catch up

I have had little desire to spend my 10 minutes of free time at night to blog...but I do have lots to document.

The first is that I think Goober is going to be just fine...and you know why? because God convicted me that the big change that needed to happen was in the parents (mainly me), not Goober. Its awesome that God really convicted us to attend this marriage conference that our church was hosting for valentines day......... and yet he SPOKE straight to me about my relationship with my oldest...i mean straight to me, like I burst into tears when Adam made eye contact with me because I was so convicted. I want to post more about it but when I have thoroughly digested it. The changes are already in place and life at the Harvell House is fantastic. If I could summarize the change in two sentences it would be this " I decided to take a job at CCA and forgo the bigger pay as a public school teacher because I wanted my kids to get a CHRISTIAN Education....not so that they would make straight A's and go to an ivy league school. Therefore, when my kids graduate as long they are strong, desperate for christ, heaven-minded, servant hearted men and women I could care less what their grade point average is."

Heading to Wednesday night church....anyone else singing "In went philadelphia born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days"....80s FLASHBACK

Adam and Goober were invited to attend a changing of the guard ceremony for Goobers old baseball coach

It was very official!

We had a great time with our kiddos for Valentines Day. Ribbit and Adam went on a daddy/daughter date on Saturday. Ribbit got to choose a princess outfit, get her hair, nails and make-up done and then walk down a runway for her daddy. They had a tea party style lunch and did a craft together. Meanwhile I let the boys run the day. We ate lunch at Medi Cafe...they love GYROS and then headed over to the local putt putt range. Afterwards we stopped at Hobby Town so they could play around with the remote control cars and airplanes. We were all wore out after a long day and finished watching a movie together in our PJs.

Serving the homeless in Fort Worth breakfast with 4 of my 8th grade girls.

Kiddos and Daddy went on their annual basketball game field trip with Mr.Dan!

Check out the awesome masks my 8th/9th graders made for our upcoming musical "Fiddler on the Roof"..these will be in the dream scene.

We are still loving our gym...we went swimming today and every single kid had 1 or 2 of their best buds there. Even our neighbors were there so Little Man was SOOO excited. They swam, played tag, slid down each slide at least 20 times, played mermaid and best of all let me be the monster and chase them all over the pool.

I made everyone Paleo biscuits with Rosemary oil for Valentine Day breakfast. They were so stinkin good dipped in Aunt Robin's rosemary honey!

Love Bears all things was the theme of Little Man's VDay party!

They wore their Pjs and ate Pink Pancakes!

We have been on a SkippyJonJones book reading frenzy and read at least one a day and then repeat the fun songs in them several times that day. I think the kids are going to excel in Spanish and they love saying " I AM A CHIHUAHUA DUDE!

This hair cracks me up!! I can always tell which conditioner she used the night before based on how BIG her hair is in the morning :).

One of the many perks of living so close to school is having the ability to walk and or ride your bike to school.

Eating lunch with one of my 8th grade girl bible classes at Braums..this was so much fun!! One of them even gave her devotional speech while we were there on "The primary role of the Holy Spirit".

We are looking forward to a week of family as Aunt Micah and Baby Levi comes in tomorrow and Lolly and Captain come in Wednesday. Then its birthday weekend as we celebrate Little Man turning 5 (STOP IT) on the 24th and Adam turning OLD (hehe) on the 25th.

We all went to a juicing class that my friend hosted....THE JUICE WAS SOO GOOD

He dreams of this gyro!!!

Mountasia...dagum it was HOT that day!! Where did winter go?..wait, it actually never came!!

Daddys little princess!

Kitchen remodel done???

What? For real? The kitchen remodel is done? Well its 99% done...Adam has worked hard this weekend. He put in a tray ceiling above the oven/island and 6 new can lights. He also finished scraping the ceilng and I can't believe how much bigger the kitchen looks now. I don't want to hang my pot rack up again as I feel it would take away the awesomeness of the new lighting and ceiling.

Risking it all on a bed of nails!

We had a very FUN weekend. Saturday we had our earliest basketball game of the season....8:00, then end of season party afterwards at Corner Bakery. The kiddos loved it...we were blessed by the parents with a free breakfast and a really next personalized Yeti for Adam. Then we grabbed Ribbit's friend from school and headed to Fort Worth to the Science Musuem. We found out that our rodeo tickets got us in for free this year so we took advantage and went on the last day possible...thats how we roll sometimes.

