Wednesday was Ii day at Preschool! 

He sure is patient with her! 

Looking out the window to check the weather! 

 Show and Tell! Kenley brought a headband for H! 

Our verse of the week

For the craft we did ice painting! It was such a simple fun craft and the kids loved it! I definitely want to do ice painting again in the summer when we can be outside! 

I just filled the ice cube tray up and then squirted lots of food coloring in, mixed it, then froze it with the little skewers in it. Super easy and you probably already have the supplies on hand or can find them at the Dollar Tree! 

I only gave the kids red, blue, and yellow so it was really fun to see how the colors mixed together as they painted! 

I is a really hard letter to think of foods that go with it other than ice cream so we had regular food and I brought our ice cream maker! We had a little ice cream party complete with the ice cream decorations leftover from Kenley's 2nd birthday party! I know that I should throw them away... but I love them... and they came in handy for this so they might come in handy for something else... right? :) 

Ordinary Life

{She likes to pick out her own outfits}

Weekly Meal Plan

I haven't been too stellar at posting my weekly meal plans now have I?

Last Week
Monday- Roast Chicken with Roasted Asparagus
Tuesday- Southwest Soup
Wednesday- Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, and Peas
Thursday- Thanksgiving
Friday- Date Night with the Hubby to Conto's in Lake Stevens (P.S. You should go there! It's yummy!)

This Week
Sunday- Chicken Lettuce Wraps
Monday- I was sick so the Hubs picked up some soup and bread at Haggen
Tuesday- Cheesy Vegetable Chowder with Buttered Rosemary Rolls
Wednesday- Artichokes for the Ladies, Leftovers for the Man (It was his late night)
Thursday- Tostadas
Friday- Stromboli

P.S. The girls and my new favorite snack is plain greek yogurt with a little drizzle of honey!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Ronk's!

Surgery has been scheduled

My surgery date is set for December 10th. I almost rescheduled it because that date is so close to Christmas and Claire's (and Brian's) birthday but in the end, we felt it was better to do it on the 10th because Brian will be on winter break from school. Thanks for your prayers!

Four tips for your Tuesday

Tip #1: Prepping Stickers. 

Kenley loves stickers and they have the ability to keep her occupied for quite a while, IF I have prepped the sticker sheets first by removing the outer sticker part and just leaving the sticker shapes! If I don't prep the sticker sheets then she usually wants my help to get the stickers off of the sheet, now that she isn't taking naps anymore I am all about finding activities that keep her occupied without my help!

When I get a new batch of stickers I will usually spend some time prepping all of the sticker sheets while we watch TV at night, its mindless and I like getting them all done at one time! . 

Before and After. So much easier for little fingers! 

Tip #2: Taming Tangly Hair

I may have mentioned this before but I have convinced myself that if I cut Kenley's hair it will turn brown. I think we have watched Tangled a few too many times :). 

Kenley's beautiful long blond locks are super tangly, I was having to use anti tangle spray most days and even then I spent a lot of time ripping out the tangles from her hair. 

I have found that prevention is the best solution! When Kenley takes a bath, I shampoo and condition her hair and while the conditioner is still in, I comb through her hair with a wide toothed comb. This helps so much! I don't have to spend long amounts of time working on her tangles anymore! 

Tip #3 Silencing Squeaky Boots

I picked up an inexpensive pair of black boots this week at Target. I don't wear black very often so this $40 Target pair should hold up great for me. My only complaint about these boots is that they were so squeaky when I would walk! I solved this problem by rubbing the parts that rubbed together with a new dryer sheet. It worked great and now my boots aren't squeaky! 

Tip #4: iPhone Help with Memorizing Scripture

We have been working with Kenley on memorizing ABC verses. We are up to the letter G and I have been so amazed with her ability to memorize! Her little brain picks the verses up to quickly. My brain isn't so young anymore and I need a bit of help with memorizing. I have been going through the She Reads Truth reading plans on YouVersion. We just finished up the Colossians study and yesterday they posted this picture so that we could put it as the lock screen on our phones to help us memorize Colossians 3:2. What a great idea! It's one of those things that I smack my head and say why didn't I think of that! I definitely plan to make more colorful lock screens for my next memory verses! 

Speaking of She Reads Truth, we are about to start a Thanksgiving Study and then we are moving on to an Advent Study which I am SUPER excited about! 

Caught my eye

I was able to sneak away for a bit on Thursday and join Brian down at UVillage for a little day date! 

