Blogging for Real

I recently read this article about blogging.  It really got me thinking about blogs.

I miss the good ole blogging days.

Do you remember those days?  Those days when blogs were filled with our stories?

(Included in this post are my previous blog headers; you can see how JandA&Co. has evolved.)

The days that we used to blog about what we were up to; the simple things in life.

There was no pressure to make money, or advertise for everyone on the planet.

When we used to write about our days and share simple photos.

When we read our friends blogs and left them kind comments, and used it as a way to stay in touch.

Blogging has been a great way for me to make new friends, and stay in touch with old ones.

However, it has become harder to do.

It is harder because I have less time then I did five years ago when I first started my little corner of the world.

(Remember my very first header?)

(My blog used to by called The Swenson Family 5)

It is also harder because I feel like there is more an more content to wade through.

I am proud to say that I have always tried to stay true to myself when it comes to my blog.

I blog for myself, and I often ask myself the question:

What is my purpose?

I don’t make money with my blog.

For those of you who do; I think that is wonderful.

For myself, I wanted my blog to be a reflection of me with no pressure from outside sources so I decided against advertisements and money making.

I hope you feel that I try to be very real here.

That is very important to me.

I hope you also see that I grow, change, and learn lessons.

This article was a good reminder for me of why I blog.  Why I read other’s blogs.  What blogs I choose to spend my time reading, and that it is important to leave friendly comments.

With that in mind, this blog will always be a reflection of the things I love.

So yes, I will be sharing recipes, crafts, and things I learn as a mother.

This blog will be a reflection of a very real life.

More importantly it is a place for me to record memories; so there will always be pictures and records of the daily goings on.

Sorry if this part bores you; but this is the most important part of life to me.

The simple moments with my family.

On that note, here is a quick roundup of what our May looked like:

(Photos are a mixture of iphone photography and pictures with my big girl camera; my iphone seems to be the way I roll lately)

(Some of these are a repeat from Instagram; sorry Instagram followers)

 

14 year married on May 20th

Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, Eli Young Band, and Kasey Musgraves with my hubby.

Spent the day at the park with the kiddos on Memorial Day weekend.

I did some swinging; and so did the kids.

Both of the younger kids learned how to pump on the swings.  They are big kids now.

Practice. Practice. Practice. 

They can both play the same song; Ode to Joy.  It is fun to hear them play together.

I had a lot of fun taking pictures of spring scenery here in PA.

Jex entered the yearbook cover contest.  I am so impressed.  He did this all free hand.

He is color blind and realized later he had colored Scooby Doo green.  Which gave us all a good laugh; including Jex.

We went to a lot of soccer games.  Jex and Stella played on the same team.

We pulled the kids out of school and took a trip to Hershey Park.

We crossed that off our bucket list.

Jex had a school carnival on a Saturday afternoon.  I loved seeing them with their face paint and hair colored.

Of course there is always plenty of snuggles.

I was asked to photograph the Memorial Day flowers at an old historic cemetery over the holiday weekend.

It felt very sacred to be amongst the graves of fallen soldiers.  Which gave me lots of time to reflect on how thankful I am for freedom; and also knowing it isn’t FREE.

100’s of pitches thrown by this cute boy.  He is the starting pitcher for his team.  I am so proud of him.

I hope you enjoyed seeing what May looked like at our house.

I also hope it got you thinking about what you enjoy about reading blogs or writing in a blog.

What kind of blogs do you love?

Thanks for reading mine.

What’s in our Summer Binders? My take on how to plan your summer.

Last summer I made absolutely no plans for our family.  I was in survival mode.  I was living one day at a time.  Really I was living one minute at a time.  Our move last year nearly did me in.  It did me in physically, but it really did me in emotionally. 

I completely beat myself up over what we were doing to our kids.  I felt bad that they had to be shuffled around.  I felt bad that we would be so temporary.  I was upset that we had to live in four different places over the summer. I was worried that they would have a hard time making friends.  I was sad that I couldn’t make permanent plans like putting them in piano or sports. 

