School's Out For Summer!

Thursday, May 27, 2010 11:46 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments


Summer time has officially come to our house and school is out for summer!! Today was the last day for the public school kids here so it was our last day as well!

Of course I like to have the kids still do some learning through the summer to keep their minds fresh and it's good for when they get bored to entertain them. Nothing good can come from any kid having that much free time in one day haha

We made some graduation hats today in honor of our last day!

We cut a strip out of black construction paper and fit it to each of the childs head and then glued it together.

We folded the top of the strip back and glued it to a flat piece of black construction paper to make the top part of the hat.

Then we took a few pieces of white yarn and glued it to the center of the hat to make tassles.

The kids really loved it!


Tumble Time Gymnastics

Wednesday, May 26, 2010 11:36 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments

I can honestly say that my kids have pretty much tried about every sport there is out there almost!

I like to have them test out the waters in every little thing possible to see what best fits their interest or what they do best at!

my boys have done some open gym before but my daughter hasn't had a chance to try out gymnastics just yet. With summer rolling around we definatly need to find a few things to keep everyone busy and active! Keep their little minds going!



We saddly missed the Tball cut offs here. Wrestling doesn't start till fall and I've been wanting to try my daughter out with gymnastics so we jumped on a great deal for the summer at one of the local businesses and all 3 of my kids started their first class for summer tonight!

I got a super cute little outfit for my daughter! I can't wait to watch her learn more! She seems to be in her own little world sometimes so hopefully this will teach her some grace and focus.

The boys seemed to pick right up on it!



See Through Egg Science Continued

Tuesday, May 25, 2010 4:25 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments



After days of observing the egg a little at a time and adding more viniger to it and watching the egg shell slowly become see through.. today we took it out and examined how it looked and how you could see through it at the table and by holding it up in front of the window and letting the sun shine through it!



We discussed what happened and then we felt of it and how soft the shell had become.

And then we did the best part of the entire project! We squeezed the egg and SPLAT!!! Observed everything that was inside of the egg!!




The boys especially loved that part the most haha



Baby On The Go!!

Monday, May 24, 2010 4:31 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments




I can't believe that it's that time already!! Our little Peyton is officially on the go at 5 months and 2 weeks!

She's been getting around by scooting around backwards on her belly since about 3 months on. She would just inch and inch back. She would scoot on her back when throwing a fit by kicking her legs so hard she was so mad and we thought that was crazy enough! The pediatrician thought we were crazy when we told him till he made her mad by messing with her at her 2 month check up and saw her try to do it on the table and was like wow she is one strong baby and especially for being so tiny!!

Then at her 4 month check up she showed him how she was scooting around backwards on her belly!

So she's been getting up on all four's for about 2 weeks now. Every since my husband left to NTC for training. I just knew she was going to sadly wind up crawling before he got back.. but that's how this wonderful military life goes sometimes..

And yesterday she's up on all fours and she takes one plunge forward with one knee and BOOM right on her face! Poor little girl! But that didn't keep her from going at all! She got up and went again! And again!!!

So we officially have a crawler! She will be off in no time around everywhere when she gets her hand coordination down a bit more!

So as exciting of a day as it was yesterday with that it was also a very bad day. I wound up going to the emergency room from having tingling down my left arm from my fingers through my shoulder. I had an SVT attack on Saturday night and was able to get it under control but had tingling off and on Sunday.

From the moment I woke up yesterday it was non stop. Then turned into a pain from my elbow up through my left side of my neck. Chest pain, shortness of breath, about to pass out. So I went in and everything checked out fine on the xray, EKG and blood work that I wasn't having a heart attack and he said the steps I'm doing at home during my SVT attacks are the right ones and just come in if they last longer then 30 minutes or get worse.

They said they think I may have something called sheehans that is developed from loosing to much blood and they think I developed it possibly after I gave birth to my 3rd child and lost so much blood with her and almost had a blood transfusion and that would be what was the onset for all of these problems.

He said I may possibly need to switch heard meds since I was still borderline for high blood pressure and my heart rate was still high but not alarmingly high. But he's leaving that up to my Dr at my appointment on Thursday. If I do have to switch I will no longer be able to breastfeed sadly. Which everyone knows how much that means to me and what a big thing it is so I'm sad thinking about it.

So I got discharged and started feeling better and we made it out for an ice cream play date at chick fil a last night. It was nice to get out and get some adult communication even if I was a little out of it!


