Little Okie Homestead

It's time to share our wonderful newborn pictures taken by our favorite photographer at the local Target! She's great! She has taken pictures for us since I was pregnant with Monkey.  Our New Family!

Here are some not so everyday boy toys that Monkey has loved over the past three years. Of course they shouldn't all be shocked at what they are...after all I said boy  toys! So here we go....(stay until the end, my favorite is the last one!) Rocks, Mud, and/or Water Any size, anywhere and in any combination. To play in, to claim on, or throw. Bugs (or friends as Monkey calls them) Monkey loves bugs! Worms, praying mantis, roly polys, ants, he collects and holds them all and loves to play with them. He can spend hours chasing ants around the driveway :) Daddy! He's a built in jungle gym! Daddy is good for everything from climbing on his legs and falling onto the floor to horse back rides through the house. Anything he can sit in!  From a plastic tub that he made into a bed with pillows, or a box to ride around with a cousin, or one to just sit in and throw balls, or maybe the basket full of toys! All super fun things! Sea Shells!...

Another fun thing that we did here in Colorado!  Golden Days! This was the first time that Hubby and I went with my parents but they have taken Monkey a few times this summer. Golden is a small mountain town that really isn't fully in the mountains. It's actually a place I would love to live if we wanted to live in the mountains. It have the small town feel and sense of community that I long for my boys to grow up in. This was the last Golden Days of the summer. They had booths out along the street with food and beer along with street performers. Monkey watched the magician while eating his favorite ice cream.  It wasn't that great of a show but he got a balloon cat out of the deal so he was happy! Goose got to hang out with Popa for a bit because he was getting cranky from being in the stroller. It really was fun for a Friday night out with the family. Great food, some entertainment, and time with each other. Who could ...

My Bible study group is currently reading a Francine Rivers book together because we just ended a very long study of Proverbs. Reading this book allows us to still be hearing stories from the Bible and there are questions that follow each 'book' (this one has 5 books in one) that allow us to be in the Bible and have the real story as well. Even though I will be doing this study I still want to be in the Word so I'm going to do a personal Bible study of James.  I don't actually have a reason to why I picked James. I was looking through my Bible trying to decide what I wanted to study. I knew I wanted a shorter book because I'm trying a new way to study the Bible that my wonderful sister in law has shared with me and James just popped out at me. Probably God's doing. He knows what I need and probably has something for me to learn by studying James. So I will be starting this week with finding out the history of James and this book. I'm excited to dig ...

We love reading in our house. Monkey loves books! The problem is he would prefer non-fiction books to fiction. So to settle this I thought about ways that I could help him with his imagination and encourage some fiction books as well. When I was a pre-kindergarten teacher I loved reading Jack and Annie books to the kids while they were laying down for nap time. I would read a few chapters right in the beginning to help them all get settled down from our activities. They loved them! Of course when I started thinking of ways to encourage Monkey to love fiction books as well  The Magic Treehouse Books  came to mind. I checked out the first book from the library, Dinosaurs Before Dark, and took it home and read the first chapter with him. Monkey was so excited to read it, mostly because it was about dinosaurs, but it kept his attention! We read it within a few days, partly because I tried to slow it down because we didn't have the next book to start. I requested the se...

I am one of 5 friends that had babies within the last two months and I have been sharing how well Goose has been sleeping on my Facebook page and I keep getting questions on what I'm doing to get him to sleep so well at night. Currently at 6 weeks he is doing 6 to 7 hours a night! I love it but I will first say that there are three things that I think help. One, luck. Two, Genes. Three, A Schedule. I think I'm just one of the lucky mom's that has a baby that sleeps. Monkey was the same way although his was partly because of the bilirubin in his system. He was sleeping through the night around this age as well. Then there is the genes. M's family can sleep like crazy! All day, any time of day, for any length of time. Me on the other hand not so much but it seems that both my boys got the sleep gene which I'm grateful for. The last part is a schedule. I started working on a schedule as soon as we got home from the hospital with Goose but with Monkey I ...

I swear Goose is just trying to scare me for the future! First  rolling over  so early and now showing that he is wanting to crawl as soon as he can! Hanging out with brother doing some tummy time! It only lasted a few minutes before he started to get upset and decide that he didn't like being on the boppy pillow. Here he is pushing himself over top of it. Almost there! Keep Going! He made it!  Once he was over he just feel asleep!  He has done this at least one more time since I took these pictures a few days ago. Apparently he doesn't like tummy time on the boppy!