Ben « A Sugar-Mamma's Thoughts

Posts Tagged ‘Ben’

Alphabet Scavenger Hunt

Saturday, July 14th, 2012

I headed into the grocery store with Joe and Katie today while Ben stayed home with Mikayla today. He was so clever and decided to do an alphabet scavenger hunt with her to present to me when I got home. I don’t know how to upload the actual power point, but I can show you the images from it and captions! Mikayla was so cute when she was going through each slide

A is for ash.

B is for boots.

B is for butterfly.

C is for chair.

D is for dog.

E is for "I’m pointing to an E".

F is for fencen.

G is for garbage can.

H is for house.

I is for Ice Cream.

J is for jellyfish.

K is for "I’m holding the letter K".

L is for Lemon Cream Cookie.

M is for Mickey Mouse.

N is for "I’m pointing to the letter N".

O is for onions.

P is for Pawpaw tree.

Q is for "I’m point to the letter Q".

R is for rocks.

S is for shirt.

T is for tree.

U is for under the umbrella.

V is for vine.

W is for water.

X is the x we made.

Y is for yellow on the bag.

Z is for zipper.

I hope you enjoyed Ben and Mikayla’s creativity as much as I did!

Tags: Ben, Mikayla
Posted in Life |

This Week’s Happenings 3/19-3/25

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

Not much new or exciting happened this week. The most exciting thing was that Ben came home! Mikayla was so excited to see him, although to be honest I think she was most excited about the gifts he brought home for her! She racked up and is loving every minute of it. Let’s just say that we have plenty of toys, candy and extra items to last us for awhile!

Other than Ben’s arrival, we kind of laid low for most of the week. I acted as "secretary" for a couple of strategic planning meetings and worked on some typing for the childcare staff, but other than that we played and hung out.

I just wanted to give a little shout out to my dad this week. He resigned from his position as head coach of the girls basketball team in Somerset (from where I graduated high school). He has been coaching girls basketball for 20 years or so (not all at the high school though). He was even my head coach in middle school! He was a great coach, but he was so much more than a coach. He really believed in the players and worked hard to make them successful (both on and off the courts) and helped to shape them into beautiful citizens. Not many coaches would ask their players to help out with a community dinner for the homeless on Christmas Eve and have a successful turn out with high school girls actually enjoying themselves. I know his presence in the basketball program will be missed by all. I love you dad!

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This was the press conference when they named dad the head coach of the girls team years ago.

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Some of his first high school girls team members. I wish I had a picture of our middle school team, but unfortunately it is in an album and not on my computer so this will have to do.

Tags: Ben, weeks happenings
Posted in Life |

This Week’s Happenings 9/25-10/1

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Sunday Mikayla and I went for a little bird watching around our house while Ben did a little work. I must say Mikayla has a lot to learn about watching birds because she was very loud! Every time we found a bird she would either talk or start walking very loudly.

Birds and chalkboard 009

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Birds and chalkboard 019

We got our first package in the mail this week (thanks Rita and Steve). It was filled with lots of yummy candy, real coffee (Instant is the main form of coffee here) and some jewelry/purse for Mikayla. Great fun! We also got another piece of fun mail from Lylah and Lara. All of which were enjoyed immensely. I just wish I could say we still had a lot of the candy left to munch on!

Letter B and more birds 010

Letter B and more birds 045

For the first part of the week there was a Peace Corp volunteer here checking out Cabrini. He joined us for most of our meals. It was good to talk with someone from the US face to face. He lives about twenty minutes down the road from us and is hoping to volunteer some at Cabrini. He will be here for two years, so a familiar face if nothing else!

Tomorrow is mine and Ben’s 7 year anniversary! Hard to believe we have been married for that long. We plan on making bacon in the morning and playing Settler’s after Mikayla goes to bed. Who knows what else our day will include, but I can guarantee it will be filled with relaxation!

