Mommy & Me Saturday

Well, today was mommy & me day (wait, isn't that every day?) Anyways, we started out the day by doing some grocery shopping, then we headed to godmother Jessi's mom's house. The three of us (Jessi, Mary & I) were making these paper roses for Jessi's wedding in June. My job was to cut out all the pieces while they assembled and painted. I haven't gotten to see the completly finished product because the paint needs to dry and we left around 2:30 so that I could get Isabel home to take some sort of nap, which I successfully managed. Actually, we both got a nice nap.

Anyways, for dinner went just down the road to Subway and shared a sandwich and then went to Cabela's for an hour. She says it is a zoo there, so I tell her to call it Cabela's Zoo. It bothers me to have her think it's a real zoo whn other than the fish, everything else is dead. But we had fun and since things are are opposite parts of the store she gets to get rid of some energy, and to play in the tents we have to go upstairs & back down again.

I took this plain black t-shirt from Target and created it into something fun & special with some DMC floss, a needle & buttons. I thought it turned out nicely. Isabel wore it today and she got compliements on it, then I owned up to it being my handiwork. I did it yesterday while she was napping; it took about an hour and 15 minutes.

Tomorrow it will be church and working on removing more wallpaper from the kitchen. Daddy will be here to help this time, so hopefully it will go quicker.

Next week, Isabel & I and a couple of friends are going to go see Disney on Ice at the Target Center. I won a 4-pack of tickets. Daddy wen to pick them up today, so I haven't been able to check yet how good of seats they are.

Project Day

We have had a busy morning. We were supposed to have a playdate, but we rescheduled that because of the weather we are expecting. So, I planned some projects with stuff I had here to keep us busy this morning.

The first project was painting wth puffy paint on a t-shirt. I picked up this t-shirt earlier this week on clearance at Target. I actually picked up a few because I was planning on customizing a couple, one to give Isabel for her birthday and one for a friend's birthday. Anyways, this was an extra one that I was just going to have her wear plain, but decided to let her have fun with it. I traced around her hands with the puffy paint and she squirted on the other spots & then used her fingers to spread it around. She waned to wear it right away, but I told her it had to dry and she could wear it tomorrow.


The next project was based on the book Seeds, Seeds, Seeds that we have been reading. One of the projects in there was decorating a cardboard picture frame with bean seeds. So, we did just that. The glue was drying faster than she could stick them on so she didn't get all of them on. In the book they put in a picture of the bear with the grass seeds he grew. I think I will take another picture of Isabel soon with her plants. She has one pea plant growing and we are still waiting on the beans and any other peas. She had planted 3 seeds in each.

Last night I made her some flashcards of stages of seed growth, as featured in the same book. They are suppsed to put them in order. We were playing with them this mornig and were just working on naming the parts.

Our final project before lunch was stamping some cards. We each did our own. She was so excited o do some stamping. I don't stamp often and I don't get creative with the cards. I pretty much just stamp an image. I just don't have time with a toddler to cut out lots of other piecese of paper/ribbon/embelishments to make really creative ones.

She had to set them out to dry as well. Not that they needed drying, she just thought they did.

The snow is really coming down right now. It will be interesting to see how much we really get.

From Monday....

This is a picture I took Monday with my camera phone. Monday was a nice Mommy/Isabel day. We went to the gym and afterwards we went to the library and played for an hour (& got new books). What you see pictured is on ONE of the bins (of two) of blocks that we made into a playhouse/castle (usually what she calls them). They have lots of toys there. It's so much fun to go there and just play sometimes.

We played with the dinosaurs for a while too and she would make them go "Rawr!" because that is the sound a dinosaur makes, but when I would make them fight she would pull them away and say, "No, they kiss!" and would make them kiss. Then she lined up all her mommy, daddy, & baby dinosaurs to watch a concert. She has really started to get quite an imagination.

Today, I watched her "call" grandma & grandpa and have a whole conversation. Mostly it was about mommy's birthday (she's obsessed with birthdays these days since we just made a card for grandpa's birthday, then left grandpa a voicemail saying Happy Birthday and then yesterday we went to a birthday party for her friend Aleyah.) So, she's got birthdays on the brain.

