Weekly Theme: Turtles

So, we started on our next weekly theme which this week is turtles. We made some finger puppets of the tortoise & the hare, a T (turtle) handwriting sheet (pictured), and made turtles out of paper plates and fingerpaint (pictured) and tissue paper. Later this week we are going to the nature center to spend some quality time at the turtle pond.

Anhorn's Gas & Tire Tour

Today we went on a tour of Anhorn's Gas & Tire with our playgroup. The kids all had a great time. They got to sit inside the tow truck & see the lights on, ride on the back of the truck that barrels are hauled with, watch a mom's minivan get lifted, see a bunch of tools & tires, and hide in a stack of 4 tires. And then when it was over they gave everyone Sixlets. Good times.

Flower Prints

Here is another idea with the credit going to the Frugal Family Fun blog. Have I mentioned how much I love her ideas. Isabel is right between the age of her girls, so her ideas tend to work perfectly for her. So, you can read all about how to make this on there. Since we had completed a couple of other crafts earlier, I let her have some freedom on her creation which turned out completely different that mine. She treated each print as it's own flower and then wanted each to have it's own pink or green stem. Now, we need to drink some wine so we can do another flower print idea from Frugal Family Fun.

The Works Hands-On Museum

This afternoon we spent a couple hours at The Works Hands-On Museum in Edina, MN. I had read about the fun there on Travel with Children. It wasn't too far away, so it made my list of things to do some time. I started following them on FB after Minnemom said they sometimes offer deals to their fans and that is just what happened. They posted a coupon for B1G2 FREE admission to be used this Th, F or Sat. That's right, all of us got to go for one admission price, which was $5. We couldn't pass that up on a place that we wanted to see anyway.

It is definitely worth $5 a person if we would have gone without a coupon (although, you know me & coupons.) It was so fun for all of us. Daddy & I played as much as Isabel did. Henry just slept (kids under 3 are free too!)
As you can see there was a variety of activities and we didn't even get to spend a lot of time at them all. We only left after 2 hours because they were closing. Next time I think I might allow three hours for us. We seem to be spending that much time at museums these days with her and even after three hours we are still dragging her out reluctantly.
She was very excited when we told her we were going to a museum today. She has learned that most of the museums we take her too are a lot of fun.

This trip there was mainly about exploration for all of us, next time we can make it more educational and explain things more to her and ask her probing questions. We all had a good time.

Benihana's

This was Isabel's first time to Benihana's. She was impressed with their "tricks". She loved the soup & rice & corn on the cob & daddy's steak. She was too full to eat all her veggies & chicken & shrimp because she was saving room to have her strawberry ice cream and most of my vanilla ice cream.

Tae Kwon Do Class

She is the kid in the pink top & black bottoms. She is really enjoying her class and the teacher really made them work hard & sweat during this second class. This class they worked on their regular kick and jump kicks. They also had to run laps (which Isabel worked very hard to go from almost the back of the line where she started and started passing kids to get to the front of the line) and they played some dodge ball too. Sorry these aren't the best pictures. Parents have to sit at the back of the classroom and I was using my camera phone.

We had So Much Fun in the Dells!

So, we went back to the Waterdome. We told Isabel we could go back to one waterpark and this was the one she picked. She did go down the big waterslide tube ride there with each one of separately. She & daddy did go over to Klondike Kavern for a little while too.

Today she asked for a blue sno-cone and it instantly turned all lips & mouths in contact with it blue. And I am sure we earned bad parents awards for feeding our 5 1/2 month old a couple sips of it (he did love it!).

So, we were there three days and I almost think we could use just one more day there. I know we could have stayed latere or gotten there earlier on the first day, but with young ones (& for us too) it was important to have a room to go back to rest. So, this time we did all 4 waterparks at least once (actually, did two of them twice) but we never did the dry playpark. I was also thinking it would have been fun to do the pottery painting thing with Isabel and next year she will be old enough to do the Wild Kids Club events (well, close enough.) But it is nice to have the time we did have there and an extra day might have just gotten really exhausting too.

WI Dells: Wilderness Territory, Glacier Canyon Lodge

This year we got the 2 bedroom with full kitchen since we had 2 kids. Last year we got the 1 bedroom. Having the full kitchen and separate living room, 2 bedrooms, & 1.5 baths is Soooooo worth it. Pay the extra for the space & comfort!

WI Dells: Wilderness Lodge Waterparks

We managed to get to all four indoor waterparks during our first 2 days here. We still have tomorrow morning and when we asked her what her favorite one was she said "All of Them!" She finally said she would like to go back to the Waterdome. We also might try to go to the Timberland Playpark (dry).

We have had a great time and it's amazing what a different child she is this year compared to last year. She has no desire to go on anything bigger than is appropriate for her age. She had so much fun and hopefully next year we can plan a little more in advance so that we can plan to have friends with us so she has someone besides mom or dad to play with.