Fun at the Dino Park

Friday, May 21, 2010 4:41 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments






As my kids call it.. because it has a HUGE purple dinosaur you can walk through! One of their favorite parks but saddly never any kids there to play with so I try to go to the others more so they have more interaction with other kids! But I love this park. It's a lot of fun! We took a lot of really cute pictures out there. It was so beautiful and green and full of flowers!











The kids how ever weren't so happy about the sun being in their eyes while I tried to take pictures and Brooklyn was crying about it and Peyton was just in a bad mood so as good as the picture came out of the four of them I had to laugh with how two of them look so unhappy to be taking it haha




Splash Pad and Finger Painted Flags

Thursday, May 20, 2010 5:09 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments



Today we had an early morning field trip to start off our day and met with a mom's group I'm in for an hour at the local splash pad! The kids always love to meet there and run free through the water and it was so beautiful today! Not to hot! Just nice, sunny, beautiful and a little breeze!



My two middle children didn't seem interested long at all today for some reason and about 20 minutes after getting there were ready to head home. But the oldest was having fun so Nana got them occupied at the park next door for a bit!






After we were done we grabbed a quick lunch and then headed home and they spent some time out in the pool swimming and then started our school day!





We did a lot of fun stuff today. Continued to examine our See Through Egg project and for Art's and Craft's we made a Finger Painted Flag for fun!



What kid doesn't love finger paints?! So they each made a flag and then got to paint a few pictures of their own for fun!




I've been working with my oldest on learning how to write in cursive this week as well. This has sparked a big interest in him. He thinks it's so interesting how different some of the letters look and has been having fun learning the different lower case letters.

Puppet Shows

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 4:52 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments


Yesterday we had a field trip to the library for our weekly storytime and picked up some new books and movies! The kids were very excited to be back in Lawton for the storytime in town here. There's something about the guy here that everyone seems to love and catches the kids attention!
They of course love the puppet show the most and always get a huge laugh out of that and have since just a few months old! My oldest is now 7 1/2 yrs old and has gone to storytime locally here since he was 2yrs old when we first moved back to Oklahoma. The other 3 have gone since birth as long as we have lived here or been in town!





When we got done at storytime we headed over to the mall just down the street and got a little play time in at their play area. We were hoping to schedule a playdate there today but most were not able to make it.

However we did run into some old friends from another playgroup as well as make some new ones! Joined back up in that group now that we are back in town to try to stay active as well!

We found some homeschool groups here but I'm dissapointed they don't seem very active at all. I'm hoping to find one that is more active like Texas was. I was really excited to be involved there and was hoping for the same here to get some older kids for my oldest during the day to have outtings with when we do field trips and to do some more educational type field trips as well.

See Through Egg Science and Craft Stick Flag

Tuesday, May 18, 2010 7:46 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments


So yesterday I got in for my first appointment here since returning home and it went wonderful! I absolutely loved this Dr! He was very relaxed, kicked back, talked to me and listened to everything I had to say and chatted with me about off topic stuff as well! Then I find out that he's not my PCM after I left! So I went down and tried to switch to him to learn he's at capacity and went to patient advocacy crying my story and how it was important I stay with the same Dr after all these test were done too and he pushed me through to be seen by him! Yay! He said it was good I switched because my PCM was actually leaving in a few weeks too!


So he sent me up to have an EKG done to see what's going on with my heart and ordered a heart monitor to be placed on me at home for longer monitoring. Did some blood work to check my thyroid levels and potassium levels now. Also put my referral in for ENT so I could get back up with the Dr that found my goiter and get the surgery scheduled. And the best part, finally diagnosed me with CVS.. the disease I've faught since I was a child but never could get answers for till my daughter was diagnosed from the SAME symptoms and put on meds for it! So he wrote me a script to get on meds for that and hopefully after 27yrs I have hope on that one too!


So today I get my blood results back and potassium was completely fine but my thyroid was really high so we are switching my meds as that will need stabilized again before surgery. Also put a referral in with a thyroid specialist.

So I got a lot done the last two days between that and also getting my WIC finally switched over and getting a breast pump to start the process to build a stash hopefully for surgery!

Today we learned about Jonah and the Whale for our devotional time and for Science



See Through Egg Science



What You Need:

A raw chicken egg in it's shell

white vinegar

clear glass jar
turkey baster


What To Do:

Have your child carefully place the raw egg in the glass jar.

Poor vinegar over egg until it's completely submerged.

Cover the jar and observe. Talk to your child about what's happening inside the jar. What can she see? Do you see bubbles forming? What does she think might be happening?

Explain to your child that the bubbles she see's in the jar is caused by the vinegar dissolving the egg shell. The vinegar eats away at it. Ask her what she thinks will happen if you let it continue to eat away at it.

