Makeover Your Mornings Part 2 (Change is on the horizon)

I am blogging a series about a two week online course I am taking called Makeover Your Mornings. If you would like to read my other posts on this course, click here for Part One.

Lesson 4: I got into bed a bit after my set bedtime last night, but I still woke up closer to my wake up time. Yay! I actually woke up excited to do yoga. I used to do it in college and when we had a Y membership, but I haven't done this type of exercise in a while. I dusted off the old yoga mat and turned on some soft ocean music and just did my own set of stretches and poses. It felt good, especially after my little jog yesterday (I was a bit sore/stiff). Being able to get in a little bit of fun exercise and having time to prepare a healthy breakfast are two of my incentives for making over my morning. I just have to share an idea I found for overnight oatmeal in a jar. I got a little too excited about oatmeal when I watched this video. I tried it this morning, and it truly was quick and easy + my 9 year old loved it cold! Enjoy!

Lesson 5: It was Saturday today, and I did get up pretty early so that I could walk the neighborhood this morning befor breakfast. That first part of the early summer morning really does feel lovely. I don't know what I'll do when the weather turns cold and I have to move all my exercise indoors. Today, I started writing down some big goals I have for myself, and I got my husband's input on some areas as well. Breaking these goals down into smaller steps will probably take me a few days.

Lesson 6:  I continued working on breaking down my goals today. My areas where I have set goals for myself are My wellness, My marriage, Ivelina, Home Schooling, and Finances. I have a few goals for each area that I am breaking down into smaller monthly steps.  I don't really enjoy goal setting, so I am trying to make my first set of goals really doable and simple.I'm most excited about my goal for our marriage: plan one date per month (without Ivelina). We are just getting to the point where she has been home for a year and we feel comfortable letting her stay with other people for a while. In fact, this week, she will begin staying with a friend during the mornings while I am at work. Additionally, this coming weekend, Ivelina will have her first overnight experience away from home. She will be staying with her grandpa, and Jeremy and I are planning a date!  Quality time is my love language, so I am stoked about some time with just him!

Lesson 7: I got up a bit later than I was supposed to today, but I still did my entire morning routine and had Ivelina ready by 7:45 a.m.  Tomorrow, when it is a work day for all of us, I will need to get us all out the door by 7:20 a.m. Today's lesson was about having an accountability partner to hold me to my goals that I am setting for myself. My husband can be one of these people, and I already have one friend who is sort of an accountability partner for me in some areas of my life. I'm hoping between the two of them, I can stick to most of my goals!


The thing I am loving the most so far about my changes to my mornings is the extra time I have to walk/jog in my neighborhood by myself in the quiet of the morning. It allows me time to think and pray over my day. I return home and have some time to read my Bible. It has been refreshingly better than rolling out of bed to a child that is already awake and immediately taking care of her before I have even been to the bathroom! Let the makeover continue!

Makeover Your Mornings (Part 1) - Change is on the horizon

Change is just around the bend for us Moorhouses. After some time of searching for a better job opportunity, my husband, Jeremy, has secured a new full-time job that he will be starting next week. There are so many benefits to this job I cannot even name them all. One BIG benefit is for the first time in his life, he will be working an 8-5 job. He has always worked a 4-12 midnight kind of schedule, and boy are we excited to change that!

His new job means big changes for our family too. I am working four mornings a week over the summer, which means Ivelina will need childcare. Starting next week, she will be staying with a friend/neighbor who has four little girls. It's the perfect place for her, but I am still nervous about the transition. All these upcoming changes are good changes, but I have known for a while that one area of my life really needs to benefit from some good change too.

For a long time, I have been frustrated by my mornings. On mornings when I do go to work, I have to drag myself out of bed only to find Ivelina is already awake. My hubby has usually slept longer because his schedule has always made him get home at midnight or 1 a.m. I'm usually running around for an hour trying to get Ivie ready, breakfast ready, and the dog cared for before I head out the door. It's frantic. It's stressful at times. Sometimes it make me grumpy. And, I'm already tired by the time I leave my house. Plus, I am always 5-10 minutes late for work...eek!

On the days when I'm off, getting ready to start the home school day isn't any better. Because it is my day off, I feel like I "owe it to myself" to sleep in a little. So, I wake up later, and by the time we eat breakfast and get everyone ready, it's 10 a.m.! I know home school is flexible and all, but in my heart, I want us to be starting before 10! It makes the whole morning feel rushed, and I feel lazy & guilty for wasting away those precious morning hours.

All this being said, I know as our family transitions into this new routine and new schedule, I want to make some changes to our times together to make them less stressful and more meaningful. I discovered a sale the other day for an online course called Makeover Your Mornings, and my first thought was, "I need that!" The course only cost me $7. It came with a downloadable workbook and video links for each of the 14 lessons. I have only completed 3 lessons, but it is totally transforming the way I think about my time.