Tags: Ben, birds, weeks happenings
Posted in Life |

Bye Bye Daddy

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Ben leaves in the morning for Swaziland. He will be gone for almost two weeks. We area already missing him! Mikayla especially, she asked to pack today and this is what we found.

We have some fun planned (like a girls weekend to Atlanta with Catherine and Molly), but nothing is nearly as fun without daddy/husband around!

Tags: Africa, Ben, Swaziland, travel
Posted in Life |

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

This is an important day to our family for many reasons, you can read about some of them here and here. It is important to both Ben and I that we carry on MLK’s legacy and share his visions for the world with her. So, in light of this, we spent the day remembering him in a service here in BG and listening to his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Mikayla loved listening to his speech.

Intent listening by both parties!

Tags: Ben, Mikayla, MLK
Posted in Life, Parenting |

Have We Changed?

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

A Christmas tradition that I wanted to start with our family was getting in our pajamas on Christmas night, making some hot chocolate, setting up the camera on a tripod and snapping away! Here is our family last year:

And then here we were this year:

Have we changed?

Tags: Ben, Growing up, Mikayla
Posted in Life, Parenting |

Mikayla’s Kitchen

Friday, December 31st, 2010

When I saw this post about a kitchen made from an old TV stand, I knew Mikayla needed one for Christmas. I looked for months for the perfect stand, but could never find it. Finally, right before Thanksgiving I stumbled upon the perfect one. I immediately purchased and drove home to begin plotting how we were going to transform it for her Christmas gift. By we, I mean how Ben was going to transform it, and I was going to paint it!

I didn’t remember to take a picture before Ben took the first door off, but you can pretty much get the picture of how it looked.

The first step was to drop the top down a bit so it wasn’t so tall. Then Ben made a hole for a sink. We got an old faucet from Habitat Restore and used a metal bowl we already had on hand for the sink basin. Then Ben switched the hardware out so the door on the left opened down like an oven instead of to the side. He also cut a whole out and put some plexi glass in to make it look like an oven door and added in an old oven handle, also from Habitat Restore. The final addition was to add a wall in between the cabinet and the oven.

Cabinet before paint and finishing touches.

My job was to paint the cabinet white and make some knobs for the stove. I got some wooden circles from Hobby Lobby, painted them and added in some numbers. They were perfect. We also found some Contact paper that looked like marble, which we added to the sink side of the kitchen unit. I painted some black circles on the stove side and we were set. Now all we had to do was fill it with kitchen goodies (courtesy of IKEA mostly) and our kitchen was complete. We complimented it with the cutest table and chairs I found at Little Lulu’s, a consignment shop in Bowling Green.

Kitchen before we stocked it with goodies.

We still want to add a shelf in the oven, but just never got around to it.

After we got finished we weren’t sure where we were going to put it all. At first we thought the kitchen, but then we thought it would take up too much space. We found the perfect solution when some friends of ours decided to transform their kids rooms for Christmas. They were gracious enough to hold onto our bedroom suite for a few years while we live in Africa and it was the perfect timing to make the switch. Mikayla loves playing in her room now and there feels like a lot more space!

Mikayla’s new and improved room with her fun kitchen and table!

Tags: Ben, DIY, gift, Mikayla
Posted in Parenting |

A Year in Review Part 2

Friday, December 31st, 2010

To help ring in the 2010 New Year I wrote a post reviewing 2009. I thought it would be fun to do this again. You never think your year was very exciting, until you take the time to reflect on all the many things that happened. Here is a quick look at my life for 2010!

January – Like most people we were very intentional when we named our daughter. Her name holds a lot of significance (you can read about it here), but one of her namesakes is Martin Luther King Jr. So when it came time for the big march in BG, we didn’t even hesitate in bundling her up and heading out. Here MLK is "marching" in her first MLK parade.

February – MLK’s got her first real snow experience. This wasn’t the biggest snow of the year, but the first time we had the opportunity to play in it. I also began my obsession with making hair clips. And lastly, we held a Kindergarten Olympics at school. I am not sure who had more fun, the students, the parents or the teachers! It was a blast!

