Our new preschool curriculum book

After story time we load up on books. Lately we have been averaging about 16 books per check out. These books last us the entire week and are read over and over and over. Children learn through repetition right? As headed to the checkout station, heavy load in arms, a book at the end of an aisle caught my attention. It was titled, The complete day to day curriculum. I stopped to have a looked and learned it was a day be day set of lessons for early childhood education. PERFECT! I have been using various blogs, Pinterest, and my own research to plan out lessons for Ted's preschool and while it has been working, it requires quite a bit of work and lots of blogs want you to have all these toys and do-dads to enhance your preschool experience. 

At one point I was planning to follow a lesson plan from a blog that listed all the materials you would need for a two week curriculum. They even included links to Amazon for some of the more obscure materials. I decided to start a cart on Amazon and add all the items that I did not already own... the total came to $85! What? Of course if I stuck with this person it would not always be this high because I would accumulate stuff... but do I really want to accumulate stuff? 

So I am giving this book a try and after 4 lessons I am sold. It has lots of songs, games, and focuses on all the different areas of learning (arts, math, gross motor etc). I continue to use Ted's work books for things like letters, numbers and writing but this books take over all the circle time activities. 

We are learning all about the body. I will take a pic of our wall later but for one of the activities I took pictures of our faces and we taped them onto outlines of our bodies. Then for hands day I took a pic of everyone's hands and taped them onto the bodies and for feet day I took pictures of feet. It is pretty funny and cute. 

 And here are just some random pictures.

One Friday we went to the outdoor mall and watched a guitar player and ate dinner.

 Ted and Tidus playing together.

just one picture

I have a bunch of unpublished posts because I will start one and then have to go take care of the kids. As an example, as I started to type this Tidus started crying in his crib. So I found this post that had nothing written but a cute picture of Ted so here you go. 

He is watching Wild Kratts while sitting on a blanket he received for his birthday from Uncle James. 

Catching up with pics :)

We finally made our way out to the Newport Beach Temple. It is only 20 minutes from our home and we headed over right after church.  

 Ted was not very happy that the doors were all locked since it was Sunday.

 Tidus totally photobombed us. psh!

 As I look through these photos I now realize that I did not get a single shot of the entire temple. It is a gorgeous temple. It is one of the smaller temples that was built while President Hickley was president of the church. It is just a pretty temple up on a hill surrounded by homes in gated communities. ;) There was an apartment complex across the street and I looked up rent. For a one bedroom, one bathroom is was over $2100 per month... yikes... But that is Newport Beach for you. There was a mountain off in the distance and the entire time we were touring the temple grounds Ted insisted on climbing it. Even as we packed up the car to leave he pointed to the mountain and suggested that be our next stop.

 Aunt Kristy gave Ted this cute set of capes and masks for his birthday. In true toddler fashion, Ted was randomly terrified of the capes. He had no desire to even let me try them on around his neck. He was fine with putting the masks on (go figure). So I put all the capes and masks in a tub in the closet until one evening Ted requested I bring the tub out. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles Ted actually wanted to put on both the mask and the cape. I had to document this moment. And send the pic to Kristy for proof.

 We are still doing our preschool homeschool. We don't sit down at the table everyday but we do make an effort to include educational activities in whatever we choose to do. It gets hard to do preschool while Tidus tears apart the house so I let him sit at the table and color with a marker. It worked for quite a while. Until he became bored with coloring and dumped the bucket of crayons all over the floor. Then I banished him to the bouncer.

I have also been checking out new parks in our area. This requires me to drive Tyler to work because the parks are in neighboring cities. He does not mind because this means he gets to use the carpool lane. 

 The primary had a pool party at one of the member's homes. She lets anyone swim in her pool and she keeps it heated at 85 degrees so it was really nice. Afterwards the kids all ate popsicles.

 Tidus eating his very first popsicle.

 We got swimming almost EVERY DAY!! I only say almost because we do not swim on Sundays. Other than the sabbath we are in the pool constantly! It makes me excited because Ted and Tidus are turning into little water babies. I love it.

