Tis’ the season…

trophy season, that is.

The girls were THRILLED this week to receive their trophies at dance.

Little Mama earned her 2nd year trophy, while K earned her 3rd.

Little Mama and Ms. Jayme

So proud of my tiny dancer.

K with Ms. Katie.  She’s been K’s teacher all 3 years.

The Jewels

The girls had a great year dancing.  It’s recital weekend and while it will be hectic, it’s sure to be fun and most definitely entertaining.  I’ll be back with pictures when I’ve sorted them. 

Don’t hold your breath for it to be anytime soon.  Maybe one or 2, but not all of them. 

xoxo

Kickin’ it

Soccer season has begun.  For K, it started last Thursday where yours truly was the coach at the helm.  Considering I know NOTHING about soccer it was quite amusing.  (Ok, well I know you kick the ball into the net – but that’s about it.  I suppose at age 6 that’s really all they need to know too).

Tonight it was Little Mama’s very first soccer night.  She was thrilled.  She got to play with her two besties and while she wasn’t the fastest or most athletic kid out there, she sure did give it everything she had.

 

 

K is also playing with quite a few of her besties.  This is both good and bad.  Good because they get to be together – bad because they are together.  It is nice that she knows everyone on the team but they are all so comfortable with one another that they are very silly and it’s hard for them to keep focused on soccer.

Tonight, I didn’t get many photos since they called off practice due to the thunder storm that was rolling in.  Hopefully I can get some great ones next time.

Spring Cleaning

This is the way we get the high stuff dusted around here…

She’s available for hire.  For a nominal fee, of course.

4 years old

Little Mama turned four this week.  She’s thrilled and already counting the days until she turns five.

Last night we had a small (but LOUD) party at our house with a few of her friends (and mine).  The kids had a great time playing and trashing the house, while the moms had a chance to catch up.  It’s been so long since we’ve done that – we tend to hibernate in the winter and it’s much harder to get together when the kids have such extensive social calendars.

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE MAMA!!!

Check out her 3rd bday here

Christmas 2010

We hope that you had a great Christmas. 

We were THRILLED to spend Christmas in our own house this year.  It was exciting for everyone to have Grandma come to us in the frozen tundra and to get to wake up (for real this time!) in our own beds on Christmas morning.

I loved getting up with the girls and watching them as they scanned the packages under the tree and to hear them as they reported how Santa really did eat all of the cookies and drink the milk that they left for him.

Here they are on Christmas Eve in their traditional brand new holiday jammies.

  

We made a rule that it had to be at least 7 am before they could wake everyone up on Christmas morning.  Little Mama knocked on our bedroom door at 6:15 to ask if the “first number on the clock was 7, yet.”

I was able to stall her by asking her to keep my spot in bed warm while I ran next door to feed the dogs their breakfast, and when I got back she was still there but K met me at the door to tell me she was “sure we got a Wii, because there was a package labeled with all of our family names".

It wasn’t quite 7, so she and I went to get M and I let them come down to scan their loot and dig into their stockings.

 

It’s amazing how excited they get over a new toothbrush from Santa.

It wasn’t long before Daddy-Man was downstairs and I cheated a little on the time and let them go to the basement a few minutes early to get Grandma.

Since K was so sure that she spotted the package that held her much coveted Wii, they went straight for that one as their first pick.

They were both THRILLED to have been right and that they found the big gift first.  SANTA was the big hero on that one, but I definitely should mention that Grandma bankrolled this one for SANTA as her gift to Daddy-Man and me this year.

 

Once the big one was out of the way, we took turns opening gifts one at a time and by 8 we were enjoying some delicious caramel rolls.

We enjoyed a late prime rib lunch at home.  I really should have taken pictures of that because the prime rib actually turned out well (if I do say so myself!)

It was so nice to be at home this year and Grandma got her first white Christmas ever!

All of a sudden….it’s wintertime.

It was just a few days ago that everyone was talking about how “nice” the weather was.  We were happily wearing just sweatshirts and long sleeve shirts when it was in the 50’s and 60’s just last week.  This morning we woke up to a winter wonder land. 

Since it wasn’t too cold out (only about 33 degrees), it was a great day for playing in the snow.

 
The snow also apparently made a tasty treat.

 
Rocky the Snowman

The snow was wet and perfect for building a snowman.  Little Mama and I had a great time building this guy.  K helped a little and was bribed with some Halloween candy to stand nicely for the picture.

What a great Saturday to spend at home!

