Mrs. Ashley

 

I hired Mrs. Ashley as one of my two year old teachers about a month after I had been there.  I was in a crunch for a new teacher and actually hired her over the phone taking a huge leap of faith in her abilities to manage two year olds.  Well, as an employer I feel like I've struck gold, and as a parent I want her to be with Korbyn FOREVER!  She's wonderful.  She's reliable, loyal, honest, hard-working, and best of all patient.

When I hired her I explained that I wanted structure in this classroom that had never seen such a thing.  The teacher that was in there before was patient, but she pretty much let the kids take the reigns all day.  In the first couple of days that she was in the classroom, I knew she was going to do great.  She used positive reinforcement instead of always getting onto the kids for doing the wrong things and they responded SO well to that as I knew they would.  Kids that age loved being praised for when they do something right (reinforcing that behavior) and she immediately set the tone that she was the teacher. 

I also knew that she was pregnant when I hired her and knew that this day would have to come eventually.  Her baby is due at the end of February and I have to give kudos to her for having seven two year olds all day and being eight months pregnant, but she handled it like a champ.  Last week she started going part time and now this week I've completely taken her out of her classroom and made her a floater.  I put a new teacher, Miss Raquel, in her place while she's out.  Miss Raquel is amazingly wonderful as well, thankfully.  But she's no Mrs. Ashley and the kids are testing the waters big time to see what they can and can't get away with.

The kids absolutely adore Mrs. Ashley and kids that used to cry when being dropped off now cry that they don't want to go home...I LOVE those kinds of tears!

She's also really good at fostering each child's uniqueness, and Korbyn is pretty unique.  I walked in one evening to check on everything before closing and noticed new artwork on the wall.  If you look closely the paper says "This is a picture of my pet."  On everyone else's picture is a magazine cut out of a dog, on Korbyn's there is a picture of a lion!  I laughed when I saw it and had to take a picture.  I asked Ashley the next day what the story was on the lion and she started to laugh.  She said she had cut out pictures of different animals the night before and laid them out on the table for the kids to choose from.  She said immediately when Korbyn saw the pictures she yelled "LION!" and said that was her pet.  Apparently we have a pet lion.

Singer

 

Korbyn has definitely found her voice.  I can't get this girl to stop singing.  Even her teacher told me that she sings and talks ALL day long.  She is either singing "twinkle twinkle" or "ABC's."  We went out to Fedor a couple of weekends ago and she was hanging out on the back of the truck just singing away, I actually only videoed a small clip.

 The night before we went to my cousin's wedding in Round Rock.  Since it was an hour drive and the wedding didn't start until almost 5 p.m. we decided we would get a hotel room nearby.  After the wedding we pulled up to the hotel and we decided since neither of us had had anything to drink and it was only 10 p.m. why not save $100 and head home.  I called the hotel and thankfully they cancelled our room and gave us a full refund.  On the way home we stopped and got diesel and Colton came walking out of the store with these two huge beef jerky sticks.  I didn't eat mine so it was still in the truck the next day and of course when Korbyn saw it she wanted it.  On the wrapper there's a picture of sasquatch so she pointed to it and said "monser stick!"  We laughed so hard.  She ate the entire thing by herself!

 And her favorite thing to do is ride the tractor with daddy or papaw. 

Happy New Year

 Korbyn's class made party hats for the new year, they were so stinkin cute.  The other two year old class made "fireworks" from pipe cleaners and paint.  I had never seen this done before but it turned out so cute and the kids loved it.  I'm glad my teachers are in love with Pinterest and Google ;)

 New year's eve was just another night at our house this year.  Colton had to work the next day so we knew that we weren't going to go out and do anything.  I considered buying a few small fireworks for Korbyn, but then I remembered the last time we did fireworks with her was the 4th of July and she didn't care for them at all.  So we were all in bed by 9 p.m.  My kind of night!

Today I had my appointment with my dr.  She did a pap and a routine exam since I haven't had one since my six week checkup after having Korbyn.  I LOVE my dr. by the way.  She truly cares about her patients.  She even called me the Saturday after Christmas.  She said she had just got back from the holidays and she saw the notes that they had on me and just wanted to call and check on me and to make sure that I was doing ok. 

Today she told me that unfortunately a miscarriage if very common, in fact they don't usually get concerned until about three miscarriages in a row.  I can tell you right now, I wouldn't be able to function if I had three miscarriages in a row.  My heart actually hurts for women who are not able to conceive and who have to go through this stuff all the time.  I just never imagined it would affect me so much.  Even walking through the baby aisle at Target the other day got me all emotional.  Seeing pregnant ladies all around me was kinda rough.

