Making a change around here (blogwise)

So I have been really slacking on posting lately, this summer has gotten crazy! Our homeschooling summer has been up and down, one good part is the addition to the kid's cousin joining us a few days a week. Having that extra kid around has really pushed me to step up my game on planning and implementing things with the kids.

Dry Erase table with Dry Erase crayons

Homemade Cloud dough (8 parts flours 1 part Baby Oil) 

I've started using more communication methods with Chance although he still doesn't have much interest I'm at least making it available at every opportunity to model using it for him. We are now going to start trialing newer devices that may be more adaptable for him and grow with him. He starts school in a couple weeks and I'm looking forward to him to go back to be with his friends and teachers. He is not a fan of summers especially Texas summers which result in us staying at home almost the entire summer due to the extreme heat.

This is our PODD book I use in addition to our Conversa 

I've also stepped up on my painting. It is a passion of mine and I'm actually getting outside interests in it! Not just my lovely husband complimenting me! I've sold my first commissioned painting and have listed several new ones on Etsy and hope to get more interest soon! http://www.etsy.com/shop/shaunamoreno

I'm going to continue to blog as often as possible but not as many giveaway posts. I do have a couple reviews in the works and hope to have those out in the next week! I'm still new to the blogging stuff so I'm learning as I go and still figuring it all out.

I've started painting again!!!

 I've loved painting since I was in high school and took my first painting class. It's always been my me time, and now with the encouragement of my wonderful husband I've started to carve out time at the end of the night to paint! I've even started listing some on Etsy -- Here's  My store!!  I'm hoping to use any funds made to help purchase medical equipment for my son Chance, I'd like to get him a mount for his wheelchair to hold his ipad for school, and also a Kidwalk walker since insurance has denied us multiple times. I really hope this helps! Below are a few of my favorite paintings I've done. 

First week of trying summer school

Now that my 1st grader is on summer vacation he is making it very obvious he misses school. I know he loves his friends and teachers but the routine is also so important to him. So since I have been attempting (unsuccessfully) all year to get organized with homeschooling Daniella, I thought this would be a good opportunity to get going again.

So I got some more supplies, planned it all out for our first week. We did fourth of july theme activities and had some fun doing crafts and worksheets.

Chance was more interested in playing bubbles and watching movies but did participate a bit with his ipad apps that went along with our theme.

This next week I'm going to try and do a bit more than last week, I'm still trying to ease in to this routine but hopefully we will have some sort of routine by the time Chance goes back to school! My favorite site I found for printables http://www.overthebigmoon.com/

Babbabox Review - fun stuff for kids!

My husband found this BabbaBox company in one of his entrepenuer magazines awhile back. It looked perfect for Daniella since she has become so creative recently and I've been struggling with activities to help with our homeschool adventure. So we signed up and it took about 6 weeks before we got ours (depends on when you place your order- but it ships out the 3rd of the next month after your first order then every 3rd week of the month after that). It's a monthly subscription of $30 so it didn't seem to much considering how much it would cost to drive around and pick up the supplies and plan and find ideas. So this past week was pretty exciting when we finally got our box! Each box has a theme and this months theme was 'you are what you eat!'.

Everything is packaged so nice and neat and the instructions were easy and fun for my 3yr old.

All the supplies we needed to make the crafts were included I didnt need anything extra.
I also learned you can add a sibling pack for $10 a month to get double the crafting supplies!

 We had so much fun making our place mate, shopping list folder and reading our story next we will download our free app for the ipad (or android) that was included. There was also measuring cups so the kids can help with cooking and a pizza cutter for homemade pizzas. And a sample of all natural kids toothpaste! 

Daniella's placemat where she drew all her favorite foods and grouped them together.

reading our story

Our picture shopping list we made!

 I cant wait for next month and will post some videos of Daniella and I doing the crafts together!

                         

                                  http://happychaos4life.blogspot.com/p/disclosure-policy.html

Click the picture below for a 20% discount code on your first box if this looks like something you'd like to try with your kids! 

Walker Edison Bunk Bed Giveaway Event!!!!

EEEK My 2nd Giveaway Post!! 

 I know as a parent of 3, one with special needs, nice beds are hard to come by. Here is the PERFECT giveaway for growing families!! 

I am so excited to announce   BunkBedsAtoZ - (http://www.bunkbedsatoz.com/) is giving away a Walker Edison Bunk bed worth ($549). Use the rafflecopter form below to enter and make sure to mention Happy Chaos Blog referred you to enter! 