At home learning

Since K is only in school every other day and Little Mama is not yet in preschool, I try to fit in some learning activities at home.  Sometimes the learning is in the playing and discussion and other times we actually sit down at the table to do some work.

This week we did a few different things.  I found a great website that K’s teacher is using at school and got some worksheets for both of them to do.  K has been working on identifying beginning sounds of words and matching upper and lower case letters in school this week.  So we did more of the same at home with both girls.  Little Mama is starting to learn sounds that the letters make – she hopes to read “just like K does” soon.

I also added some cutting and gluing, turning practice with scissors into some fun art.

Little Mama got out the watercolors afterward to add a touch more color.

K also recently worked on a couple of graphing projects at school, so I thought we’d do one at home too.  I took some of our Halloween M&M’s and had K guess how many there would be (before counting), and then we lined them up on the graph paper to see how many there really were and then she graphed it herself.

 
It was great practice for her in both reading a graph and making a graph.

Not to be left out at all, Little Mama worked with her own pile of M&M’s.

For her the activity was more about sorting the candies into their proper color columns and then counting how many of each color there were.  She too wanted to attempt to graph them, but unfortunately her attention span doesn’t hold as well as K’s does for that kind of activity.  I was happy enough that she got some practice sorting and counting.

Hope you all had a great week!

Little Mama and the Tooth Fairy

I'm sure we all remember when Little Mama needed stitches because she got hit in the face with that door that I was opening?

And then, remember when we found out that incident was also the cause of her chipped tooth and 2 broken roots on her front teeth?

Well, it finally happened.  That chipped tooth and the gum above became infected and the tooth had to be pulled.  I felt (and still feel) awful.

We went to the dentist last Thursday.

They sat her in the chair and gave her a "funny nose" mask to wear.  She chose to smell strawberries (laughing gas) and within a few minutes she was totally stoned.  Next came the numbing gell and the "little pinch"  aka the shots.  She struggled a little with that part with just a few whimpers but no major screams.

From the first pinch to the gauze going in - less than 2 minutes passed and then shortly after that we were on our way to Target where we bought a new Sleeping Beauty Barbie, an outfit for her fave doll Emma, and some stickers (which she later shared with Kaylee).

They gave us her tooth (with most of the root still firmly attached) inside a larger plastic tooth so the tooth fairy would recognize that the dentist had to pull the tooth, rather than it just falling out on it's own.

She slept on the car ride home and we spent the day relaxing on the couch watching TV.

That night the tooth fairy did stop in to drop off another Barbie, but didn't take the tooth since it wasn't under her pillow yet.  She wanted to save it to show Daddy when he got home from his work trip the next night.

Here she is putting the tooth under her pillow.

one of the only good toothless shots I was able to get in the first couple of days.

ready for the tooth fairy

That night the tooth fairy did come back, took the tooth and left one dollar.  She was thrilled and immediately placed it in her piggy bank.

Here we are just shy of 1 week later:

I'm getting used to seeing that hole in her smile now.  I guess I'd better its going to be there for quite a while.  She's already started to ask if her new tooth is growing in yet, I just don't know how to tell her that it could be up to 5 years before it comes in! 

YIKES!

I'm sorry baby!!!

Fish School

About 5 weeks ago (boy am I behind!!) K and Little Mama finally got to start swimming lessons.  The girls and I are members at a local gym and they offer swimming lessons as well.

The girls were thrilled and suprising not the least bit timid about getting into the water with a complete stranger and no mommy.   Just another reminder to me of how quickly they are growing up. 

Little Mama managed to be the only person in her class for a couple of weeks and we loved all the attention she got because of that!  After only 5 lessons, she's extremely comfortable in the water.  She's willing to jump in from the edge and entirely submerge herself and pop right back to the top (still wearing a floatie).  She's working on floating with assistance and keeping her entire face in the water long enough to blow bubbles.  At the end of the summer session last week her instructor said that she's skilled enough to move to the next level for the fall session starting in October. 

K had just one other kid in her class, which left plenty of time for quite a bit of attention as well.  In her very first lesson she learned to float on her back unassisted.  Something I spent many months trying to teach her!  ugh!  What a stinker!  By her 3rd lesson she was working on gliding through the water and switching from her front to her back and vice versa.  She's doing very well and even swam about 8 yards across the deep end (5 ft) unassisted.  At her last lesson her instructor said she was doing very well and is about 1/2 way through her current level, but was impressed with how quickly she progressed. 

It looks like we should have signed these 2 up for fish school a long time ago!!!