A few moments

This post shares a few moments of my children with you.

Painting - a favorite pastime.  And a smirk for the camera!

 Hanging out with friends at the Zoo

 ... even sharing a stroller!

 Walking the plank- my brave/ambitious little girl!

And checking out the "Cave" at the polar bear exhibit.  Can you Roar?

 A playdate with friends- sharing the sandbox

 And a tea party, of course!

That's a bit of what we've been up to lately... How about you?

Never Dull City

Since there is never a dull moment at our house, I thought I would share tonight's project.

Start with tape (of course!) to make some streets.

Next, give the streets some names.

Add some buildings...

Good for approximately 30 minutes of play.  I think the clean up may take longer!

Daycare Stuff

Wow, what a busy week!

This post will touch on the parts of the week that were daycare related.

For two weeks every day, the parents of preschool take over Teacher Appreciation!

Today wraps up those two weeks. 

There are several components of teacher appreciation at our preschool.  This year, we did a lunch, a breakfast, bags, bonuses, and a video.

I was the "lucky" parent "volunteered" to do the bonuses for the entire center.  Friday was the last collection day, so next week I will get to distribute money!

I also volunteered myself- for the older kids- to make a "Thank You" video to provide to the teachers.

As for the bags, each kid is assigned two staff members (or 3 if you have two kids), for surprises.  This is one of the items I feel like I did pretty good at.  Each of our familie's 3 assigned teachers got some sort of "treat" each day - - from an apple or snack to a trinket or note to a gift card - over two weeks.  Some of my favorite ideas - - stolen from other parents doing an appreciation thing for teachers - were the s'mores kit:

And the hand soap:

Glad those two busy weeks are over!  I know the first day of summer is not "officially" until mid-June, but with today being labor day - it certainly feels like summer has arrived!

Hair Cutting

It was inevitable.  They are kids, right?

 

The other day, we had some scissors out from a weekend project.  Eventually, we turned around and noticed that a little bit of Laura's hair was gone.  See picture below:

I found the scissors that were the "suspected" culprit.  I asked the boy, "Did you cut sisters hair?"  No, Mommy.  I asked the girl, "Did you cut your hair?" "No."  But... her hair was cut.

So... I asked Seth, "did you by chance cut Laura's hair"?  No.

Still a mystery.

As I picked up from daycare, the teacher's asked - who cut Laura's hair?  I asked, and she said "mommy!"  I told the teacher - Mommy did put her hair up today, but I did not use scissors on her hair.

Still a mystery.

Because I'm very critical/analytical, I mulled over this a bit more.  Last weekend, Daddy got his hair cut.  And the boy asked or mentioned something about Laura needing to have her hair cut.  I finally decided... it must be the boy.  And I was disappointed that the boy would have lied to me!

So - a conversation on lying ensued.  And then, a conversation with my hubby that I anticipated that the boy did it.  This was at the dinner table one night.  My "practical" hubby turns to the boy and asks, "Did you cut Laura's hair?" and his response is "Only a little bit of Laura's hair."

Okay, so did he really "lie" the first time?  Probably not.  After all... getting your hair cut almost always means ALL of your hair, right?

Either way... It was a quandry in our house for a few days.  But thankfully- - - at least this time, the mystery was solved.

And it really was only a "little" of her hair.  If she wears one pony on top of her head instead of two, you don't notice it at all.

And beyond that, even.... It's probably a childhood right of passage for both kids.  Or maybe just something that is significant as a parent.  And truly... It's probably my responsibility for having scissors down to wear a child could get to them and use them unattended by a parent.  There are way worse things (injuries, damaged furniture, etc) that could be done with scissors than just cutting "a little" hair.

I'm greatful that I have two pretty well behaved kids- - despite the occassional "little" incident!

More Strawberries!

Strawberries are still in season!

 

This time, we went with Dad to pick. 

 

Mark and I picked together:

While Laura "helped" Dad pick.

























Laura got a bit "sassy" when I tried to take her picture.  "No picture, mommy."  She's not shy about saying "Leave me alone!" these days.

 
















And we had quite the haul this time!  Two full baskets.




So what are the plans for these massive quantities of strawberries?  I am doing the freezing of some to use during the winter, especially for smoothies- and possibly for a pie.  DH is making jelly again (Yum!  We ate it all up last year!).  And Kiddo insists that he is making strawberry ice cream on Saturday.  Despite the fact that we don't have an ice cream maker.  As DH said - that could mean we buy some vanilla ice cream from the store and have strawberries on top!  After all - - I don't think kiddo will know the difference - so I definitely think that's good enough for this time.



Maybe the boy will wind up with an ice cream maker on his birthday or Christmas wish-list this year...

Supporting the community

In the last 12 hours or so, we have done 3 community events!  Whew!

First, I let the kids stay up way past their bedtime to see Frozen (the movie) at the local outdoor amphitheater. 

Then we want to the local agricultural festival at the fair ground.

And then, we stopped at our local "green" McDonalds for a craft, planting a seed, and some time in their play space.

Strawberry Season

It's mid-May - - which means one thing:  Strawberries!

We grab our bucket

We pick and pick and pick

Even the odd ones...

Then we eat up!

One of my favorite parts of summer:  Strawberry Desserts! 

Our strawberries from this trip are all gone... Time to go back!

Big Slide

This video captures differences in my kids, and I love it!  I wanted to post on facebook, but had trouble with it!

A little trip

I started this post from the plane, but never got around to finishing it!

While we were in Texas the first weekend in May, we went to Fossil Rim - essentially, a safari-like experience, where you drive your car through some amazing animals in a not-quite zoo setting.  You get to feed them, and you can see from the previous pictures that I posted that we got up close and personal with the giraffes!

Unfortunately, my "good" camera died shortly thereafeter.  These images were taken from my cell phone, and capture the last part of our tour, as well as a few other tidbits from our time in Texas!

On Safari, the last of the "major" animals we saw were Zebras!  As we were leaving the park, though, there was an Emu hanging out by the entrance.  I had Kiddo "dump" the rest of the food.  Well, this Emu must have been hungry because after the food was gone, the Emu stuck his head in the car and grabbed the empty brown bag right out of Kiddo's fingers!  A little scary, but very funny!

Here, Grandpa took Kiddo on a tractor ride.  And Baby-G was enjoying some of the crumbling muffins that her Grandma T had made!

"The Farm" where Grandma T and Grandpa D live in Texas has TWO ponds.  This picture shows that the back pond has no water.  I have never seen it empty!  Good thing they don't have any cows on their property at the moment- they would be expensive to keep watered!




Another special treat- helping Grandpa wind the grandfather clock.  Not all grandkids have been able to get this close to the precious clock!



We also enjoyed picking some of the onions right out of Grandpa's garden for dinner.  Grilled onions on top of steak - YUM!  Probably some of the freshest onions I've ever had in my lifetime...

The kids were pretty good on both plane-ride segments.

And here, a pretty cool picture that was painted by my brother-in-law!

Monkeys

My kids love it here.  I guess I am a bit too type A - it makes me nervous every time!

Wordless Wednesday