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Elephant Fuzz, Building Bugs, Poodle Skirts and Moon Day; A Week In Review

Published on July 16, 2018December 29, 2018 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

We have had quite the week again. Fun and crazy as usual. Keep reading to find out about some of our many adventures here in the little house on the pond. We have included affiliate links to some of the products mentioned in this post. These help to support our blog.

Monday

Elephant fuzz here, elephant fuzz there, elephant fuzz everywhere… sounds a bit like a children’s book, doesn’t it? So what is elephant fuzz? I asked the same thing when I first saw this all over the house:

The kids were quick to reply that it was ‘elephant fuzz’…. ok, but where did it come from? Here is the answer:

It appears that this little pillow has a hole and is leaking elephant fuzz… lol… kids come up with the darnedest things don’t they? Well, I got the hole taken care of and hopefully that’ll be the end of the elephant fuzz.

Afterwards we made some Haystack Cookies or Noodle Cookies as Mr. Awesome calls them. The kids have been eating them up!

That afternoon Jacob put his Kids Cook Real Food skills to work while helping me make a salad to go with our Red & White Pasta.

Monday our regular club dance was ‘dark’ to support a reunion dance that was being held locally. Here is a short video from the event:

We had a good time and got to see old friends plus we made some new ones while we were there. Afterwards we ate at Texas Roadhouse and an exceptional server named Terrence.

Tuesday

I got a call from the Florida Gardiner Scholarship telling me about a glitch in the system which had caused some of my orders to be denied… this meant I had to go back into the system and resubmit the orders… oh what fun!

I also figured out that I can ‘Air Drop’ pictures from my phone to my tablet… this makes life so much easier!

The kids are loving their new routine chart:

I am working on ordering some different magnets because the stars don’t stick very well. I may also paint or paper the board. There will be a post about this sometime in the future.

We read a chapter from the Laura Ingalls Wilder biography before bed and had a short discussion about the things we learned from the chapter. The kids are super excited about the new school year.

They were also very happy that I had ordered more of their favorite toothpaste:

We all love the lemon flavor and I love the fact that it works so great! I always buy the triple pack and the first time I ordered I bought the multipack so we could try out all the flavors. The kids didn’t care for the peppermint or cinnamon as they thought they was too spicy. Some of us older folks liked the wintergreen flavor but lemon was the majority vote.

I actually found a little time on Tuesday to paint my nails too! Mommas need a little bit of pampering from time to time. 😊

Wednesday

Wednesday morning we changed our breakfast routine a bit. Instead of Muffins the kids had a bowl of fresh fruit and a cup of yogurt.

I’m really loving this new fruit bowl I got earlier this month. It is so much bigger than the one we had, plus it’s not as fragile. The banana holder is a great feature as well. It keeps the kids from dragging out and bruising all of the bananas just to find the ‘perfect’ apple.

While cleaning the bathroom I got a call from Walgreens …. NOT… it was a telemarketer call disguised as a local business. I HATE these kind of calls. They wanted to help me with my interest rate on a card they knew nothing about.

After politely asking a strongly accented Chris Sawyers to remove me from the list I had to threaten to report them to the authorities for FRAUD. He asked me to hold online while he removed me from the list. I did hold, with the phone muted and the receiver set on the shelf, and an hour later I was still on hold… haha Mr. Sawyers from card services you’ve won a mention on my blog. Congrats!

After our morning chores were finished we played one of the new games that we’ve gotten:

Bugs Building is similar to the once popular Jenga game. They had a lot of fun playing the game but then we had some major midweek meltdowns!

Luckily I still had a hidden stash of FREE chocolates…

Thursday

Hmmm… Thursday was a kinda gloomy day, very rainy and windy too. We didn’t get our laundry done because of the weather but it got finished up on Friday. We were also without power for a little while that morning.