 To end bird week for preschool we went to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. It is right across the street from the beach and is the perfect place to go bird watching. In fact, there were lots of people there with binoculars in hand. Other bird watchers were impressed that Ted brought his own.

 We also go to quite a few pug meet ups. I mentioned in a past post how there are so many pug groups in southern California. Tyler even said it feels like he is constantly going to put parties... This group is the OC Pug Saturday Group. This has been my favorite dog park in SoCal by far. It was nice green grass with a paved path all the way around. There was chairs, picnic tables, trees for shade, and water stations.

 Ruby getting jealous that Tyler is petting another pug.

 True to her sheepish pug personality Ruby spent the entire time either right by our side or hiding in the back. Plus, she kept trying to climb into the storage compartment of the stroller.

 More pics of us at the pool.

 Tidus is crying because he wants to be in the pool and not sit on the side but I really wanted to get a picture of him.

First days of summer

Summer is officially upon us. Last week I started getting brave and took the boys to the pool during the day while Tyler was at work. It is finally hot here so the pool feels wonderful. Ted has a floaty that he wears and he is brave enough with it on to swim over to the deep end of the pool. I discourage this since I have Tidus in my arms, but I do love his enthusiasm. Tidus has his floating island but I suspect he is reaching the age where he does not want to sit in his personal floaty anymore but he is too small to wear a life jacket. This means I get the pleasure of holding him the entire time. He does enjoy standing on the steps and splashing in the water. I enjoy giving my arms a break. And it is fun to see Ted coming out of his shell and playing with the other kids at the pool.

Yesterday we walked to Home Depot and bought supplies to make a water table. This idea came from the What's Up Moms YouTube channel. I can be counted on to try out most of their craft ideas. I already had quite a bit of pvc piping from previous projects. Ted chose the color orange to paint it and of course when daddy arrived home all calm and polite water table play went out the window. I was soaked by the end... I'm not a fan of spontaneous water fights so you can imagine how thrilled I was with this.

This post is being typed from my cell phone while baby sleeps on me. He is sleeping through the night which is absolute heaven! Unfortunately naps continue to be a battle. Today I surrendered and am just letting him nap in my arms. The alternative is to put him in his crib and have him scream at me for an hour. Ted has been left to his own devises. Thank goodness for living in an apartment. It is so much easier to handle two kids when they can't get very far from me at any given moment.

Pugs at the Beach

 In Southern California when summertime hits all the pug meet ups head to the beach!

Also can we take a second to truly appreciate just how many pug groups there are in California... the ones that I know of are the Central Coast Pug Group, LA Pug Meetup, Long Beach Pug Meetup, Newport Beach Pug Meetup, and OC Pug Saturday. Only one of those is not within reasonable driving distance for us. We could be doing a pug thing almost every Saturday! Plus the last Sunday of every month!

Okay back to today. The Long Beach Pug Meetup and the LA Pug Meetup both planned activities at the same dog beach at the same time and day. I don't think they did this intentionally but obviously everyone just ended up joining together. There were over 100 pugs playing at the beach and it was a blast! Ruby LOVES the ocean. She loves to dig in the sand, she doesn't mind the waves, and she is obsessed with playing fetch with shells.

 I follow a lot of pugs on her Instagram account and I was trying to recognize other pugs but it is kind of hard. Mean Mug Pug Ozzy was there and her brother Kubrick. Gidget the surf pug was there. Afterwards I went on Instagram to see who else came and posted pictures.

 Tyler is pretty much amazing. He has about a million things he needs to do at work and he knew how important this was to me so he went. When the meet up was over he went home and showered and then headed back in to work.

Here he is with a bunch of pugs on him.

 In the background of this picture you can see Gidget surfing. Apparently there is a breaker out in the water at this beach so there really were very few waves but she was still able to catch a couple. It was cool to watch up close because you can really tell that she is moving on the board to keep it balanced.

All three of my children were thrown into the tub and hosed down. 

The end of a fun and tiring event for Rubert.