Looking back, I realize that all my worries actually caused me to miss a great summer with my kids.  Instead of living in the moment, I was worried about all the moments we might miss.  Because of my attitude; I didn’t plan a single thing.  We just lived a day at a time, and the summer came an went(and I was a mess). Nonetheless, we did have fun, I just didn’t realize it at the time.  Kids are resilient and they are so good to go with the flow.  I wish I wouldn’t have beaten myself up, and just enjoyed myself more.  Even though I was there with my kids last summer, I must say I wasn’t really there.  I was home, but not home if you follow me.

This summer, we are moving again. I have made a little pinky promise with myself that I won’t miss out on moments with my kids this year.  Kids really only have a handful of summers to be kids; and then they grow up and do their own thing.  I am right in the thick of that and I don’t want to miss out on this summer with my kids.  Even though we are moving, I am going to let things go.  I am going to stop packing or unpacking and just take the kids to the park.  I am not going to let this move interfere with our summer.  I will not beat myself up because of the change that is happening.  I will resolve to just enjoy being together.

With that in mind, I am going to be very deliberate about our summer.  In fact; that is the motto I live by.  I want to be a deliberate mother.  I want every choice and decision I make to have a purpose. 

I am the type of person that has to have a plan.  When I have a plan, I am a go getter.  I get things done.

…and that is where our summer binders comes in to play.

Our summer binders are the plan. 

Do you have plans for you summer?  How will you make your child’s summer great.

Maybe your summers are great when you are a fly by the seat of your pants kinda gal; which is awesome if it works for you.  If you are like me, and like to have a plan maybe this little idea will work well for your family. 

This idea just might help you get your summer under way.

When putting your own binders together, this is the perfect time to sit down as a family and discuss 5 things.

1. Give your summer a name, and a purpose.

We have named our summer; Swenson Family Summer Camp.  Our summer is too crazy to enroll them in any camps or extracurricular activities.  So we will have our own camp at home.

Purpose: To enjoy our summer doing things we love and want to do, enjoy being together, accomplish items on our to-do list, and have a deliberate summer.

2.  Make a list of the things that must get done each day.  For our family it is: piano practice, reading, morning chores, and some educational activities for the little ones.  Even though summer is a great time to play, it is also not a free for all.  I don’t want to be a crazy mom at the end of the summer because we let everything else go and only had fun.  It is important for kids to learn that there is a time for play, and there is a time for work.

This should be a list of activities that can keep the kids brains and bodies active, and your house clean.  No mother wants to have a summer break and live in a dirty house all summer.  Enlist the kids to help with this.

3. What activities are you dying to do this summer? What are your summer vacation plans? Is there any place locally that you want to visit? Will you enroll your kids in any camps(when an where and what are the dates?)

This is a great time to sit down with your family and look over all those fun kid projects you have pinned on Pinterest.

4.  Look over your calendar and write in days that are taken up by family reunions, birthdays, vacations, holiday parties, camps, or any other important event(for us moving dates.)

Fill those in on your calendar first.

5. Make the rest of your schedule and get them in your binders.

The last step is typing up your plan and putting it in the binder. Every child and mom has there own binder.

P.S.  I found the adorable polka-dot binders at Walmart.  Can you say cute?

Here is how our family binders and our plan came together to give you an example.

Step One: accomplishing the items on our to-do list. 

Mom always has things she has to do.  I would love to spend all day every day enjoying the kids, but we all know there is laundry to be done; among other things like packing and unpacking.  Each morning we will accomplish our to-dos.

We came up with 6 to-dos.  They are to work on these together as a team. 

We came up with a schedule which we may or may not stick to minute to minute but it is a good outline for our family.

This schedule is typed and in everyone’s binder.