Place the jar in the refrigerator and observe for 24 hours.

After 24 hours remove the jar from the fridge and remove the old vinegar. Be careful not to poke or bump the egg.

After the old vinegar is removed place fresh vinegar in the jar and place back in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Continue this till the egg shell is see through.

Once the egg shell is see through gently remove the egg. You can see the insides of the egg which is held in by the membrane. Ask your child why she thinks the membrane is helpful to the chick growing inside. Explain how it keeps out dirt and germs.

Encourage your child to examine the egg shell now egg less. What does she see?

Let your child now gently hold the egg in their hand over a sink and gently give a squeeze and the egg will explode! Does it feel squishy like a pillow?





Then for music we listened to some songs such as This Land is My Land and God Bless America while we did a craft in honor of Memorial Day next week.



Craft Flag Stick





Supplies Needed:


9 craft sticks

red and white acrylic paint

brushes

glue

blue construction paper

white crayon


Paint 5 craft sticks red and 4 white. Let them dry.

Glue them together in an altering pattern and two broken craft sticks on the side and the middle.

While drying cut a square out of the blue construction paper and have child draw white starts or specs on the square.


When the glue has set turn the flag over, glue the blue square on the left side and a long craft stick on the side.

Now you have a little flag to celebrate with!



We also made a new friend today! Keagan found a caterpillar and made it's day with ONE BIG APPLE all for one LITTLE worm! hehe

Oklahoma Bound

Sunday, May 16, 2010 7:31 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments



Well we made it safe and sound to Oklahoma and officially relocated home during my husbands training and deployment!


I know different people have different opinions on rather you should go home during deployments and I normally am one that thinks it's really better to just stay at home and hold down the home front when they are gone instead of uprooting the kids and the family and starting all over in a lot of ways but I also see a lot of benefits of it for a lot of people. Just for me in the past I hadn't come home for the deployments in the past but the last deployment I came home and don't think that was a bad choice and don't regret it but it was definitely hard moving home after being on my own for so long. Being used to sharing space with someone, not having the entire house to myself, my parents unfortunately don't have a back yard so I had to go out a lot more to get the kids out door time else where to make sure they stayed active and it was definitely a little stressful for them getting used to years with no kids and then all of these kids coming in. So I wound up going back to Texas before deployment was over and enjoyed my time back on my own and didn't think I would attempt moving home again.


But here we go, yet another deployment and as the time came closer I found more and more reasons to why I should come back home and making me think about it again. But the biggest kicker was my health and the recent things going on and not having much choice if I wanted to get the ball rolling and get things taken care of I knew the drs here would do it and not put me off like they were there. I think the fact I "need" my mothers help more then just moving in for convenience has made me appreciate it a lot more. I've noticed even on visits home the last year that I appreciate things she does a lot more and I think she appreciates us being here more because she realizes how far we are and how much she missed when we were gone.


I don't care for a lot of things in our home town but I miss some of my friends of course but really miss the family and them missing out on the kids as they grow up so it's nice to have this time to share with them while my husband is away. Like a bitter sweet trade off.






The kids got their first swim of the year in at my parents house (aside from the lake)! I don't know how they swim in that cold water but I remember swimming so much earlier then May when I was a child! Around March or April sometimes! It's amazing how our tolerance changes as adults!

Chalk Fun and Froggy Friends!

Thursday, May 13, 2010 10:36 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments






Today we enjoyed some beautiful sunshine before the rain headed our way! On top of the normal not so fun school work as the kids call it haha we went outside and did chalk art for our arts and crafts part of the day.
We had a contest to see who could draw the biggest best dinosaur after reading about dinosaurs! My oldest son Aidan drew a dinosaur with a long neck like we read about in the book!
The kids traced each other with chalk and made shadow images of each other.
And of course my youngest son who I'm going to start calling "frog boy" knows just where to find frogs! He seriously walks out the door and it's like he "smells" the frogs and finds them! So he found a little buddy who sat there with him on his lap while he drew art! He sure is going to miss those frogs when we move!
I just can't believe how he gets them and gets them to just chill and sit on his lap! It's so crazy to me!
We've also had a little bunny camping out in our back yard the last few days. Every morning we
find it under the pic nic table and she will run away when you get to close (yes my kids did try
to catch her lol) then she will come back later in the day!
We also had a really fun snack today that was a hit for the most part but my oldest son doesn't
care for strawberries. I would've liked it to be a little sweeter but it was pretty good!
Olivia Strawberry Smoothie
Ingredients:
1 cup frozen strawberries
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup ice
1 tbsp dry milk powder
2 pink marshmallows
chocolate sprinkles
Directions:
Combine first four ingredients in blender.
To make ears cut two thin slices cross ways from a marshmallow.
Pour smoothie into a glass. Place large marshmallow on top of smoothie as snout. Add other two pieces as ears to glass. Add the chocolate sprinkles as eyes and snout.







