Green

Continuing with the simplicity trend, I officially kept a holiday simple. We wore our green and ate Lucky Charms and called it good. Simplifying felt nice (don't mind that non-green grass, freshly uncovered from the snow).

Simplicity

I spent the weekend alone with the boys while Troy was in D.C.

I expected to be bored and lonely, but I actually enjoyed the simplicity.

We played at the park and made grilled cheese sandwiches upon request for dinner. We attended a baptism and had lunch with friends. Blake and I had a movie night with our gas station candy of choice. We snuggled under a warm blanket. I got caught up on my email correspondence (I'm not always the best at that). I tackled a bit more of my ongoing project to add labels to old blog posts in my efforts to index our blog (man alive I used a lot of exclamation points back in the day). I took the boys to church where there were over 400 people in attendance for a missionary farewell. I gave them a never ending supply of bread and rice puffs to keep them quiet in a jam packed chapel. Blake gave his first scripture in Primary, which he had mostly memorized.

But most of all, I enjoyed my two little sweethearts. We played in the sandbox. We pretended to be monsters in the "magic dark." We built trains out of duplos. We practiced going down the stairs with Nash.

I wondered, when did I blink? How did they got so big?

The Hunt

I have been feeling the pressure.

There has been an avalanche of information regarding the education of our preschooler.

I have been bombarded with hype from chain preschools that claim they can teach our three year old to read. There have been rumors of waiting lists and interviews to get into the "best" schools. Advertisements have been selling us on the necessity of outfitting our three year old in a uniform and delivering him to a rigorous academic preschool to give him a leg up on the competition.

I disagree with most of the preschool claims and advertisements that I have encountered. I have issues with the drill and kill with worksheets philosophy. Sure, it's great to know letters and sounds and to read and write, but I can teach emergent literature one-on-one with my child at home. Then, there is the other end of the preschool spectrum, which I can't say is much more than child care.

So, I was left to trust my own instincts when choosing the right preschool for Blake.

I boldly tackled the preschool search over the last few weeks. Blake and I visited seven different preschools in our area. Maybe that is a little extreme, but early childhood education is my field, and I wanted to be thorough. It was a completely different ball game when I was searching for the philosophy and curriculum that best met my child's needs compared to when I was searching for a teaching position. And I wanted to be sure that I knew all of our options before Troy and I made a decision.

I was shocked at the range of quality that I found. I'm still convinced that no preschool is as great as where I did my student teaching in Michigan. But, in the end, Troy and I felt at peace with choosing a school that best met the philosophy I have been taught and wholeheartedly agree with.

I was surprised at how much it mattered to me that we chose a Reggio-Emilia based philosophy. The philosophy is basically that children learn through hands on activities where social and emotional development are the focus. As a result of the self esteem they build through competent play, they excel academically. Man oh man do I agree with that! Preschool should be about enrichment, not about competition.

Don't even get me started on those cute little art projects that have to look exactly like the teacher's. I personally feel very strongly that art and science should be about the process, not the end result. I immediately wrote off any school that had those cutesy carbon copy art projects on display.

I'm not saying that this is the philosophy for everyone, nor does the preschool you choose even come close to determining your child's success in later grades (or going to preschool at all for that matter). I think everyone makes the best choice in their own situation, and our decision feels just right for our cautious and hesitant three year old who needs a little social boost.

I feel such a sense of relief that the hunt is over. We secured one of the last three two-mornings-a-week slots at our preschool of choice for the fall. He's in!

I Have a Crush On Our Snow Plowman

Can you blame me?

It's a tough job these days with the amount of snow we are accumulating.

But our snow plowman comes through and takes care of it for us. The rest of us stay inside in the heat and peer through the glass at our expert.

We're all wimps when it comes to freezing temperatures and hauling out snow gear in March.

Love that little nose pressed up against the {dirty} glass.

Records

I have never been sentimental about "stuff." All of those cute little scribblings and yarn necklaces my son brings home each week from Sunbeams go right in the trash (while he's not looking). I condensed my entire array of childhood yearbooks, awards, programs, and memorabilia down to one box. If I don't think I'll use an item again, I donate it or get rid of it. I just can't stand to have all the clutter around with the thought of having to move it from house to house over time.

But there is one thing that I couldn't bear to get rid of.

If I ever lost my records, I would be heartbroken.

In fact, a few years ago, my favorite Christmas present was a fire and flood proof safe to store my journals and external hard drives full of digital files. If our house ever burns to the ground or fills with water, I want those records to be protected! The safe is already filled to the brim with my personal journal arsenal.

I am passionate about keeping records. Once a thought or idea or memory is in writing, I feel such a sense of relief. I don't have to keep it in the forefront of my mind anymore, worried that it will slip into never-never land and be forgotten forever.

There have been so many times that I have wished that I could read journals that don't exist from my great grandparents. To read about their opinions and fears and joy and trials. To know of the memories that filled that dash I see on family history records in between their birth dates and death dates.

I want to be sure that there is a record of my life and my posterity beyond birth dates and death dates. I want to be able to look back on the good and the bad and have all of the important (and not-so-important) events documented.

Therefore, I am a record keeper. I am so thankful to have my memories in writing (at least most of them...some make me roll my eyes).

At the top of my list of records to be preserved are the two humongous binders chock full of every letter Troy and I wrote to each other while he was on his mission.

Yes, we used to be really cheesy. After five years of marriage, we certainly aren't as sappy as we used to be. Some of the love-sick things we used to write to each other make me pretty embarrassed now. But one of my favorite things about Troy's weekly letters was how he addressed his envelopes. He never wrote my actual name. He always came up with a creative (and sometimes embarrassing) title. I treasure each and every one of those address labels.

I hope that someday our children and grandchildren will enjoy reading about our courtship and how we grew closer letter by letter.

I keep records in a few different ways now. Everything has gone digital, and I don't live in the dinosaur era, but sometimes I still like creating with actual prints. I have a Christmas scrapbook that I add a few pages to each year, including our family Christmas card. The album is always fun to pull out and look at how much we have changed and grown from Christmas to Christmas.

Then, I have scrapbooks for each of the boys. They only document from birth to one year old. I feel like realistically, the first year of life is about all I will be able to keep up with for each child in scrapbook format.  Nash's book is already about half as thick as Blake's. But, it is complete, and I am satisfied that his life thus far is documented.

Especially since I started his book two weeks before his first birthday. I brought my supplies to Arizona and created layouts with my favorite crafting buddy (who happens to have many more supplies on hand than I do). The dining room turned into our project room for the week.

The nice thing about how I did the boys' books is, sometimes, I created full 12x12 pages, but often, I just slid pictures into 4x6 slots and called it good. The most important parts to me are the journaling clips on each page.

I am so happy to have Nash's book complete. I enjoyed using my scissors and paper cutter for layouts even if everything has gone digital. I enjoy digital design as well, but sometimes, I just need to take a break from my monitor and work with my hands.

Since I determined that the cut off for scrapbook documentation is age one, I continued Blake's records with a blog of "Blakeisms" where I record the funny things he says from time to time. Eventually I'll have a blog of Nashisms when he starts talking as well.

Then, of course, there is this blog where I keep the most updated records. I am slightly paranoid about my blog accidentally being erased one day or Google crashing, so I import all of my posts every once and a while to a back up blog. I also have each post automatically emailed to me for back up. I'd like to have a hard copy of all of my blog posts someday, but I haven't found a program I love to turn our blog into a book. I tried using blurb a while back and gave up after a few hours because I had to reformat every page to make it readable. I feel like there will be better technology in the future for blog-to-book transfer, and I'm no rush to have it all printed out.

I love records.