Catch Up

Hello again!  I thought now would be a good time to catch you up on what we've been up to in the past week and a half since I last posted.  Tuesday I went in for another doctor's appointment.  I am currently dilated to a 1 and 50% effaced.  The baby is head down.  The doctor recommended that I get a stress test done to make sure the baby is okay.  The reason for this is because there are times when I do not feel the baby moving as much.  So we got the stress test scheduled for Friday morning at 11:00.  So we will see what the news is then.

Other than the doctor's appointment, not a whole lot has been going on, so I thought I'd let you know what I've been doing with Brian.  I took a lot of pictures and there might be a lot of explaining, making this a longer post so please bear with me.  

About three weeks ago I started doing pre-school with Brian here at home.  It only lasts an hour or two but I (usually) have his attention the entire time and he loves it!  There have even been a couple of times that he will ask if he can "do school" around seven o'clock at night!  He's a very quick learner and catches on real fast.  It's fun to see him learn and grow.  So all together I have been quite pleased.

So what do I do?  I have four books that I work from with him.

This first book that I use is basically a teacher's guide that has a daily lesson (one lesson per day for eleven weeks) for your child which includes a mental activity and a physical activity, both of which are pretty basic.  It teaches good basic skills, such as learning how to cut with scissors, how to pick out your clothes for the next day, how to hold a pencil properly, etc.; it also introduces children to their colors and counting, as well as practicing their coordination (i.e., standing on one foot, walking heel-to-toe in a straight line, etc.).  I LOVE THIS BOOK.  It is an excellent pre-school guide and is a lifesaver!

The other three books I use are just cheap learning books that came from the Dollar Tree. (You can find some really good stuff at Dollar Tree!)  Brian always gets extra excited when it's time to work out of these books.

  I really like this last book because it is a dry-erase book.  So I can re-use it again and again!


After we finish working out of each book, I include a fun activity of some sort.  Here are a few things that I have done with him recently:

We made a pasta bracelet.  I asked Brian to count the individual pasta pieces as he strung them onto the string.  (He loves wearing this by the way.)

Practice drawing/tracing lines.

Practice sorting different objects into different categories.  Here he sorted pasta noodles, pennies and crayons.

This is an activity where I drew four different types of weather, then I cut out several different articles of clothing.  What Brian is supposed to do is decide what articles of clothing can be worn in each type of weather and match them (i.e., you wear a coat in the snow so he would  put the picture of the coat next to the picture of snowy weather.).

Brian learned how to cut with scissors.  He had a great time!  He kept asking to  use scissors  for several days afterward.

We made a puzzle out of the cover of a cereal box.  Brian liked it a lot more than I expected!

We played with Play-Do.  Alli didn't quite know what to do with it at first but she caught on.  :) 

A few other things that I have done with them that I wasn't able to get pictures of is:

• Nature Scavenger Hunt
• "Adopt a Tree"- Brian learned a little about trees.  I took him outside and let him pick a tree. He drew a picture of the tree, learned how to describe it, did leaf and bark rubbings, and watered it. I also took a picture of him next to the tree.
  
• Learn the alphabet in sign language.
• Make paper airplanes
• Puzzles

Birthday Shopping

Luke went birthday shopping today.  He got some great deals on a couple of dress shirts and a pair of True Religion jeans.

I also found a super cute pair of shoes for our future baby girl. :)

Doctors and Fish

I was finally able to go to the OBGYN today.  What a relief!  They gave me the glucose drink.  So I get to do that lovely test tomorrow morning.  But other than that, everything is fine and great.  I am 34 weeks and 5 days.  It's hard to believe that I only have a month left!  I'm getting more and more excited to welcome our new little girl into the world!
We stopped by the store afterwards to pick up some food for lunch.  The kids got to ride in one of the car carts.

They loved it!  

Later after dinner, we took the kids out to the pond on Luke's parent's property to feed the fish bread and also to practice going "fishing" (it's a catch and release type of deal).  This is one of Brian's (and daddy's) favorite things to do.  He is definitely and outdoors boy!

The pond has several different kinds of fish and other pond life.  There are Blue Gill, Bass, Carp, Catfish, frogs and toads, and even a Snapping Turtle!  Luke accidentally caught the turtle on his line once.  He was fishing and the turtle decided to take the bait instead of the fish!  But no worries - the turtle was released and is alive and well :)

There is a duck couple who have hung around on the property for quite a while now.  Geese also fly in  to swim in the pond every now and then.  It's neat to see the birds come in.  Once in a while we even get a Heron that will fly in to catch a fish out of the pond.  It's a lot of fun!

Brian loves to go fishing!  Luke will cast the line out and then let him reel it back in.  He enjoys it  so much!

A daddy-son moment :)

Alli was loving the outdoors tonight as well!

A Sunday Date

Today Luke and I went on a walk in a neighboring city, Troy, to get out for a while, while Luke's parents watched the kids for a couple of hours.  I thought I would show some of what we saw on our walk.  To start out, we passed through the Strawberry Festival that was going on.  As we moved through the festival, I looked across the nearby Miami river and noticed the Troy city courthouse.  I love this building!

The picture doesn't do it justice, but at least it can give a small idea of what a beautiful building it is!  

After leaving the festival, we passed through a park and walked through a cemetery.  While in the cemetery we found a neat looking memorial.

It was a really cool carving! It looked at first to be carved out of a tree stump, but after walking up to it I realized that it is actually carved out of stone.  It was amazing to me the detail that was carved into it! And it was beautifully carved all the way around.  

Moving on from the cemetery, we stopped to look at the Miami river, which so much larger than any of the rivers you can find in Utah! 

The Miami River

There were several ducks and geese at the river

  And that concluded our lovely walk.  While I miss Utah, Ohio is a beautiful state, made even more so because of the time of year.  We have been getting a lot of rain over the past month or so and it has made everything so GREEN! It is so pretty!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog!  This first post is just an introduction.  This blog will mainly be about my family and our life in Ohio, so family and friends can keep up to date with us and what we're doing, especially since I never update anything on Facebook anymore.  So if you want to know what's going on with the Osborne's, just check in on the blog periodically and see what we've been up to!