Book Review: Princess Monroe and Her Happily Ever After

illustrator Glynise Martin

How many of you have ever read a fairy tale and wished that it had a different ending? Maybe one that didn't involve the princess being swept off her feet by some unrealistic, ideal of a Prince, or one where she actually does something productive to save herself?

Guess what? I have the perfect book for you! I did receive an advance free copy in exchange for an honest review of the book. I honestly loved it! The illustrations are adorable and the storyline is wonderful!

This is wonderful book about Princess Monroe who is more than just a princess. She is a smart, independent girl with many different interests. While her Queen Mom has a more traditional idea of finding her a prince, Monroe wants to explore, learn and play. As the princess continues speak her truth, without a prince beside her, her mom accepts her daughter's wishes. In this story,the princess saves herself.

Here is just a bit more about the book:

Full Title: Princess Monroe and Her Happily Ever After

Author: Jody Smith

Illustrator: Glynise Martin

Synopsis

Princess Monroe is more than JUST a princess. While she likes “princessing,” she finds it a bit boring. Monroe is more interested in learning, playing and building stuff. She has dreams of traveling to Paris, rescuing puppies and becoming a scientist. In her spare time she likes to rock climb, dance and garden.

Quite frankly, the only issue for Monroe is there are only 24 hours in a day! What she knows for sure is she can’t possibly find what makes her happy while she’s taking care of a prince. So instead of being saved by Prince Charming like every other fairytale, Monroe is going to save herself first.

I found this book so refreshing compared to all the books out there that are full of the sterotypical princess story of the princess falling in love and finding "true" love. Today's world needs more about how the real world is and I feel that Princess Monroe gives us that. She shows us that there is so much to be explored and done in life and that it's not all about settling down with a "prince charming", but it's about adventure and fun and how you can do that without hurting those you love. Her mother accepted that her daughter didn't want to fit into that stero-typical princess type, and she rolled with it. So I think it would be good for every mom to read this book as well as every princess!

*You can find the book here: https://amzn.to/2p9dT1M

Connect with the Author Jody:

Website http://www.princessmonroe.com

Instagram http://instagram.com/jodyvalleesmitth

Facebook http://facebook.com/jodyvalleesmith

Courageous Girl group https://www.facebook.com/courageousgirlcommunity

*Disclaimer: this is an affiliate link and I will receive a small commission for purchases made through this link. Purchases help to support the site and keep my blog up and running. 

School Has Begun

So, as most of you know I decided to keep the girls home from preschool this year and do it myself. It has been quite the adventure so far and it's fun. I had a call with Headstart and when big E overheard she said "But, mommy I wanted you to teach me!" So, what is a mother to do with that? Well, I had already made up my mind what I was going to do and that was to keep my girls home their last year and teach them myself.

I have an Associate of Arts Degree in Early Childhood so I'm perfectly suited for teaching preschool and I'm loving doing it! Our first week we did an All about me theme.
*This post may contain affiliate links, I receive a small commission when purchases are made at no cost to you. 

 I had them draw/color their favorite outfits. Here is little E with her Elsa dress! She wore that dress out and has been begging me for another. We'll have to see what "Santa" might bring her this year for Christmas.

 Big E drew her version of her Anna dress! She loves that dress. It's been mended many, many times, but she still wears it. Maybe "Santa" will bring a new one for her for Christmas this year.

 This is Little E on our first day of school at her desk. I was able to borrow desks that were not being used from the Academy where my husband teaches and they work wonderfully for the girls and they love them!

 Here are both girls posing for their first day of school photo behind their desks. They were so excited to start school. Grandma made them special school outfits to wear 5 different ones. A cherry one, sunflower one, Shopkins one, Hello Kitty one, and a Watermelon one. I believe some others may be in the works with some material that I had on hand. They love their school outfits as do I. My mother is an excellent seamstress and does such beautiful work. These outfits take her about 45 minutes to whip up. If any of you would be interested in ordering she does take orders. You can contact me and I'll put you in contact with her.

 This is Big E posing on the first day of school! She's super excited to get started!

 At the end of our first week we did self portrait paintings and the girls had an absolute blast with that. They had been asking all week when we were going to paint. We actually got to paint during our library day, which was a surprise, but then they also got to do this at the end of our school day. Above is Big E and below is Little E.

