The Koch Family Blog

2009-12-15T08:08:00.001-05:00

the tree is up

2009-12-07T07:33:00.001-05:00

Visiting Santa

2009-12-06T04:35:00.003-05:00

Mo explaining his christmas list

Cole would not sit on his lap. This was as close as she was going to get to him and that was only with cousin Claire in between. She wouldn't look at me to get her picture because she had to keep an eye on Santa to make sure he wouldn't touch her. If he moved she was ready to make a run for it.

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-26T12:42:00.003-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Happy Birthday Ray!

I can't believe it's Thanksgiving already. I am so behind. Mentally I just about ready to start decorating for Halloween.

not forgotten

2009-11-19T10:55:00.010-05:00

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I've written on my blog page. So many things have happened, many things that I really just don't want to talk about or think about.

Since I've written last my mother has been up to visit. It was really nice having her here. While she was here I had surgery on my foot. They put a pin in my toe and I was laying around with my foot up for about two months. The hardest thing was not being able to drive. I taught myself how to knit from watching YouTube videos. I got tired of reading. So far I have made four scarves. I want to try making hats next if I can find the time. We really don't need anymore scarves!

The kids are getting big. We haven't been keeping up with their schooling activities like I wanted to. Ed lost his job not to long ago and has gone back to just construction fulltime. Since then I have been working with him and the kids go with us. They enjoy it for the most part. They even get into helping us. Our friend Mike gave us his old laptop that the kids can watch videos on while we are at a job site. I got out of working with him today because I have so much laundry to to. I really don't have any clean pants to wear. Yesterday I wore a pair of maternity pants that I found in the back of the closet.

The kids made a video on the laptop. I'm going to try and post it and see if it works.

painting

2009-08-28T09:21:00.004-04:00

painting painting painting

Half of our living room is painted and I going to attempt to finish the walls today.

I was checking out the color, dreaming of decorating and maybe being able to finally hang something on the walls when I noticed Moe's unapproved painting project on our leather couch.

Get Out

2009-08-13T09:19:00.001-04:00

IMG_4030, originally uploaded by patteykoch.

keeping the mess outside

2009-08-11T08:00:00.002-04:00

We hosed down the easel that has been sitting outside in the corner of the yard for a while so the kids can paint outside. I am having a hard time getting Mo outside for some reason. He only lasted maybe 15m out there before he headed back in.

IMG_3972, originally uploaded by patteykoch.
"Wow Mo that's a great train. I love it! You know what it really needs....."

"See right here, you really need a Cinderella."

"Here I'll help you!"

"Go away punkin, I don't want a Cinderella on my train!"

I find it kind of funny that I was obsessed with Cinderella when I was little too. When I was five my niece Bobbie Jo was born. I wanted to name her Cinderella.

My Horoscope

2009-07-30T10:20:00.003-04:00

I like to check my horoscope every now and then. I find them interesting even though I don't believe in them. Anyway, my horoscope for yesterday said -"Your emotional state is pretty volatile today." LOL! What is should have said was that this would pertain not to me but to the guys in my life. From the moment my son woke up he was in a bad mood. No matter what I said to him it would invoke a temper tantrum. He refused to eat all day. Seriously, I think he only had a spoon full of rice all day. He finally cooled down sometime after dinner when is father took over. (Things were not going well working on the house) At least his temper tantrum ended with him cleaning the house. :)

Time Out please

2009-07-23T11:04:00.001-04:00

The kids are playing and giving each other time outs right now :)

Protecting the garden from pest

2009-07-21T11:36:00.001-04:00

IMG_3384, originally uploaded by patteykoch.

I "borrowed" a book from my sister in law on solving gardening problems. She just may never get this book back. Anyway, it has all kinds of information on protecting your plants from deer, raccoons, rabbits and gophers. Something has been stealing our peppers. I’m thinking it’s a pest of the two legged kind and there is nothing in the book that tells me what to do for that.
Since everything is in containers I moved them closer to the house for now.