March – In March we made a quick trip to Tallahassee to meet our god daughter Molly. We also got to use our pull behind bike thing for the first time and experience Mikayla taking her first steps.

April – In April we celebrated a very special first birthday with friends and family, took our first family hike in Mammoth cave and hosted our first Easter dinner with friends. It seems that April was a month of "firsts"!

May – We had a lot of spring time fun with Mikayla and harvested our first asparagus from the garden. I also braved a field trip to the Nashville Zoo!

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June – I stole the idea from a friend to take at least one field trip a week with Mikayla this summer. In June we went to the Humane Society, Somerset for Taylor’s birth, local hotel with glass elevator and waterfall, Tallahassee for Molly’s baptism, and Kentucky Down Under. We also took Mikayla to the beach for the first time and I started sewing.

July – In July Ben and I headed to Swaziland, Africa to begin preparation for our move there. It was a fun two weeks, but the hardest two of my parenting so far because we left Mikayla in the states! We all survived, but still hard. Before we left we took a quick trip to Tennessee for a little blackberry picking. Mikayla and I also took an overnight trip with some good buddies to visit the Indianapolis Children’s Museum.

August – In August I started teaching first grade and of course had some last minute summer fun which included celebrating Lylah’s first birthday, a day at the lake, basketball, rain boots and much more!

September – This month we made the decision on working with Cabrini ministries in Swaziland and co-hosted a Labor Day cookout with some great friends!

October – Mikayla took her first plane ride as we traveled to Colorado for a family vacation and then we hosted our last (at least for awhile) Halloween party!

November – Mikayla and I joined my parents and siblings for a weekend getaway in Lexington. Ben also started making kites in November so we flew a lot of them and I made Mikayla her first sensory tub and hosted my first Thanksgiving meal with Ben’s family.

December – We spent December making special gifts (a post in the very near future) and continuing some Christmas traditions! Ben and I also got to spend an evening in Nashville listening to the one and only Garth Brooks in concert!

What a year! I can’t wait to see what 2011 brings for my little family. Happy New Years everyone!

Tags: Ben, Mikayla, year
Posted in Life |

A Long Day…

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Today was a long day at work. It started out okay, but about 10:00 we were asked to take our kids to the hall for a "severe weather drill". In case you haven’t been in one recently here is what it looks like. First, you cram a hundred or so K-3 students in a small hallway. Then you have them get down on their hands and knees, tucking knees in under chest. Then you have them duck and cover their heads with their hands. All while not talking or moving. Are you kidding me?? This is hard enough for an adult to do, not to mention this many kids under the age of ten. We were this way for about 20-30 until we got the "all clear". My kids were so confused asking why we were practicing for so long! This was drill one.

Then, while my kiddos were walking through the lunch line we got called for another "severe weather drill"…I think my kids were catching on at this point that it wasn’t a drill anymore! So we quickly left their trays where they were and headed to the gym. This time it was much harder to keep them in the right position and still for the thirty minute block. Now, while this may not seem like it is exhausting work, keep in mind that the schedule was now way off, the kids were feeling the chaos and the day was only half over. Oh and did I mention we had a fun assembly with Woody the Weiner Dog this morning? Yeah, add all that together and it was a pretty hectic day! However, despite the chaos, these cuties made it all better when I got home!

Tags: Ben, Mikayla, school, students
Posted in Work |

Swimming and Snow…

Monday, October 11th, 2010

On the same day even! As we were prepping to leave Colorado we took one last trip to the hotel pool. Then jumped in the car for the drive back to the airport. On the way there we drove through some snow! How crazy is that? We hit it all: desert, snow, swimming, mountains, rocks and sand. It was a great trip with two of my favorite people ever! Here are some of our swim and snow pictures!

Tags: Ben, Colorado, Mikayla, travel, vacation
Posted in Life |