 Here are both girls with their self portraits they were so involved in their projects I had a hard time getting them to pose for these pictures.

 Here I was able to get some in action shots. We started studying the letter Ii this past week so we made little books with the Letter "I" and made books that went along with the short vowel sound for I. This coming week we'll do the Long vowel sound.

Here they are doing their math sheet. We were focusing on the number 5 this past week. They can count really good up to 10 and sometimes even beyond that. They sometimes do tend to add in extras that are not there, but we're working on it.

I've created a read aloud list of Letter I books from the Letter of the Week book list which you can find here and you can find my Youtube Read Aloud List here.

A most awesome potty training product!

http://www.pottymd.com?aff=5

Photo credit: PottyMD.com 

As a mom you'll understand the ups and downs of potty training! Well with twins it's doubly different. You would think it would be easier since they have a sibling to help and encourage them, but nope! Big E was pretty easy to potty train and did very well and has done very well. She freaks out if she wets the bed or has an accident. However, Little E has been a different story. She's such a busy little critter that I think she just gets involved and forgets it's time to go.

A few months ago I had the opportunity to get a kit from PottyMD for potty training. And I jumped on it! It has been awesome and has helped Little E tremendously!

Little E loves her Potty Monkey! (It makes different sounds too and has different settings on the battery box, you just have to try out different settings) 

The kit comes with this adorable fluffy monkey who talks and says he has to go potty and asks if you have to go too! There is also a potty that makes the flushing sound when the button is pushed. Let's just say that for awhile that monkey went everywhere with Little E and it made Big E a bit jealous!

One of the things that we were struggling with was bed wetting and guess what?? Little E has been bed wet free for several weeks now! Our kit came with the Wet Stop 3 Alarm that you hook up to them at night. One end kind of looks like a phone jack but has a highly sensitive sensor on it that picks up any dampness including if they pull up undies too quickly after going potty. The other part the box will vibrate and set off an alarm when it senses wetness. It did the trick. Although it seemed to scare the girls and I think that also helped to cure the night time wetting because Little E finally decided that she didn't want to have to wear the alarm at night so she started making herself get up to go potty. So now, no more wearing the alarm and no more waking mommy up because she wet the bed. Yipee! I'm so thankful for having found this amazing program. I highly recommend it. It took us a couple of months for it to take effect but it worked!
Click here to purchase or view on their website!

*Please note, I did receive the whole kit for free in exchange for this review. However, the opinions stated here are my own and are true.

A 4 Year Old's Summer

I keep forgetting I have this family blog to be updating. But, maybe I'll post more here than on social media coming up.

This summer seems to have flown by and now it's the weekend before school begins. Hubby goes back to work full time on Monday and I will be teaching the little's at home this year. We are still at Carolina Christian Academy however, I am not teaching at the academy this year. Hubby is teaching US History and Life Science as well as supervising in the ACE learning center for Junior and Senior High school. He's excited to get back into the swing of things and the girls are delighted to be starting preschool with mommy!

This is our preschool corner. It's part of mommy's room!

 These are bulletin boards I did for Hubby's classroom since he's teaching Life Science and US History this year. I so enjoy doing creative things like this. I found the ideas on Pinterest, but added my own twist. (You can follow me here!)

The academy does offer a K4 program for 4 year olds, but the girls just weren't ready to go this year. In fact, not that we base our decisions on their opinions because come on they're 4, but I did ask them if they wanted to go to school or stay home with mommy and they chose mommy. So I get the pleasure of teaching them this year and I'm excited and a little nervous about it. We'll use the K4 Abeka program as well as Letter of the Week and other curriculum as we go. We're starting out with an "All about Me" theme in which I'm hoping to teach them about writing their names.

 Little E loved this twirly thing and climbing all over!

 Mommy got to enjoy some time at the park with the munchkins this week while Daddy had staff in-service. We enjoyed seeing the fish in the pond, playing on the playground and even meeting new friends. They love being outside and it's amazing what it has done for their growth. Of course the heat makes it difficult as it was around 90 degrees this day, so we ended up grabbing some chicken nuggets and ice cream after our park adventures. :)

Little E is definitely a mama's girl and loves to snuggle with me any chance she gets. She cozied right up for this picture. Even though she is a lot more on the go, she does have her moments when she just wants cuddles and snuggles. 

