Stonefire Pizza

Tuesday night, we went to Stonefire Pizza for dinner. Daddy had never been there with us and Isabel didn't get a whole lot of running around in that day. So, this worked out well. We had fun, ate lots of food. We spent a little over 2 hours there.
Isabel's favorite thing was walking on the blocks. She also was able to follow my instructions and climbed top the top of the tall slide by herself, which meant I did not have to follow behind boosting her up to level.

Yesterday we went to the Y for our classes, then had snacks in the cafe with our friends and then went to the library to pick up some new books & videos. That evening we had dinner with Jeff, Lynn & Luz that I made.

Today we mostly stayed here except for a shopping trip to Target & Michaels to get some things for Jeff's house that he asked us to pick out. We did go outside during the morning to have some adventures in the woods & on the rocks. We also made some drawings on the driveway, including a hopscotch and four-square.

Not sure what is really on the docket for tomorrow.

We were hoping to know what our plans for the future were by tomorrow, but the other place is not deciding who they are offering a job to until Monday. There is a possibility that we are going to move back. Daddy had interviewed at a couple of places and has one offer and possibly another. This has been a stressful year and extremely stressful summer and as much as we like living here and like our friends and daddy enjoys his job, well, we can't go broke or crazy from stress. So, we'll see.

And I guess a strom ripped through out town. One of our neighbors called to say that our house was unharmed but that there are some big branches of ours down and they have trees of theirs that are down, one of which is through their garage roof. And there may be some down lines. Daddy called the utility companies and they basically said, Get In Line. And if anyone saw it or read it on CNN, there was a plane crash at the small airport (only 2 miles from our house) that went down and killed seven people. I don't know anymore details than what I read from the CNN article, but they were flying in for a meeting with a local company.

Reading to her Babies

Visiting the Great Grandparents

This morning we went to visit great grandma Mary & great grandpa Clarence. It was nice to see them again. Soon we are off & heading back to Wisconsin.

Last Evening

For grandma's bierthday we ate at Tejas in Edina. It was pretty good food and even though they were "kid-friendly", it was not the most toddler friendly place. We had to keep asking them to bring parts of her meal (since it included drink, & dessert as well) to keep her occupied since getting our food & check took a while. We eventually had to take her outside to see a nearby water fountain. So, of course, mommy & daddy didn't really get to taste too much of their food since we have to take turns keeping the child out of mischief. Oh - the life of living with a toddler. Afterwards we all came back to eat the cake Isabel & I made. I must say it was very good. The picture above is of Isabell walking with daddy and her cousin Travis as we left the restaurant.

Some More Pictures From Today

Gotta upload them while I have accesss to the wifi....man, have I mentioned I love wifi and miss it terribly!

We walked to the park nearby and as soon as we got there it started to pour. Isabel loved it. She loves playing in the rain & in puddles. Needless to say she will need a clothing change before we go out to eat for grandma's birthday tonight.

Family Weekend #2

Isabel woke up and when she saw it was raining she got so excited and wanted to get outside RIGHT AWAY. So, off come the jammies & out she goes in her diaper and bed head to splash in the water. There is also a little video of her splashing with grandma.

She also found the sombreros that Uncle Tony left at grandma's and she enjoys putting them on and mom has to wear the other one. The one picture she is also wearing daddy's shoes.

We made a German Chocolate Cake for grandma's birthday celebration this evening. Isabel helped sprinkle the pecans and pour everything into the bowl and mix it. She is so much better now and getting thing IN to the bowl when she pours them.
Rarely are there pictures of Isabel & I since I am the one taking the pictures. This is a picture that our friend Luanne took when we made jam recently.

Man, I Love Wifi!

I can't wait to have wifi back again. It rocks!

Anyways, these are some pictures from Wednesday. We went to Lyons Park in Muskego and it was quite hot there in the full sun, so we only stayed for a little while. Then we wentt o this country store place (I forget the name) that is basically like a FT farmer's market. We bought some fresh eggs there (from their chickens that Isabel got to see) and some cookies from their bakery and some yummy WI cherries. That country store had lots of picnic tables outside and a playset, so she was able to play there for a while. That evening we joined cousin Jeff & his daughter and her boyfriend out for dinner. It was very yummy.

Yesterday morning we met our friends Luanne & Lucie at Wirth Park. I don't have any pictures from there, but we had a lot of fun. It was a great day to be at an aquatic play center. After naptime we packed up and headed to MN (after some errand running.)

Slideshow from Last Weekend

Well, I have a couple of days with wifi now. So, here is the slideshow from the weekend with mommy's family.

Right now we are with daddy's family for a weekend visit. I will have some more pictures to post from this momentarily.

B&W Pictures from Today

Pictures from Today

Well, today we stayed home all morning waiting for the mail lady to bring our laptop Express Mail from grandma and grandpa's house. We forgot it there. Bah!