It only felt weird when he raised and lowered the nails..I felt it in my rear first thing and it was like a sudden pinch!

It was quite perfect...a front row parking spot and a WHOLE exhibit devoted to Peter Rabbit. The girls are learning a play all about Peter, Cotton tail, Mopsy, Flopsy, Mr McGregor, etc and they played dress up and acted out the story for a solid hour!!! The boys found a fun exhibit right next door where they played with magnets, turn tables and buildling blocks .....I think we could have stayed in that one wing the whole visit but I insisted we check other parts out. We ended up finding a bed of nails and we all took turns laying on it. Later we found a skeleton exhibit, an old pioneer school house and ended with riding the DRAGON SLIDE several times.

Mother and Flopsy :)

We got home and headed to the store to grab some art supplies for school and some pants for Goober..the child literally outgrew all of his non school pants overnight. He had nothing but school pants to wear for church and even though I only wore uniforms for 3 years I feel his pain about being in constant uniform.

He could have played with this magnetic turntable all day!! He got so excited!

We got home, did some laundry for our upcoming busy week and waited for Adam to get a stopping point on the kitchen. Then off to Market Street for dinner. Market Street is a grocery door with a huge buffet like style restuarant on one side. Since our kitchen was in no shape to cook in we all got what we wanted at the buffeet and ate upstairs. The kiddos loved this and we thought it was a great budget friendly way for us all to get what we wanted and not have to dress up for a dinner out ;). We ended the night with some Amazing Race-which is our current addiction and showers.

This took a lot of patience..He and I were both quite proud of his hard work!

Ready for a somewhat calmer week than last....no AHG or Trail Life..no art competitions, and a date night on Friday for mom and dad as we are partking in a Marriage Matters weekend with our church!

This was FANTASTIC. Shredded cabbage, topped with steamed broccoli, chicken sausage, roasted beets, roasted butternut squash and brown mustard!! It was bascially my attempt to clean out the fridge and ended up being sooo YUMMY!

Would you rather?

This week has been 10x better than last week....we are trying some new routines and I think they are paying off. I could and I will write a whole post about why I think fitness is the best answer to poor choices and/or learning disabilities but...Goober has gone with me 4 out of 5 morning this week to work out and we are seeing a much more positive kiddo at home and at school. His teachers are telling me that he is trying and seems to be more confident. His grades are slowly coming up and he is even showing them to us instead of hiding them....Adam is working on this end with giving him a shot of coffee every morning...hey if it helps us focus then why wouldn't it help him? We also are being thorough about covering all of his HW and making him redo everything until he does it the right way with 100% effort....not accuracy but effort.

So with that said the kids and I enjoyed some time at the pool this week as well. We swam with friends on Sunday afternoon and today right after school. Its so great knowing that anytime we go there my kiddos will have playmates. They love the slides, the shallower end to practice swimming and handstands and playing tag. They are so easily excited and couldn't believe the huge fancy lockers rooms, or hot sauna room or the fact that there are 3 big rocks walls to play on. They even enjoyed going to the kids club on Tuesday night as I went with my girlfriends to a lifting class. They didn't want to leave and I had to pull Goober off the basketball court, Ribbit out of the climbing area and Little Man off the dodgeball court. THEY SLEPT SO HARD THAT NIGHT!!!

Tonight we are on our own as Adam is annoucing his last basketball game of the season. We made us some veggies with bacon for dinner and are now cuddled into the couch with our blankies, watching Tarzan and Jane. We HAVE A LONG FULL DAY tomorroow and I want to enjoy this night of being able to rest!!!

At dinner I played the Would you rather game with the kiddos and tried to make it hard for them to choose between two things...its funny how before they answered every question for themselves they would say "I bet mommy would choose this" or " I know what Daddy would choose!"...hehe, they know us so well!