 After crossing this bridge Little E said she didn't like bridges anymore. She's not much for heights or things she can see through and walk across. (which neither is mommy.)

Big E was all about climbing and swinging and hanging on the monkey bars this day. And she did awesome! Of course mommy helped, because it's a scary thing swinging on those monkey bars. They do it often here at home on the playground, but need help. Big E's favorite color is pink and Little E's favorite is blue except she keeps switching and liking pink too, so who knows! LOL 

Marketing 101.1 Webinar

I share a bit about my story and how I got started working from home, and a little about life with my twins and working from home on the webinar here. Check it out!

Working At home Ideal For Many Reasons

Just some reasons why I work from home. Working from home may not suit every parent or mother out there. And I don't consider myself a full time work-at-home-mom because I do have a part-time out of the house job with teaching.

It takes a lot of work and planning to pull this off and I get a lot of mommy guilt, but my girls love imitating me and it's wonderful to be there for them for the important things and when they're sick I don't have to worry about calling off. And I don't worry about working weekends!

New Year, New Goals, New Ideas

I know that it has been nearly 2 years since I have updated this blog, but a lot has happened since that time and I've recently had some time to think and re-evaluate where I am in life. I will be picking the blog back up and hopefully beginning to publish again on a regular basis on the topic of family development.

I was recently named 1 of 5 women chosen to be torchbearers for the Born to Lead Campaign for 2018 and my topic is Family Development. I encourage you to join the campaign if you are a women in a place of leadership you can go to http://www.borntolead2018.com for more information and to sign up, just state that I sent you.

Something else huge that has happened in our family's life in the past year is that we moved from the state of Ohio to the state of North Carolina to teach in a Christian Day School. My husband earned his bachelor's degree in History in August of 2016 and had been substitute teaching in Ohio, and we both decided after praying and searching our hearts that it was time to make some changes in our family's lives. So, we took on the huge move of 6+ hours and a HUGE box truck to move all our belongings to North Carolina. 

It seemed like we had so much stuff still to pack on moving day even it was crazy! Stuff is still being found that was packed randomly. Big moves are rough. We even sorted through our storage unit and got rid of most of what was in it, donating it to a local thrift store.
 

We were welcomed to the area with a food pounding
and love offering from two of the churches
involved with the school where we teach. 

 If you have never moved, then you're missing out of the chaos and fun that it is. I found so many great ideas on Pinterest to try to help organize our move. We ended up literally moving in less than a month from an area where we had lived for more than 7 years of our married lives. You can see my Pinterest board here and follow it for moving ideas. We have moved several times in our married lives, but this move has been the biggest.

Just more of the chaos of moving!

First day of work at my new job! I am the
technology teacher for grades 1-11 as well as
the yearbook advisor/teacher for grades 10-11.

Our home decorated for fall a little early. Unfortunately the
mums didn't make it till the end of October. 

The girls were so excited to start doing preschool this year
with mommy as their teacher. They have learned to write the
letter "I" and have started learning the letter "U" that's about
as far as we have gotten. But Elayna can trace all the numbers,
draw a heart, draw a pretty good smiley face, and Elyssa, is
drawing hearts, circles and counting pretty good too. 

The girls love to dress up as princesses. These dresses have
seen better days and are about to head out the door. They were
Halloween costumes from a previous year and have been put to
good use, but they've been mended many, many times. 

The girls thoroughly enjoyed playing Owlette at
a friends' house on Thanksgiving. Mommy was
able to catch this look between them and just
thought it way too adorable. 

We celebrated Thanksgiving as a family on Black Friday, with
Daddy doing most of the cooking. He had been doing quite a
bit of that, but it's a new year and mommy has other plans. 

The girls got to be in their very first parade for
our church here to advertise our big Christmas
program called "Journey to Bethlehem" We
ministered to 6,444 people this year over the
course of 4 nights. It is a live drive thru nativity,
and the largest in the state of NC. 

Mommy and Daddy even got in on the Parade and the acting in Journeyto Bethlehem.