Category Archives: Kendall

Individual Time= Busy Weekend

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One of the hardest things about having a larger family in addition to have 3 kids so close in age (8,5 and 4) is finding time to spend with each child individually. Zach is the easiest for this to happen because during the school year he is at home with Daddy most of the week. Usually at least one Thursday a month, I am home and try to spend some quality one on one time with him as well. This weekend, both Lily and Kendall were about to get some quality alone time as well.

Kendall is usually a very quiet and well-behaved child but she has struggles some this year at school with talking. This week she was able to achieve 3 of 4 day with excellent behavior. I decided to reward her, to take her to a bread making class that my Sunday school class was sponsoring. She loved it! The class was really informal and all the ladies including the teacher made her feel special. She was able to spend about 3 hours with just me on Saturday. I decided to ask her what was the best part?  Eating of course …photo 1

On Sunday, our church reserved most of a theatre to see the movie “God’s Not Dead”. I had initially purchased tickets for all five of us to go and planned on letting Zach and Kendall use their mobigos and our phones for more entertainment. However at lunch my sister-in-law, volunteered for the younger guys to come over to her house this afternoon. Their family had watched the movie last weekend and she figured that both of them would have a hard time staying entertained during the movie.   Both Kendall and Zach were excited to spend the afternoon on the farm. Lily became an only child, she was able to enjoy watching the movie with her friends but also got to get some special time with both of her parents.

I really enjoyed the individual time with each of the girls. It just is really hard both time wise and money wise to develop individual quality time with each kid but I hope they remember and enjoy it!

Travel Budget

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If you have been reading here long you know that our family travels on a regular basis. The usual standard of travel is to save money while enjoying the trip. This long weekend was a bit different in this aspect. We still travel on a budget, however it was much larger than most of our trips. the reason?  We only took snack foods and drinks, all meals were purchased. If you just want to see some cute pictures of our family, scroll down for a group of pictures

Here is our budget breakdown:

Hotel    $240.72  The hotel also placed a hold on $100 for a security deposit but that was returned on Tuesday
Gas       $120.00  This was 2 tanks of gas in the van. It is in addition to our regular monthly gas budget.
Food      $400.00.  Basically $100 a day. We came close to this everyday and the additional was spent for clothing.
Spending money $240.  We used the majority of this for purchasing clothes and other small treats while shopping.

Total budget amount $1000      Total spent $1200- the additional money will be deducted from clothing and additional regular gas money not spent.

On our food budget we enjoyed pizza, ice cream, daily breakfast, PF Changs, Olive Garden and Cheeseburger in Paradise.

End of an Era— Potty Training Ends!

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I am so excited, the biggest and best milestone has occurred at my house. Zach is finally completely potty trained even at night. This means that I have bought my last pull up/diaper EVER!  Let me repeat after 8 consecutive years of buying diapers/pull-ups I AM FINISHED!

Each of my children has been very different in regards to potty training. Both  Amanda and Haley, were completely trained before they were 2 years old. In fact, I think I remember Haley being trained before 18 months.  Lily was also a very early trainer, I distinctly remember that she was completely out of diapers/pull ups prior to Kendall’s birth.   Lily was 2.5,when Kendall was born.  Kendall does everything on her own terms. The last time she wore a pull up was during our Disney trip in  April 2011.  I seriously debated keeping her in pull ups during the day at Disney  but she refused! Kendall was 33 months old during this trip.

Then we have Zach, he currently is 4 .5 years old. He has been trained during the day for a year but continued to pee regularly at night. We finally decided that we had to get serious. So we made him wear underwear to bed. To our surprise and amazement, he did not pee the first night but did the second night. Our strategy worked and less than 3 weeks later, he has had only 2 accidents at night!

Join me in my happy dance!