I don't know if this is funny or disturbing

2009-07-15T11:04:00.001-04:00

We went out in the backyard this morning and the kids found a squirrel floating in the kiddy pool. When I pulled the plug to empty the water, Nicole ran inside. I thought maybe she was afraid of seeing a dead animal. What she did was run in to get Ed’s survival book. Now I thought OK she’s going to look up first aid and want to save the darn thing. What she was really looking up was how to gut, skin and cook a squirrel! um… OK Seriously she wanted to cook it!!!!! She freaked out when I threw it in the garbage. It took a few minutes to calm her down after I explained that he would be the happiest in our garbage can, because that is where he practically lived anyway. So what I finally got out of her was she didn’t want to eat it, she wanted to cook it and send it to someone who didn’t have any food.
I’m guessing she caught me mumbling to the squirrel one day after chasing him out of the garbage can and cleaning up mess he left that it was OK I was just fattening him up to make dinner out of him!

2009-07-13T12:14:00.001-04:00

IMG_3856, originally uploaded by patteykoch.

Zoo part 2..... I think

2009-07-03T07:34:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the gap in posting I had to take a short break to just relax, sit back and you know scratch myself.
We did make it to Turtle Back Zoo. There are lots of photos on my flickr if your interested. We had a great time with Aunt Nancy.
We finally poured the concrete in the addition. YAY! As soon as that sucker hardened enough, I started moving all the kids toys down there. I'm still moving toys down there and trying to figure how to set the room up for the kids.

Going to the Zoo part 1

2009-06-10T06:45:00.006-04:00

Monday we spent the day taking down our massive collection of ocean/beach stuff. I have a basket of scraps for crafts. It has scraps of everything fabric, paper, ribbon. It sits on a chair by the kitchen table. The kids can use anything in there. Moe has yet to make use of it. Cole on the other hand is always digging in there. She has made a very large collection of jellyfish from scraps and hung them everywhere. I still found some yesterday that I had missed.

Anyway we are moving onto- going to the zoo. I spent most of Monday searching for anything to do with zoo animals. This is very hard to do because all our stuff is packed away while we are working on the house. So I had to search the boxes in the basement and the attic. It took all day to find the one book I was really looking for, Dr Seuss -Put me in the zoo. I knew I had it and I was not going to buy. They didn't have it at our library. In fact they hardly ever have a book I am looking for. To go with the book Put me in the zoo, I want the kids to make up their own animal to put in the zoo. I am very curious to see what they create. I also spent most of the day on Monday rotating their toys.

OK this is what you will find on our table right now;

A few library booksA couple trays with crafts. I leave these trays out with some foam piece that I just free cut. They can put them together when ever they want. These are a couple of stick puppets.I pulled out another set of animal puzzle cards. If the kids want they can pull out the magnets again to spell the animal names. We also have a tray of lacing cards.In their sensory pin I changed the sand and shells to beans and put their plastic animals in there. Moe with his ever present train is delivering food to the zoo animals. I printed out a few pages and left them on the table. I don't make them do them. I just leave them there and if they want to they can do them. As soon as Cole saw them she said "Cool, printouts!"

I usually don't print any work sheets out. I was very lucky to be given a huge collection of workbooks. Between books my mother sent me and my sister in laws neighbor I'm set.

I have a bunch of plastic top loading sheet that I put the workbook pages into. So they can use them over and over again. These were left over from my working days when I had to build my own product catalogs. I just had to buy some dry erase markers. I don't make the kids do any of them I just leave them out and I let them use them at anytime they want. I find these easier for Moe. I don't know if it's because he is left handed or not but he has a hard time using crayons. He just looks uncomfortable holding them but when he uses the dry erase markers it smoother and slides better for him. I want to help him yet I don't want to scare him away so I have yet to correct the way he holds is pen. Every once in a while he will hold it correctly so I sure he just needs time.

Rain Rain go away

2009-06-06T07:15:00.004-04:00

Everything here was flooded the back yard, the driveway. I started the pump we have in the back and pumped some of the water to the front of the house. Now the front is flooded. I went out to get the mail and the water in the driveway was up over my ankle.

It made it a perfect day to just stay inside and forget about what was going on out there. I'm glad we hit the library the other day. We read alot, played with playdoh and baked bread. I made a an awesome loaf of onion rye. Yum, I had to stop myself from eating it all!

I'm already dreaming about lunch.

Taking it easy

2009-06-04T10:40:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we had an busy day just doing thing like laundry, dishes and playing. We took a break and walked to the farmers market and stocked up on some food. I always seem to forget that I have to carry everything we buy back home. Why does the walk always tire me out but never the kids?

Today we are off to the library.