Below is a recap of my thoughts for the first three lessons.

Lesson One:  Today's lesson was an introduction. I told my husband about my plans to commit to this course. He agreed that with his new schedule change, he would love for us to all be on the same page, eating breakfast and dinner together, and getting up a little earlier so we do not feel so rushed out the door each morning. He added that more structure and routine is a good thing for our daughter too. He supported my idea to make over our morning routine! I'm excited to get things started!

Lessons Two: Today, I learned that I need to set a bedtime for myself. I've been really guilty of waiting up for my husband to get home from work even on nights when I have to be at work early the next morning! I also need to establish a nighttime routine for myself. I have always been pretty consistent about packing my lunch and choosing my outfit the night before, but with the upcoming changes of getting all three of out the door by 7:15 each morning, there are definitely more things I could be doing at night to help the morning run smoother. I have written down my nighttime routine, and I can't wait to try it! I am a little skeptical about getting up earlier because I have always had such a hard time with that; however, I believe the reason why I have always had a hard time getting up earlier is because I don't go to bed early enough. For right now, I have set my bedtime to 9:30.  We'll see how it goes!

Lesson Three: So...last night I did much better and did go to bed at 9:30. I thought I would just lay there for two hours trying to fall asleep, but that did not happen. This morning, I cheated a little. My ideal getting up time that I have set for myself is 5:30a.m. I know that sounds crazy, right?  When my alarm went off, it was so dark I reset it for 5:50a.m. It will take me a while to adjust to waking when it's still dark. On the positive side, though, I had time to do devotions, exercise, and shower before the little one was up! That made me feel really accomplished! Pushing snooze for twenty minutes snuck up to bite me, though, when the last 15 minutes before heading out the door was a bit of a frenzy. I had to eat the breakfast I had prepared and still needed to throw my hair up, do make-up, and brush my teeth. One funny note: I decided for my exercise today to do a little walk/jog around my neighborhood. I thought surely I would be the only one out that early, but as soon as I got on the road I encountered three different neighbors who wished me good morning and asked what I was doing up so early.  Ha! So there are other people crazy enough to be out and about at dawn. That fact made me feel better. I hope that after the two week course, my body will adjust to this new schedule, and I will be able to figure out my best rhythm.

We chose her two years ago

I was reading through all the different parts of our blog, remembering Sudan and laughing at the good times we had there. I read back through several old posts on adoption, and then I remembered our adoption timeline. I glanced over it marveling at how God brought us through that process.

It has been over three years since Jeremy and I sat down on a New Year's Eve and decided together that we were going to adopt. I remember the two years leading up to that moment were agonizing at times for me because I really wanted to add a child to our family. We had not been able to get pregnant, and I just knew adoption was for us, but I had to wait a long time for Jeremy to join in this decision. I was so happy and relieved that New Year's Eve 2011.

Then, Mother's Day 2012, we announced to our moms and families that we were going to adopt. I was so excited about the way we revealed this to our moms. I made a handmade card for each of them. Inside I wrote a cute little adoption poem...I think it said something about how they were going to be grandmas, and I pasted images of our adoption agency's logo, the country flags of the countries we were considering, etc. They were excited and emotional to receive this good news.

Then, summer of 2012, as soon as we returned from our mission trip to Africa, we mailed off our official application to AGCI. I remember we were nervously excited because now we were starting to put money with our decision to adopt. It was becoming much more real.

Little did I know that there was more nervous excitement to come. It seemed like every step of this adoption was met with anxious, tempered excitement. Later on in the fall of 2012 we held a couple of fundraisers and sent in our first big set of agency fees. We were officially contracted with AGCI, we had officially chosen to pursue Bulgaria, and we "met" our case worker over the phone. She was with us every step of the way!

Then from October 2012 until May 2013 we were in the home study phase. I know we were nervous about "passing" the home study...haha.  But, it really wasn't all that bad and we enjoyed meeting our local home study social worker. All that time, we still has no idea what type of child we would adopt. I was constantly wondering if it would be a boy or girl, toddler or older child or baby, special needs or not. We struggled with how wide to set our parameters and we ended up keeping them pretty wide open so that we would qualify to adopt many types of children. The open-ness of our parameters made it really difficult to imagine what kind of child would eventually become part of our family.

While we were still completing our home study, we saw an email profile of a little girl. I remember forwarding the email to Jeremy while he was at work with a simple message that said, "I want her." After some conversations and prayer, that simple email led to us inquiring about this little girl. Amazingly, no one else had expressed interest in her yet. She was meant for us!  It was this time TWO YEARS AGO that she was put "on hold" for our family. We could finally imagine our family with a little girl added in the mix. That little girl was who we now know as Miss Ivelina Anne.

