Puppet Show 2

Riley wanted to bring the puppets upstairs to play with today. When Lily saw them she got really excited. Here are pictures from her own little puppet show.

Here is a short video of Lily doing a puppet show.

Puppet Show

I did my student teaching at Riverside Elementary, which is an art and history magnet. They teach with a different theme for each month. I had the privilege of doing my student teaching under Amy DeCastro, who is a great teacher. She taught me so much! One thing was to go above and beyond what you needed to do. So, when it was my turn to take over teaching, and the theme was artists, she suggested that I have a center for puppets. So, Jeff (wonderful husband that he is) built a puppet theatre for me. We still have this theatre in our basement. My sister, Amy, who is a children's librarian, sometimes puts on puppet shows at the library and Riley LOVES to watch her put them on. He has been asking her to come over and help him put one on for Jeff and I , so she came over yesterday. Here are pictures from their cute show. (Zach helped too!)

Here is a short video of part of the show. They are "dancing" here.

They did a good job and even put on a show for Amy later on.

Sledding!

We went to the park by our house today to go sledding down the big hill there. The boys had a lot of fun! They went up and down the hill several times.

Lily went down twice with Zach. After the second time, she said, "Done! Done!"

I don't think she was that excited about it.

Even Jeff & I went down the hill once.

It was a fun way to spend time together.

Snow!

The snow finally came! We didn't get anywhere near what they predicted, but we got enough for the boys to play in, so while Lily was taking a nap, the boys went out and played in the snow. Here is Zach sliding down the snow/ice covered slide.

While Zach was busy building a snowman, Riley took advantage of Zach not looking, and pelted him with snowballs. (Don't feel too sorry for Zach, Riley had endured Zach throwing lots of snowballs at him before Zach lost interest.)

Here is Zach's snowman. He has a carrot nose, Starburst eyes, and pencil arms.

Since Lily didn't get to play out in the snow, here are some pictures from yesterday of her drinking her first cup of hot cocoa. (ever!)

I think she likes it!

Rain, Sleet, Ice, Snow....

Looks like snow, doesn't it? You would be wrong. This is actually what was falling by our house yesterday afternoon. What is it you ask? Ice pellets. Fun....

Yesterday, my sister Amy said she heard someone on the radio call what was coming down in Wichita "unidentified precipitation." I would have to agree with this person. We had ice pellets, sleet, a tiny bit of snow, and I swear I saw rain coming down last night. All the while the weathermen kept saying, "The snow is coming!" If you live in Wichita, I know that the west side of town actually got some snow yesterday, but not here on the east side. On the ten o'clock news, they said we would wake up to 2 -4 inches of snow with more to come during the day. This is what we woke up to:

More ice! With a light dusting of snow.

This is our poor little tree covered in ice.

It is actually snowing now.

The boys are super excited and Lily keeps looking outside and laughing. Hopefully they will be able to play in it later on.

Shoes!

Lily LOVES shoes. Seriously. We will walk by them in the store and she will yell out, "Shoes! Shoes!" She likes trying on shoes, and gets mad when we don't buy any. She also has opinions on which shoes she likes. I tried to buy a red pair of sandals and she said, "No." and pointed to a pair of yellow ones that I had just tried on her feet. She comes by this naturally though. I love shoes too. Jeff is not too thrilled with this obsession of ours. =) Here is her shoe basket.

She also likes to try on everyone else's shoes. Here she is in a pair of my flip-flops.

She even thinks Daddy's shoes look good!

Here she is trying to put her shoes on her baby doll.

So, as you can see, Lily and I will have to start saving for shoe shopping trips in the future. (and when Jeff reads this, he will probably disagree, ha ha!)

A Walk With Lily

Sometimes, Lily and I like to go on walks when both boys are in school on Tuesday & Thursday morning. So last Tuesday, we headed out around our neighborhood. I normally take her in the stroller, but when we got outside, she started running down the driveway shouting, "Walk! Walk!" So I thought we would both walk this time. Lily loved it! I did have a hard time having her stay with me though. This is a picture of her running ahead of me, one of many, many times. Good thing she has short legs!

There is a ditch by our house and when it rains water collects there. While we were walking on the sidewalk above the ditch, Lily spotted her favorite animal, ducks. She will even call them ducks now and then, but most of the time she calls them quack quacks. Here she is trying to chase them down. They were not cooperating with her. I had to get her before she ran into the water. =)

Here she is by the trees by our house. They have little blossoms on them. She kept saying, "Pretty!"