Swenson Schedule:

8:00-8:30 up and moving (yes we will be sleeping in some this summer)

8:30-9:00 Breakfast and clean up

Cereal or easy breakfast M-Th. Friday is pancake breakfast

(As you can see I like to set the expectations for my kiddos.  Jex wants pancakes everyday, and I can’t keep up with that.  Now they know when to expect them)

9:00-11:30 Must-Do Activities until lunch(see below)

I am so flexible and there will be days to play, but these are also things to do so mom can get some things done around the house as well

9:00-9:30 morning chores, get ready for the day and one job from the job chart

job chart chores will be simple such as; wipe down table, wipe down toilets, clean mirrors, empty trash

9:30-9:50 independent reading for 20 minutes 

9:50-10:00 writing time

Write about your day, or what you just read in your book.  Tess will be drawing at this time.

10:00- 10:30 Teaching and practicing

Jex practices the piano while Stella teaches Isaac and Tessa something from their binder or the teaching bin.

I have included worksheets and age appropriate educational pages for the little ones in their binders.  This is a great time for the older kids to teach the younger kids something.

10:30-11:00 Switch teaching and practicing

11:00-11:30 extra time

choose something from the list of extra play(see below)

11:30-12:00 lunch and lunch clean up

Included in the binder is blank paper for drawing, and lined paper for writing.

I have also included some fun worksheets for Isaac and Tessa. 

Tessa has simple pages that help with her colors, letters and numbers.

Isaac has more complex pages with sight words, weather charts, and crossword puzzles.

You can find worksheets for print here, here, here and here.

I also typed up a list of Isaac’s sight words.  I included instructions of what he should do with these words.  That way it is very easy for the Stella and Jex to help him.

I also came up with a list of activities the kids should refer to during their extra time.

Extra Activities

Visit an educational websites (pick from this list)

www.wegivebooks.org

www.pbs.org

www.wordle.net (create your own word art)

http://www.shelsilverstein.com

http://www.seussville.com

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/ (makes crossword puzzles

http://www.sesamestreet.org/home

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/ (make your own comic strip)

Kindle- play an educational game on the kindle, or read a book on the kindle

Color

Play playdough

Play outside

Draw

Play a board game with your siblings

Paint

Art project

Teach your sibling something

Email a friend or family member

Write a card or letter to family member

Do a puzzle

Work in your summer journal with your camera

And because every list of work should be rewarded, we came up with a chart and reward system.  Each child has this chart in their binder.

Each item must be signed by mom each day.  Each signature is worth a point. If every child crossed off every box each day, our family could earn 1,200 points.  Our family must earn 850 points to go on our exciting family activity at the end of the summer.(to be determined.)  I am thinking Lagoon which is an amusement park in UT. 

In order for this to work the points have to be earned as a whole group.  This will encourage them to work together and help each other cross off their boxes. 

Hopefully, this will give everyone the incentive to tackle the things that need to be done. Some days we may just throw in the towel, disregard the schedule and go to the pool.  I like to be spontaneous sometimes too.

This morning schedule is to avoid boredom.  It is to avoid them asking me to watch TV all morning.  This gives them plenty of ideas of what they can do.  While they have things to do, so will I.  This will give me the time I need to accomplish a few things around home, or run to get groceries.

Once we have that done it is on to Step 2.

Step 2 is where the fun begins.  This is when we accomplish those things on our list that we WANT to do.

After lunch is when Swenson Family Camp Begins.

From 12:00 to 12:15 I will read to the kids.  This is a good time to just let them relax, and be still for a minute.  I just finished reading Harry Potter to the kids so we may read number 2.  We have also talked about Percy Jackson, or A Little House.  Box Car Children, The BFG, and Junie B Jones are some of our other favorite family re-alouds.  And yes, before you ask me; my little ones will sit still for these as well.  Even though some of these books are for an older audience, they still listen.  Kids just like to be read to.

After 12:15 Camp Activities begin.

Each week will have a theme. Each day will have a topic.

