Sunday

We did family photos ourselves on Sunday to use for our Christmas cards and give away individual photos of the kids. We wanted to have Skye take pictures, but that isn't in the budget so we will wait until this spring to have her take pictures of 4-year old Isabel and 6-month old Henry and family pictures. So, this is Isabel's 3 1/2 year old picture. I just ordered prints online to give our to family.

She wore several outfits on Sunday. She likes to stay in her jammies as long as possbile (who doesn't) and then she picked out her outfit for the day. She picked out a striped top, tights, & socks (she figured because they were all stripes that they matched) and some solid shorts. Later in the day she put on her Christmas outfit for pictures & we went out later since we were all clean & dressed up nicely.

We were quite crafty on Sunday. Well, mommy & Isabel were crafty while daddy & Henry took a nap. This first craft is a paper chain advent calendar. I found all the ideas for all three crafts online in different places, but because I closed the windows and I am sleep-deprived I cannot remember what the urls were. But you can get the idea of how these were all made by looking at them. I don't know that any had directions either. I think they were all pictures anyways. On the paper chain advent calendar (it's 25 links) we wrote activities or getting something from the candy dish or extra hugs/kisses on each of them. She still has the advent calendar I made her last year which will have chocolate in it (which reminds me, I need to put the chocolate in there tonight). These are mostly activities, which I also happened to correlate with things I already have planned, like visiting Santa or writing a letter to santa or a visit to the library, etc.Isabel helped me come up with what to write on each.

This was pretty fun & simple. It was based just on a picture and then I just googled "cone pattern" to get the larger pattern and then free-handed making it smaller to have 2 different sizes of cones to decorate. When we made this I really got to see her creativity. On the first one she put a star at the top and then proceeded to put 4 more stars on the top and then decorate the rest. The the other two she wanted them to be "different" and she put other shapes at the top of the tree.

She wanted to continue being different and she wanted to make her own design with the strips I precut. She made 2 of the cards and I did the others. I figure these cards we will use to attach to some gifts we give. She also made a bunch of stamped Christmas cards a couple weeks ago. Anyways, I have to wonder if the reason why the teacher said she had trouble following a pattern was because she wanted to be "different". She followed the pattern just fine when she made her card, but she was not happy about it. Apparently, she must have quite the artist spirit in her.

Start of the Holiday Season

This morning while daddy & Henry took a morning nap, we made puppy chow. Since we were waiting for daddy to put up the tree, she asked that we make a Christmas treat. It is very yummy and every time I walk by the bowl I grab a handful.

The kids have their own small trees upstairs in the hallway by their rooms and I let Isabel decorate hers completly, well, I put on the star & pearls. She put on the lights, garland & ornaments.

This afternoon we decorated the main level with christmas decorations and put up the xmas tree. It looks nice.

My Baby Girl

Pictures from SMM

These are all pictures that are in the slideshow (below), but I know some have a hard time viewing the slideshow so I wanted to make up some collages. There are many more pictures in the slideshow, but these were my favorites.

I have not had to go anywhere really that was just me & the 2 kids, but I came to many realizations while all four of were at the Science Museum yesterday since until he can't start solids & is exclusively breastfed. Some day soon (hopefully) I will be on my own for these activities and will have to figure it out.

Science Museum of Minnesota

We went here yesterday with the kids.

Crafty Girl

Yesterday was filled with crafts & projects. She & I did the snowman craft together, it makes a magnetic picture frame. She made hers and I made one for Henry. Now I just need to get some pictures of them to put in there. She also made several other "projects" (as she likes to call them) by herself. Actually, she is always making projects and going through glue like it's going out of style. I kinda wish I would have stocked up more on glue during back to school sales.

Crafts & a Playdate

These are all pictures from several different days.

Since our next holiday is Thanksgiving, we have been making turkey crafts to decorate our dining room picture window. After next week we will begin our Christmas crafts.

The top picture is a toilet paper roll turkey.