So, we got some good puzzle playing, painting, book reading, block building, coloring, & video watching in during that time.

This afternoon we went to Muskego County park to swim & play in the sand. I will have pictures from that later. We built rivers & lakes in the sand and floated our boats out to the pond/river.She did some swimming and we also watched the fish on the other side that were very friendly and seemed to want to be fed.

So, the pictures you see here are from painting this morning and a picture I tool from my camera phone that I sent to daddy. I took other pictures, but haven't gotten around to uploading them.

Later on we met up with our cousin Jeff and went our for dessert at the Gingerbread House. We had some very yummy desserts.

Family Weekend #1

There will be a slideshow coming sometime of other pictures from Sunday. This past weekend we visited Auntie Phanie & Uncle J on Saturday. We hung out with them and had lunch and then after naptime (Isabel), movie time (mommy & Auntie Phanie) and Wii time (daddy & Uncle J) we went to a park to play and after that we went to Nonna Maria to eat. After our day with them we drove to grandma and grandpa's house and spent the night there and all day Sunday with them. That evening mommy & daddy went to Auntie Razz's & Uncle Shane's house for drinks & conversation in their gazebo.

We had a picnic with lots of yummy food at George's Pond and went swimming. It was the three of us, grandma & grandpa, Uncle Al, Auntie Razz, Uncle Shane, & cousin Blake. We had a lot of fun. Isabel also got to enjoy lots of popsicles with grandpa and she enjoyed this.

This coming weekend we are headed to MN to see the other side of the family. And while we are there we will celebrate grandma's birthday. Isabel & I plan on baking her a cake (probably in the most simplest forms) on Friday.

Morning Explorations Slideshow

As promised.....

This Only Took FOREVER!

Well, enjoy these because you won't get anymore until tomorrow when I can upload the slideshow at Auntie Phanie's house and then not again until Monday & Wednesday next week when I have access to wifi.

Yesterday we explored the driveway of our cousin's house that we are staying at now. We picked blackberries (Isabel didn't care for them, but mommy thought they were yummy!), picked wildflowers (& arranged them in a vase in the house), found other treasures (nuts, rocks, sticks), found an ant colony, went for a little hike, crawled over rocks, learned about different leaves (I made chalk rubbings of them), checked out the neighbors corn, tried not to get bit by mosquitos, and pushed all our findings in the stroller. It was fun.

Later we went to the Gingerbread house and bought a minitaure rhubarb bundt cake. It was just too crowded & hot in there & not an environment conducive to a toddler that wants to touch everything.

After naptime we met up with cousin Jeff & Uncle Henry at Fountainhead Pool and we went swimming for a while. We enjoyed an ice pop & slushee while we there as well. Isabel loved swimming, so she had a blast.

This morning we are going to go check out an upper furnished duplex in Mke that we can rent M2M. It sucks for Isabel & I that is it away from our friends, but we gotta do what we gotta do. We can move in there on August 1st and have the cats with us. The lower is someone daddy works with & her parents live in the upper but are leaving to travel the US in their RV for 9 months. Daddy already saw it, but we need to go check it out to see if we are ok with it (& the nieghborhood).

Pictures to Come

Well, I have some pictures from this morning but I am just not getting them uploaded with this dial-up today. So, I will have to try later. I have a slideshow as well, but that will have to wait until Saturday when we go to Auntie Phanie's house and can use her high-speed.

Slideshow & Video from Last Night

As promised....here is the slideshow and video.

Kids' Night at the Zoo

We met our friends Lynn & luz tonight at the Mke Cty Zoo for one of their July Kids's Nights. It was a lot of fun. Crowded, but fun. Isabel needed it to get out and run around & dance and get some energy out as our day was pretty relaxed. All we pretty much did was go to storytime at the New Berlin library. Other than that we just hung out at my cousin's house until we went to the zoo. I will have a short video of her chasing the cheetah to post tomorrow, as well as a slide show. This was all I could manage to post with dial-up.

Tomorrow we are going to the Y for our classes and then we are going to a playgroup in the afternoon. Hopefully we will make it back to the zoo in the evening for their Zoofari concert (series.)

Well, better get this posted before the dial-up boots me off. It does that often.

