the music stuff back into the "music room" which we had been using as the school area (computer area). It looks and works much better with all the music stuff setup in there. In the family room area where the music stuff was we put all the computers. Amazingly this looks really nice this way.
We are painting the laundry room which will become the school area also. This will work out better since all the school stuff is back in this area anyways since this is where all the storage is. This will also be helpful since we have a nice fold out table that all three of us can sit at to do our work and whatnot.
I'm amazed at how much I love it when we rearrange things!
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