Category Archives: firsts

Kindergarten screening

Kaylee and the super cute/nice teacher/lady (not sure if she is a teacher, or just helping with testing? I will call her a teacher.) who administered her screening test. She was very kind to humor my need to document EVERY moment of our life.

So they had us (parents and children) waiting in the cafeteria. It was fun seeing some of the other kids Kaylee will be going to school with.She did AWESOME! The teacher (who’s name I forgot to get.) said she is very ready for kindergarten (socially, and academically.), and that she is excited to have Kaylee attend the school. She also said that they always send kids home with a few things to work on.

The only thing she struggled with that surprised me (because she is good at this at home.) was identifying numbers 11-20. Other wise she did as expected.

So when asked to write her name (not specified which!) she wrote her LAST name. The teacher was impressed and amused. I reported that she CAN do both, but is more comfortable with the letters in her last name. We will continue to work on it.

She has ALWAYS struggled with gross motor skills. She can hop on one foot, but is super unsteady. We practice this everyday. She takes it very seriously. VERY. “I needa prakis hopping on one foot for kindergarten!” I have herd this daily for months.

She has a hard time remembering where her ankle is so that wasn’t a shock.

Jon was listening in on another teacher parent review while we waited for Kaylee to come back, and got a panicked look on his face when the teacher started talking about sequencing. HA! “Dude, she’s great at sequencing.” I think he was more nervous than Kaylee!

I have not covered opposites or rhyming words AT ALL. Those two subjects were not on my radar. The teacher said that Kaylee when asked to do opposites asked, “Whats opposites mean?” After it was explained she did great. We do need to work on it though since she said that the opposite of hot is not hot (hehe). This amused the teacher. But she knew up/down, big/small, in/out, happy/sad. I was impressed since we really have not gone over this at home.

The teacher reported that Kaylee did okay with rhyming, and that lots of children struggle with it. But to work on it over the summer. Will do teach. Will do.

She also said that I need to teach Kaylee the spalding pencil grip, and told us how to do it. I thought I was doing it right, but was just SO not. Shannon did show me the spalding way, but clearly I failed in teaching it. It’s okay. We have time to work on it.

I love that Kaylee got her first “Great job!” from a teacher. Evidently they are looking for the children to relate a sentence or two describing a picture. Kaylee told a whole story. The teacher said this is an indicator of creative writing skills. Kaylee LOVES to tell stories.

Just sitting and waiting for little miss to come back. Regan got to use a mini urinal while we waited. He thought that was AWESOME! Jon said it was so cute, and I said too bad getting a picture of said cuteness is not kosher.

We let the children play for all to brief a time before we loaded them into the car to leave the school.

Please note that Jon is playing too! Love that man!

Jon is dropping off the humungous registration packet today, and then she is all set for school. Well aside from uniforms, backpack, and school supplies that is! 🙂

Sunday dinner at the Day’s house:

Jon: Kaylee passed her screening.

Shannon: Of course she did. Was there any doubt.

Before and After: Coffee table

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Remember how my awesome brother in law GAVE me this awesome coffee table. Well I am finally getting around to my before and after of the refinish project.

I have decided that I need to actually start posting before and after photos of all the crazy things we have done to this house. (The table is IN the house so it counts. Okay.)

We basically gutted this house before we moved in, and have been SLOWLY trying to finish it up ever since.

The before and after photos are fun to help us remember JUST how much work we’ve done. It’s good for days when you are looking around and your eyes can only SEE the half finished work waiting for it’s turn to get loved on and finished up.

This is my sad before picture of the table. The kids where sick, so I was taking pictures (because that’s what I do) of my sickies with their puke buckets. It was sadly the best before picture I could find.

I was half way done sanding the top when Jon came out to ask me if I had taken a before photo. DOH! I was not too worried because I was positive I had a decent one to use. But I didn’t, and that’s okay.

So I sanded it all down, then I stained just the top a nice dark walnut. And painted the base a light creamy off white that I mixed up from left over paint. I was trying to keep the whole project under $10. Which I did!

I did the rest of the painting in the garage because it got windy outside, and I didn’t want any debris getting stuck on the table. When it was all dry I covered what I needed to on the top with Frog Tape, then cut out my design. I don’t have a cutting machine, or vinyl so the Frog tape was my quick and dirty fix. It worked beautifully.

Then I painted over the whole thing with my lovely shade of (looks better in person) green oops paint. I did two coats of paint, and peeled the tape off when the paint was still wet.

When the paint dried I slapped a bazzillon coats of Polycrylic (about 6 letting it dry between coats) on it to help protect it from the children. And it has. Nail polish come right off. As does sharpie.

I was far too lazy to sand paint and poly the inside. BUT I may actually do it someday. This table gets used and abused, and has held up wonderfully.

We LOVE it so much. It has wonderful rounded corners, is on wheels(SO easy to move for vacuuming!), and the part we like the best is that the top lifts up to be a giant t.v. tray. Great for eating, coloring, crafting, whatever….

The boys (Jon and Josh) like that it matches the area rug. The “matching” was a total happy accident.

The inspiration for this refinishing technique came from here. When I first told the boys what my plans were, they gave me the “Janice is wearing her CrAzY pants again” look. I get that look often along with the “you have like three heads right now” look.

So I pulled up her site to SHOW them and they where all like, “Oh, okay. What ever you want to do is fine.”

And you know what? They love it.

My oops paint I bought months before on a whim because I LOVED the color, and it was a gallon of nice paint for under $5. So ya, it came home with me even though I have no plane for it yet.

I spent a couple bucks on a teeny tiny sample of stain, and had more than enough. And a couple more bucks on the Frog tape. I came in just under my $10 goal which make me giddy and love this table even more.

I told Jon it’s really more like under $5 since the paint was already at home, and we didn’t count the poly as it was leftover from previous projects. He said, “Suuure….”