The Jones Girls

I planned a fun activity for the moms and kids with my La Habra Moms Club at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.  We had a huge turnout, about 30 kids and 15 moms.

This time it was mom’s turn to have fun – making caramel apples!! The kiddos got to do their all time favorite dip their marshmallows in chocolate.  Rocky Mountain as always, was very gracious to us and offered us a steal of a deal buy 2 caramel apples, get 1 free!!

Today we enrolled all 4 girls in Ballet classes at Adagio Dance.   Savannah used to have ballet classes here, but when Amanda’s surgeries came up in the past year and a half, and with the current economic crises, we put ballet on hold.

I got a letter from Adagio recently that waived registration fees for all girls and Miss Jennifer, the instructor, gave us an incredible deal to allow all 4 girls to take ballet lessons.   

The reason why I enrolled them in the class is to benefit each of them in the following way:

Miranda: to teach her to follow directions and sharpen her listening skills

Amanda:  to help her with her balancing issues and strengthen her overall core of her body

Maryssa:  to help her with her pigeon-toed-ness and to help her follow directions and sharpen her receptive language

Savannah: to help her with her mild muscle tone and coordination issues

The girls are having a blast and look forward to getting dressed up each week for class.   It is a lot of work for me, but a thousand times worth the effort!!

This is the true joy of having girls…seeing them float and prance like little princesses in their pink tutus and ballet slippers. There is nothing more precious…

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.

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!!

I planned and coordinated a tour for my La Habra Moms Club with the La Habra Heights Fire Station.

I made homemade spaghetti and meatballs for dinner for the fire station.  I also brought all of our baked goodies that we made last Friday.  The firemen were so excited!!

I took the girls and we met up everybody at 3:45pm today.    They had a really neat presentation of how they put on a firefighter uniform from the boots to the jacket to the air tank,etc.    We learned some facts about their outfits…like the jackets weigh over 20 pounds and with the total gear it is close to 50 pounds!!   They have rescue alarms that beep louder and louder if a fireman is in trouble and needs to be rescued in a fire.    Then all of the kdis got to try on the jackets and the hats.  They had a ball.

All of the kids got to tour the firetrucks and sit inside.    They got to flash the lights and the sirens.     My girls thought it was a blast.

The fireman gave each kid a goody back with crayons, coloring books, stickers and each kid got their own fireman’s hat.  So cool!!

I met a really nice girl at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in La Habra.   She goes to Biola University and does part time tutoring and babysitting.    

I interviewd her and we worked out a very reasonable rate that I can (barely) afford.  She comes Mon. 12pm-1pm and Wed. 12pm-1pm and she will be doing Preschool tutoring.   

So today was their first lesson with Britteny and it went really well.  Their attention span is about 15 minutes so they can sit at the table for 15 minutes and learn then they turn into squirmy wormies and they need to get up and play.  Then about 15 minutes later they are back at the table learning again.

It is a little chaotic and I help Britteny.    It is working out well for the triplets and for me.