Playing Outsid

I decided we better get outside & play today and enjoy the somewhat spring-like weather and nicce sunshine before we are house-bound tomorrow. They are predicting 8+ inches for us. Yuck! I am guessing our playdate for tomorrow will have o get rescheduled.

Anyways, we went out with chalk & she "drew on mommy"; she thought it was hilarious to draw on my shadow and them she started jumping on my shadow and thought that was funny too. We played in the rocks and I wrote numbers on all the (top) layer of landscaping rocks in the driveway. It was a good way to help her with counting. She does good with 1-13, but then after 13 she always skips to 16. So, we gotta keep praciticing so she stops discriminating against 14 & 15. BTW - we have 52 landscaping stones around the top layer.


She asked me to make a hopscotch and she tries do that as best as she can. And four-square too, but we just hop around that, we haven't graduated to using a ball with that yet. And then there was jumping in the puddles, which she had a lot of fun with. I got a good mid-air jump picture. Of course, a change of pants was required after playing outside. I managed to get all my birdfeeders refilled as well. I actually got to them before they were all empty -- lucky birds!

After tomorrow all our chalk creations wil be covered with snow & ice.

Making a B-day Card for Grandpa

Gramps has a birthday on Monday, so she was coloring a card for him. I took a little video of her (actually it's almost 2 minutes long) as she colors & we sing Happy Birthday. The above picture was taken after the video when she wanted to say "Cheese!"

I also did a video of her singing the clean-up song with me.

We had a good day today. We went to gymnastics open gym this morning and this afternoon we had a friend over for a playdate and the girls played wonderfully together. I think it helps that they are almost the exact same age, there was no one bossing around the other one.

ECFE Crazy Costume Party

We went to a special event that our ECFE was having. It was a crazy costume party. Isabel's wig was a big hit. Everyone loved it. I was surprised that she kept it on the whole time. She never wore it before; it was a post-Halloween purchase at 75% off.

As usual they had plenty of crafts & activities (& snack too!) and we had a lot of fun.

Hanging Out at Home

These are pictures from yesterday. So, it's 2 days in a row in a skirt. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Letting her pick out her own clothes is sometimes interesting, but lately she has been taking gentle encouragment so she doesn't look too crazy & is dressed warm enough. We spent most of the day at home yesterday because we had the plumber here to finish. Now all our bathrooms are back to being fully functional again. Yeah!

We did get out of the house to go to the gym. She enjoys kid care there once again (well, has for several months now). For period of a couples months or so when she really in the middle of potty training she didn't want to go and would cry. Of course, they could calm her and she was fine but would be really subdued. Now she gets out there and plays with all the toys & kids. A friend told me that her oldest did that when she was potty training and once her kid mastered the potty, everything was fine.

Happy Thursday!

Isabel poses by some singing Care Bears I got for her. They sing/talk together. It's pretty neat. They sing songs she knows so she loves to sing along with them. This morning we went to playgroup at McD's and this evening we are going to a Crazy Costume Party at ECFE. I will let her where whatever she has in her costume bin. I am afraid she will have on too much that I won't be able to buckle her in. She picked out a skirt to wear today, as well as yesterday. I'll have pictures from yesterday to post soon.

I Forget We Have A.....

Pool table up on the third floor. Daddy is annoyed that we had the roof leak (or something) and caused some issue with the ceiling/wall they worked so hard to put in. It's not a big area and we could easily clean it up, we just haven't. Anyways, Larry decided to go up there and Isabel wanted to follow him and it reminded her that we have a pool table, so she wanted to play. (This was yesterday, for some reason blogger wouldn't upload my pictures, so I had to wait.) Anyways, I brought up the vacuum and did some dusting while she played pool. She was trying every way she could think of to play with the pool balls, or as she likes to call them, "marbles".

The other night/day she was wearing her "grandma slippers", as she calls them. They are the slippers that my mom crocheted for her & gave them to her for her first xmas. They just really fit her as of this Christmas.