Monday: Make it Monday (make a craft)

Tuesday: take a trip Tuesday (field trip day)

Wednesday: Wet Wednesday (play with water)

Thursday: Thinking Thursday (learn about something using a book or the internet)

Friday: friend Friday (a day to have friends over)

Following the activity the kids can do whatever their hearts desire.

As I said each week will have a theme.  This is one of our weeks in July.  You will see that the activities follow the daily topic.

Building and Creating

July 15^th-July 19^th

Monday: build a balloon powered lego car (Make-it Monday)

Tuesday: take a trip to the local hardware store (Take-a-Trip Tuesday)

Wednesday: play with water and moon sand (Water Wednesday)

*make dad a birthday treat, Happy Birthday Dad

Thursday: We are going to look up the largest building here in the US, see how long it took to build and how much it cost. (Thinking Thursday)

Friday: Spend the weekend with our friends at Bear Lake (Friend Friday)

I have each week planned out.  By doing this I have been able to look at our whole summer and include moving dates, family reunions, weekends with friends, birthdays, and activities that the kids have been wanting to do.

Here are some of our other weekly theme ideas:

America the Beautiful

Colors

Travel

Exploring

Pioneers

Family History

Service

Treasure Hunters

We have activities planned for each week. Each activity will go with our theme.

We will end the summer with a Glow in the Dark end of summer party.  We plan to invite friends over for night games, treats, and glow in the dark activities.

All of this crazy information is typed up and in our binder. 

My binder includes a list of what I need to buy for activities or crafts, and what I need to prepare for each week.  This list will keep me on top of our week.

Is this summer binder intense? Maybe a little.  I can admit that.

But I always say better to be prepared.   

Most importantly, when the kids go back to school, I hope we will have crossed off a good majority of our summer camp activities.  I also hope that we accomplish our goal, and get to go on our reward activity.  I hope this plan helps me to stay more checked in this summer.  And more then anything, I hope the kids will say they had the best summer.

This binder will accomplish all that for us.

I also can’t wait to look through their binders and see finished work, stories and pictures.  This binder will serve as a summer journal of sorts. 

Will we accomplish everything on our list? Probably not.

Will there be days that we don’t do anything in our binder? Probably yes.

Will we have a great summer accomplishing some of the things we want to do, the events we have planned, and the things we need to do? I hope so.

The best part is that this binder is full ideas for moments to share together.

Are you ready for Summer?

I have been making our summer preparations this week. 

I am going crazy because in the middle of summer we will move across the country.

I am making plans for summer in 2 different states, but I think I have come up with a good plan this year.

Here is a sneak peak of where our summer plans begin:

Our Swenson Summer Camp Binders.

More to come…

Check out some other things we have done in Summer’s past:

Alphabet Summer

Summer Journal 

I can’t believe there are only 17 more days of school.  Ahhh!!

P.S.  I was featured on one of my favorite blogs Worley House. You will love Andrea’s blog.  Check it out.

Go here to read 5 things about me.

P.P.S. A big shout out to my hubby.  We have been married for 14 years today.  I love you even more than I did then.

A little gift…

I really enjoy putting gifts together for people. 

I made some beautiful coffee filter peonies for a gift this last week. I gave them to the kids teachers for teacher appreciation.  I also made some for a few of my girlfriends for Mother’s Day.

It was a little time consuming; but I enjoy creating so it was worth it.

What you need:

small coffee filters

large coffee filters

green floral tape

floral wire

food coloring

vinegar

a deep pan

cooling rack over a cookie sheet

dryer

pots

potting soil

I really wanted to try dying the coffee filters. I have seen it done all over Pinterest.  What held me back was that everything I seen had people hanging and drying coffee filters over their house for days.  I found a tutorial where she put the filters in the dryer.  That changed everything for me, so I gave it a go.

I used this video tutorial for dying the filters.  She does a wonderful job showing you how to do it.  It is worth watching.

Here is my version in simple Andrea terms.

1. put cold water, 4 T. of vinegar and your choice of food coloring in a deep pan.  (I followed the back of the food coloring box to get the desired color) 

2.  Separate your coffee filters.  You need 5 large and 5 small to make each peonie.  I dyed the sizes separatly so that I knew which were which.