Big thanks to our Host - Children Teaching Mama
 (http://www.childrenteachingmama.com). 


The giveaway will run from June 20th to July 10th at 12:58pm and is open to United States residents 18+ and older. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway 

First days of summer vacation

Day ONE::

Chance is off school now! For the next 3 months I need to keep him busy 24/7. Today we didnt do anything special I'm sure he thinks its the weekend he spent most of the day watching movies in his room. So I've been scouring pinterest for tons of ideas, most of them messy, so that means lots of baths around here.

Isabella is still almost walking , Chance is almost walking and Daniella is always looking for opportunities of mischief. In fact Daniella sprained her ankle 3 days ago pretending to be a dog around the house!

Maybe I will be able to have some big project fun with the kids.

But I've made it my goal to just get through the day. Yeah big goals for summer 2012.

Day TWO::

We spent today at the BEACH! I should clarify before we get too far, my 3yr old Daniella is convinced our boxes of sand are the beach :) Easy to get there ... just outside the front door!! Now my 7yr old with his sensory issues doesnt really play in the beach, mostly because he will eat it, but Today I ventured to keep them busy first we had an all out Dance Party in the living room after breakfast throwing around all our big bouncy balls, but then Chance shortly got annoyed -- by my Dancing I'm sure! So we went outside for a little gardening and beach time!!! I figured I'd give him just enough to feel it on his hands but not enough to just chow down on chunks of sand... and it worked!! Daniella made sandcastles and Chance played in the sand on his wheelchair tray!! Now its bath time then lunch then movies until Speech Therapy... I can handle days like this NO PROBLEM!!! :D

fun giveaways I've found

I am loving the giveaway hops!!! Here's one for the summer from Life with two boys!! They are giving away an awesome  Kiddi-O Fold n' Go Nanas Tricycle from Kettler USA

Dont forget to check out all the other blogs giveaways listed at the bottom of that post! 

Here's another site Contest for Moms -http://www.contestformoms.com/ lots of opportunities to find free stuff and enter more giveaways!! 

Last one: BellaSavvy has some more giveaways I just entered! http://www.bellasavvy.net/giveaways 

Good luck to all!! 

New Projects

So now that summer is about to begin, I've begun the organization of the house in preperation of having all 3 kids home 3 months straight!! And since we live in the oven of Texas (San Antonio) with 100+ temps pretty much all summer, we dont get out much, hardly even the back yard as its just too much for the little ones! Of course we do have SeaWorld San Antonio 15 min away so we certainly take advantage of their water park as often as possible.

So with that in mind I started thinking of ways to declutter and make summer easier to have all 3 kids fully entertained at the same time. Last summer was easier since Isabella was an infant and basically ate slept and pooped, as infants do.

My first project was to purge the plastic toys which I kinda did, about 50% anyway, then I organized them all and gave Chance all the bigger toys in his room. Then I decided to use all the left over diaper boxes I had to build a toy bookshelf out of them!

Cut tops off and laid them out

Poked holes with a screwdriver and attached the boxes to each other with zip ties

Lots of tape to support it up, could use duct tape

final product except I will be adding contact paper on the insides and cover in fabric on the outside

Mommy's day!

I love this day, the day to celebrate my lifes purpose. Being a mommy!! I've always known I was going to be a mom, I know its not for everyone, and everyone does it differently. I L O V E love it!! Some days are crazy hectic (well every day is really!) My kids are everything to me and I am so lucky to have them all 3 in my life :)

Trying to parent naturally

So I've always been interested in being eco-friendly and especially with the kids. It is so hard and sometimes I feel completely failed at this attempt as I clean with all purpose cleaner, and laundry detergent. But I keep trying and I usually remember to make my own all natural cleaners half the time... better than none of the time (right??). So in the past year I've come to realize the kids toys that are full of plastic and electronics may not be the best for them, learning wise or toxicity wise. Now this seems to be my biggest challenge because all natural toys are soo hard to come by! ToysRus has very little selection ... and dont even bother with Walmart, Target has introduced some more lately and I'm pretty excited about that. But I already LOVE Target!!! so I'm not surprised :) Well I managed to get rid of a ton of small plastic toys that have accumulated Since Chance was a baby, so that is progress. But I've recently discovered a ton of fun shops on Etsy that sell beautiful handmade toys! Now I just need to money to get them all! So I've started my collection with some handmade playsilks that I won in a contest with BeneathTheRowanTree!!!