Friday Pictures

These are some pictures from yesterday. This is her new backpack. She likes that it has buckles on the front. She is really into buckling things lately. We bought this at a rummage sale and it is in excellent condition. It has pockets on both sides for water bottles, which is why I like it because when the two of us go places we can have both of our drinks easily available. Daddy suggested we get a backpack to use with the umbrella stroller a friend gave us (as ours had the seat rip) and it doesn't have the basket in the bottom like ours did (which was awesome), so now we have to backpack it. Doesn't she look so little with that backpack on?
I had read in numerous places about letting kids paint with water. Honestly, I thought it was a bunch of hooey. Why would a kid be entertained by using water to paint? Seems pointless when a kid has perfectly good paints to use. But on a whim yesterday afternoon I thought I would grab a paint brush and gift it to her. It kept her busy for a good 15 minutes, which is great for a toddler. She didn't seem to bore of it. I guess I was wrong. She had fun and so I guess we will paint with water more often.
Isabel just loves popcorn. I know kids are supposed to wait until 4 years old to have it (choking hazard with the hulls, I guess.) Anyways, a friend was babysitting her and didn't know about the 4-year recommendation and gave Isabel popcorn. She loved it. So, now we have popcorn as a snack often. Isabel will say, "I love corn!" She's so passive-aggressive, she never says " Can I have corn? or I want corn!" It's always "I love corn (or fill-in with whatever it is that she wants.)"
After dinner last night I gave her some chocolate pudding. Yes, I know the last 3 series of pictures all have in her suit. She was outside going in & out of the pool for 2 hours Anyways, she does a good job getting herself messy when she eats. We have not taught her to eat like a little lady yet. Daddy bathed her in the kiddie pool afterward to clean off the pudding. After that we went to Books & Co. for their pajama party storytime. That was a nice time. Then we came home and she played her new computer game with daddy and mommy read her more stories. She was a very silly girl last night.

Making Strawberry Jam

Today Isabel and her friend Lucie made strawberry jam with their moms. The girls put the jars in the kettle (to boil), picked leaves of the strawberries, and helped a bit with the food processor (not too much as it was loud & it kinda scared them.) We left them out of the cooking & filling stage of jam making. All our lids sealed and hopefully our jam will set nicely. Tomorrow the girls will clean up the jam (from where I spilled filling them) and put labels on and have some to eat. I sampled a little bit as I was filling and I think we did a great job! We hope to get some good pictures tomorrow of the girls together with their jars of jam.

Zoofari Concert #3

We went to our third Zoofari concert. This time some friends joined us. I was able to get pictures of Isabel with her friend Drew. Although, her friend Taryn was there as well and you can see her in the little video I took of them dancing around a tree. Playing with the trees at the zoo was apparently the fun thing to do. In the picture above, Isabel & Drew were trying to remove the pole. Silly two-year olds.

It was a good concert, although much MUCH busier than the last 2 weeks. I am not sure if it was because they are a popular band or maybe it was just such a great night to be out. Next week we will get there earlier (if traffic will let us) and we'll bring in our own food. I waited in line a long time to get our food & then again to pay for our food. It was crazy.


This is a project we did the other. I had a picture of Isabel & Rachael enlarged and then she decorated the frame with jewels and she will give it to Rachael when she gets back from vacation.

Wee Wonders Class #2 at Retzer Nature Center

We had her second Wee Wonders Class at the Retzer Nature Center. It is a once a month class. It is pretty fun class and we both learn a lot from it. Today's class theme was "Under a Log" and we did just that....look under logs & rocks for living creatures. We found lots of roly-poly bugs, slugs, worms, ants, a spider, and some bug the teacher didn't know what it was. By the end Isabel was brave enough to hold a worm and throw it in the compost bin. She actually threw about 3 worms in the compost bin, but before that she would only quickly touch it and say "sorry". She had fun with the magnifying class; each kid got one to use. The mosquitos were plentiful, but we had on bug spray. Although I have to say that the bug spray has been bothering me since being back. It's amazing how much more sensitive (or at least notice it) to chemicals you become when you don't regularly use them.

This is just a fun collage of a bunch of pictures of her learning today. I highly recommend taking your 2-4 year old to this class if you can. Our next class will be in August. I can't remember what the theme title is, but I know we are getting wet.

Isabel has been getting a little addicted to a Dora video here and will frequently request "watch Dora again." She never really watched Dora before, although we are always checking out Dora books from the library. So, we decided to fill up Rachael's kiddie pool so that I could convince her to go outside & play. Pretty soon we are going to go meet some friends to go for a walk.

We have been talking to Isabel about her favorites lately. If you ask her, these are a few things she usually responds with:

• Favorite Number: 2
• Favorite Color: Green
• Favorite Animal: Cow
• Favorite Shape: Circle

She pretty consistently picks green as her favorite color and usually if given a choice of items to pick out, she will pick the one that is green.

Science Experiment

Learning is fun!

Happy 4th of July (& Birthday to Uncle Al!)

We did a little science experiment we saw on Peep where they froze toys in ice and then watched to see which melted fastest & learn that the ice melts when it gets warm. She had fun pushing the ice across the table, although the ice never got to fully melt as she started to eat the ice (which you will see pictures in the slideshow.) She did have fun. These were toys she got from the library for the reading program. After we were finished we put them back in 2 different size containers and will try the experiment that way (this way was ice in the same size containers.)

