2015 To-Do List....

- Get Simon piano lessons. He has started really taking an interest and picks out tunes on our electric keyboard. I got him the beginner piano book that i used to use and started showing him how to read notes a little. He thought that was super cool and is proud that he can play the first two songs by "reading" .  He'll still take cello at school.... I think that's a good activity for him ... but the teacher isn't teaching them to read music, which I didn't figure out until he was practicing for the recital this last time. I think if he had that, he would actually start to progress pretty quickly on his own.

- Keep teaching Ben how to cook. He LOVES cooking and wants to learn to make more things on his own. He made a cake a few days ago that he has been wanting to try for awhile. He did a great job!

- Start working with Jonathan on writing more... a little bit each day. It's not his most favorite thing and I'm hoping to avoid the frustration that Simon had with it and also try to figure out if we need to keep up the OT intervention through kindergarten.  Just need to figure out how to motivate him. I also want to get him dictating some sentences and stories and ultimately writing his own sentence-stories/pictures by the end of the summer. For some reason, our elementary school is not particularly strong in writing in kindergarten until the very end of the year, so I want to start that now....

- Organize our lives better. I'm always trying to figure out ways to expedite things in the morning and spend less time having people run around like crazy looking for things.  We do okay... but we can do better. My goal is for everyone to be able to be completely independent in the morning.  I also want to organize the playroom and storage rooms better.... and just plain organize the garage, period.  Our garage is a disaster.

- Get rid of more. Our storage room looks like an episode of Hoarders. This would not have been the case if we still lived in our townhouse. It's happening because we have (had) this giant empty storage room and it's just so easy to toss the unwanted toys in there rather than deal with them immediately. I'm tired of looking at it though and it's standing in the way of the previous goal....

- Fix the broken stuff. We are HORRIBLE about maintenance. I have a to-do list a mile long of things that need to be fixed.  (i.e. loose towel bar in the powder room, water stain on Jonathan's ceiling, burned out lights EVERYWHERE.....) I'm perfectly capable of doing most of them myself, it's just a matter of making sure I have the right supplies and actually doing it.

- Plant more gardens. I want to do a hot pepper garden this year and make our own hot sauce! (this is probably one of my more lofty and silly goals.... but I think it would be fun)

- Write more. Here and just in general.

- Take more photos with my real camera.

- Take more family photos. (I think we have ONE from 2014....)

New Year 2015!

Last night, we rang in the New Year with just our boys and some yummy appetizers, vegetable soup, chocolate mug cakes, and some sparkling apple juice.  Tom and the boys played Risk and Jenga while I cooked, and then we had a Toy Story marathon (those movies are still hilariously funny every time!!)... and we dug out all the Toy Story toys we own and they played while we watched. Jonathan especially loves our bucket of little green Army Men.

All three kids went to bed around 8:30, we made it till about 10.  There were some really great fireworks  around then that seemed to come from the elementary school, so I guess someone else couldn't make it until midnight either! LOL!

It was seriously one of the nicest and most relaxing New Year's Eve's ever... and ours are usually pretty relaxing anyway! :)

Happy New Year to my readers who are still hanging in there. One of my resolutions is to write more here and as often as possible.  Here's to a wonderful 2015!