Even more of our Ocean/ Beach theme

2009-06-03T02:35:00.003-04:00

This is just a quick list of some of the things we did today.
We played memory while mommy made breakfast.
After reading What's in a shell, we counted shells and sorted them by sizes. We even remembered a few of their names. Then we moved onto a simple boat. Of course we had to see if it really floats and tested out in the fish tank. Poor fish!The kids each got a basket and had to pick out ten things to see if they would sink and float. I wrote them all down and they took turns checking them off on our chart. In the end I had them count again how many sank and how many didn't. It was a tie.

Then they got to play in the water for awhile. Once Cole climbed in I knew it was time to call it quits. After they got cleaned up they moved on to some more crafts. This one was making jellyfish.

Then we made some magnets from our trip to the beach for Aunt Nancy.We also made some jello jigglers and the kids cut out some with fish cookie cutters. The only thing left on my list is a coloring book I have to print out for them - whats in the sea with some practice writing. I tried to get them to practice writing in sand. That didn't go over very well. I'll give it a try again later in the week.

Next week I would like to move onto a Zoo theme because we have a trip planned to the Zoo next week.

More of our Ocean/ Beach theme

2009-06-02T13:33:00.006-04:00

I started putting trays out with activities for them to work on. First thing in the morning Cole comes out to color. Then she plows through all the work sheet pages I leave on the table. She will not do any if they are in a book -all pages must be ripped out. Moe will follow at a very leisurely pace. The only thing he likes is mazes ,puzzles oh and glue. After they had enough of the puzzles I dumped their magnets on the table and they matched the letters on their puzzles.

I pulled out our fishing puzzle that I had hidden. This will have to keep us satisfied until we find our fishing poles. I am hoping Ed will be home early one night to go fishing and crabbing with us.

We made octopus puppets.

Our refrigerator is our bulletin board it is covered with pictures of all kinds of sea creatures. Seems I forgot a sea turtle. Thanks Cole for adding this little family of turtles to our frig.

We finished our crabs.

poor thing looks like he's crying
These are some of the books that I have in our book box on the table. We've read them several times but I leave them out for them to look through.

Having fun in the sun

2009-06-01T09:37:00.008-04:00

We hit the beach on Sunday with some of the other Koch kids. I really thought the water was going to be to cold for the kids. I should have known better. It was perfectly mild so I didn't have to be on top of them at all times and I could back up a few feet and snap some picture. I have no idea what she was doing yoga?? Just look at the joy on this kids face. He had a such ball running through the water.
We did some kite flying too

Dirty Dirty Kids

2009-05-30T10:15:00.001-04:00

IMG_2583, originally uploaded by patteykoch.

Ocean Theme- Rainbow Fish

2009-05-29T12:52:00.008-04:00

We are still working on our ocean theme. I don't know if I posted these pictures. I'm bad like that. I know I added them to my flickr account. Here are the kids making their ocean picture. I had them paint glue on the bottom and sprinkle sand on it. They also added shells that we collected from the beach and ripped paper for the seaweed.

Moe's

Cole's

Notice Cole's. She just doesn't want to stop. She just wants to keeping adding things. Today we read rainbow fish and we made paper plate fish.

FOUR HOURS LATER! Yes, that is a Sponge Bob reference not really four hours. Even though it felt like it. Michael and I had ours hanging up already and Cole was still working on hers.

She kept going back to the book. "See Mommy look I need more colors. I don't have enough colors" She was also very unhappy that I only cut the tail fin. "Mommy this fish has five fins. I HAVE to have five."

This baby is going to need a few days to dry before we can hang it up.

Have you ever...

2009-05-21T13:08:00.002-04:00

been out and about and have a fabric softener sheet or better yet a pair of panties fall out of one of your pant legs. How embarrassing, right? Yes, I've done it. Well, I think I can do one better than that. Yesterday I went to Home Depot with a slice of cheese stuck to my a**! OK you can stop laughing now. I mean it stop laughing! How? Why? You ask. Well, I don't really know. I do know that I gave Moe a slice of cheese before we left. I'm guessing he put it down on the chair right before I sat down to put on shoes. I mean stop laughing!!!

butterfly release

2009-05-18T20:56:00.001-04:00

IMG_2372, originally uploaded by patteykoch.

Meeting Aiden

2009-05-18T20:34:00.002-04:00

Yay we finally got to meet little Aiden Joseph. I just want to kiss those cheeks. I'm so ready for another one or two or three or four!

Just look at these two. I had to fight them to get to hold him.