All About Oreos!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 5:20 PM Posted by The Cookie Cutter Diva 0 comments



Well Mother's Day was a pretty good one! It started out kind of crappy because Bryan had to work with getting ready to head out for training here soon to NTC. We thought it was going to be a short day but he wound up working all day so I was a bit bummed that not only did I spend it alone with out him but I didn't go home to even get to see my mother because we thought he'd be home fairly early.







I finally got tired of sitting around the house stuffing my face with chocolate and watching lifetime and figured what better idea then to take the kids to Chucky Cheese to have fun on Mother's Day and relax while they ran around with their smiling little faces! And of course I figured it'd be the one place NOT packed and sure enough it was so peaceful in there! haha


Then Bryan got off while I was there and surprised me by leaving a big thing of flowers and some new flip flops in the car waiting for me for when I came out to the car after we got done! I heart my flip flops!



It's been an interesting week so far this week. We are all ready for a summer break around here for sure!


We've done a lot of new things over the last week. My youngest son who is in prek has been working on learning about money, simple addition and subtracting and learning to read. Things he wasn't doing when I pulled them out of school just yet but has caught on very quickly and showed a huge interest in it so we are making a go with it! I thought I'd introduce it to see how interested he was and shocked when he took off with the sight cards I introduced to him and has even started reading some beginner readers!



My other son has been working more on telling time like they were in school as well as introducing working on nouns, correction punctuation, and reading some longer books with chapters in them!





Since we are headed back home for a month during my husbands training we have been trying to do a little more fun stuff around here that we won't get to do once we move and enjoy some time with daddy! So last night we took a trip to Putt Putt! I couldn't remember why we didn't make more trips there when the kids asked several times as we passed "When are we going to go there again" till I spent as much as I did and realized just why we didn't go there that much! If we had just played golf it wouldn't have been to bad but since we won't be back I figured we'd go ahead and hit up the batting cages, play in the arcade some and let them each pick a ride to do. We had a lot of fun though!










My daughter Peyton had her 4 month old check up (she's 5 months now) yesterday as well and I was surprised she did so well. She was doing really good so we decided to go ahead and make a family out ting since my husband got off really early in the afternoon and she did wonderful till around bedtime then it hit her and she was miserable! We didn't give her any Tylenol with the recent recall because I didn't think to get the off brand! After a friend suggested that my husband went out and got some for her last night and she was much better after that! She just needed something to nip the pain to sleep for the night but was fine after that dose.










She was 10lbs and 14oz and almost 25 inches long! She got 3 shots and thankfully I caught the 4th one. We do selective vaccinating and my husband had taken her in last time because I didn't feel well and said something about how she didn't like the "oral" shot they gave her and I'm like "ORAL SHOT?!" it wasn't on the list of what they were going to give her and he signed for it but I had no idea they were going to do it to tell him NOT to do it! I didn't get it with the other kids and don't personally want it and was very aggravated when I found out. Not at him but that they just assumed we'd want it and put it on the list to sign for rather than saying "Would you like this one" since it's an optional vaccine and then he would've asked me. So I declined it and she was like "she got it last time" "yes I know she got it last time and we got in an argument after the appointment thank you!" then she was like "Well would you like to read more on it before making your choice" "No, we don't get that vaccine but thanks" there's nothing I hate more then when they proceed to go on and on like the one nurse who tells me "And you want to get that vaccine" don't tell me what I "WANT" to get my child! UHG.. I know they are being helpful and they want to tell you the benefits they are taught but it's like drop it once I've made it a point that I'm not interested!










Anyways enough of the vaccine drama. Nothing I can do about the fact she's had one dose of it now so I might as well get over it!










On to the better more YUMMY stuff that I made for desert!










Philadelphia Oreo No Bake Cheesecake! This cake out of a recipe book my mom got for me for Christmas!







What You Need:

1 package of oreos divided in half
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) of butter melted
4pgs 8oz each of cream cheese
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tub 8oz whipped topping thawed


Make It!

Coarsley chop 15 of the cookies and set aside. Finely crush the remaining cookies and mix with butter. Press firmly into a 13x9 inch pan. Refridgerate while preparing.


Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla in large bowl with electric mixture until blended. Gently stir in whipped topping and remaining cookies. Pour over crust, cover.

Refrigerate for four hours.

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