The Jones Girls

I received some awesome coupons from Party City and it prompted me to go online and check out their costumes. I went to their store today.  Boy did they have tons of costumes to choose from. I wound up purchasing some “kits” and I am going to be making their costumes and adding the kits. I had some awesome coupons and wound up saving $30 on the costume kits.

My girls are big time into bugs these days…lady bugs, bees, butterflies, centipedes, worms, ants, etc. They originally all asked to be monkeys and then they changed their minds and asked if they could be bugs for Halloween.

This is what they will be:
Savannah will be the Queen Bee
Amanda will be the Butterfly
Miranda will be the Bumble Bee
Maryssa will be the Lady Bug

The outfits will have leotards, tutus, tights, wings, antennas, boa fur on the cuffs and neckline and a puffy ball on their dressy shoes.   I will be doing some sewing and using my creativity to make their costumes.  I priced the pre-made costumes and they are outrageously priced.  So I am going to hand make mine and I think mine are going to be even cuter and 100% better quality.  

The girls saw their costume kits today which consist of the wings and the antennas.  They loved them and are so excited.

So I am stating to cut the 50% off coupons from Joann’s Fabrics and that will be a huge savings for me to do the costumes.  I can’t wait to get started!!

Savannah made the late bird class – yay!! She goes from 10:10am-1:30pm. This works great for me because I have more time in the morning to get the girls ready for their day plus get a little house cleaning done.

We do lots of flash cards and practice writing her name and other words. She is learning to read site words now. She knows 2 word colors by sight now – RED and GREEN. We are working on upper case and lower case letters and she knows them all by sight and sound. I have flash cards with all of our names on them and she now knows them by sight. I then have her write each of our names down, including her last name too. She is doing very well at this.

She knows all of her numbers up to 30. 1-10 by sight and most of her teens but gets a couple confused and most of her 20’s up to 30.

I ordered some books from Scholastic from her school. They had a packet of 20 books that focus on sight words so I ordered them for Savvy. We do reading every night together. She loves to read together and so do the triplets.

She has a tendency to talk without raising her hand so we are all working on teaching her to learn to raise her hand and wait her turn to speak.

They get one snack at 10:30am and she loves her cheese and crackers and orange juice.

I LOVE her teacher, Miss Tarbell. She is a wonderful Christian and is very patient and kind.

Savannah’s Kindy curriculum is high academic and we get about 1-1.5 hours of homework a night. Reading writing, sorting, grouping, coloring, cutting, pasting, and flash cards every night.

Can you imagine what it is going to be like with the triplets go to Kindy? YIKES!!  I hope they get Miss Tarbell.

Homeschooling Preschool for the triplets is going well.  The tuition was over our heads since Cliff took a 50% pay cut at the beginning of the year. I have a tutor come in for an hour on Mon and Wed. I give her the assignments and she does them along with allowing them to take breaks and play. This gives me an hour to run errands or get caught up on housework. It is only 2 hours a week, but that is all I can afford and it is a good way to begin introducing the triplets to someone else teaching them. If our finances are better in January, I will put the triplets in preschool for 2 mornings a week for 3 hours each day. I am not too worried about preschool because they just turned 3 last month. I am going to make sure they will be in PreK next year 3 days a week for sure.

The triplets know most of their colors. Maryssa knew her ABC’s by sight and sound since she was 18 mos and the other 2 have known for about 6 months. They know most of all of the shapes and know most of the primary colors. They can count to 10.

I am going to start taking all of the girls to the library once a week. The triplets are just about finished tearing up and damaging books and they understand to respect books so I think we are ready for the library. I have a pretty extensive home library since Savannah was in preschool the last 2 years before Kindy. I was able to order her books through Scholastic at Preschool so I have built up quite a library of classics and popular kids books. Over 1/3 of them are damaged from the triplets ruining them in the past couple of years so I will be replacing them this year through Scholastic.

So we are plugging along here.

For the past couple of weeks Savannah has been learing about the color red and apples.   Today her Kindergarten and the 1st grade had a school activity called Johnny Appleseed.  The parents were invited to join the students.

Cliff took Savannah to school and participated with her at the Johnny Appleseed workshop.   I had to turn in 2 apples the day before which was to be used for the Johnny Appleseed event.

The kids got to cut apples and eat all different sorts of apples, eat apple muffins, drink apple juice and learn about the subject of apples.   Cliff really enjoyed his time with Savannah today.

We hired a babysitter, Sabrina, from 7pm-10p for tonight.  She offered to give the girls baths (which I told her she didn’t have to but she was happy to) and then she read them a book that she brought for them and tucked them into bed.  

Cliff and I celebrated our anniversary at a restaurant called Bari Bari which is located in Yorba Linda.   Sabrina, our babysitter recommended the place to us.  Cliff and I love Teppan cooking, and our favorite restaurant that we got to is Benihana’s.  However, Benihana’s has remodeled their restaurants and they suck!!   This restaurant does Teppan cooking like Benihana.