While I waited for Brian to meet me, I did a little window shopping and snapped some pictures of some things that caught my eye! 

First up: The Land of Nod. I really liked these stockings! They almost have me wanting to make us new stockings this year! They look pretty simple to make! Just burlap and a big sparkly bow! 

I have been collecting old classics for the girls from the thrift store (So far we have Little Women, Robin Hood, and The Jungle Book). I loved this display set @ The Land of Nod! I wanted to scoop the whole set up and bring it home! 

I also loved these wood grain letters. You will most likely see some DIY wood grain letters at C.Lo's birthday party! 

This isn't something that I could make but I thought this necklace from Anthropologie was stunning! I loved that some of the configurations (to me) resembled bees without it being an overtly bee necklace! 

My final stop before lunch was Pottery Barn Kids. I love that store, all of the styling is just gorgeous! My favorite thing in the entire store was this bed! How perfectly Christmas-y and rustic! 

It looks like it could be a (sort of) simple DIY too! Maybe the next bed frame that we get we will be able to do something like this! I just love it! 

What is your favorite store to window shop? 

I would say that mine is a cross between Pottery Barn Kids and Polo Ralph Lauren. Both stores win me over with the styling! 

Grainy iPhone pictures and I have been making things!

{Surgery Update: I called 2 days ago and found out that "My paperwork got lost in the shuffle" yeah... so that is why we hadn't heard anything yet. It should be scheduled by the end of next week. I'll let you know! The good news is I got my blood test results back and I don't have any of the cancer markers! Yay!}

Claire's hair is getting so long! 

 She does this really funny thing where she completely throws her head back to rock back and forth. It is hilarious! I need to get a better video of it! 

Kenley's BFF, Gracen's birthday party was last Saturday! The theme was art party and April did such a great job with every detail! Kenley absolutely loved being at the party! 

I assembled a church bag for Gracen since she turned 3 and will now be sitting in the church service. I missed getting a picture of the bag and contents (probably because I was putting the finishing touches on it at 2 am) but I had a pink tote bag embroidered with her name on it and inside the bag I had a bunch of things that Kenley enjoys in her church bag. Contents included a pencil pouch with small coloring books, a pencil pouch with stickers, a pencil pouch with color wonder paper, a clip board, 2 little books, a crayon roll, and a color wonder marker roll! The idea is that April will be able to pull out a coloring book, a few sticker sheets, and a few pages of color wonder paper and clip that to the clip board and put that in the bag and go. That way the bag has something a little different each week! 

Here is the crayon roll and the marker roll that I made. I sort of followed this tutorial... but I am really bad at following instructions :) 

While I was in crazy crayon roll sewing land I was also in happy rainbow cake making land! 

I was totally thinking about this little 1 year old whose rainbow cake I made... 

 In addition to the church bag I also made Gracen some felt food for her play kitchen! Cinnamon rolls and Strawberries! I loosely followed this tutorial for the cinnamon rolls and then kind of made the strawberries up... {basically I traced a CD onto my red felt, cut those out and then cut those in half, sewed the cut sides together and then hand stitched the seeds, struffed them and stitched them closed and then added the green tops on... does that make sense? I got 6 strawberries from 1 piece of red felt} 

Here is the finished cake with the banners that I cut with my Silhouette machine! I swear, I love that Silhouette machine more and more each week! 

The birthday girl with her cut cake! 

Best Friends! 

Silly Face! How cute is that apron that April made for the girls to wear at the party??? 

While we were making crafts and birthday partying, Brian was at WSU for Dad's weekend. My Dad couldn't make it so Brian went for him! 

Kenley's face drawings make me so happy! 

Kenley has never fallen asleep during church before! I was shocked! 

 After church, and a nap, I took her temperature and it was 102.6... so that explains the sleeping in church thing. She was super lethargic that day and woke up in the night but by Monday morning the fever was gone and she was back to her usual bubbly self! 

I am the worst present wrapper... and honestly I am okay with that.... It just gets ripped off anyway... right?

Kitty helper. Did you even know that we have a cat? He was a stray and has snuggled his way into our hearts. His name is Elvis... that's a long story. I usually call him Elvie... He doesn't like Claire and Claire doesn't like him... he is supposed to be an outside cat, but we are softies and let him in sometimes... he is a sweet cat! 

This morning I set out some beads and pipe cleaners for Kenley to do some color sorting. It was a hit!

Claire liked it too but she just wanted to hand me the beads :)