Reading

After starting this year with thoughts of more structure for schooling those ides quickly faded into reality. Or, at least what I choose for reality, I have not sat down and done formal school with the girls at all. I get asked regularly if Hannah is in school and I say no, I'm planning to homeschool, but friends who know I'm home schooling ask how that's going and I'm beginning to admit it's not going as I thought it would, we're really not doing anything this year....or are we? Wednesday Hannah read her first book(Big Bear, Small Bear), Friday she read me 40 pages of Hop on Pop (I had to stop her from finishing because it was past her bed time and it's a 60+ page book). Yesterday morning she was telling me how three and three is six, later that day Hannah was asking how to spell diaper and caterpillar so she and Evie could sing those words to the tune of BINGO. Early in the week she was drawing up in her room and would run down every time she drew something that looked like a letter and show it to me....so maybe we aren't doing anything formal, maybe I'm not sitting down with her everyday to write letters and do math problems, but maybe, just maybe she still is learning and maybe kids really can learn a lot through play.

Evie's weird sleeping habits

If you haven't noticed from some of the other posts on Evie and sleeping, she does some really weird things to get to sleep/while sleeping etc. Last night Nathan was putting Hannah to bed and called me up to see the latest thing Evie had done. She commonly makes herself a nest to sleep in, but last night she had a wall. 

 The wall.....

 And there she is on the other side of it. Have I mentioned the girls are sleeping in their clothes for the next day instead of PJs now? It definitely has it's pluses for making the morning run smoother!

Cookie decorating

 I haven't had a cookie decorating party is two years! I couldn't believe it had been that long, I was way over due to have one. So I invited my friends, made a 280 cookies and let the madness begin! I think there were 11 moms and 22 kids, or there about. For entertainment (besides decorating the cookies of course!) there were the balloons from Evie's party. It was amazing how a large quantity of balloons can keep the masses entertained.

 Daddy has been sick, so he was home for the madness, he came down towards the end and helped Evie with some cookies.

 Some of the finished product.

 More of the finished product.

 A picture of the craziness, this was round one, we had two rounds of kids at the table because there were so many of them.

We all had a great time and Nathan's classmates got to enjoy some of the cookies tonight as well :-)

Evie's birthday

This past Saturday was Evie's birthday. She's now three years old and very proud of it. :-) We had a party for her with a few friends and lots of balloons! She said she wanted a balloon party (apparently she still likes them http://mayerupdates.blogspot.com/2010/02/happy-valentines-day.html), so that's what we did. We had over 200 balloons for her. And we had fun doing things with balloons, we made balloon heads with clown faces that were colored and then taped on, of course there were balloon animals, we had a balloon powered car, helicopter balloon and balloons with lights (LEDs) in them! It really was balloon madness. For her cake she wanted a blue, green and pink cake. I made an ice cream cake (as I remembered she didn't eat her cupcakes last year) and colored vanilla ice cream blue (remember blue vanilla ice cream from a childhood trip to Canada's Wonderland with smurfs) and made vanilla frosting pink and used mint chocolate chip for the green. Here are pictures form the big day (and prep the night before!). 

 

 Nathan learning how to make some balloon animals thanks to youtube. Note the balloons on the floor, we used an air compressor (best thing ever for blowing up balloons!) and did about 150 ish Friday and the rest Saturday morning. 

  

Making the blue ice cream for the cake!

Evie and Nathan before their Daddy/Daughter birthday breakfast (once the kids reach three he takes them out on their birthday for breakfast!).

Lots of balloons!

Coloring the clown to put on a balloon, Evie colored hers all blue and then put it on a blue balloon, please note the balloon belt in this picture :-)

Doesn't she look so old?

 

The cake!

 Here you can see the inside with all the colors!

Blowing out her candles, she was super excited to have candles on her cake and blew them out practically before the cake was on the table.

After cake and presents the kids all wanted to go outside, so they did, the mosquito are REALLY bad right now, so I haven't been outside much, but it hasn't seemed to stop the kids.

I thought this was a good shot of Hannah in the balloons :-)

 Nathan gave everyone a lesson on how to make six balloon bunches, here's Kacy practicing.

 

 Here's Nathan with a balloon monkey he made.

 

 This is one of the light-up balloons, they say on the package they only last 15 hours, but our are still lit today, three days later!

 I didn't think the picture really did justest to the light up balloons, so I took this video as well.

princesses and goo

I totally forgot to post about the birthday party we went to on the 15th. It was a princess party and the girls both went dressed up. They had a great time doing all kinds of fun princess things like drinking out of tea cups decorated with jewels! At the end of the party Niki made pink goo and every princess got to bring some home. Really, what more could a princess want? That goo kept my girls occupied for a week! They loved it. I didn't have my camera at the party so I didn't get any pictures :-( But I have a picture of Hannah when we got home still dressed up playing with her goo. 

