Weekend of Skiing

Posted on February 18, 2019 by jlcleve

We went to Breckenridge for a weekend of skiing last weekend with some friends of our from church. This was our first time up for the season. We both commented multiple times how glad we were that we had scheduled this…about three months ago…because life gets so busy that it never would have happened if we hadn’t had the foresight to plan early. =) The Dads split the kids up and enjoyed skiing Friday and Saturday. The Moms spent time relaxing, but also giving breaks to kiddos as needed.

In the evenings, we played games, watched some shows and played a lot of pool and foosball. Micah and his buddy spent a good amount of time in the hot tub, too. AND, ate a whole lotta good food.

On Sunday morning, the Dads got in a bunch of runs by themselves. It was lots of fun!

The Start of February

Posted on February 17, 2019 by jlcleve

Playing games:

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Doing schoolwork (reading fun books and books for Ethan’s big Faces and Places in Ancient History project, doing a mega brief art study on Durer, diagramming sentences – we sent this one to Aunt Mel to get it corrected!, and Micah admiring his schoolwork thus far for the year:

Ethan went to his first drop-and-go birthday party while Micah and Daddio had eye appointments. I was thanking the Lord for all of the growth we’ve seen in both boys this year. Ethan was a-okay with someone else driving him around and playing at Dart Warz solo and Micah was able to use the letters for his eye exam, rather than the pictures. Woot!

And, finally…this is a little glimpse of parenting boys. They throw snowballs at the kitchen window to get my attention.

The week bookended by GC

Posted on February 16, 2019 by jlcleve

Just wanted to fill in the gaps from my previous post. While Grandma Cleve was with the Bertilson family, we had a busy week at home. Mike was in Minnesota, enjoying a balmy -48 degrees or something. It was pretty crazy. I saw a meme that indicated it was colder in Minneapolis than Antarctica that day! Meanwhile, we enjoyed a snow day on Monday. And my cousin, Meredith, came over to play in the snow. It was a HUGE treat to all of us!

Check out how awesome she is:

Tuesday was a rough day. But no one wants to hear the woes of homeschool life. Micah did have the chance to take Bailey on a walk in the snow that afternoon – he’s getting ready for his potential job this summer of walking neighborhood dogs.

On Wednesday we had our usual day, except that cousin Matthew invited Ethan over after piano lessons. So Micah and I had the afternoon to ourselves until we picked him up before drum lessons. It was pretty fun. I snapped this picture of my red bush tea because I bought it on Amazon to drink while I listen to the audiobooks of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency…and then I found out that one of my favorite “celebrity-ish” people did the same thing!! (Sarah McKenzie from the Read Aloud Revival podcast, if you must know =D) Great minds…

On Thursday and Friday evenings we were able to celebrate the boys’ reading out loud accomplishments for January. They both read 25+ days out loud for 10 minutes! Their self-selected rewards were a movie night with special snacks (Micah) and game night with special snacks (Ethan). Lots of fun! I guess we only took a picture of the movie night – we watched Prince Caspian.

Grandma Cleve in CO!

Posted on February 15, 2019 by jlcleve

Grandma Cleve came out for a visit at the end of January. This was her first time to meet baby Joshua and the last time spending time with all her grandchildren living in the same state (at least for a while…). We loved having her in town again! She split her time between both homes; her time with us being the bookends. Grandma Cleve came in on Friday night late and spent all day Saturday with us – we opted to have breakfast out at our favorite place, go on a Focus on the Family tour and then drive through Garden of the Gods (we were all shocked that we hadn’t taken her to Garden of the Gods on any of her previous visits!). And we finished our evening reading books and playing games.

On Sunday we went to church together, got in some snuggles and coin talk, played a game and then had Ashley and her family over for dinner. It was lovely to have everyone together! And, of course, we snapped a picture of Grandma Cleve with her four grand babies. She went home with them and spent the week there – including some time babysitting Caleb while the others checked out their new home town in Atlanta.

We joined back up on Saturday morning for breakfast and a tour of Hammond’s candy (something Mike and I did when we were dating, but hadn’t been back since!). Grandma Cleve spent the remainder of that afternoon with us before Mikey brought her back to the airport.

And, yes, that is a cricket in Micah’s sucker. He ate its head and then said he had had enough. His verdict – that was gross!

It’s always a gift to have family in town! Thanks for visiting, Grandma Cleve!!

