Five for Friday: 6/13/14

Woohoo! It is Friday! 

It is the 13th, but besides a few cranky kid moments, it has been a decent day! Hope you can say the same, aside from the cranky kid moments, I am happy to take one for the team! :-)

I am excited because my husband and I are going to have a date night tonight! It has been a while since the two of us have gone out alone and will not have to say, "Do we need to go to the bathroom to talk?" while giving that uber mean parent look! 
Not sure where we are going, but it does not really matter! 
We are overdue a night out to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary (was in May) and Father's Day. 
My 3 sons will be sleeping at my mom's house tonight.  She is hosting grandson night, all 5 grandsons plus my brother. Yikes, that is a lot of testosterone!
When we leave, it always reminds me of the AirTran commercial, "Don't leave me with the babies!"

She is brave woman! The boys love her, and I know she loves having them over, even though it is exhausting. Trust me, I know, I live with 3 of them!

We have spent a lot of time swimming this week. I even have a little sun to prove it. 
One of my goals was to get my youngest to not be so afraid of the pool and make progress towards swimming. He is doing great. He is now putting his head under the water, walking in to what he calls the deep, deep water, and is trying out swimming motions. He has even made a friend who is encouraging him to swim under the water, they are really funny to listen and watch. It is a total man up fest:

"I can do this."

'Watch me, I can do this."

"Oh, let me show you this."

I keep waiting for them to beat on their chests like Tarzan. 

Here is the little guy attempting to swim  like a frog.  

Oh, he makes me smile!

We may not make it to the ocean, but the boys are thoroughly enjoying the scuba sets I picked up at Target last year. My oldest needs new flippers for his BIG boy feet, so he is mostly exploring with the mask and snorkel. 

It is really encouraging to see their progress in the water. I still remember the {exhausting} summer I had all 3 in the shallow end and spent most of my time keeping them above the water.

My favorite snack is popcorn! Yummy! That is probably why I love going to the movies in the summer, means a big tub of popcorn to share with the kids. 
I know that movie theater popcorn isn't healthy, but man it is good! 
Apparently my kids really like it too because they plow through bags of microwave popcorn. I know that isn't healthy either, so I splurged and bought a new popper. 

It works great, so great I told my husband to toss the box. I found this gem at Wal-Mart, but I know Target sells them too, and probably Amazon. 
This beauty stirs the popcorn kernels for you - but don't leave the room, it pops pretty fast and you need to unplug it when the popcorn sounds slow down, unless you like burnt popcorn! 
I have made it even healthier by using coconut oil as the popping oil, oh yummy, it is light and fresh! 
I made a bunch and am bringing it to my mom's tonight, my boys love it and my brother has 2 teenagers who really love to eat! 

Did you know that as a teacher you can sign up for ABCmouse.com for free? You can use it as an account for your young kids. Since I teach the upper grades it is not something I use in my classroom, but was thrilled to learn that I could sign up  as a teacher and set up an account for my 4 year old. 
He loves it! It is great to help him practice his phonics and letter sound recognition, along with practicing counting, color recognition, fine motor skills, and sight words.

Today he and my 7 year old played together for over an hour! Without fighting, and were even singing along together. My 7 year old loved being his mentor and navigating the sight with him. They went shopping with his tickets and bought some pets. When they ran out of tickets, they worked together to earn enough to get a frog. It was so sweet to watch and listen to. Hooray for summer learning and getting along! 

Oh, if you have not already done so, swing by the The Teaching Tribune for Free Fonts Friday. 

Don't forget to hop on over to Rockin' and Lovin' Learnin' for her 500 follower giveaway, contest ends on June 17th. 

Thanks again to Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting Five for Friday, love checking in with everyone and having an excuse to share 5 random things, because you know that if I wrote an essay like this on a common core test, I would definitely not meet expectations! 

Happy Friday Friends!