Easter around here

Short little update.

Things have been going well. I can't complain really. We paid off some massive debt ($6,300) with our tax return this year and now we have a bit of money to spare. That has felt nice. It's kindda opposite of what everyone around us is feeling, which is weird. We were able to save to buy an Acer laptop, which has been nice so that there aren't so many "who gets the computer" related fights around here. We have also set money aside for Christmas (for the first time EVER!), for going to Michigan Adventure this coming summer and just have money in general savings. It feels pretty good. We are still paying on a couple low balance credit cards, plus my New York Institute of Photography schooling and student loans will be coming due fairly shortly, but all in all, I think we are doing well.

For March, I made notes on the calendar about some of the things that we did and wrote them in a little book for a summary.

Lilly has been going to the Drop In Center (a child care center for low income families) quite a lot this year. She gets 6 days per month and she loves being there to play witht he other kids. She only has until November (when she turns 6) to keep going so we are sending her as often as we can.

Marti started a story telling class at the Civic during the last weeks of February and went on through March. She had a story telling performance where her class performed "The Pied Piper" just over a week ago. She had a blast and will be taking Singing for Actors in the summer at the civic.

Which reminds me. We got a membership to the YMCA here in town and we have been going swimming 2-3 times a week which is a lot of fun. The girls will hopefully each be starting a swimming class here very shortly.

They also have a gymnastics class available this summer through the city that each of them want to take. So, lots of fun things coming up.

In March our family friend, Nicole, took the girls to Bounceland, which is an indoor place where they have a bunch of inflatable things that kids can climb on. It's an exhausting place for adults, but the kids adore it!

We also are seeing the Spring Matinees at the local theatre. We missed the first one or two weeks and we are missing this weeks as well, but we have seen Madagascar 2, Igor, Kung Fu Panda, and Horton Hears A Who. This week we are missing Tale of Desperaux, which the girls did want to see so we will defintely have to rent it.

The week that we were going to see Igor, Marti didn't want to go. We discovered (through talking with her) that it was because she felt like we were taking away her video game time, which she has been very protective of lately. So that led to us giving each of the girls a choice day where they can decide to do whatever they like. This past week it got forgetten about, but I will have to work to correct that so that Marti doesn't feel the need to protect her video game time so tightly.

We also got to visit with Marti's best friend on the 16th of March. Marti, Lilly and Gwen have started a nature club which Gwen's backyard is perfect for and now the girls want to move closer to Gwen :)

And the whole reason I started this post...

I <3 unschooling.

Yesterday we did the Easter basket thing around here. I bought probably $10-15 (I would guess closer to $15) worth of candy for Easter so they would have plenty of candy for awhile. So, you can see a change in my way of thinking right there. This holiday was an excuse to buy candy (not that I needed one, but I went out of my way to buy "plenty of candy"). I also bought other little (non candy) things for their Easter basket. Lilly found hers first. I bought heart shaped stones that look very similar to the heart that the main characters where in the Barbie movie, Diamond Castle. The girls were super excited about it and then Marti went looking for hers and several times we heard groans because she would open an egg and find chocolate. How funny is that??? LOL!

Finally, all the eggs were opened and the biggest hit of all were the heart shaped stones, the eggs that I had bought that has various stones in them, the magnifying glasses I had bought them to go along with their nature club and the flashlights that were bought for the same purpose. They kept shinning their flashlight on the stones and looking at them through the magnifying glass. :)

Oh, and the Kiwi story. When I was writing the above story I remembered another story. The girls were recently at the store spending their allowences. Lilly had picked out what she had wanted and still had a little left over. Usually when that happens we go for candy so we were walking down the candy aisle at the store when I remembered that she had recently said that she wanted more kiwi. I recently had bought a kiwi and she had loved it. So, I asked if she wanted Kiwi instead and the answer was a resounding "Yes!". Don't get me wrong, I didn't ask her to distract her from the candy at all. Also, I would have bought it for her, but she loved the idea of being able to buy it herself. When we got over to the produce selection she decided on two Kiwi and a package of strawberries (that were on sale). I love my fruit and veggie girl! :)

So, that's our life over the last 6 weeks or so...

Next time I will try not to stay away too long.