The outside of the restaurant is very misleading as it is located next to a super market.   The windows are blacked out from the outside so it looks like a restaurant supply store on the outside.   We walked in and were greeted by a humorous Japanese guy who sat us at our table.  This place is much smaller and really quaint.   This place is loved by the locals and the restaurant was full which is a good sign we are at a good place.

There was no wait and we sat at a table and 2 other coules joined us.  One couple was a boyfriend girlfriend of 3 months and the other couple was expecting a baby any minute.  She looked like she was about to explode!!

Our chef, Tom, was a riot.  He was entertaining.  When he was making the stir fried rice, he took little pieces of the egg and was able to toss across the table into each of our mouths.   He did some funny stuff and amazing stuff.  I tell you, Benihana can’t touch this restaurant.  Plus the prices are half the cost of Benihana!!

So when Chef Tom was throwing the egg to the pregnant woman, the egg fell into her cleavage.  She immediately starting cringing in pain.  The woman went into immediate labor right then and there!!  OMG!!!!   She huffed and puffed through dinner. the poor thing.  She mentioned that she was in preterm labor for 8 weeks and she was now 38 weeks.  They were going to the hospital right after dinner.  I wonder if they had their baby that night?

The couple of 3 months dating were a lot of fun.  The boyfriend is deep into politics and he had something in common from Cliff.  He lived in Vermont for a few years so there was a lot of fun conversation and discussion about Vermont.

After dinner we drove in the heights and enjoyed the view of the city lights.  What a nice and relaxing evening we had.

What a great anniversary!!    Time has gone by so fast,,,I can’t believe we have been married for 11 years.

Maryssa is now going to a speech therapist once a week on Fridays for an hour at Jordon Elementary School.   

It was really stressful trying to get there.   There is no parking as all of the teachers park in the parking lot and leave no room for guests or parents to park.  Really frustrating.   I have to take all3 girls out of the minivan because I can’t leave them in there by themselves as I can’t just drop Maryssa off at the front office.  So we go to the main office and sign in and get a Visitor badge.  Then I walk the triplets across the entire school to Room 9 .  It is a looooong way.  

So I am a nerve racking 5 minutes late.    The teacher tells me I have some paperwork to fill out and take me and the 2 girls outside of the class and fill it out.    Maryssa is in class with another little boy and they both receive speech therapy from the teacher.

So I am outside of the class filling out the paperwork and Miranda and Amanda are running around like little banshee monkeys.   I tell them to be quiet because the classrooms are in session and we need to be quiet.   I am quickly filling out the paperwork and I hand it to the teacher really quick and try to scram.   Maryssa saw me and started bawling…Mommy no Mommy don’t go!!   Broke my heart…

I quickly walked with the girls back to our car, buckle them in the car seats then drive over to Savannah’s kindy class and wait for her to be dismissed.   They took longer getting out.  They were supposed to get out at 11:50am but didn’t get out till almost 12pm.  I had to be back at Jordan school at 12:10pm and I was still waiting in the pick up line at 12;02pm!!   Finally Savvy gets in the car and her Kindy teacher, Mrs. Tarbell, wants to have a quick chat with me and tell me Savannah will be a late bird…Yay!!  That will make pick up and drop off much easier now…whew!!  

In the meantime I am looking at the clock…it is 12:08pm!!  Oh my gosh!!  I safely scadaddle and get to Jordan at 12:15pm and arrive at Maryssa’s class at 12:18pm.

I am met with the teacher with her arms crossed, pissed off as all hell at me and tells me this is unacceptable.  I tried to explain, but she said it can’t happen again.  Ugh…  What a terrible way for us to start Maryss’a 1st day of Speech Therapy.  I tell her I have to run because I left the girls in the car (which I didn’t want to do but I knew I was so late).   Totally sucked…

The teacher did tell me Maryssa did very well and was attentive the whole hour.  My hope is that Maryssa blows through this speech therapy and will graduate by Christmas.  She has come so far since starting private at home speech therapy last November.  She has had continuous Speech Therapy since November of Last year.

One good thing is that Savannah will be a late bird ( as long as her behavior is good and she can keep up with the more advanced Kindy students) and I won’t have a tight timeline between picking her up and picking Maryssa up.  Savannah will be going from 10:10am and I won’t have to deal with the crazy madness of the 8:30am drop off chaos.  I will be with 10 or 15 other cars and will be able to drop off Savannah right in front of her classroom – yay!!  I will pick her up at 11:30am.  This means the mornings won’t be so chaotic for me and I can breathe a little…whew!!

Have you ever heard of those Edible Arrangements? I received one today for our 11th wedding anniversary which will be tomorrow. Cliff’s work sent it to me. Cliff has been working out of state in Arkansas for over 5 weeks now. He had been missed by all of us and his work wanted to show their appreciation for Cliff’s hard work by sending this fruit arrangement. It is very beautiful and the girls devoured the grapes, strawberries and I let them try the chocolate covered fruit too.