The kids made the best of no electricity and played some board games. I think they thought they were getting out of chores but everyone had to help finish up the chores when the power came back on. Then it was time for some lunch which was Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

After I got the kids down for quiet time I got this text message from Mr. Awesome:

Oh boy do I love these kind of messages. I dug my outfit out of the closet and got to work on making some dinner. I had planned to make Spaghetti but opted for Sloppy Joes when I realized I didn’t have any noodles.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any pics of the Pink Cadillac Dance or our super cute outfits because my phone was acting up again.

Friday

Friday was Moon Day and we celebrated with some Moon Pies for an afternoon snack. That morning we finished up the laundry for the week and caught up on few things that needed done around the house.

After paying a couple of bills I went ahead and renewed our ABC Mouse that the kids have been begging for. They wasted no time getting on their and taking care of their virtual pets. Joey also made sure to update his avatar:

Those glasses look almost like his and they are just too cute!

That afternoon I went to make some our favorite Cream Cheese Chicken with Rice and Green Beans only to realize I didn’t have any cream of chicken soup… I don’t know what happened when I went grocery shopping last week but I guess I didn’t do a good job. I did finish dinner and it was really good with the substitutions I made so I’ll try to get that updated recipe posted soon.

That evening we went to the square dance. Again I didn’t get any pics because my phone died but I did get that video finished. I’ll have it at the end of the post.

Saturday

I had planned to get the porch cleaned up a bit but the constant thunderstorms kept us inside. The morning was spent tidying up around the house and then we went out to eat at Golden Corral. It wasn’t the best experience and we probably won’t visit that location again but the kids enjoyed it.

After eating we headed to the movies to watch the new Ant Man movie. It was pretty good and everyone had a great time. All in all it was a good week and we are really looking forward to a great time in the upcoming week.

This week I plan to get some of the lessons entered into the Homeschool Manager app and also set a date for us to start school. I will also be working on a couple of more promo videos for square dancing as many clubs will be starting classes in September.

As far as cleaning the FlyLady missions will be in the Master Bedroom this week. I just need to do a tidying up in there so I’m not really sure how much I will get done in there. I would really like to get the porch cleaned off and have some usable space out there but the weather hasn’t been cooperating.

What are your goals for the upcoming week?

Below are some other things that we’ve done this past week and that video we put out for square dancing.

Other books we’ve read this week were:

Be A Good Dragon is a cute book about a dragon with a cold.

Yum! A Preston Pig Story is a variation of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ that kids enjoyed.

We got lots of goodies in the mail this week:

I was really excited to get these books and hopefully the kids will get to use them some this weekend.

Dr. Seuss Read-Along Set

This week I also posted these posts here (which may have affiliate links to some of the products above):

We are looking forward to a new week with lots of new surprises. So far we have these activities planned.

Upcoming Events/Holidays:

AMELIA EARHART DAY July 24

AUNT AND UNCLE DAY July 26

Here is that video I promised:

A Look Back On The Past Week And A Peek Ahead To This Week

Published on July 16, 2018July 17, 2018 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

I honestly don’t even know what all we did last week. It seemed to have went by in such a blur. I do know that I had put out a few different posts and here are the links in case you missed them:

I hate how I sit down to write a quick little post and my internet acts up and makes it take foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…………………

But anyways let’s get back to what all we did last week…

We did get more packages from UPS and Fed Ex… the drivers pretty much know me by name and recognize me when I am out and about now… I guess that’s a good thing? Continue reading “A Look Back On The Past Week And A Peek Ahead To This Week” →

Choosing The Right Fit For School

Published on July 14, 2018August 31, 2018 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog1 Comment

I recently read a story on Facebook about a mom who took her son shoe shopping. Her son had a club foot and this caused a big difference in shoe size between the left and the right foot. After shopping for a bit he finally found a pair of shoes he loved. However this meant that mom was going to need to buy two pairs of shoes in order for her son to have the most comfortable fit for each foot. One big size and one little size because he wouldn’t be able to wear the little shoe on his club foot as it would just be too tight and the likewise the big shoe wouldn’t fit correctly on his smaller foot. The manager realized the dilemma and he purchased one pair of shoes for the child. How great was this experience for this child? I bet he won’t forget this for a lifetime.