Colton and I talked and we think in a few months we'll want to try and get pregnant again.  We're in the process of trying to decide what we're going to do about our living situation.  We MUST get out of this tiny rent house...and fast.  I'm looking at this whole incident in a new light, a silver lining if you will.  First of all, our house is very small and we've been wanting to move for a very long time and to stop paying rent, well this pregnancy kind of put a fire under our butts about it and now we're on the hunt for a house!  Second of all, insurance.  I absolutely HATE insurance by the way.  If this baby would have been born, it would have been born at the end of August and my deductible starts over July 1st.  Whew!  God just knew that we needed to do a little more planning before we add another cutie to our family :)

Christmas!

 My mom took all the grand kids, along with my sister-in-law Katie and myself, out to Ledbetter to see the Trail of Lights, it was AWESOME!  We went out to camp Tejas last year to see the lights and Colton and I just weren't that impressed.  Ledbetter really gears theirs towards the "traditional" Christmas with the hay ride pulled by the old tractor, having hot chocolate in a house built in the 1900's and just all around a great family atmosphere.  I'll definitely be taking Korbyn back to that one next year.  Who knows...I may have found another tradition I want to keep :)

 These are all a hodge podge of pictures from our different Christmas outings, so do your best to follow along!

 My aunt took a picture of Korbyn and myself when we were at my aunt's house for the Boriack Christmas, now it's my favorite picture of the two of us.

 Every Christmas Eve we go over to my grandma Boriack's house.  There's no gifts, just food and family.  Kyndal and Korbyn are second cousins and they're in the same class at school.  After they saw each other they were connected at the hip all night.

 Christmas morning finally came!  The night before, we put out our key for Santa since we don't have a chimney.  Uncle Mark and Aunt Jana gave us a Santa key last year.  Korbyn really seemed to understand that we had to hang the key on the doorknob outside so Santa could come in later to bring all her gifts.  She actually hung it on the door herself.  We then laid out cookies and milk for Santa.  After our bath and before going to bed she was so worried about Santa's key and his cookies and milk that we had to check on them one more time.  The next morning Colton and I were both up before Korbyn and couldn't wait any longer.  We went to wake her up and the first thing out of her mouth was "Santa!  Key?  Cookies?"  We couldn't believe she remembered!!!  We went into the living room to find that Santa ate his cookies and drank his milk.  Not only did he drink it, but our OCD daughter noticed that he spilled some of his milk too.

 She had so much fun opening her presents.  Each time she would open one she would say "OOOOOO!"  And all her presents had to be stacked in one pile and the trash picked up before going to the next one.

 What the heck Santa?!  Why in the world would you give a two year old SO many little pieces?!?! ;)

 Then we headed over to nanny and papaw's house (where apparently I forgot to take pictures) and then went over to memaw and papaw's.  I've waited so long to see sweet baby Alysse and I couldn't even hold her because I wasn't feeling well and didn't want to chance passing anything along to her.  I was SO disappointed, but at Easter that sweet baby is mine!

 Korbyn was extremely excited to get all the presents that she opened.  She got a new frog blanket and pillow set for school, or as she calls it her "rog."  She also got a tricycle!  She can't peddle quite yet, but we've been practicing a lot inside the house.

 She got a doll house too.  It came with a lot of pieces (thanks memaw!) but she knows to put them back in the plastic bag that I designated to hold all of them in.  I know exactly what she's about to start playing with when I hear all the pieces hit the floor.  It's really fun to sit down and play it with her though.

 Then we were at my parents a few nights later.  Kaylene and Korbyn got a hold of my phone and were taking pictures of themselves.  Korbyn is still infatuated with Kaylene, they're best buds.

 They were back in the play room and Cody and Noah were playing "Gangnam style" on a phone and Kaylene was teaching Korbyn the dance, which she was actually doing!  It was so funny.

 Korbyn and uncle Cody.

 Korbyn saw memaw at the sink and immediately grabbed the stool and said "I help wash dishes!"

 When I got to my parents house my mom gave me the task of hanging up all 16 stockings.  I actually had to get a ruler out and measure for all those things!

 And of course the group picture before opening presents is never easy.  If you look at the top picture, the younger girls are upset because they didn't get to hold Korbyn.  Then in the bottom picture the older girls are upset because they didn't get to hold Korbyn.  The boys are smiling so good, they don't care who holds Korbyn they just want to open presents.  And poor Korbyn doesn't even know what's going on, half of the pictures she has her finger up her nose!

 Korbyn got a Dora table and chair set and a fishin' game which she constantly wants to play.  By the end of the evening my dad had somehow managed to talk me into playing the piano so everyone could sing some Christmas carols, still not sure how that happened.

When we got home, she had to get in her "ork."  It's a pop up tent that we call her fort, she can't really pronounce her "f's" yet, so it comes out ork.  The other day she told me it was a cave and she was the nice monster that lived in it.  We had a great Christmas this year, it was fun and super busy like always!