This turkey hat was made tonight when we went to the Wee Pals childcare & preschool open house and Run, Yell, Tell Puppet Show (teaching kids about strangers & bad touch). It was a free event and it's a good thing to start teaching kids at this young age about being able to say no and getting permission from a caretaker before accepting anything from anyone.

Isabel got this sun catcher kit as a present from her friend Gavin after Henry was born.

Now that Isabel has been feeling well we have been working to fill up her social calendar, although it has been tricky since other kids have gotten sick. But we did have some friends over yesterday to play in the bounce house. It was nice for her to burn off some energy and play outside.

Saturday, November 14th

Isabel wanted me to take a picture of her with dolly.

This morning it was girls morning out. We went to Lowe's for the Build & Grow Clinic where she made a garage that came with a little car. Then we went to the open house for Tri-M Graphics and we got some snacks and got to do 3 make & takes. I let her complete them with as minimal supervision as possible. She ate the candy cane as soon as we got home & she showed daddy her craft. I don't think she realizes the snowman has chocolate in it.

Sunday, November 8th

Here is a picture of Isabel hanging out in Henry's room as I take pictures of him. Even though all these pictures are indoors, we did get outside on this 70-degree day, but she didn't want me taking pictures of her outside. She actually hid in the closet when I told her I was bringing my camera outside. We went outside and were bug hunters. We did capture a daddy long legs and put it in her bug house. And we blew a bunch of bubbles.

Isabel thought that Larry needed to look pretty and put some of her necklaces on him. If you look closely you will see he has a pearl necklace on too.

Isabel really loves her brother. She wants to hug & kiss him all the time.

Yesterday

She had preschool yesterday, but seems to be getting stir-crazy when she is used to go-go-going all the time with mom and now we have been at home so much this week. Since we weren't going out to playgroups or having playdates really this week, she has started to ask me to set some up.

Today, she did have one with her friend Cole and tomorrrow she will have one with her friend Amelia. And todat daddy took her to gymnastics open gym & I took her grocery shopping. When I asked her how her day was today at supper she said, "I had a really good day."

The past couple of days she has been interested in knowing more about dinosaurs. I told her we would take her to the Science Museum so she could see the bones & skeleton. Of course, now she wants to go tomorrow, but it will have to wait a week or 2 I think.

Win a Melissa & Doug Kitchen

I signed up to try to win this Melissa & Doug kitchen.You can sign up too! Isabel would love this. We love all our Melissa & Doug products and have a lot of them.

Reading to Her Brother

Isabel likes to read to Henry. It's very sweet. she picks out books that she basically has memorized and reads them to him. I also bought her a basket and filled it with a bunch of new books that I could read to her & Henry while I nurse him, but she likes to read to him just as much as she wants me to read to both of them.

Happy Halloween (Belated)

Keeping up with updating blogs for both kids gets to be a lot of work. I actually had the collages made yesterday, but didn't get them up here since I decided to institute an earlier bed time.

Andy took Isabel out to TOT at a couple of neighbors' houses, we just took Henry over to one of them. It was too chilly & windy to be walking to other places with him. Isabel let him borrow one of her TOT bags and carried it for him. He also took her over to the outlet mall where they were doing TOTing and Old Navy had special events for Halloween going on inside the store (see picture below). Then they went to Caribou Coffee to pick up BOGO smoothies and Taco Bell for free tacos (plus bought more for supper), and finally McD's to use her Halloween coupon for free apple dippers. Gotta love the business freebies for Halloween! Saved me from having to plan out dinner on our first night home and saved us some money too!

Here is Isabel at our neighbor Cindy's house going Trick or Treating.

Daddy took these picture of Isabel at the Monster Bash at Old Navy at the Outlet Mall.

She's Soooooo Three!

I think the only thing that would make this picture more THREE than if I was taking a picture her right now as "naked girl princess". Her sock got wet and all of a sudden she had to take off all her clothes and don a princess crown.

This picture was taken at supper. We had waffles and she thought it was more fun to wear her waffle as a bracelet or rings rather than eat it and of course she had to get dressed up in some dress up clothes to eat.