Summer Vacation is Officially Here...Almost

Tomorrow is my final day of teaching summer school. I enjoy teaching (and I especially enjoy the extra paycheck), but I am ready to just relax and spend my 7 weeks of summer vacation at home with Makenna. I have several goals that I hope to accomplish during my time off including:
1. Completely potty train Makenna

2. Work with Makenna on her colors, ABCs, and numbers 1-10. I purchased a DVD series called Preschool Prep about these three things and they say a child will have them mastered if they watch the DVDs every day for 2 weeks. Well, I am going to test these claims one DVD at a time. She LOVES to watch Sesame Street and can recognize and say the letter of the day for the remainder of the day, as well as say the number of the day (no, I am not bragging about my amazingly smart 17 month old daughter), so I hope to be successful in this quest.

3. Finish reading the Twilight series--I know I have only been reading them since December and am only on the second book. Needless to say, it isn't my favorite book series of all time, but I promised some students that I would read them.

4. Make some progress in my goal to have a homemade cross-stitched Christmas stocking for each member in our family by Christmas 2010. At the rate I am going I might have them accomplished by the Christmas of 2030. Here are the links to the patterns I bought. The finished products will be amazing, but they will take hours to complete. And in case you are wondering why there are 4 patterns instead of just three, please recall that I am a planner and I was just thinking if the future and wanted to purchase them at the same time so that they all had the same style.

http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=K8778

http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=K8645

http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=K8806

http://www.123stitch.com/cgi-perl/itemdetail.pl?item=K8740

5. Complete most (not all) of my Christmas shopping. I like shopping early for the holidays so that I can avoid the chaos of the retail stores and malls during the months of November and December. I have already purchased Justin's large gift--it is so large that is was a combined birthday and Christmas present-- and I also have 4 or 5 gifts for Makenna, so I am off to a good start.

6. Have a good relaxing vacation in Vegas. We leave 3 weeks from Sunday and I cannot wait. We have reserved tickets for 2 cirque shows (Mystere and KA) and we are planning on taking a day-long excursion to the Grand Canyon. We will miss Makenna while we are gone, but Justin and I are both looking forward to the trip.

7. Learn about a new hobby I want to begin sometime soon. I have begun the process of researching SLR cameras because I want to get back into photography. And maybe if I get semi-experienced with using an SLR I might begin taking some pictures for family and friends because hiring a professional can be SO EXPENSIVE! After seeing some pictures of Makenna that I took, I did have some co-workers ask if I ever considered taking pictures for others. I had never really thought that my photos were anything special, but their encouragement prompted me to want to upgrade to a nice camera. I will keep you posted on this new quest of mine.

Wow. That is a lot to accomplish before I return to work on August 12th, but I like having goals to meet so this list should prevent me from getting bored during my time off.

Happy Father's Day

I would like to wish all fathers a Happy Father's Day, especially my daddy. I love you so much.


Love,

Makenna


**I am sharing some of my favorite pics of my daddy and me over the past 17 months of my life.

Congratulations Mom!

This weekend we had the opportunity to go to Branson to attend a very special banquet for my mom--she was installed as the president of the Missouri Federation of Republican Women. She has been a very dedicated member of this group for years at the local and state levels and now she is holding the highest office for this group. We are very proud of her so it was only fitting that we mention it here on our blog. Makenna even got to take the stage with her during her speech and once again she was the center of attention.

This past week I was also involved in our church's VBS. This year we did a sports camp where the kids got to learn fundamentals of basketball, volleyball, baseball, football, and cheerleading. We also had a Bible story time. I have to admit that by the time I got to VBS at 5:45 I was pretty exhausted from a full day of summer school and by the end of the week I was pretty drained. However, the time I sacrificed by being a team leader for the camp was WAY worth it because I got to lead two boys to Christ. It was awesome how God used me as a tool to further His kingdom.

On one final note, did you notice what is missing in the family picture above? That's right--my glasses. I finally went to the eye doctor last week and I am trying out contacts. I think I finally have to hang of how to put them in and take them out and now I just have to get used to them. I go back on Wednesday, so I have just a few more days to decide if I want to continue with the contacts or get a new pair of glasses. Any suggestions are gladly welcomed. Have a great week.

Our Girl is Growing Up

This week has been a big week in the Coffer house--Makenna used her potty chair for the first time! It is my goal to have her completely potty trained by the time I go back to work in August and we are off to a good start. I really had no intention of beginning the process until next month, but on Tuesday she decided she wanted to sit on her potty chair so of course I let her. She has used the chair four times since then so all I can say is the potty training is definitely in full swing here. It will definitely be nice to not have to buy diapers until we have another little one!

Makenna's vocabulary has also expanded and she is starting to say phrases and sometimes complete sentences, including "Here's my bow.", "Where daddy go?", and "I see it." Justin's glad that she can also say "baball" (basketball). He is so excited about her new word that we bought her a basketball goal this morning at a garage sale. Now, we did get a good deal on it by only paying $5 for it and it is in great shape, but I am not expecting any slam dunks from her just yet. I will try to post some pictures (or maybe a video if I ever figure out how to do that) of her playing with her goal sometime soon.

We did enjoy our trip to Sikeston last week. It was good to see family and to catch up with friends we hadn't seen in a while and of course, the wedding we attended was beautiful. My first week of summer school went smoothly. I can say that I love doing credit recovery (which is teaching the kids that need the credits so that they can be promoted to the next grade) and it is also nice to know that with this position I am pretty much guaranteed a summer school job and that I won't have to "compete" for one. We don't have any pictures from the wedding because we forgot our camera, but here are a few pictures a friend sent. Another friend is supposed to be sending us more (they all took several of Makenna), so we will post them when we get them.

Justin with Ryan and Chris--We love these two guys!

Makenna and Justin dancing at the reception