I can't believe two years has already passed since that day we committed to her. I still remember where I was sitting when I saw that email and her photo. Now she is a thriving part of our family. It's starting to feel like the days of re-doing home studies, getting fingerprinted what seemed like every month, and frantically changing flight plans due to Jeremy's emergency kidney stone surgery are far behind. Sometimes, I have a hard time remembering what things were like before Ivelina was skipping down our hallway and riding her trike out in the driveway. It is good for me to have this blog so that I will always have memory of our adoption, all the ups, all the downs, all the stress, and all the joy of finally bringing our little girl home.

It was also sweet to see at the end of our adoption timeline the words I had typed:  "Finished. HOME with Ivelina."  Made me smile.

Our Winter Adventures

Yes, spring has sprung here in NC, but, alas, I am just now blogging about winter.

We waited and waited for some snow around here. Ivelina got new snow boots, new snow mittens, a new sled, and some nice hand-me-down snow bibs for Christmas, and I really wanted her to get a chance to use them. It finally snowed on February 17th, my 31st birthday.

Being from northern Bulgaria, Ivelina has seen a lot of snow, but she has told us that she has never gotten to play in it. This is understandable I suppose. It would be difficult for the orphanages to keep winter snow gear in the correct sizes for so many kiddos.

I was hopeful that this would be the year when she finally got to enjoy the snow like a normal kid. This first snow was only about 3-4 inches.  To any northerners reading this, I know, I know... 3-4 inches is nothing but she loved it! It was 3-4 inches of dry powder with a slight layer of sleet on top making it the best sledding snow!  We actually sledded down our road mostly. There were no cars out and it was super fast sledding!

watching the first flakes fall

She couldn't wait to get out there and play

For some reason, the kid LOVES overalls. She was thrilled with these bibs!

Her first little taste.

Daddy daughter snow fun

Me and Ivelina going for a ride. It really was a blast!

Going solo

Just a week later, we got another snow. This time it was 5-6 inches, but it was super wet and slushy. It melted much quicker too. We got in some good sledding in the morning and by lunch time, the roads had completely melted in the sun. 

We met some of our neighborhood friends and invited a few other kids to sled together. We had six little girls sledding together. It was a great time to meet new friends in the neighborhood. I did not snap any photos of our girls sledding day, but I did get some shots of Ivie's first snowman. This snow was sticky and great for packing and building.

Snowman #1   Needed some guidance on this one.

Snowman #2   She made this one all by herself.

The snow was fun, but I'm glad it's gone. We are currently enjoyed sidewalk chalk, tricycles, trampoline, and wagon rides outdoors. I love living in a place where the seasons change! 

Happy spring, everyone!


-Shelly

Letter S - first letter of the year

We only took about a one week break from home school for the Christmas holiday. I felt we needed to jump right back into academics so that Ivelina could keep up her learning momentum. We ended up spending two weeks on review, Letter S, and our second round of assessments. 

The theme for Letter S from the Letter of the Week curriculum was snowman.

We began by watching Frozen.  Ivelina loved it!

This girl loves to paint!  I taped off a giant snowflake on canvas and let her go with all sorts of cool winter colors. The finished product turned out very pretty. I want to frame it!

We got some great non-fiction books about snow from the library. For her letter collage this week, we glued on fake snow on her S's. 

Ivelina completed her pattern block Letter S puzzles.

We have this number poster I made by drawing 10 squares and drawing dots in the squares. We use it for all sorts of simple number activities. I thought of this silly idea that Ivie could do. She used kitchen tongs to count out cotton balls, or snowballs, onto the poster. 

First she chose a number card from our LOTW stuff. Then she had to match it to the square with the corresponding number of dots. The last step was to count out that same number of snowballs. Lots and lots of one-to-one correspondence going on!

I had this print out of bunches of little snowmen, so one day Ivelina colored the snowmen (practicing her coloring skills) and she cut them out (practicing her scissor skills). Then, we spent a long while sorting the snowmen in different ways. Finally we read Snowmen at Night and used black paper, chalk, and the snowmen to create a night scene.

Here is the finished product!

Wow! I just had to share one picture of an assessment. It may seem boring, but this writing assessment was her weakest back in October. In January, though, as you can see, she was able to form many of the letters we have learned in school. Some still need work, but I was ecstatic at how many of these she could write without help and without tracing. Amazing!

That's a little re-cap of our Letter S week. If only it would have snowed during these two weeks, it would have been perfect! 

On a side-note, we have been really pleased with our LOTW curriculum. If anyone os adopting a child similar in age and ability to Miss Ivelina, I would highly recommend it. It is on the perfect level for her. Of course, I supplement with all kinds of other lessons and activities, but LOTW provides a nice base of number and letter activities for us to build our homeschool week around. 

The Reading Corner

After Christmas break from home school, we started incorporating "independent reading" time into our daily school routine. I use the word "reading loosely. It's more like pre-reading, but I have been impressed with how Ivelina has taken to her new reading corner.

