Puttin' up some Pig!

Back in mid-November, we headed to Grandaddy & Grandma Tee's house to "cook a pig." I was personally very nervous for days before we had to go, because i have the weakest stomach when it comes to messing with raw meat. But the idea was to cook a pig, & store up some bbq for the winter. Yum. The end result was worth the work in the end... although it took several weeks for me to forget the process to actually eat a batch of bbq! While we cooked, the kids played....
Pete, my dad's boxer, just eyed us the entire day through the fence. He could smell that pig & he was lucky i was there... because i talked them into letting me throw him a bone. He was a happy camper.
This was Eli's first look at the pig on the cooker.... can you tell he is a little unnerved, himself? The cookie helped him feel better, i am sure ! :)
And here is Rebecca & Leah checking it out.... about the same reaction here too!

Here I am all proud of myself. Yes, that is me, ME, holding a pig's rib cage. I know! Those of you who know me well know that this was a monumental moment. (I might need therapy later, but i got through it! ha!) You can tell my dad was amused, eh?
And i might add that the entire time we were pulling the pork off the "carcas", Randy was right next to me sampling the meat as we went along. The smacking & mmmm-ing about made me sick!
This was Daddy, Grandaddy, & Hattie Mae checking to see if the pig was done in the first place. Luckily, we ate lunch first (the first helping off the pig) then got to work, pulling. If we had done this in reverse order, i honestly wouldn't have been able to eat it. Just bein' honest here!

While the pig was cooking, Randy took his new gun out for a test shoot in my Dad's back yard. It was so loud! I don't know how anyone can be that close to it & have any hearing left.
Hey cutie..... Here is a random picture from the day of Randy with no hat on. I know it is a new sight for some of you! ha! It is a rarety for me too.... except Sundays!
Anyway... Grandaddy & Hattie Mae came up for the day also & so they pitched in & helped us get it all pulled, chopped, & bagged up. Aren't they cute?
This was all the bags at the end of the day...
And i couldn't resist sitting this little pig on top of the bags to see who would notice first. Kind of a little joke... i think Tee saw it first?? Anyway.... it was a fun day, despite the nasty, hard work!!

A Thanksgiving Play....

"Hello, Mr. Turkey, How are you?
Hello, Mr. Turkey, How are You?
With a Gobble Gobble Gobble
And a Wobble Wobble Wobble....
Hello Mr. Turkey, How are you?"

Jackson was in a play with the entire kindergarten class the week of Thanksgiving. I tell you... there was no other pilgrim as cute as he was..... He practiced the songs for weeks & his favorite was "hello Mr. Turkey, how are you?"

Here he is waving to us from the stage (we were so thankful for Grandad's zoom lense!)
After the play with his teacher, Mrs. Byrd...
He was so excited that Leah, Eli, & Kaleb made it to the play. He was a proud little bugger.

Two Funnies....

FUNNY #1:
Jackson has been working really hard at school on preparing for his Thanksgiving play & the Thanksgiving Feast.... they are learning many songs & he sings them often. It must be all they talked about at school for weeks! When it wasn't even thanksgiving yet, but it WAS spirit night at McDonald's (where proceeds from the sales go towards the elementary school...), he got in the car after school & before he even buckled... this was the very excited conversation....
J: MAMA, MAMA! Ms. Byrd, she said we could all go to McDonald's for supper!! ..... ..... But we had to ask our mom's & dad's first.... and and and.... it's for... it's for... THANKSGIVING!!
Me: (Laughing hysterically!!) Oh, Jackson, you are so cute... so confused... but so cute! (still laughing to tears....)
Eli: MAMA! It NOT funny!
Me: Oh, Eli... it really IS funny!


I got so tickled at this little conversation... mainly because i know at school they had been talking about Thanksgiving constantly & the most logical explanation for WHY we would be eating with Ms. Byrd at McDonald's (when he couldn't remember the reason....) was because it was for Thanksgiving! So funny!

FUNNY #2
I got Jackson's daily binder out of his bookbag yesterday & in it was a Thanksgiving card he had made. It had a turkey on the front & it said "I am thankful for....." Once i opened it, there was a blank line that he had to write in what he was thankful for. He wrote, "my dog." I busted out laughing.... WE DON'T HAVE A DOG. We haven't had a dog since our sweet Gracie Mae and that has been 2 years! I said, "Jackson! Why are you thankful for our dog? We don't have a dog!" And he replied. "I knew that... but i thought it would be nice to have one." Now, that's praying in faith right there!

