New Table and Chairs

Well, we sold our chairs at our garage sale as they were purchased from Shopko and were starting to fall apart. We had gone furniture shopping and finally found 6 new chairs to replace these. After purchasing them, they told us that they would come in, in 2 weeks and we had 2 weeks to cancel the order. Meanwhile, the swap n' shop classifieds came out and we saw an ad for tables and chairs similar to our old one for less than what we were going to pay for the brand new chairs. The newer tables and chairs we just brought home are only 2 years old and sturdier and prettier than our older version. Here's some pictures:

Mikayla's Reading Testing

We were getting just a little concerned that Kayla didn't seem to have much interest in reading or writing, so we enrolled her in a week-long reading class this summer. Maybe we are just thrown off by Elly already knowing the alphabet and stuff, or the fact that some our friends' kids the same age as Kayla are already reading, but anyway. Today was her pre-reading class assessment. After the assessment was over, to distract Kayla to discuss the results, the instructor tells Mikayla to go pick out a book. Kayla wonders around the little library we were in. The teacher begins by saying that we should start saving up for Harvard. Just then, Kayla brings the teacher a book. Wanna know what she picked out? "A teaching manual!" Too funny.

The teacher said Mikayla is quick as a whip. Kayla scored in the 8 or 9 year old range for reading comprehension (which is weird because she can't read -- but maybe for her age reading comp. is just listening to a story or something). And she said Kayla did something that she's never seen another kid do. She had told Kayla to draw a square. Kayla said, "I can't do that very well, so I'll just trace yours." Pretty funny, but the teacher said she's never seen that level of problem solving at such a young age. This reminded Nate of the first time he took Kayla to the movie theater and the chair kept folding up on her. "I remember clear as day -- she was still learning to talk (what was she, a little over two?), but she sat up on my lap and said, "'nd get some rope 'nd tie it down!"

Just feels good to have a teacher say that about our big girl.

Summer Photos

Just some photos from our adventures today. Kayla had swimming lessons this morning. We met our friends at the park beforehand. After lunch, Kayla picked more flowers in our flowerbed. Then, when Elyana woke up from her nap, we went to Foster Arend Beach. This is the same place I'll start the Rochester Triathlon in a few weeks.

Kindergarten Testing

Well, It was definitely affirmed that I wouldn't make a good homeschool teacher. Mikayla had to be tested to see which class to be placed in and to see if she needed do go all day to kindergarten. She passed the test fine. When she came running out of the room, I told Mikayla that she was so smart. She replied, "I know. I also reminded the teacher that I already know I shouldn't talk to strangers and she shouldn't either." The teacher reviewed what she got wrong. One of them being, she didn't know what a trapezoid was. Geez, not sure if I do either! Then, she told her that one of the shapes was a diamond. "We call it a rhombus," said the teacher. "Oh, I told her it was called a diamond," I replied. Oops. She got her 9 and 6 mixed up which the teacher said was common. She also needs to work on her pencil grip and the sounds letters make versus just knowing the letters. We're doing a one week reading readiness class in July which I think will help also.

In regards to Ely, she is still an avid "reader" as you can see in the below picture:

My Favorite Snack

I wanted a more positive blog post, so I thought I'd share with you all my new favorite snack. 14 pieces, 120 calories, and 2 g. of fiber is a serving. It's dark chocolate covered plum bits and really hits that chocolate craving.

Garage Sale Nightmare!

Well, the girls have seemed to adjust to sharing a room and Ely hasn't seemed to be bothered we took away her crib and room. She's even done great considering she has a cold right now. It has been a very busy week with up to an hour of training several nights this week and up to 2-3 hours each night preparing for this weekend's garage sale.

We weren't scheduled to start our sale till Friday late afternoon when I had someone there to help me. However, I forgot I shouldn't open the garage door to take out the trash and people started to flood in. I at first thought, I'll do this for a 1/2 hour and then shut the door again. Then, I heard the forecast was calling for thunderstorms possibly later that day and all day Saturday. So, by myself, with two kids, I managed a garage sale until reinforcements arrived 4 1/2 hours later.

That wasn't what was bad though (although it was very tiring and stressful). An elderly guy arrives in a handicap van he drives himself and comes out of it in a motorized wheelchair. Since he is handicapped, he asks me, "What's that? OH, can you put that aside for me. Oh, that's nice, add that to my pile, please..." He also would snap at other customers, "That's mine, I just bought that-put that back down!" So, after a while, he has a huge pile formed ($55.00 worth of stuff). He tells me to keep it aside, he'll be back that afternoon. True to his word, he did come back that afternoon, starts up a whole separate tab and huge pile of stuff. All along, he's bickering with every price, trying to talk us down. Keeping track of the tab soon got confusing as we discovered that our calculator timed out after awhile. Anyway, his total came to 260 something. He says he only has 150 and needs to go get more money. He does come back and gives us more money, buys more stuff and is ready to load. Nate arrives home from work soon and kindly offers to haul stuff to his house in his truck for him. Nate had to bring 2 separate loads of stuff. After the 2nd load, this guy starts to bicker about the final sale price. Turns out, he wanted $5 more dollars. Nate kindly gave him $5 more dollars, despite the fact that he hauled all the stuff for free for him. 3 hours later, this man arrives once again in our driveway. He claimed that he bought a nice container from us (which I recalled) and that it was filled with Crystal. He did buy most of the crystal we were selling. He says he can't find it at his house and thought we forgot to load it or something. There wasn't anything of the sort left in our garage and he starts bickering once again about his horrible loss. He said he would come back the next day to figure it out and get it settled. I was in tears by this point from stress and Nate didn't sleep a wink all night wondering when he would come back and what we should do with him.

This is a warning to all of our Rochester friends, if you see this guy arrive at your garage sale. Either he has mental issues, or is a scammer. On a positive note, we did make some descent money from him. Just don't want to ever in my life see him again!

What A Week!

Well, it's Monday again. We are currently getting an entire new air conditioner installed. Nothing like spending a couple thousand on a Monday, huh?! Basically our two goals for this week are for me to train even more for the ever nearing Triathlon and to prepare for our upcoming garage sale this weekend. Oh yeah, if that wasn't enough, we decided this was a great opportunity to sell our crib and changing table/dresser. This means, transferring Ely to a toddler bed this week. Yikes. We are extra crazy and are putting the toddler bed in Mikayla's room and reclaiming our guest room again. Needless to say, we are all starting this week tired and cranky!