 And I've found several others doing giveaways like this blog http://naturalsuburbia.blogspot.com. I hope I win some more of these fabulous toys for my babies!! As of right now I'll continue to purge the plastic and look for the more natural toys, but I am sure its all in balance since we still got Daniella a cute pink/purple keyboard for her birthday because she has gotten in to performing songs for us! We love this passion in her and will hopefully continue to find more things she will love! I'm going to continue to look for more natural ways of parenting and living too, and hopefully at some point the natural stuff will take over the chemical stuff but until then I will just keep trying!

My life is a Jason Mraz concert

This morning I've spent it listening to Jason Mraz. Love him! His music is so happy even when its not always about the greatest things in life. He has a way of lifting my spirit. My happy chaos life is every week some kind of roller coaster. Today is no exception. C had a seizure this morning then of course he was super crabby all morning (understandably so). After a nice bath he seems to be better. D has been off and on sick but she seems better I think its mostly the time change and weather changing. I'm still trying our homeschool preschool a little bit everyday. C is on spring break so its a little harder to fit it all in. Plus I am so excited my mother in law is coming over in 2 weeks to spend 3 months with us. She live in the UK currently so we havent seen her in years. It will be so nice to have the kids nana living with us. Plus she will be able to babysit which will help me and J get back to one on one time <3. So as you see, the day is full of fun and not so fun stuff. But overall I smile. Life is always good in some way.

 jasonmraz.com

Best Song & Video!!

Mondays

I normally like mondays, it's when my oldest goes to school and i just have the two girls during the day. But today I am dragging so much, the coffee's not working, my toddler was up until 1am which felt like 2 because of the time change, mr. C got sick in the middle of the night so I had to clean him up and his bed luckily he went back to sleep and woke up fine for school. Baby is still teething which feels like has been going on 10 yrs! And today I still need to clean up Mr. C's bedroom, the playroom, make some appts, and sweep the floor in between keeping the girls out of trouble and hopefully keeping them from screaming their heads off all day over various things. So this monday is in no way a good day, but I am now playing catch with Ms. D whether I like it or not as I just got a soccerball to my head while she was yelling  'CATCH' her new favorite word!!

Playtime and meditation in Fall

So it's fall and in Texas that means it's outside weather! We are not living in a gigantic oven anymore, there is coolness to the air and the ever present sun is still shining everyday. I love it. This is why I moved here 5.5 yrs ago. Now we can talk walks outside with out heat exhaustion! I've been feeling kind of weird through this transistion of season, very disconnected but yearning to be grounded again. It all and always comes down to the distractions we have. We have so many computers and gadgets and tv's it's so easy for us to be doing 10 things at once. Dont get me wrong, I love my Facebook. It keeps me connected to all the other families out there with a child with Angelman Syndrome. They are my support group and my family. But I need to keep perspective and I dont need to be checking every second of the day if they have posted updates. This time of year I start to feel the desire to be more connected to our earth, maybe since I was born in October. so now instead of watching TV when the girls are napping, I will meditate, listen to wind in the trees, the cars going down the street, the creak of our house settling in for the cold weather.

Being a mother up to this time has been fantastic and continues to be. D is almost potty trained, I is learning to crawl, sit up and eat baby food, and C is his happy crazy self as always. I am constantly challenged by them to do better and learn more. It's so weird how this life that I've had continues to be so hard yet so fulfilling at the same time.

Life gets so crazy for us sometimes. Hubby has been self-employed since I met him. This kind of employment is not easy and not for everyone. You have to be resourceful. Money does not always come in regular intervals like for employees of a business. You have to wait for money, or you gets tons of it in one big bunch but then you dont always know when the next bunch is coming. This lifestyle has made me resourceful to say the least, I know how to stretch a dollar, and we know how to budget to big bunches to make it last until the next. It has also taught me what's really important. Some people seem to think it's better for a family to have steady money coming in and more money than you may need. Although it does make life easier to have more money, I dont think it makes it better. Life should be great with or with out lots of money. I definitely appreciate having money and lots of stuff to buy. In fact I love shopping, going to store and buying fun stuff to bring home. But I know for sure my families happiness has nothing to do with whether we can buy stuff or not. I actually really love this. I hope my kids see how we are living our dreams and always make the best of whatever our situation is. I hope they never see us stress over money, and they see us work hard for everything we have. I know they will never see my husband and I fight over money. I know we do get stressed from it here and there but there is never a doubt we will be ok. And I hope my kids grow up knowing if they follow their dreams they can make any situation happy.