Preschool sign up is upon us. The preschool within our public school doesn't sign up until the end of March and there is only one section for her age. The preschool teacher says I shouldn't worry, that as long as I am there on sign up day I will get in. But I do worry because all the private preschools in the neighboring town have either already begin sign up, will have it next Monday or in a couple of weeks. I really want her to go to the one in town, but I feel like I have all my eggs in one basket by waiting and I don't really want to lose the money for registration fee somewhere else.

We do our ECFE classes here with the preschool teachers in the preschool room and we really love it. Both preschool teachers and one of the aides are all licensed teachers, which is not a requirement for teaching preschool. I did some reading about requirements for teaching preschool, and in a setting that would receive federal funding they are required to have a HS diploma and a certification in Early Childhood (just means taking some classes - but not necessarily a AA degree), but that does not mean a BA/BS or a teaching certificate. And in a private preschool that has no federal funding, they only need to possess a high school diploma and no certification is needed. So, having 2 licensed teachers and an aide that is also a licensed teacher (there is also a 2nd aide too) is awesome! I want that for my child.

Happy Valentine's Day

For breakfast I made pancakes that said I love you and for supper we bought a heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's (we do this every year.) We also went to Just Food Co-op today and had chocolate dipped strawberries (all organic! the strawberries were so juicy!) and they had a photo booth that we had fun with too. So, maybe later I will get to scanning in that series of pictures.

We spent the morning at the MN Zoo. They have a Tropical Beach Party event for the three-day weekend. We played in the HUGE sandbox for 45 minutes right when we got there. It was fun to play in the sand in February in MN. We also checked out a bunch of animals.

Projects Slideshow

Tonight

Here's our spread from our valentine playgroup.

Tonight we did a couple of projects. The first was to plant some peas and beans. She is holding a couple pea seeds in her hand. I made a slideshow of these projects, but also decided to post a few of my favorites here. We did these plantings (even though it's February) because of our monthly theme. Beans & peas both germinate rather quickly, so she will get to see something sprouting through the dirt in a week to 10 days. She is going to love that.

Here she is posing in front of her newly planted seeds and also her Amaryllis plant. It is doing very well and she is very proud of it. She waters it and loves to show people her plant when they come over. She is going to be very excited when it blooms.

We also made these birdfeeders from a recipe in the Family Fun magazine. And unfortunately they are not staying together after baked them. I kinda hopes she forgets about it and doesn't ask about it, but I think she will get that they broke and that's ok.

Tomorrow, I think, we are going to go to the zoo. They are having a Tropical Beach Party this weekend and as part of that they will have a huge sandbox. How much fun is it to play in a huge sandbox in February!

Valentine's

Here is a picture of Isabel opening the valentine she received from grandma & grandpa. She was very happy about the chocolate inside.

We went to open gym today and te gym gave all the kids heart stamps and a box of candy hearts. And her friend Bella was there passing out valentines too. She also got a valentine in the mail from cousin Jayden earlier this week, or maybe it was late last week....I don't know, anyways she got one.

In about 15 minutes we have a bunch of friends coming over here for a valentine party playdate. I made heart shaped sugar cookies with candy sprinkles, heart cut-out of jello jigglers & heart cutouts of watermelon. I also made apple-raspberry juice (because of the color).

I am uploading some videos of Isabel from the past couple weeks:

Isabel Playing

Waterdome Waterpark

Go, Stop, Slooooooow

Sunning....

This is a picture from the Waterdome. This waterpark is a big dome of windows so that you can sun year round. It was so nice to be able to lay out. This feature alone is worth the trip there in the winter.

Slideshow from the Waterdome

Several other pictures from the waterdome that are not featured below, in addition to th ones below.

Waterdome at the Wilderness

This is pictures from the third indoor waterpark they have here. They have 3 indoor & 3 outdoor (obviously not in use this time of year) waterparks. This turned out to be our favorite of the thre waterparks, too bag Lori & Rachael missed it. Actually, it was our favorite because it was just what Isabel wanted to do. When the water was calm it was a big huge swimming pool (since the majority of this waterpark is the wave pool) and then when the waves were on she loved to go out and crash into the waves. We should have known this would be her favorite. She's our little girl who loves to crash into us with her ride-on car or when she is swinging. She thinks crashing is hilarious, and crashing into waves is equally hilarious. She couldn't stop laughingwhen we would get plummeled with waves. Plus they has a small young kids play area (for under 48") and she enjoyed that a lot too.