In the corner of our living room, I added a basket full of books and her little rocking chair. There is a mixture of library books, books we have at home, and books about our school theme of the week.

Each day at the end of our school time before we work on abcmouse.com, we set the timer for 10 minutes, and she sits in her corner to "read" quietly. She enjoys this time, and does really well staying interested in her books for the full ten minutes. We will hopefully extend this time as she matures and gains more stamina for reading.

Ivelina has a favorite book from the library, which we have checked out many times. This is the first week that she has started memorizing this book. I'm excited because this is a great pre-reading skill for her. The book is called Brown Sugar Babies. It has seven babies to represent the seven different colors of dark skin tones. Each page describes the baby with food words: honey, caramel, chocolate, peanut butter, black cherries, etc. We read it multiple times a day.

Here is must-see footage of Ivelina "reading" her first favorite book. Some of it is mumbling, but I put subtitles to help you hear her words. Here's to more reading improvement in 2015!

 

December in Photos

We made Christmas cookies for our neighbors and friends.

We had a Christmas craft day. Ivie made some very cute things including this Santa!

Our friends came to help us finally cut down the tree in our front yard.

We enjoyed Christmas Eve with Shelly's family.

Oh boy!  Ivelina received three seasons of her favorite show, Emergency!

Ivelina got snow boots, bibs, and a sled for Christmas. Now all we need is some snow here in NC.

Miss Josey loves opening Christmas presents. Here she is opening her new dog blanket.

Our first Christmas morning together as a family was very special.

Hugs for her new Ariel doll.

We now have a trampoline in our back yard. Ivelina has already jumped with me, Taty, her friends, and Blue Monkey.

We had several days of mild weather and were able to get out and enjoy beautiful December days.

I made my own laundry detergent. Been wanting to do this for a while now. I used this recipe.

I also made my own Larabars. They were extra easy and extra tasty! I used a nut-free recipe found here.

For home school, I set up a reading corner for Ivelina.

At school we learned Letter S for "snowman."

Ivelina also learned Letter J for "Jesus." She went on a number scavenger hunt.

After she found the numbers, she had to match them to the correct box of dots.

 

December was a wonderful month to cap off 2014.

I can't wait to see what fun January 2015 holds for us!

November

Where did this month go?

Overall, this has been a good but quick month for our family. 

We had our second post-placement report with our adoption social worker. 

Ivelina also had her second check-up since being home. This time she was screened for tons of stuff which meant several vials of blood were drawn. She also got caught up on her immunizations. She was a trooper through it all!

We finished up Ivelina's psycho-educational testing and had our first IEP meeting at our local school. We discussed a placement for her for next year IF we decide to place her in public school. 

We celebrated our first Thansgiving as a family of three!
We also celebrated two birthdays; our dog turned 8 and Jeremy turned 35!

Much to Ivie's delight, we put up our Christmas tree. This girl LOVES Christmas trees, especially ours. 

Ivelina also got to meet Santa (probably for the first time.)

Jeremy celebrated 35 wonderful years on this earth!

Like, I said, it has been a fun, busy, and very fast moving month for our family.

Here are a few photos to represent our month:

One thing we focused on this month in home school was recognizing and spelling Ivelina's name.

Ivelina coloring in her life-size body.

A Pinterest idea for a puzzle that I actually pinned and then tried with Ivelina. She loved it!

I thought about doing a separate post this month about Ivelina's "Big Body," but I never got around to it. As a part of doing Letter I and a week all about her and her name, we traced Ivelina's body on large paper. She is really into anatomy, so I drew all kinds of different bones, organs, and such. Ivelina colored it in. We cut it out, and Voila!  "Big Body" I never knew this simple activity would bring a whole afternoon of play. "Big Body" played with blocks, watched TV on the couch, took a nap in Ivie's bed, and we made paper clothes to pin on it. It was basically a life size paper doll! 

"Big Body"

Just Big Body taking a nap.

Our little turkey doing some Thanksgiving crafts.

My little family at Thanksgiving lunch.

After Thanksgiving lunch, Ivelina got to take a little tour of the fire station down the road where my cousin works.

She saw six fire trucks, got to sit in three of them, and got to wear a helmet, or "hoomet," as she likes to say.

Our dog Josey received a new bed for her 8th birthday, and she loves it dearly.

We celebrated Jeremy's birthday and Thanksgiving together this year at Baba Gran's house. Ivelina helped make cookies.

I learned about a little place only 15 minutes from us with a free walking Christmas lights display. The family who runs it gives out free hot chocolate to every visitor, and Santa is there!  Ivelina loved meeting him, and she promptly asked for the most random things I'm sure he heard all night:  bath duckies and a crocodile.  lol

Merry Christmas a little early from Ivelina