Mondays....

Since becoming a stay at home mom 2 yrs ago. Mondays have become alot different but also kind the same as when I worked. I still have to get up early, and do lots of paperwork and make lots of phone calls, the big difference is now I do all that with diapers, sippy cups, and kids that only get fussy when I'm on the phone with people I've been trying to get a hold of all day!! ugh! But even with all that and the sleepless nights, big huge messes, whining and crying, I wouldnt trade this life for anything. My kids can drive me crazy but at the same time melt my heart and make me laugh. They are waaaay better than working with adults!! : D

Potty Training Time!

So it's time to start potty training D. This is so difficult but needed. She shows interest in the potty so I'm hoping she's ready. She is my first potty trainee, I am kind of excited, C unfortunately is still not trained not sure he ever will, since I see no interest from him. But anyways, so we started out the normal potty training way : sit her on it every couple hours but then she started to hate it, I think it was more of asserting her independence, why should I tell her when to sit on the potty? (makes sense) then I couldnt even get her to put her but down for 2 sec. and its not that she didnt like being in the bathroom, far from it. Most days I cant keep her away from brushing her teeth and washing her hands. But sitting on the potty seems to be on of the worst things for her. Then I discovered stickers!! Oh my how my daughter loves to peel them off and stick them onto another sheet. So I taped up some paper on the wall next to her potty and now I get 5 min. of potty time while she decorates paper. yay! Except for the fact she wont do any of her business on there!! I just dont know how to explain to her to pee, she gets poop but she wont tell me when she's going #2 yet. and I'm just hoping we will get some random occurance of #1 during our sticker art sessions. I think I'll start saving her pages of stickers. Anyone know how many stickers it takes to get a 2 yr old potty trained?? --- I found the following on pinterest.. one day she will go potty.. I hope!!! http://www.parenting.com/gallery/how-to-potty-train

Source: parenting.com via Shauna on Pinterest

Finally the end of my day! Oh wait my wonderful Angel Chance is wide awake whining.......... Chance is 6 yrs old and has Angelman Syndrome. (more info check out www.angelman.org or www.cureangelman.org) Since he is completely non verbal and whining I have to play detective quite often to figure out what's wrong. This is not fun, one of the worst parts of having a non-verbal child. I wish I could just read his mind. Please tell me what hurts, what's uncomfortable, whats annoying, anything. :( Ok pity parties over turns out he just doesnt want to sleep! Like most kids that age! It's so weird how one minute I feel like the average mom and the next I feel profoundly different, I suppose because my oldest child is profoundly different and at the same time very typical. He loves everything most 6 yr old boys love... monster trucks, super hero movies, sporting events, and annoying his younger sister! But of course he is different than most because he cant walk on his own YET, has no verbal words (still can get a point across), movement disorder with severe sensory dysfunction and the no good horrible seizures. His body does not work well for him, but his mind is beautiful... He finds joy in EVERYTHING. Sure he has his moments when he is upset or feels ill... even in those times if he is crying and whining, he can still crack a smile and give a giggle if something catches his attention. I love that about him. Angelman Syndrome has given us alot of challenges and definitely played a huge part in giving us the happy chaotic life I'm writing here about. Although Angelman Syndrome sucks, our community is fabulous. Most of us dont live near each other but because of the internet we are here for each other through it all. My AS family has become family. The love and support we get and give to each other is something I never would have guessed I'd have when I gave birth to my beautiful boy 6.5 yrs ago. But I am so glad I have it.

Wow, I cant believe how much I've typed so far! I got a lot to say I guess! I'll stop here but if you want to help my son please visit www.helpsavetheangels.com and vote in the vivant gives back contest through facebook. Vote for FAST and help them win $250K that will go to research. Our scientists have already cured AS in mice and your vote could help them discover how to treat AS in humans. Thanks so much :)

My First Post!! Welcome to my happy Chaos!!

So this is my first post. I'm in no way a writer so if my sentances run together, and sometimes I dont make sense, well that's the way I talk so deal : P! But if you can look past grammatical errors, you will read about my crazy life as a stay at home mom, happy wife, special needs community member, neurotic, buddhist, spiritual, creative person. I love sharing my life with others sometimes way more than I should be (so blogging should be perfect!). Now my  beautiful little 2 yr old is getting up from her nap so I will be posting more later.............