Living Room Productions

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

Happy Valentine's Day!

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!):

Nora's 2nd Birthday

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.

She really did enjoy her birthday.

With a Spade of Snow

After much anticipation, and some angst (how will Santa's sleigh land on our roof without snow?!), we finally had our first real snow of the year today. And after much anticipation and some angst, we convinced the girls that it was worth putting on their snowsuits to go out and play.

We hit all the classic playing in the snow activities:

Riding on the sled:





Making snow angels:





Snowball fight (although we didn't get any photos of that one)

Playing on the swingset:





Building little snowmen:







(one on his head)





Letting the snowmen play on the swingset:





And building a big snowman:





Our snowy adventures were followed up with everyone's favorite snowy day treat - hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows. (Yes, and. I made the mistake of asking the girls to choose one, and they chose both. Ah, well.) Unfortunately, it was warm enough today that by the time we were finished with our hot chocolate, all three snowmen's heads had fallen off, and our snow is pretty much gone now. But we enjoyed our first snow day of the year!