What a nice and thoughtful thing his work did. Now I wish my husband could hurry up and get home!! He is flying in tonight for a few days and then will be back in Arkansas sometime next week. He is making good progress on the project out there, with the help of his 2 other colleagues.

I wanted to share real quick what our wedding was like. We got married in Cliff’s hometown of Poultney, VT. I had never been to VT. Cliff had a dream of getting married in the church he attended while he was growing up. So we planned a New England wedding during foliage season, which was for September 19th. The only family member on my side that was able to fly out was my mom and my BFF, Deidre,  had moved to the state of NY a few months before our wedding so it was pretty easy for her to get to the wedding, she was my maid of honor and we were childhood best friends.

So here we are 11 years later, with a marriage that keeps on ticking like the Timex watch and we are constantly working on ourselves and having a good marriage. It is never just easy, but then I think it would be boring if it were just easy…KWIM?

Here is a salute to my Darling Husband Cliff….to a great 11 years of marriage and looking forward to a lifetime of many more anniversaries!!

xoxoxoxoxoxxo

The girls have been learning how to emulate and copy dance routines from different shows like Fantasmic at Disneyland.   I have been thinking for a while that they would love to be in dance class.    The problem is with 4 girls in dance, it can be pretty expensive.

I got a coupon in the mail today from Savannah’s old Ballet Dance Studio, Adagio Dance. They are offering waiving the registration fee and offering a hefty discount for ballet and dance classes.

There was a schedule of classes included with the coupon and Pre Combo Ballet & Tap for 2-3 yo’s (triplets) and Pre Combo & Tap for 4-5 yo’s (for Savvy) are Friday nights 6:45-7:15 for the triplets class and 7:15-7:45 for Savvy’s class.  Wow, I could take all of them in one swoop, who could have planned that schedule any better?

Now mind you, I opened my mail at 5pm tonight so I just noticed that the time of the classes that are tonight’s classes are 6:45 and 7:15pm!!      I thought about it and called the dance studio and asked if I could bring the triplets down and have Ms. Jennifer, the dance instructor and owner, evaluate the triplets to see if they were ready for the 2-3 yo class.   I also wanted her to let me know if she thought Savvy could do the 4-5 yo class.

After I made the call, they told me to bring the girls down tonight if I wanted.   I am looking at the clock and it is now 5:50pm.  I have about 40 minutes for me to jump in the shower because I feel gross (it has been so hot and oppressive here) and also to get all 4 girls dressed up in the ballet gear and hair done.

I am running around with a vengeance and we managed to get to the dance studio at 6:50, just 5 minutes late.  Not too bad.    I had no ballet shoes or tap shoes for the girls and the studio said they have extras to lend people.   That was so cool!!   They were able to provide all of the ballet shoes and tap shoes for the 4 girls.  Yipee!!   I quickly get the triplets ballet shoes on and I walk them into the dance room.    I stay in there for moral support and observance for 5-10 minutes and then I left the room to be with Savvy who was watching vigilantly outside viewing through the one-way mirror.

One thing that impressed me about dance class on Friday nights is the classes only have about 6 kids in them and with my girls it made it about 9 kids in the triplets class and in Savvy’s class it was only about 5 with her in the class.  The waiting room for the parents was pretty bare and it made for a very relaxing and less hurried atmosphere.   The girls’ classes were the last classes of the day which made it less rushed and enjoyable for me.

Ok so back to dance!!  After 15 minutes of ballet, all of the girls ran out and I switched the ballet shoes for tap shoes.     You should have seen me, I was like a conveyor belt putting one shoe after the other…6 feet in all!! LOL!!

 The triplets quickly scuttled back into the dance room and tapped their little heart out.I had tears in my eyes.  I was so proud of them!!

I got Savannah ready for her class and she did beautifully in her class.    She has been out of ballet for about 16 months now.    She remembered most of her moves from her past and got to learn some new moves using new techniques.   She looked so confident and relaxed and had so much fun.

While she was in class, the triplets were running around the waiting area like my little banshee monkeys.  I had to remind them to be quiet to not disturb Savannah’s class.

It was amazing to see my parade of 4 pink ballet princesses, fluttering about in their tutus and laughing and giggling like little angels.    My 4 girls won the hearts of their teacher, Ms. Jennifer and also all of the other parents.

So I negotiated a discount rate with the owner.  I think the dance will benefit all of the girls in the following manner:

Amanda:   This will improve her sense of balance, strengthen her core and help her posture.

Maryssa:  She is pigeon toed, her feet point inward.  The shoes and the exercises will help align her feet to be more forward and hopefully help her overcome her pigeon toe.

Miranda:   She does not take direction well and easily gets distracted.  This will help her learn and follow direction in a group setting as well as keep her focused.

Savannah:   She has bilateral coordination issues and muscle tone issues which were inherited from me (so sorry Savvy!).    In the past when she was in dance, it offered her good therapy to help her promote good coordination and muscle tone.  

The nice thing about all of this is all of the girls have no idea it is therapy, it is fun, fun, fun!!