I just finished up one of the books I got from our first trip to the library. This book is by an author that I already have on my bookshelf at home and I was in love when the book started out with the comparison of schools to shoes. It is so very true… schools are like shoes in that there is not a ‘one size fits all’. I mean when we are shoe shopping we try on various different kinds of shoes, if you are like William you may try on every pair in the store, before finding the right shoe. I know I’ve found shoes I really like but they weren’t the right color or they didn’t have them in my size. Most of us will ultimately decide on the most comfortable fitting shoe because we can’t change our feet.

So why do we insist on sending our kids to school when something obviously isn’t fitting right? My kids have been through all of the stages of public school. They usually start out excited and they like to go to school to learn new things. Then somewhere along the line they lose that enthusiasm. They start complaining of tummy aches or other ailments. They go from making A’s and B’s to bringing home mostly D’s and F’s. What happened?

**If you would like the name of the book with my affiliate links then please scroll to the bottom of the post. Continue reading “Choosing The Right Fit For School” →

Family Fun Day: Books, Elvis, Ice Cream, and Another Huge UPS Delivery

Published on July 12, 2018August 31, 2018 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog3 Comments

**This post does contain some affiliate links which help to support our blog.

Oh what a day we’ve had. The kids thought it was gonna be just another boring day but it actually turned out to be quite interesting.

The morning started as it normally does with the exception that we had a cereal day instead of muffins… I just wasn’t in a muffin kinda mood this morning. Nobody complained either. Before breakfast the kids had done a little bit of their summer work books that I’ve printed off for them.

After breakfast we had some calendar time… do you like our new calendar we got from Lakeshore Learning? This picture was from the weekend. It is quite a bit bigger than our old one and I had a hard time finding a good place to put it. So for now it is in our ‘hallway’ and I put up some new remote control lights to help us see better. These are really neat and I had enough to put one in the closet as well.

After the chores, which included changing/washing the sheets and washing the whites, I had everyone load up in the van. Well first a couple of them had to change clothes because they had already gotten dirty. We also had to brush hair, wash faces, and go potty. Eventually we made it to the van and I had them asking so many questions about where we were going…. but I wanted to keep it a secret. Continue reading “Family Fun Day: Books, Elvis, Ice Cream, and Another Huge UPS Delivery” →

A Pocket Full of Pennies

Published on July 9, 2018July 2, 2018 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

If you are close to me then you might hear me jingle when I walk. You might also wonder why or how I’ve come to have a pocketful of pennies. Well if you were one of my kiddos there is a good chance that that jingle means that I’ve caught them being good.

As part of my newest positive parenting technique I’ve decided to start carrying around a pocketful of pennies. Every time I catch my kids doing something good I’ll give them a penny. My kids love money as do most kids and this is a fun way for them to earn a little bit to put in their piggy banks.

Some examples of catching them ‘being good’ would be if big sister is helping little brother put on his shoes without being asked. Maybe little brother found some stickers stuck to floor and he is working on scraping them up without being told. Also I’ve caught them taking care of their chores without being reminded.

Also we have been working a lot on making ‘good choices’. I have one child, in particular, who is extremely impulsive and will make some really ‘bad choices’ on a daily basis. When I see that the kids are making good choices when it comes to something we’ve been working on I may be able to catch them in the act and reward them with a penny or a hug. They love this extra bit of attention and the fact that their piggies are getting quite fat.

Now sometimes they just get a big hug or some kind of ‘atta boy’ in exchange for the deed. I don’t want them to think that they will always be rewarded monetarily for every good behavior that they display. I just want to try to focus more on the good than the bad as sometimes we can get stuck in a parenting rut where it feel like we are just spinning tires and going nowhere.

Please note that I am not an expert in the field of parenting but I do have a little bit of experience in the area.This method of rewarding good behavior seems to be working, for now. I am hoping that this will help to encourage them to demonstrate kindness to one another on a regular basis and learn that being responsible can and will pay off.