A week or two ago the girls and I spent the entire day together while Mom was away. Kristin and I were talking and we realized this was probably the first time we had ever spent the entire day without her at all, so I thought the events were worth documenting.
First, we had a great breakfast. I think the girls even slept in a little.
After that we played dress-up, here the girls are demonstrating how they got all the outfits on their make shift closet.
We decided to taken advantage of the ridiculously warm weather and have our morning snack at the park.
That also gave us a chance to use our All-Terain-Wagon, check out those wheels. The girls rode the whole way and announced to everyone we met that they were Cinderella and Snow White, the wagon was a pumpkin, and I was a horse taking them to the ball to meet the prince - not kidding at all there.
At the park they played on the slides and monkey bars.
Nora has no concern for her own safety and managed to get stuck at the top more than once.
We had apples and string cheese for a snack. I've been told Dad makes the best snacks (the secret is I look forward to eating them as much as the girls).
We had lunch on the porch, another of my favorites.
And in the afternoon we did a lot of play shopping and reading.
The girls also draped themselves with blankets and pretended to be ghosts, but I wasn't allowed to take any pictures of that.
As was to be expected, post the Snow White play Abby and Nora have been putting on quite a few plays and shows. They're usually reenactments of books or movies they've just seen, which often digress into a sort of high octave, stream-of-conscious, psuedo-song. Eventually, one or both of them run out of breath and move on to another game.
At any rate, last night's showing involved several songs that we worth capturing:
The Stage
Sunday School
Preschool Snack Song
Preeschool Day's of the Week
And, a slightly uncooperative Row, Row, Row Your Boat
We had a fun Valentine's Day this year. It's Abby's first year of school, so it was our first year of Valentine's Day projects for school. Abby and I made valentines for her class (a Martha Stewart project so you know it's awesome!) It turns out that making 24 valentines, and especially getting them to a point where a 3 year old can help, takes a lot of work from Mom, but she had so much fun helping me with the last parts, and she was really proud of them when she took them in to share.
You can also see in the corner of those pictures the enormous Valentine's Day cookies we made to send in to preschool, too. The class got to frost and sprinkle them for snack, which the kids all really enjoyed. In my typical fashion, however, I made WAY too many, so we made some pink frosting and decorated the leftovers to send in to work with Adam on Tuesday. So now he's the most popular guy in the office.
Abby was also really excited to show off all the valentines she received from her classmates.
I was feeling crafty this year, so in addition to homemade valentines, I made the girls some decorations to wake up to on Tuesday morning. They were a pretty big hit - Nora wants to be held up so she can touch them every time she goes into or out of her room
We gave the girls little heart shaped boxes of chocolates, and Adam gave me a big box of chocolates for Valentine's Day. After having one piece yesterday, I set both boxes up, although in different places. Apparently I didn't set them up high enough, however, because Nora managed to find both stashes today when I wasn't looking. She was one messy but happy girl about that!
Last Saturday, I took Abby to her first play - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was put on by a women's club in town and really geared towards kids, so it seemed like a good way to introduce her to theater (I have grand plans of seeing lots and lots of musicals with the girls someday!)
Getting ready:
We got all dressed up for our outing:
And Nora decided that she'd get all dressed up, too:
Waiting for the show to start:
We had a great time at the show. Abby did get a little scared a couple of times and climbed into my lap (but to be fair, the huntsman hovering over Snow White with a knife while she begs for her life is kind of intense) but she did a great job, and she really enjoyed the whole experience. The story was just a little different from the Disney version, so she's been reconciling the two versions in her reenactments over the last few days. I think she's created a new hybrid version that she's happy with. I can't wait to take both of the girls to the club's show next year!
It's been a little while since our last update, so here are a couple pictures of the past few months.
The girls went through a brief ponytail phase:
For my perfect cube birthday, Adam made me a Rubik's Cube cake (most awesome cake I've ever had!):
This December our little Nora turned two years old (though if you ask her she'll tell you she's three just like her big sister). It always seems hard to believe how quickly the grow. When she's not yelling, "No I will not!" or staging her own Occupy Meijer protest we can almost remember the little bundle we brought home just before Christmas two years ago.
Nora really enjoyed her birthday. We started out with pancakes, Nora's was bigger than her plate.
Later we opened presents. Nora had a great time, Abby and I went to Toys R Us a few days before to pick out something. Abby did a great job thinking of something Nora would like.
Finally, we had a Winnie the Pooh cake which Nora requested and ice cream. It looked and tasted great and Nora enjoyed it.
She did not however enjoy being sung to, far too much attention I guess. Mom did manage to console her though.