Sliding down poles

Evie mastered the fireman type poles at parks awhile ago, but Hannah was still afraid to try. Well last month (yeah, sorry, just loading picture from my camera to my computer and found these)

Up she goes!

 Made it to the top

 Time to go back down!

A little jump at the end. 

After figuring it out she did it again and again and again and had a blast!

And just in case you were missing a picture of Evie :-)

Rain!

We got rain all day Saturday and a little on Sunday as well. Before church it was raining and it wasn't quite time to go so I let the girls go play in the rain and got out the camera!

Yes, they did end up changing before church, but they had a ton of fun!

There's a hole in the fence!

Hannah and Evie were playing outside the other day while I was doing something in the house. Hannah came running inside "Mommy! Mommy! Evie climbed through the hole in the fence and is now in the front yard!" I went out the front door to see if this was true and sure enough, there was Evie in the front yard....not so good. Well the hold turned out to be a loose fence board and I brought Evie to the back yard through the house and made sure they both knew not to climb through it. 

 Here's Evie with the hole

 

Yes, she can make it through that bottom part without a problem!

church garage sale = more craziness

This week was definitely not as calm as I would have hoped. Monday was a pretty typical Monday, Tuesday Hannah was sick, she napped twice and went to bed at 8 pm! Wednesday we kept it ultra low key to try and get both girls feel better and then Thursday we woke up and hit the road running! We had Bible study in the morning, came home, had lunch and went to church, where we spent the afternoon sorting things for the garage sale they held today. We came home for about an hour and a half in which time Evie had peed in the play room and less than 30 seconds later Nathan called to say he locked his keys in the car at the gas station down the street, he was on his way to school and was already running late, so I threw clothes on Evie put both girls in the car and went and gave him keys, came back, cleaned up Evie's mess, made dessert for home group and headed out. We didn't get home until after 10:30, I put the girls to bed, they were up by 7:30 am Friday and we ate and headed back to church for another long day of sorting and pricing. At one point one of our friends told Evie to take off a bracelet she had put on and Evie just lost it, she fell on the floor screaming and then was asleep before we knew it! So she got a little bit of a nap under the table (I totally meant to bring my camera yesterday to church and forgot! I might get a cell phone pic my friend took, but I don't have it yet), but was it. The girls went to bed early last night, 6:40 pm, and were up by 7:30 again, which was good because I was watching my friends two younger girls while she was at school this morning and they got here at 7:50 am and were here until after lunch. Now both girls are sleeping and I got a call that the garage sale is done and cleaned up! It was a huge success. The money earned will go to Stepstones Ministry to buy stoves for homes in Guatemala. Now on to cleaning my house. :-)

Under Where?

One of the girls favorite CDs is Slugs & Bugs & Lullibies, which you may remember this clip of Evie singing Tractor Tractor from that CD. Well, they've put out a new Slugs & Bugs CD called Slugs & Bugs Under Where? and we got a digital copy of it on Friday. Since that time we've listened to it a CRAZY number of times and it's gotten very stuck in some peoples head (NATHAN) who has not stopped singing Mexican Rhapsody, since I've had to put up with listen to the CD over and over and over again along with Mexican Rhapsody being song by my husband continually I thought you might like to hear some of the music. :-) You can find Mexican Rhapsody and I Wanna Help here. Let me know if you're hearing "cheese dip, cheese dip" the rest of the night! There are some other great song on the CD as well, one is about adoption, another is about how God makes messy things beautiful. My girls already have many of the songs memorized and there are lots of good ones! It's lots of fun with good Biblical truths mixed in!

The craziness ensues

Nathan's starting to get into the middle of his semester. He had a book review due yesterday and a test on Tuesday. Research papers will be coming up after that and he has already started his research. This makes for little computer time because he has to use it for things writing book reviews. The girls and I have been keeping busy! Monday we had friends over in the morning/afternoon and then we had people over for dinner. Tuesday was the park with friends! The weather is starting to get nicer (upper 80s, low 90s and lows in the 60s!) which is great to get in some outside time. Tuesday night we went to friends across town for dinner and visit time while Nathan was at school. Wednesday we went to the space center, they have a new exhibit with mind binders puzzles in it, quite challenging, but the girls had fun with some of them and they've really gotten into the huge indoor climbing area. We try and get out of the house on Wednesday, as that's Nathan's home study day. Thursday was Community Bible Study in the morning and home group Bible study at night, by Friday the girls were pretty done, we went to gymnastics, but decided not to do it and came home for a quiet morning. I then babysat a family from church after lunch on Friday. On top of that the girls both ended up with a cold :-( So they're fighting that off. We also had a birthday party across town today that we ran to after church, so yes, super busy. This week will be much more low key! Sorry, I've been slacking with the camera, so no pictures.