We will only have time to hit one waterpark tomorrow before we head back home and this is the one we plan to go to.

We will be missing gymnastics this week, but will be back in time to go to ECFE class.


Check out Facebook to see a few other pictures I didn't put on here. One of our friend Lori & Rachael and some pictures from eating at Moose Jaw Pizza & Brewing Company.

Wilderness Resort in WI Dells

We are about to go out to the third indoor waterpark, so I won't write much here. We went to 2 of them already. The above picture is just from one of them.

Rachael & Isabel at the arcade.

The lighting is swful for taking pictures in the dry park. Oh well, I might try to get more when we go back again. It's prety fun. There is lots of climbing & sliding to be done for both kids and adults.

Lori & Rachael and all 3 of us got adjoining rooms. One was a suit w/ full kitchen and the other was a double queen with sofa. It was nice to have the adjoining rooms. Not sure we could get the same suite adjoining as I think the large number of rooms is just several of these adjoined together. Anyways, our suite is pretty nice. We have a full kitchen with dining room and living room (murphy bed in the living room for Isabel to sleep on) and a king bed in the separate bedroom with a HUGE bathroom of the bedroom. There is also a half bath off the kitchen. The room is pretty impressive.

Ok - back to the waterparks. We are going to the Wild Waterdome this time.

Clean-up Song

Lately Isabel has been enjoying singing the cleanup song as we, well, cleanup. This isn't a video of her, but you get the idea.

Saturday Before Vacation

We were a bit artistic today. This mornng we went outside to "spray" paint the snow and fill up our bird feeders.

This evening we did a full body outline and colored it in. She would explain parts (ears, chin, eyebrows, fingernails, shoes, pants, belly button, etc.) that she was drawing as she drew them.

We plan to leave tomorrow after church to head to WI Dells for 2 nights. We are meeting our friends Lori & Rachael there (John will be in a different state for something for work). So, stay tuned for some pictures after we return. I don't know that I will get to them while we are there.

Picture from a few days ago

This is a picture from a few days ago. She is wearing a sweatshirt that we bought for her with xmas money from grams and gramps.

Sledding, Ice Skating, Swinging & Sliding

We did it all at the park this afternoon. It was so nice to get out & move around. After we went down on the sled once she noticed the ice rinks and asked to go skating. Luckily I had decided to just keep the sled & skates in the truck so we woul have them to use whenever. So, we did some ice skating. She lasted longer & did more on her own this time. Then we went back to doing more sledding and then finally over to the park to play on the equiptment. They expanded the warming house hours for the snowpark, so we were able to use that. It's such a nice asset to the community.

February Theme: Fruits & Vegetables

We started our monthly theme a day early. We went to the library and checked a bunch of new books:
* Vegetables by Emily Green
* Green Beans by Elizabeth Thomas
* Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert
* Apples, Apples, Apples by Nancy Wallace
* Seeds, Seeds, Seeds by Nancy Wallce
* I Eat Vegetables! by Hannah Tofts
* I Eat Fruits! by Hannah Tofts

I am really enjoying Nancy Wallace as a kids author. She wrote Paperwhite, which we read last month and did several of the things she mentioned in that book. I hope she has written a lot of books. We will do many of the items she mentions in Seeds, Seeds, Seeds. I think we save the stuff in the apples book for the fall, as they are more appropriate for then since we would need to go apple picking.

Last night we went grocery shopping to buy a bunch of fruits & vegetables. We are going to be trying several new things and we will be saving the seeds from many of them so that we can add them to a poster we will create (idea from the Seeds book). Plus we get to try new things and talk about all the fruits & veggies & their parts as we cook and eat them.

I need to look up some new songs to teach her that talk about fruits & veggies. She really enjoyed the snowman/rabbit song we learned last month.