A whole 'lotta testosterone!

This is all of Mema & Grandad's grandsons.... and that is a whole lot of testosterone to have in one house (ALL DAY LONG). Poor Becca is the only granddaughter and she likes it that way! Mema & grandad are such saints to keep all these boys for us. Jackson was thrilled this day that he was out of school & got to go to Mema's too. He has been missing them terribly since starting kindergarten & this morning he even cried because he misses them when he has to go! So sad! But i assured him i would take him to see Mema & Grandad (although i think it is just as much about the play time!!)

The Sweetest Sound....

My boys LOVE to listen to what they call "church songs". They will say, i want to hear "changing me, changing you" which is actually the song Ancient Words, one of mine & Randy's favorite hymns. They sing all the time, with or without prompting by an adult & most of the time the song just comes from their heart without even hearing the actual music on the iPod. Eli was randomly even singing this particular song in Walmart the other night while we were shopping & asked me to sing along with him.... of course i DID!! There are several others that they request too, like Hosanna or Blue Skies & Rainbows, but today i happened to have the iPod going in the kitchen while Jackson was working on homework & Eli started singing Ancient Words as usual... i happened to have to camera nearby & caught it on video... so sweet let me tell you... (& i love the made up words that they put in place sometimes when they don't know the real word!)

I can spell....

Eli is so funny. Since Jackson has started school, he insists on having "homework" too. I usually let him do a big floor puzzle, his new favorite thing, or maybe playdoh or coloring. He really gets into it.... check out the position of his "bum" in this one....
and the tongue on this one as he concentrates! He cracks me up!

He also takes the puzzles very seriously & is always so proud when he gets done. And these aren't simple puzzles either... i am actually surprised (& proud of course) that he can do them independently...
He has always loved the alphabet and letters & their sounds. A couple of days ago, he came to me & said, "Mommy.... J-A-C-K-S-O-N... that Jackson!" I think he has learned this from Jackson's monogrammed curtain in his bedroom because Eli loves to go in there & recite the letters... so now he has it memorized.....

I don't think i could be more proud of this boy!

Homework....

I can't believe how much Jackson has already learned at school this year. He absolutely loves homework (such a blessing!) and he is recognizing sight words, spelling sight words , writing all the time, and doing lots of math stuff too. He loves patterns, counting (high!!) and has even begun some basic addition too. I am so proud of him! On nights that there is no homework to be done (because we have done it all already!!), he will ask me for work! So i have borrowed things from Mema to use to keep him busy and we invested in a "sight word BINGO" game that both he and Eli love! One of the things we borrowed from Mema is this uppercase/lowercase ABC match puzzle. He still gets confused on some of the lower case letters, so he loves this puzzle....
I didn't even tell him to put it in order... but he did. And when he got to the end, he realized that the Nn was left over & he looked over his work & figured out where it went. (you'll have to excuse the head band.....)This is a picture i found on the back of some of the class work that the teacher sent home.... so he must have a girlfriend (again!!)
And this is some homework that we did just this week. He had to write his family tree... Well, they don't make a family tree for grandparents who are divorced, so i thought this was going to get tricky, and spur lots of questions, but he did great and didn't ask questions even though he has so many grandparents (all the more to love him!) I just kept it simple and asked him who my mom was (Nanny) and who my dad was (Grandaddy) and when i asked their real names, he paused on Grandaddy's name.. so i prompted him a little with what Kenneth calls him "papa wayne" and with Nanny he said "fancy" which i thought was hilarious!! This is funny because he knows she likes Fancy Nancy books because her name is Nancy & that name is so close to Nanny that i know it is confusing to him! When we got to Grandad's real name, i asked him what Mema called Grandad & he replied "honey!" so funny!

