Miss Emily

Emily is such a big girl!!!! She started walking around the first of the month but it still surprises me to see her come walking in the room. She is such a happy smily girl who loves to laugh which makes us all laugh. I know I have said it over and over but she plays so great by herself. I bought her a Little Tykes slide recently and she can climb up it and slide down all by herself!!!! That blows me away. She will do it over and over. She rolls cars down it and pushes her stuffed animals down it. She recently has started carrying around baby dolls and while she is carrying the baby she is saying baby...baby. It is so precious!!! My favorite thing she does is flip through books and if I am sitting on the floor she will carry a book over and sit in my lap so I can read it to her. She also has several stuffed animals that she loves! A star wars character that we call her chewy, even though Chris informed me it was an ewok, and a stuffed lion. She sleeps with both of them.



Could she be any cuter??????

Valentines Day = Lazy

Oh my goodness we were lazy on Valentines Day! I felt guilty but it also felt good:) Nobody cooked all day we just kind of snacked and then ordered pizza for dinner. Except for Ellie we all took a nap at some point during the day. Chris gave me and the girls a big box of chocolates so there was lots of junk food eating. I think we all had a great day. Ellie said that it was the best Valentines Day ever (in all of her 3 years). I stuck with my New Years Resolution and gave handmade gifts. I made Ellie a cape which she seemed to like. I know it doesn't look that great but I was proud of it any way. Ellie made dad a card. It was so cute. I asked her a series of questions about Chris and then I just copied down her answers. Two of the cutest questions and answers were:

If dad could go anywhere where would he go.....work!

What makes daddy happy.....playing with me!



After Chris and I put the girls to bed we watched Life With Dan and I got a massage:) It was a great day!

Weekly Menu

This week we are having:

Cheeseburgers w/sweet potatoe fries

Asian lettuce wraps w/egg rolls

Indian Chicken w/salad (I still have not made this!)

Grilled Shrimp w/grilled veggies

Roasted Chicken w/rice and mixed steamed veggies

The girls are having:
Breakfast- Ellie's choice, Strawberry Wafffles, Grits, Toast, Boiled Egg
Lunch - Corndog, Ham & Cheese Sandwich, Muffin Tin Lunch, Hotdog, English Muffin Pizzas

Preschool

The trend for preschool lately seems to have preschool one week and do absolutely nothing the next!!! This past week was our week to do nothing but last week was pretty fun and productive. I didn't do the best job at recording what we did (something I am going to work on) but a few of the things were Montessori type activities. We transferred colored water into the butterfly suction cups with a dropper. You can see how proud of herself she was because she didn't spill any. We also transferred water using different utensils into the ice trays, which we used later in our lemonade. We played with our bug game and cards. I love this activity. We sorted the bugs by color and type and then used the cards to do repeat patterns. I think I enjoy this more then Ellie. We played Scrabble Jr. or at least the made up way. I found this game in excellent condition for only .99 at Goodwill. We took turns drawing a letter and matching it on the board. Anytime one of us made a word we got to have the other person do something. Talk about being silly. I think Ellie was doing donkey kicks in this picture. Some of the activities were run around the kitchen five times, hop up and down, sing a song, act like a frog, act like a baby, and the list goes on and options are endless. We also added the word "is" to our word worm and read lots and lots of books.

Happy Valentines Day!!!

Hope everyone has a wonderful loving Valentine's Day!!!!

Wordless Wednesday

Stomach Bug and Food

I caught a NASTY stomach bug on Sunday night after a relaxing girls weekend away. Luckily my wonderful hubby took such good care of me and the girls. Since I was sick I didn't make up a menu for us this week but we made several fun foods last week. I know it is weird to do a food post while I am getting over a stomach bug but what can I say....we love food around here. We made Rice Krispy treats and in honor of valentines day we made them pink. They were really yummy!!

We also made fruit skewers. Ellie has always loved fruit but lately she has not really wanted fruit unless I had strawberries so I figured if I put the fruit on a stick she would want some and I was right. I made my skewer first and Ellie wanted hers to be just like mine so it was perfect because it snuck in a school lesson of pattering. We also made cereal muffins last week and they turned out really good. At first I didn't think they were sweet enough but after a few bites they became addictive and both girls loved them. Here is the recipe which came from this blog.

2 c. flour

1/2 c. sugar

3 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

1 c. milk

1/4 c. oil

1 egg

1 c. ready-to-eat cereal

Mix all ingredients together, adding the cereal last. Pour batter into a 12 cup, greased muffin pan (or use muffin liners). Bake at 400° for 25 minutes.

Wordless Wednesday

Preschool

We had a good school week last week but I guess anything is better then what we did the week before, which was nothing:)

This week we added the word AT to our word worm. I am just amazed at how easy and fun the sight words have been. In the car we played a lot of I will meet you AT ? and sometimes we would spell it and say I will meet you A..T... ?. This game got very silly but it worked. She would read books and pick out the word on her own and also the word THE from last week. Silly I know but I was so excited:)

She wanted to break out her foam alphabet puzzle and put it together. I will admit I wasn't excited because last time she dumped them out and that was the extint of playing with them but this time she put the whole thing together. I was so proud!!!! It took quite a bit of time so I couldn't believe she stuck with it. It is amazing the difference a few months make! We played lots of letter games on the mat but mostly it was her stage for singing.

We put together lots of puzzles. I found a box of 24 piece 2 sided kids puzzles I had forgotten all about so we put several of those together.

We played LOTS of games. I taught her how to play Go Fish. She really enjoyed this and it is such a good numbers game.

She practiced writing her name and also the word at. She gets so frustrated when she is writing and doesn't get the word exactly right. There is lots of grunting and growling but when she gets it, boy is she proud of herself. I promise I don't make her sit and write and actually try to talk her into doing something else when she is frustrated:)

We also worked on her numbers 11-20 some more. She has got 11-15 licked but 16-20 is still a bit jumbled. She worked with the big alligator teeth again with her numbers but the big hit this week was the candy store. We played this over and over and over. Tons of counting and eating involved. I printed the activity from Kidssoup. If you are the store owner you had to sort out the candy hearts by color and if you were the shopper you had to bring in your list and tell the store owner what you needed. The owner would then count out the hearts you needed and then count the total number of hearts at the end. Of course you paid in hearts at the end and the owner ate them.

Menu

This week I only planned out four meals because for the last 3 weeks we haven't made all five because there is so many left overs. This week we are having:

Rotisserie chicken with asparagus and rice

Calzones with salad

Indian chicken that I never made last week with roasted cauliflower

Grilled chicken with sweet potatoes

The girls menu: (Ellie loves doing this each week!!)





Breakfast: Cereal, Waffles, Oatmeal, Toast, Muffins (I am trying a new muffin recipe and if they turn out good I will post it)

Lunch: Fish sticks, Ham and cheese cracker, PB&J, muffin tin lunch, cheese quesadillas