New year, new start

We are 4 days into the new year and I am focusing on truly a fresh start.  Sticking with my goal, I have avoided all sugar.  Along with that, I have completed 2 workouts.  Wow am I weak from taking time off!  I could even feel it in my lungs a bit as I lifted today, very bad.  I think that these 2 changes are easy enough to start off with this month.  On top of the personal changes, I have spent time thoroughly cleaning the kitchen and living room.  After everyone was in our house with shoes and the snow over the holidays, the floors were gross.  Jon was great and took the kids to gymnastics yesterday and out in the snow today so I could get things cleaned without the kids underfoot.  It feels so nice to have such a clean house.  We also put out the tree today and packed up the Christmas decorations, so the house is much less cluttered.

I have also spent some time making some preschool activities for James.  As we head into the second half of the year and he continues to show the desire to read, we'll continue to focus on letter recognition and their sounds, as well as writing the letters.  I'm following the handwriting order of introduction rather than alphabetic, since he already knows the song.  We'll do some alphabetic order stuff too, since I know that's something he'll need for kindergarten.  I've put together some packs with a nursery rhyme, art project, and letter writing.  We'll get letter books from the library and work as he wants.  I figure we'll go a little slower with this, at most 1 letter a day.  I also made my own crocodile snap game.

You take turns pulling letters/numbers out of the box and saying them.  If you pull a snap card, you have to put all your cards back.  Whatever cards you get right you have to keep.  I figure it can be fun on days he's looking to work on "preschool" but doesn't have the attention for writing.  As he gets older I can even make new note cards with sight words to put into the box.  I might make a second set of cards with math problems for Carolyn so she can play, but we'll see her interest level.

I've enjoyed this time off and extra time with family, but I'm looking forward to getting back to our routine.  Yesterday the village was working on a water issue in our neighborhood so our water was off 10-4.  We went over to Jon's parents for the day.  The kids had fun, but James fell asleep on the way home at only 6.  Yep, we definitely still need naps!  Today they both slept until 2:45.

Time to put them to bed!