1. Would you rather feel like you are always tired or always feel like you slept WAY too much?
Goober-Way too much
Ribbit-always be tired ( I agree, I get a headache if I sleep to much!)
Little Man-Way too much

2. Would you rather eat ONLY sweet foods for the rest of your life or ONLY savory foods for the rest of your life?
Goober-Savory for POPCORN
Ribbit-Sweet-ice cream
Little Man-Savory because brother said it (my theory at least since he actually yelled FAVORY while he fist pumped!)

3. Would you rather run without shorts or without shoes?
Goober-shorts because you would still have on underwear
Ribbit-Shoes (because she knows mommy or daddy would carry that sweet thang)
Little Man-shorts (at this point I made Little Man answer before Goober so we could see some honesty and not copying :))

4. Would you rather only eat soggy cereal or crunchy cereal?
Goober-crunchy for sure and I know mom would choose crunchy too because she doesn't even drink milk
Ribbit-crunchy 
Little Man-crunchy, I let it get soggy and YUCK
**We all knew that Daddy would choose soggy too but agree he is WEIRD

5. Would you rather be an Olympian for the marathon or for shorter distances at the track?
Goober-shorter distance
Ribbit-marathon, right mommy? (as she looks at me with a big grin and is totally hoping I will choose her as my favorite kid from now on :))
Little Man-uh, what is O-lym-pen?

6. Would you rather eat a whole jar of almond butter or a whole jar of Nutella?
Goober-almond butter for sure, but even better would be sunflower butter
Ribbit-almond butter because its healthy, right mommy? (her kissing up is sweet)
Little Man-grabs his foreheand and says "its so hard" as dramatic as he can..."almond butter is his final answer after a long hard minute of thinking it through

7. Would you rather run outside when it is really cold or really hot?”
Goober-Cold, I sweat too much
Ribbit-Hot
Little Man-Hot
Of course I choose hot...its 56 outside and I am inside in sweat pants, 2 layers of sweat shirts, fuzzy socks and a blanket!!!!

8.Would you rather be able to fly or breathe under water?
This one took some time to flush out all the pros and cons...lots of debating over who was right too!
Goober-Fly because fish have more predators
Ribbit-fly
Little Man-fly

9. Would you rather eat cupcakes with sprinkles or donuts with sprinkles for the rest of your life?
I knew this one would STUMP THEM.
Goober-Donuts because of the texture (totally my kid)
Ribbit-cupcakes because they are bigger :)
Little Man-Donuts maybe?

10. Would you rather be able to become invisible or shoot fire out of your hands?
Goober-Shoot fire...but maybe both? But I want to defend myself
Ribbit-Invisible but you could still see my outline...hehe
Little Man-Shoot fire rockets and smash people!!!

Now to brag on my other kiddos...my students. These aren' t all of my kiddos who entered work into the Truth, Goodness and Beauty Art competition but ones I could grab pictures of...I am one proud art teacher!

This is her 3rd platter...talk about GRIT! She won 2nd place in the Ceramics category!

I couldn't love this girl any more than I do now...she is super talented and has no clue!

My naturally gifted sculptor..Rhino book ends..She won 1st place in Sculpture!

A sweet girl I have loved since 7th grade. We LAUGH about all of our memories together. She is incredibly talented and a hard worker. She took home 1st place in Ceramics for her two pieces!

Family friend and student...best combo ever. Love this sweet girl like a daughter. Look at the glaze work up close and you will see why she got 3rd place...that and her perfectly braided handle that you can't see.

This girl has done a 180 since 7th grade...once shy and always quiet...now she is HAPPY, so funny and a friend to all. She is a true joy!

My only 9th grade girl who had art entered. Check out that spider made out of bolts and wire!

HIs collection of insects made with computer parts won him a 2nd place medal! All the little kids loved it. I have taught this young man and both of his brothers...sweet boys!

My 3rd Fitzgerald to teach and just as talented as his brother and sister. His steampunk insect won him a 3rd place metal!

I have known this kiddo for a long time as his little brothers played on Goober's 1st grade football team. I also teach one of his brothers private drawing lessons. This awesome Picasoo inspired self portrait got him a 1st place medal!!!!!

My sweet 7th grader who did a FANTASTIC job on this 2 point perspective drawing of a stadium, then watercolored it, then picked out all of the interior and exterior samples to present to an architect. Love this whole family as we go to church with them!