busy with what?!

I have no job outside the home, I take no classes, my only involvement at church is hanging out in the nursery once a month and have no yard or home maintenance to care about...what in the world do I do that makes it so I don't think about blogging for over a month, seldom carry on a phone conversation more than 5 minutes and get so stink'n tired even when I sleep 8 hours...

The answer is really quite easy.  She's 2, and he's almost 4. And they're crazy! :)

Violet is really into story telling lately and who knew listening could be so exhausting!  She stumbled into the habit of filling her stories with "um" until she could think of something to say, but we eventually made a rule against "um" usage.  However, she still tries and will stop her story to interject, "Momma, can I say um? 2 times?"  Her learning style seems to be quite a bit different than her brother, and right now, she has no desire to get an answer right, but rather to use as many words as she can and use her eyes to be convincing of the answer.  She starts most of her phrases with "because..." regardless of its appropriateness.   She loves dress up shoes, gum, string cheese, playing with hair, my little pony, and playing momma with her babies and animals. Forgive the hair, but here's a picture of the eyes she uses for various purposes :)

Benjamin is crazy.  He's all about playing his air guitar and singing all.the.time.  Lately he'd rather play inside than out, with Violet, or legos, or his animals or doing school.  He loves learning.  Its kinda crazy how his little mind works all the time...I'm actually kinda guilty of slowing him down.  I wasn't really ready for thinking through what to learn/curriculum, schedule, consistency etc...So right now, we do whatever momma feels like, work books, on-line, etc and finish school whenever one of us is tired of it or not trying very hard.  We have no expectations of how long he wants to do school - 5 minutes, 30 minutes, not at all...but if he wants to do it, he has to do it right.  I guess thats the only rule to our school day.  :)  Right now he's all about phonics/reading and its so fun to watch the light bulbs go on.  :)  Here's a sweet picture that I captured where I thought he was pretend reading, but when I slowed down and listened I figured out he was trying to sound out "David"...I wish I had it on video and not just a picture!

Besides running after these two, I have been slightly crazy about cleaning and sorting, doing hair on and off, playing the game of budgeting and thrifting, and because I'm trying to grow my hair out, and have stopped aimlessly re-arranging my furniture I have needed a new stress relieving hobby.   I have pulled out my sewing machine and tried to learn what sweet Mrs Blunk tried to teach me.  I have made some curtains, pillows, bow-tie, and altered a couple pair of pants...I still get flustered, I forget what I learn from project to project, and have taken out quite a few seems with the ol' seem ripper...but I'm hoping that if I keep trying, putting less space between projects, and maybe take a little more time reading vs winging it, that I will come out with some basic skills and more fun projects to show for it :) 

Here's some more pictures of my sweet babes to redeem this rambling blog entry :)

Ok, this picture I just threw in, because its the most successful I've been at growing ANYTHING :)
Yay for Mint, cilantro and basil!