3. Submerse all of your small coffee filters in the dye.  Use tongs to swish them around.  Let sit 5 minutes.

4.  Pull out the filters.  Squeeze out the extra dye over the dish of dye.  You can do this to a whole bunch at once.  Lay them on the cooling rack.

5.  Separate the filters and place them in your dryer.  Dry for 15 minutes.

6. Repeat with the larger filters.

So Easy and beautiful.

Once they were dyed; I followed this tutorial to make the peonies.  She does a beautiful job of explaining it, so I will not repeat.

These were time consuming.  I found it easiest to do them in a production line.

 

Cut them all first, and then put them all in the wire and wrap next….and so on.

Once all your peonies are finished, I filled my little buckets with potting soil. 

Then I arranged the peonies.

I attached a sweet little tag with ribbon, and they were ready to give as gifts.  Our kiddos also wrote the sweetest note of appreciation to their teachers.

This project took me about 4 hours.  I made 18 peonies. 

I love how beautiful they are and so I made some for myself as well.

I currently have them in a vase with potting soil, but once we move I plan to use the crystal water to give the illusion of water in a vase.

I have found that stuff does not move well in the heat; so I will wait.

I also love how these flowers look on this piano, and want to recreate this same idea in our new home with my new coffee filter peonies.

source

These would be a great gift to lift the spirits of a friend because they are flowers that don’t die.

I can’t wait to dye more coffee filters and come up with some more projects.

For more gift ideas from JandA&Co; go here.

Mothers

I really love being a mother.  Mother’s day is always a good reminder of how lucky I am. 

I started my morning by looking over my kids baby scrapbooks.  Oh what a blessing babies are; and I was blessed with four beautiful babies.

 

I am thankful for my four babies.  I love being a mom to 4.

Even when people look at me like a crazy person because I have 4 kids.

I like being a crazy mom of 4.

My hubby and kids spoiled me with a nice dinner, beautiful cards and notes.

They also made me some coupons.

Stella pointed out a watch to Jonathan that I had been eyeing.  Good Job Stella! Jonathan wrote me the sweetest note that he gave me with the watch.  He used the word time often, and how I give of my time.  The watch seems to be a very fitting gift for Mother’s Day.  Mothers do give up a lot of their time in the service of their family.

…and they also bought me the most adorable K Swiss shoes for Zumba.

I am in love.

I am thankful for the sweet monetary gifts that my family gave me.

I am most grateful for my four sweet children who made me a mother, and…

a husband who supports me in that role.

What I miss about our life on Saba… and what I don’t.

This was supposed to go up last week when I was writing about Saba.  Somehow my writer didn’t publish it, and I am just now realizing it.  So here is the last of my Saba posts and then I am moving on. 

I hope you have enjoyed getting to know a little bit more about me this week, and some of the adventures that my family has taken since it’s beginning almost 14 years ago.

I am going to wrap this week up by touching on a few of my favorite parts about living on Saba.  The things I miss with all my heart.  There are also a few things I don’t miss, and I thought I would share those too.

As I was going through these pictures, my heart was warmed.  It was fun to have the flood of memories come back.  I am thankful for cameras.  These pictures were taken with my very first digital camera which I thought was so amazing at the time.  Now that I have a big girl camera; I can look at these pictures and realize it wasn’t all that great.  Although, I am thankful to have pictures.  Especially of this time in our life, and I will take any pictures I can get.

First off I want to start by saying that I think Jonathan misses the ocean most.  He loved being able to catch fresh seafood and cook it up.  I miss the adventure of it all. This is a Saban lobster; which happens to be one way fishermen make money on Saba.

 

My favorite memory has to be having cookouts at Cove Bay.  Cove Bay was down by the ocean and just below the airport.  It was a great place to start a fire and cook tinfoil dinners.  We did this often on a weekend night.  We always did it with good friends which made it so special.

