FUN TIMES FOR ALL

We made several crafts as Valentine's Day approached. We focused on two of our neighbors who help out here and made them each a "LOVE YOU- Poster" for them to pin up at their homes. We are so thankful for our sitter/helper, Sara and for Miss Diane, a part-time teacher who takes Josh to school on the COLD days. They make a huge difference in these kids lives and in mine!!


The kids have kept me laughing... ever once-in-awhile they'll get goofy and try on all our dress-up attire... Ethan's photo can't be topped! I make sure to capture lots of moments for these families to keep in their photo collections. Bart regularly burns CD's for the parents... they are always so thankful. This group of kiddos have been so special. I anticipate some changes and am working hard to find a couple new pals for Kira and the boys: ) We'll see what God has in store.

I do plan on giving a new IDEA/concept for parents about every week.... yes I'm due to post one--- check in tomorrow night R-E-A-L-L-Y late: )

Warmer Days over the last couple of weeks...

For those of you who know about Ft.Collins you are not shocked to hear about 60 and 70 degree days scattered randomly throughout the winter. We have enjoyed such days these last couple of weeks for sure here. While Bart worked on his course work several friends went on a hike that overlooks one end of Horsetooth Res. Polly's husband Mark was awesome enough to carry Kira on his back!! She adores him and calls him "UH- Mark." Kira has photos of them together coated with fingerprints and kisses. When she is at their home she can be found in one of their little antique rocking chair or cuddling with Mark on the big one. We enjoyed the fresh air and I sure needed the work-out right POLLY?!

Another day the boys insisted we have to have a picnic instead of just playing on the playground... I like to plan such things but it all worked out none the less! It's kind of strange to lay out a blanket on our dead grass though! A couple of other days the kids enjoyed helping me spread some new mulch we got for free from our recycling center while the two little ones napped. As the pictures show they were more interested though in scooping up our driveway stones and filling my garbage can! I've got a funny story for you... I asked to borrow my father-in-laws trailer to ambitiously and very unrealistically get a load of mulch on my way to or from my dentist appointment. No one questioned my ability to do this aloud for some reason: ) No, I have never hooked up a trailer to our Jimmy and sure didn't budget lots of time to do this while my dear friend Polly watches over the Daycare. Well I found the trailer in our driveway and said my goodbyes here... only to realize I couldn't find any car keys. I wasted a lot of time looking for them and stressing only to find them in my purse of course! In frustration, I tried to attach this contraption to the Jimmy and had it all hooked up ready to hop in when I looked at the trailer in a rush to make my appointment NOTICING the thing was stinking FULL OFF MULCH already!!!!! Dave--- would have loved to see my sweat and stressing!!! I was SO worked up to find my keys and get it hitched I NEVER thought to look in at the load he had painstakingly filled up FOR ME! What an awesome surprise!! You'd have to know me to know this is not THAT shocking!! Well over the next days I got it unloaded with NO help from Bart dearest! If it's not his project he sure is not inspired to help... glad Dave was!

Speaking of Bart he is starting new shorter hours at work due to cut backs... no more mandatory overtime days just 8 hour days. We are sad to see the loss of pay coming. In the end this cut means a fifth/20% paycut in what he used to take home after taxes and insurance. Bart is looking at taking a second job at the new Walmart a couple blocks over that is opening end of April. Hopefully I will take on a sixth child full-time. This last year I had kept one slot open incase we had a baby of our own. I've continued one kiddo before and after school (he's my sixth kid in many senses). I am so glad Bart is working on his Masters in Computer mumbo-jumbo!!! It will be awesome to see him shine and feel like he is really using his mind. He's talked of running a little charity where he collects donated CPU's and updates them and gives them to those who are unable to purchase a computer. All I know is that we always managed to be blessed and to be a blessing no matter how much money we make. To think he got this news just after we commited to helping one of our missionaries in Mexico once a month with shipping donated items to the children she interacts with and we wanted to send a pastor and his family on a little vacation! Satan would love to foul things up but I need to have faith we can stick to our commitments!!!! We're hoping all of you are finding ways to overcome the obstacles coming our way... we really are a blessed nation despite this economic challenge.

Switching back to Picasa

I just want to announce to the 3 people that actually look at our blog that I am switching back to
Picasa to host our web albums. The url for our Picasa page is http://picasaweb.google.com/saunders.bart.

Our older pictures can still be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/thesaunders/.

We will also continue to use Photobucket for our online videos. http://s115.photobucket.com/albums/n307/bgb1122/

Learning made SIMPLE

Before I post this I have to admit I hate that you get to see the real deal... yes those dice have been ripped at over the years and are ready for replacement and yes, I have an old blanket pinned over my blinds to keep the winters chill out... curtains WILL come in time!!

I love a good deal if you know me well. If you have little ones I'd love to throw a few ideas at you:) At Walmart you can usually find a placemat map of the U.S. It is fun to see how many states you can help them memorize. We keep little foamies (cut up mini-circles) which we stick on the map as we id and spell each. Say for example California... we talk about earthquakes, house foundations built on wheels," Disneyland, and beached whales. VERY RANDOM, eh? Wisconsin we'll remember they have "yummy cheese and milk from lots of cows who live on that land." There are so many little facts you can pull from your history and from the internet ofcourse.

We have a great Teacher's store in Windsor where we purchased foam dice. You can use any dice you can get a hold of for the kids to toss and count. I teach the kids here to count with a tune... just the good old A, B, C song! When kids get stumped they respond well to tune cues. We seem to count to 25 and sing... "and you sung it with me." With really young ones I have them follow my finger as I touch each dot. Any cube box works to convert into dice as well: ) Over time we begin to draw the # they just rolled. Marker boards are my favorite, little or big ones. When drawing we verbalize aloud --like for 5... "lay down stick, little down stick, and around- stop." STRANGE but it has worked well. I will alter my voice if it is helpful;)

If you have atleast a couple kids you can play your own form of Musical Chairs with number counting or with the alphabet song. We run around the chairs until we hit 25 for example. Some kids take turns adding an element like, "jumping" or they yell, "switch." For variety we'll count to 100 by 10 to the same tume slowly and then we sing... "and you made a DOLLAR for ME." With one of the boys with CP we have to try different things to help him obviously. He likes it when we rock side to side while counting by tens. Whatever works: ) Hope I'm making some sense.... time to go to sleep.... thanks for humoring me!!