Amalgamation

This is another A letter activity we did. I wrote big and little A's on the non sticky side of clear contact paper (little a's had to be written backwards, which was easy because they just look like capital D's). Then I cut out colored A's and a's so they could match them to the corresponding A's on the contact paper. They loved this activity and Will did surprisingly well putting the A's the right direction and matching them to the correct case. HOORAY. It's so rewarding to teach my kids and have them get it!

 Will loves Claire so much. He comes up to me quite frequently and says, "Mom, I love Claire sooo much." And I reassure him that she loves him too. He's just so rough with her!

She is getting into everything these days, here she's "helping" with the dishes. She's become such a busy-body recently that I've been telling her "no-no," so she has started saying "no-no" to everything too.

And this dude! He turned 3! I can't believe my little guy is already three. That also means we've lived in this house for three years. I can't believe how fast time has flown by. We had a fun day playing in the 90 degree weather.

I made him pizza for dinner, we opened presents, smacked open a pinata and ate brownies (idea courtesy Kristen).

This week Brad is once again out of town. Here we are romping around at Shoshone Falls park.

Update

Brian, Tia and kiddos came to visit last week which was a total blast. We went to Boise with them for a day and went to the aquarium. It looked lame from the outside but we had a ton of fun. 

 Unfortunately I didn't take any other pictures while they were here, be we also went on a picnic and a waterfall and played. It was so fun.

In other news, Ruth made herself a blue ribbon and glued it onto her clothes

Since our colors of the week ended up being successful (Will is now very color competent) I decided, since he's turning three next week, that he should start learning the letters. This week is the letter A. We made "A" animals:

We are making an "A" letter wall. It's awesome how I can adapt our activities for both kids. Ruth helps me come up with the "A" words and even wrote some of them, and Will looks at the words and shows us where the "A" is and tells us what sound the "A" makes.

 Today we made letter "A" sun catchers for the back door.

Yesterday was also Brad's birthday, like mine it was a pretty uneventful day for him. He went to work. When he came home we went to a greenhouse to get bushes and flowers for our front yard. Then I made him homemade mac and cheese with bacon and goat cheese and we had banana cream pie and strawberry rhubarb pie with ice cream. Happy 30th bebe!

April Stuff

 We made playdough 

 Brad had all the kids laughing with duck sounds

Ice cream while Brad was out of town

Claire eating her first ravioli, pasta is her new favorite

Will being a beast

 Ruth's costume for the dance show

More Stuff We've Done

Paint our hands and feet

Will so kindly shared his new pajamas with Ruth, who could hardly stand still

Yellow week crafts and activities

Yellow sorting

Yellow bee

Push-pin worksheets

Easter Eggs

Grandma watching the egg hunt

 Grandpa watching the egg hunt

My Birthday

My birthday started out super uneventful, like any other day. Zumba, park with kids, make food for people. But then Brad and I went out to a new sushi place and ordered a Happy Boat filled with chicken and beef teriyaki, sushi, potstickers, fried veggies and pineapple. I thought it was gonna be a little plate sized boat thing, but no, it took up our entire table...and it was delicious!

Spring Break

We had lots of fun with my parents and Uncle Matt

Days 3, 4, and 5 of Orange Week

We made ORANGE handprint flowers:

We played in our ORANGE tupperware and blew bubbles with ORANGE straws:

We made ORANGE tigers:

 And today we made ORANGE paint and made prints by only painting on one side of the paper:

This week we also got PINK eye!

Color of the Week: ORANGE

Day one we played with gum drops and toothpicks and had an orange lunch of mac and cheese, goldfish, mandarin oranges, carrots and orange Emergen-C.

 Today we had a lunch of orange juice, cheese, orange bell pepper and cheese crackers with peanut butter.

Then we had 4 stations set up at the table:

 Orange envelopes and orange popsicle sticks

Sorting beads to find the orange ones

Playing with orange Easter eggs, buckets and beads

The last station was playing with an orange truck, not really picture worthy. I'm really happy to say that our color weeks are totally helping. Will can tell you when something is green or orange now! But the best part of all of these activities is that I'm growing. When I set up these activities I have very clear ideas about what should happen. Then the kids sit down and they don't play with the objects the way I'd envisioned. So I start to correct them...and then I see that what they've come up with is so much more creative than what I thought of. I need a lot more practice not being in control of every second. It's been such a joy to watch the kids explore and play and to start to control my control-freak ways.