Happy Birthday to Uncle Al!

Today we hung out most of the day until about 4pm and then stayed for about 4 hours with our friends and grilled out and ate lots of nice food and the kids played. The guys played cornhole.

Reading a Dinosaur Book

This may be took dark to see much, but most of the point of this video is to listen to her read to her dolly.

After the Silliness....

She finally calmed down after a lot of silliness that including jumping, flips, tickling bellies, and getting sacked with a pillow (she thinks having a pillow fight is her curling up in a ball, laughing her little butt off, having me toss pillows on top of her) and watched an episode of Peep. she is becoming such an active little toddler.

Tag!

I have been tagged by Skye......and instead of re-typing everything I will just copy & paste from her blog.

Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 songs you are embarrassed to admit to others you like and tell why.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

My Five Most Embarassing Songs I Enjoy:
* Baby Got Back - fond memories of it from high school & I know all the words
* Come On Eileen - fond memories from the sorority days; we have a dance to this
* Chubbawamba - it just makes me smile
* Mambo #5 - I think of Kendra singing this to me when we went out dancing because my name is in it.
* What a Girl Wants - I just love to sing this out loud
(I notice a lot of people list as these are the songs on their ipod, which I don't have, but they are songs I enjoy nonetheless.)

Tagged People:
* Drea - a wonderful mommy who's blog I read (both sons' blogs)
* Jamie - a very organized and loving mom in my playgroup who has incredible patience
* Audra - another mom in our playgroup who has these beautiful girls that are so sweet
* Kristal - another mom in playgroup with beautiful girls. It's hard to tell if they look more like mommy or daddy.
* Jeanette - a friend in Newcomer's who works hard at raising awareness for food allergies
* Lori - a close mom friend in playgroup who is just so sweet and thoughful
* Kendra - my dear friend who has the biggest heart that I know and is so beautiful
* Alison - I have never actually met her, but I have been reading her the blog the longest of all.

Sunset Park Slide Show

Now, doesn't that look like a fun park to visit. This afternoon we plan to meet our playgroup at Fowler Park, although that might change if we can go see a couple of rentals I emailed about.

We did make it to the concert at the zoo last night, but only stayed 40 minutes due the rain. We wimped out in favor of dryer fun inside.

Sunset Park

Isabel & I went to Sunset Park in Genesee. It was one of the first parks we visited when we moved to WI. We love it. It is such a good park for climbers & sliders. There are swings there and a nice sandbox with diggers as well. There is a 2-sided covered pavilion and soccer courts and basketball courts and sand volleyball courts. It is really a nice park. Of course, Miss Daredevil likes to spend most of her time on the bigger stuff.
So, this is the play equiptment. You can see a picture of the swings & sandbox in the slide show that will be posted. Remember to click on the picture to make it bigger. There is another park in this community as well. We haven't been to it yet. Both are near our church, so maybe we'll go after/before church this weekend. Stay tuned for the slide show.

Oh - Isabel is on to 5 word sentences now. It was just a week and a half ago that I first noted her first 4-word sentence, and now it's onto to 5. This morning she said, "I want bread too please."

And if someone is looking for a very fun book to buy someone or check out from the library, you should check out: How Many Bugs in a Box?
We have it checked out from the library right now and it is her new favorite book. She often reads it out loud to herself (well, she can't read yet, although she is practicing sounding out things, but she recites from memory and says what the pictures look like.)

The Bug Ball (Dance)

This afternoon we went to the Bug Ball. It was a kids' dance sponsored by a local library. Isabel had fun there. Here is a short video of her dancing there. Soon we are off to the zoo to go hear a band there and for Isabel to do more dancing. Some of her friends are supposed to meet us there, hopefully they do so that she has someone besides mom & dad to dance with.
The kids did the limbo, hokey pokey, chicken dance, twist, and danced to lots of other fun songs.

We've been busy....As always...

Monday was a little relaxing and we hung out most of the day, but yesterday we went to the library for storytime and met a lot of our friends there. Then later in the day we had a playdate with some friends and after than we went for a walk with our friend Mary & Ben down the Glacial It was a nice walk but would have been longer if the skeeters weren't trying to eat us alive.

This morning we had Isabel's 2-year doctor appt. The doc was double-booked so she was way behind and we were late for Isabel's class at the Y.....mommy missed her class altogether and just had to go to the fitness center to run/walk. Afterwards we sat in the cafe with our friends and had a snack. Then we went to buy some food and when we left the store it was pouring and we got quite wet. It is raining again now.

After Isabel's nap today we hope to go to the Bug Ball (dance) that the library is sponsoring and later on tonight we hope to meet daddy at the concert at the zoo, but we'll see how the weather is later one. I hope to have some pictures & video of her dancing events. So, stay tuned.