I don’t miss the water situation.  It was so hard and such a struggle to conserve water.  We adapted, but man am I grateful for water.  I know how important it is to be conservative with water.  I am just thankful I don’t have to work as hard as I did on Saba to do that.  Let’s just say I am thankful I get to flush the toilet after each use.

This is a photo of Jex in our make shift bathtub.  Saba didn’t have bath tubs because of how much water it takes to fill them.  It is so funny for me to think that for 2 years our kids bathed in a bucket.

I miss the simplicity of life.  I miss that there was no pressure to run around and do this or that.  There was no pressure to be involved with too much.  I really loved that there was no pressure to have MORE.  There wasn’t MORE to be had on Saba.  Everything came by boat and was expensive.  What you had, you were grateful for. 

One of my favorite parts about our simple life was that we had time several days out of the week to go and spend lunch with Jonathan.  I looked forward to seeing him during the middle of the day, and he loved seeing the kiddos.  I know it helped break up the monotony of classwork.  He was one of few students who had children so it was also fun for his classmates to be with our kids.  The kids loved to go for the fries. The school cafeteria had the best cook.  She made the best chicken dish on Fridays.  I looked forward to that each week.

It was so nice and convenient to island hop.  We were so close to many other islands.  It was fun to be able to explore other parts of the Caribbean.  A nice perk to living over there.  There were many Fridays we would stand and watch the cruise ship pass right by our island.  This is a picture of the littles on St. Maarten.

Our friends on Saba were the best.  They are life long friends that I will never ever forget.  They became our family.  We also share something that we don’t share with others.  We know the secret to island life.  We survived it, we survived medical school, and we have unique stories to tell because of it.

I miss being outdoors in such an amazing place.  The beauty there is  unreal.  I enjoyed our family hikes, and my morning runs.  I miss sitting on my porch watching the sun come up, and the sun go down.  I miss waking up early and going to bed early because of how the sun sets and rises.  I miss the smell.

I had a great support network on Saba.  It was a group of all the significant others of Saba students.  We got together often, and I learned so much from each of them.  I miss all of them, and grew to appreciate that each of us are different.  Although we were different we had such a strong bond because of Saba.

I miss sitting on my porch watching the rain fall over the ocean.

I miss the powerful church meetings we had on Saba.  God can certainly be found everywhere.  All of these men are members of our church and held great responsibilities in making our church services happen.  We did not have a church leader called to be over us.  These men stepped up and made it happen.

I missed our families greatly when we had to stay on the island for Holidays.  It was never easy to be away.  I will tell you that those are some of our most memorable holidays.

I miss the bananas.  Oh the bananas.  The majority of the bananas that grow on Saba are called fig bananas. They are shorter, fatter and sweeter.  We had a banana tree in our backyard so we ate a lot of banana’s.  Stella ate many a fresh banana mashed as baby food.  We also ate banana muffins, banana bread and froze a lot for smoothies.

I also miss all the delicious food on Saba.  I swear they have some of the best restaraunts.  This blows my mind because all of their food comes by boat, and they don’t have all the fancy cooking tools.  I wish I could just take you all to dinner right now.  You would have to give me about 7 days to take you to all my favorite places.

I miss Ting.  A delicious Caribbean grapefruit drink.

I don’t miss how hard it was to travel there, the poor internet connection, and how making a phone call home cost an arm and a leg.

I don’t miss the bugs.

I don’t miss paying $10 for a gallon of milk.

I am thankful to live in the Good Ole USA.  I am also thankful that I had the opportunity to live somewhere else for a while.  It gave me great perspective about life.  It also afforded me many opportunities I couldn’t have ever gotten had we not gone there.  Saba is where I discovered who I am, and what I am made of.  I will forever be grateful for that.

Saba will always have a piece of my heart, and will always feel like my second home.

Thanks for being here while I shared all these stories of my past.  If you missed anything that I shared this week about Saba.  You can find them here.