We had the first nine-weeks parent teacher conference on Monday & i thought he was doing well, but it was really nice to have it confirmed & for her to tell me he is in the highest literacy group in the class! Yay Jackson! They split the kids up for literacy groups based on their levels of reading, phonological awareness, etc. He is currently considered "early emergent" in his writing level and she showed me where they had to draw a picture & write a sentence about it. He drew a picture of the family eating pizza and the sentence looked like this : "ILKTOITPSU" with no spaces (actually the lack of spaces surprised me because he does use them!) I doubt you can figure out what this means, but i did! It reads, "I LK TO IT PSU" with spaces & if you sound it out, he was writing "I like to eat pizza." SO SMART- yes he is!!! The teacher also told me that he scored a 22/30 in his phonological awareness & that it needs to be a 24 in order to be "mastered" and that most kids aren't expected to have this mastered until well after Christmas. Well, let me tell you he DOES have it mastered because the only area he didn't score in was the rhyming words & he must have drawn a blank that day because he has been rhyming since before kindergarten. He loves to rhyme & will randomly say a words & then rhyme it on purpose. So, i feel certain he actually does have that mastered & i am so proud that he is a full 9 weeks ahead of where he is expected to be in all areas and even further in some areas (her assessment, not mine)- she actually said, "he is doing FANTASTIC!" You have no idea how happy this all made me! I am so proud of his hard work & interest in school! This is a video i took of him today after being SO surprised last night when he was able to read this book! They are starting to send home readers for the kids to read every night for the week, send back on Friday & then get a new one on monday. Last night he read 75% of this book independently, and today, almost the whole thing... see for yourself! Can you believe my child can do this? i wasn't expecting so much so soon!! This is broken into 2 videos... but it is the continuation of his reading the book...



Jackson, Mommy is sooooo proud of you!!

Halloween 2009

Well, i am finally uploading halloween pictures well over a week later! Sorry, but it's been hectic around here!

Rebecca & myself had a halloween party over at her house & it was so much fun! We waited to get the boys dressed until the guests almost were arriving, and this was a little touch & go for Eli for several reasons... 1) he didn't get a nap beforehand and 2) he isn't a fan of safety pins, which i had to use to attach the black parts of his costume on his legs & hands.... so he ended up like this......

But he was SO cute! He was a Blue Crayon for halloween this year & we made the costume out of blue long johns. It was so easy & turned out great!
My favorite part is the back of the leg where it says, "blue"....
Jackson decided that he wanted to be a baseball player. We are friends with a family from church who has 4 boys & the majority of them play baseball. She pulled through for me & let me borrow an entire uniform! Yay! So all we did was add a shirt underneath in case the weather was cool and a ball cap from the closet. He looked pretty cute too!
Here is the baseball player with Emma and Leah... a pink kitty & an angel....We convinced Nanny to come too.... Halloween is one of her favorite holidays & she looked really cute with her hair all spikey & the flower head band in. Even her socks were all festive, but i didn't get a picture of those!Kaleb was able to make it to the party too, but these pictures i got of them all dressed up turned out blurry.... but he was batman..... (Uncle Jeremy got some GREAT shots, so i hope he emails them to me... hint hint....)
The hat (crayon tip) kept sliding off & it really aggravated Eli, so i finally just took it off!!And here they are looking at their great score!!
We hope your halloween was as fun as ours was!!

The style of a 5 year old...

Jackson has found these head bands of mine & taken over! Granted, i have NEVER worn one this way, but he seems to think this is the coolest way to wear it.....
Oh, my! We have our work cut out for us in terms of style with this one! He loves to pick out his outfits & days like these where he looks like this, well, it scares me a little! But it does give me a good laugh too.... you gotta see the boots with the mesh shorts & headband to get the full effect...

How do i take this seriously? I mean, really? But you just gotta love him for it!

Finally.... a Fence!

The week of Halloween, we finally got our fence put up! Yay! We knew as soon as we put an offer on this house that it was in desperate need of a fence. The back yard backs up to thick woods & the left side of the back yard is on a deep slope. I didn't feel safe letting the boys play out back without a fence because i didn't want them back in those woods or anything "from the woods" coming in the back yard. We are so excited it is finally up & it only took them 3 days to get it up! The first day was all posts, the second was the fence boards, & the third day they made the gates & cut out the scallop along the top!

i think it makes the yard look great! At first, i thought it made the back yard look smaller, but i realized that this was because i was looking on from the deck, which is high up on the back of the house. This is my view from the deck... Once i walked to the back corner of the fence, the yard seemed MUCH bigger to me! We have a double gate on one side of the house.....
And we have a walk gate on the other side...I realized after uploading pictures, that i didn't take any from the front of the house (the outside of the fence where it looks the best.... but oh, well! You get the idea!!

The boys have already enjoyed running loose back there & i have already enjoyed having them out there (safe) and i not have to watch their every move!