First Sleepover & TKD Class

Today we started some seeds that will be transplanted. The advanced organic gardening class I went to recommended starting tomatoes & peppers only 6 weeks in advance and planting smaller transplants in the ground. They said they withstand shock better and develop bigger & stronger plants because they didn't start getting leggy before transplanting. So, that is what we were working on this afternoon.

Later this month we will start some squash and cucumbers indoors when we have our Earth Day playgroup (which is actually a week later due to scheduling conflicts). But we like to give some seeds to our friends so that they can start a garden and have them plant them that day. We will also probably buy some flowers in cells that her friends can plant directly into pots to put on their porch.

I mentioned on Henry's blog about how much they love each other and how helpful she is. She just loves to help out with Henry as much as possible. Today she asked if she could push him around in the stroller. She was so happy to be able to do that.

So, I dropped Isabel off at her first sleepover without mom or dad sleeping over too. This is her first sleepover without us EVER. She is there as I type and I keep wondering if I will get a call to come pick her up. I stayed for about a half hour and the girls were so excited for the sleepover that they got into their pjs at 6:30pm (right when we got there) and then went outside to play.

I had to admit that I have knots in my stomach and I am not sure how well I will sleep tonight. Not sure this was the best plan since we are leaving in the morning for a couple nights in WI Dells, we will pick her up on our way out. I feel like how I felt the first week she was at daycare when she was an infant and her first preschool day camp. I was a nervous wreck, but she did just fine. When did she become such a big girl?

I don't have picture of it, but she had her first Tae Kwon Do class this week. We are trying this out because there is no dance in the spring due to the instructor having surgery & needing healing time. So, she had her first class and she loved it. She did really well and has good form and enjoyed that they got to kick & break a board at their first class. This is only 6 sessions and I don't know if community ed. offers it in the summer or not. We'll see how much she continues to like it and if she has to choose between her activities in the fall.

This Week with Isabel

This idea came from Frugal Family Fun. I just love this blog. She has so many great ideas & they are frugal, of course. Anyways, that is wax paper around her feet secured with rubber bands. She grabbed the cat toys and pretended that they were poles and she was skiing. That was her idea. I tried not to laugh too hard when she would wipe out when she would get a little crazy on her "skiis".

We went to the Nature Center this week after storytime. We spent 2 hours here. We were looking for snakes, but it was a bit chilly so I think they were underground. But we did see lots of turtles in the turtle pond and heard frogs singing and heard lots of wood peckers.

This week's theme was snakes. We did a pipecleaner snake craft (we brought it with us) to a playdate we had, then we did a sequencing bead snake craft, make play-doh snakes, painted snakes, made a rice krispie snake snack, read some snake books & tried to find snakes at the Nature Center. I think we will continue the snake theme into next week as I have a few more things to do with it that we didn't get to.

Happy Easter!!!

We started out the morning with an Easter Egg Hunt, then had breakfast, went to church, then grandma & grandpa M came over and we had lunch, played outside (flying a kite, riding a bike, blowing bubbles) then had dessert, naps, then ham & bean soup made from Easter dinner leftovers.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Egg Crafts (Weekly Theme: Eggs)

She painted this egg & cut it out by herself. All I did was write the letters & then hang it up in the dining room window. We also did some other Easter egg coloring sheets.

These were fun. We tried some fun new things. One of them was putting pieces of colored streamers in the eggs to color them. In theory the color from the streamers were supposed to bleed onto the shells, but that didn't happen so we just left the streamers on them. It was a fun way to give our eggs bright colors and not have the mess of dye. We also did traditional egg dying with food coloring & vinegar. One some of them we drew designs with crayons and on some of them we wrapped rubber bands around to leave white lines (kinda like tie-dying). It was not very easy getting the rubber band to stay on the eggs. And then we used whisks to put the eggs in to dye them with. It actually was very helpful with letting them dry evenly.

We also did another craft with egg shells, but it isn't finished yet and it is going to be a birthday gift for daddy (Isabel's idea). We also spread crushed egg shells in the garden and talked about the benefit of putting egg shells in our garden to help the vegetables grow and how egg shells contain calcium.

Ballet Dance Recital

So, a little over a week ago she has her first dance recital. They did three dances: ballet, tap & jazz. I have a video of each, but uploading & processing just this one took 45 minutes. So, you can see the ballet one. The tap one she had to go potty during it and adds a whole bunch of extra taps & then about 3/4 the way through I pull her out to take her to the bathroom (she didn't care & wasn't embarrassed at all) and the jazz one she was in the far corner away from me, so it's not as easy to see her anyways.

So, enjoy watching her ballet video. It's about 2 minutes long.

Three Easter Egg Hunts

This was a picture from the Easter Egg Hunt at Applebee's Saturday.

This is a little collage from the East Egg Hunt fpr MOMS Club at Sarah's House on . There was actually probably 15-20 kids there, but Isabel was one of the first couple out there, so I got just the one of her searching (she is kind of hidden behind another kid).

And here is a video of her doing part of her Easter Egg Hunt at home today, that the Easter Bunny hid.