January Updates

Posted on February 14, 2019 by jlcleve

This year we had one of the talented mamas in our CC community take pictures of each kiddo for our year book. She also took class pictures. These pictures were taken a while ago, but I just noticed them in our shared folder recently.

I also found this gem of the boys in Essentials (the afternoon part of our CC day):

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On MLK day, we went downtown to see our first hockey game. This was a Christmas gift from Grandpa Russ – thank you, again!!

Here are some pictures from schooling at home. It’s tough to get back into the swing of things after a long break, but we padded the month with lots of good books and plenty o’ breaks. =) Mike joined us for an art class one morning – Micah was the teacher.

We also had a few snowstorms, so that meant some recesses were spent sledding. One of those days Mike drove by on his way somewhere and snapped a picture – that’s why you see me featured in the one. =). Also, Ethan lost another tooth on the hill!

Other happenings include enjoying Christmas gifts – puzzles and 3D puzzles – and the purchase of Micah’s new favorite hat that will be featured in many pictures from now on it appears.

Solo-parenting in January

Posted on January 24, 2019 by jlcleve

Both Mike and I did some solo-parenting already this month. As I already mentioned, I traveled to Atlanta to help my sister with the trade show there. I left on Wednesday afternoon and was back on Sunday early evening. Micah and I made some overnight oats ahead of time so that their breakfasts would be easy! I also assigned the boys various homeschool assignments and they spent both days finishing their lists. One day I even got a text from Mike saying that the boys finished their assignments before their snack at 10 am! They spent much of the rest of that day building legos while listening to an audiobook. They also had a snowstorm and a lot of food delivered to the house! LOL. I was glad to see that the boys had all gone sledding in the snow.

Here are a few fun pictures from my time in Atlanta!

We spent Sunday evening with Ashley and Zach so that we could *finally* meet Baby Joshua. And then soaked up some Daddio time before his trip.

The following evening, Mike traveled to Minnesota. The boys and I had a busy week! We started the week with CC. Then, Ethan got his eyes and teeth checked. I got my eyes checked and my hair cut. Both boys had lessons in piano and drums. We had cadets and kids club and CBS. And we had lots of school and fun in the meantime (especially drawing pictures).

While Mikey was out of town, we hosted cousin, Meredith from Michigan. The boys were literally jumping up and down at the prospect of having her over and have been asking every day since if she could come back. =)

Since We’ve Been Gone…

Posted on January 23, 2019 by jlcleve

We hit the ground running! We arrived home just in time for me to turn around and get to a tutor meeting for CC. Then we spent the weekend unpacking, doing laundry, going grocery shopping, going to church and potluck, and preparing to start school on Monday. But before I get into pictures from our first two weeks back from vacation, I wanted to mention two really important things that happened in our family:

The first is that we welcomed a new baby boy into our family – Joshua James was born a couple days before Christmas! We weren’t able to meet him until a week after we got home since we were a little congested upon arrival home. We’ve since met him and, of course, are madly in love with the little sweetie.

The second is that we spent much of the New Year praying for our other baby nephew, Eddie. He was in the ICU for over a week! We are so very thankful that he’s home now and healing well. It brought tears to my eyes to finally see pictures of him in his mama’s arms!!

As far as every day life at our home…

One of the first things we did was put up Micah’s bird feeder. After sending pictures of it to my Dad, we raised it so that the squirrels wouldn’t get in! =)

We’ve also been playing lots of games, doing new puzzles and reading out loud a lot:

Our first week of school was interrupted by my travels to Atlanta to help my sister with her trade show, but I understand they did lots of hard work while I was away. Here are some pictures from while I was in town and I’ll do another post with photos from the trip/boys at home.

I also took a couple of pictures of Micah’s homework just to give you a little glimpse into the way that sweet guy thinks! If the math problem asks him to cross out a leaf in order to figure out the subtraction problem, he will have caterpillars attack and eat the leaf instead. And if the math problem tells you to cross out a jar, he will make it break into little shards of glass. And if the problem asks you to draw a line from the problem to the answer, he will make sure the line has loops in it because that’s what a balloon string would do. =)

Micah now knows how to blow bubbles and does so very well. The boys have discovered that sometimes Micah will be able to do things that Ethan can’t do very well, and vice versa. Ethan can whistle; Micah can blow bubbles.

And lastly, sometimes we get pictures of cute family members with their book pajamas and it makes us smile.

The Cleve Crew

We do FAITH, FAMILY and FUN!