We will make a collage of fruits & veggies and we're going to be doing a lot of cooking and eating. Yum! The other thing we are going to do this month is grow alfafa sprouts. I bought some seeds form the natural foods store we go to.

I am sure I will print off some coloring sheets. I have one already to use when we need too. I plan to do the color change celery experiment. She will think that is kinda neat I believe. And we;ll make some crafts with dry beans, count & sort dry beans as well. I also think I will try making stamps out of potatoes (I've never done that before) so we can do a stamping art project.

Some songs I found online:

Two Big Lemons (Sung to: This Old Man)
Way up high, in a tree (hold hands up as high as possible)
Two big lemons smiled at me (put hand on cheeks smile)
So I shook that tree with all my power; (Pretend to shake a tree)
Down came the lemons, whoa, they were SOUR!! (make sour face)

Five Little Pumpkins
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate, (hold hands up)
The first one said "oh my its getting late," (hands on cheeks)
The second one said "there's a chill in the air," (hug self)
The third one said "but we don't care," (shrug)
The fourth one said "we're ready for some fun," (jump)
The fifth one said "lets run, run, run," (run in place)
So woo went the wind, and out went the lights, And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight (sit down).

Red is an Apple
Red is an apple
Yellow is the sun
Blue is the sky
And purple is a plum
Orange is an orange
Green is a tree
Black as the sky
I know my colors as you can see!

Plus, we have Valentine's Day this month, so we'll do some things rlated to that.
Down came the lemons, whoa, they were SOUR!! (make sour face)

Growing Up

Well, we've turned another corner in growing up. So far she has gone an entire week with no overnight accidents. She had been doing well with this, but would have some accidents. Well, she did so well this week we decided to switch to no more diapers or pull-ups at all and wear underwear to bed. I thought for sure this would bite me in the butt and she would have an accident. But so far, so good. I do have a liquid-resistant fabric mattress pad on her bed. She is very proud of the fact that she "stays dry all night" and will come tell you just that.

She still likes a little assistance getting onto the potty, so she is not completly independent when it comes to the bathroom. So, now w/o a diaper on, she wakes you up in the morning to go potty when she gets up. Actually, I think she could do the potty completly independent but just doesn't want to yet.

Last night we took her shopping to let her pick out some new underwear, kind of a reward. She was very excited, as mommy had picked out the other underware she has. She picked out some Tinkerbell underwear. She also really wanted some new socks, which we obliged. She seems t go through socks since if they get a little bit wet she wants them replaced, and because the cats seem to drag the water dish across the floor spilling water out, we tend to get wet socks often.

Winterfest at River Bend Nature Center

Today we spent some time at River Bend Nature Center for Winterfest. The first thing we did was go on a horse drawn sleigh ride. Isabel kept calling it a hayride; I suppose sleigh ride & hay ride sound the same. I had never been on an actual sleigh pulled by horses. It seems like there is usually never enough snow, so it does end up being a hay ride.

In the Big Woods Ampitheater they were roastin marshmallows. That was such a fun treat. It made us want to go camping, but certainly not in the winter. We aren't crazy. I think this was Isabel's first roasted marshmallow. She was messy and our jackets and her mittens now need to be washed.

We did some sledding. This wasn't actually the sleddng hill, we just decided to sled down it. It went fast and we kept our legs out to help slow us down and steer us. But it was qute fun. Isabel didn't care for riding with daddy though, because his big feet kicked up a bunch of snow and it ll went into her face. That ended sledding.

They had a big snow hill there that they dug a snow cave into. That was fun for the kids to go into.

They also had food & activities inside. They had a whole bunch of stampers that were of animals tracks. So, that was a neat way to learn that. We also made paper chain and watched the birds.

We definitly had a fun time.

Benefit

After the Nature Center we stopped at the school where there was a benefit being held for a local family whose dad has cancer & thye have young kids. We don't know them, but we went to offer our support. Isabel enjoyed getting her face painted & the balloon sculpture she got. They also were serving chili & had a bake sale, which we bought serveral things from, and a silent auction. We left when there was over an hour left of the auction and we have not received a call yet saying we won anything. Oh well, at leats w helped bid some things up then.