We finally made it back home after our adventure. Lily loves walks, but I don't think I am going to get her back in that stroller again!

Career Choices For Six Year Olds

If you read this blog regularly, you will have read that I love to listen to the conversations between my niece Taby and my son, Zach. Today Zach told me that in school they had to draw things that they would like to be when they grow up. I asked him what he drew and he said a race car driver. I asked Taby what she would like to be and she gave me this list: an ice cream girl, a cake maker, and a sword person. Not to be outdone, Zach added these to his list of things to be: a race car fixer, a land digger, and a treasure hunter. My favorite though, was what Taby added when Zach was finished with his list. She said, "OH yeah! I also want to be ME!" Too cute!

Riley's Book

Today Riley wanted to write a storybook. We do this every once in awhile. The boys think up a story and I write the words down on paper. They draw in the pictures for each page, and then I staple the whole book together. It is a fun way to spend the afternoon. Here is Riley's book:

Pinata

Today we went to our niece, Elayne, and nephew, Bryce's Birthday party. Bryce turned one and Elayne turned three. They had a pinata for each of them. All of the kids got to take a turn at hitting each pinata. Then they all scrambled for the candy! Here is Bryce taking a whack at his Micky Mouse pinata. He had fun for about 1 minute and then was done. =)

Here is Elayne with her princess pinata. She is a girly-girl and that is exactly how she hit that pinata too! She was very dainty the whole time. It was very cute.

Here is Lily hitting the pinata. She thought it was funny.

Riley and Zach had fun hitting it too.

Happy Birthday Bryce & Elayne!

Daddy's Girl

Jeff has to go out of town from time to time and when he does, it seems to be hardest on Lily. Partly because the boys are older and are used to it, but mainly because Lily is a Daddy's Girl. Big time. If Jeff leaves for work before Lily gets up, she will shake her head no and say, "Daddy home, Daddy home" in a sad little voice. She now adds "Daddy work" in this little lament. Jeff had to be out of town yesterday and part of today, so she hadn't seen him since Thursday night. I told her that he was coming home so she set her & her little baby doll up by the door to wait. (By the way, thanks Aunt Diana & Uncle Sam for the doll, it is by far her favorite!) Here she is waiting for Jeff to come home. (In case you are wondering, I didn't tell her he was coming home until he called and said he was about 5 minutes from home.)

She sees Daddy's truck!

At home at last!!

It's really too bad she doesn't like her Daddy. =)

Spring Break Part 3

Well, our Spring Break is almost over. Yesterday, we went to a puppet show at the Central Library, where my sister Amy is the Children's Librarian. She didn't do the puppet show, but she was there, so the kids enjoyed seeing her. The puppet show was really cute and even Lily sat through most of it. Then we headed over to my sister Kathleen's house where we had lasagna (YUM!) and the kids got to play with each other one last time before school started back up again.

Today we just stayed around our house which was also nice. Since it is the 20th Anniversary of Eric Carle's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I happen to love Eric Carle's books, we made a caterpillar mobile. (Which was supplied to us by Amy. Thanks Amy!!)

Since I am showing art work, here are the leprechauns the boys made for St. Patrick's Day.

This afternoon, we went to the park by our house and we flew the kites that Aunt Kathleen gave the kids. (Thanks!!) I was not sure how I was going to help all three kids fly kites, but I thought I would give it a try.

I started out with Riley. He did a pretty good job!

Zach was next and he was so good, I didn't even have to help him again!


The boys had a lot of fun flying their kites.

After I got the boys settled with their kites, I decided to at least take a picture of Lily with her kite since I didn't think that even if I could help her fly it, I would never get a picture of her flying it.

I was SO wrong!! I handed her the string and told her to hold on. Then I put the kite up in the wind & it just stayed up there!! It was unbelievable! I was able to get several pictures of her holding the kite, flying it by herself.

She did figure out though, that if she let go of the kite, it would fly even farther and she had the added benefit of watching Mommy run like a crazy woman after the kite before it fell into the pond. (Because that's where it was always headed!) After the the third time, I was onto her though & I decided to not let her hold the kite anymore. =)

We had so much fun this week! We don't have anything major planned for this weekend, so we are just going to relax and enjoy the last few days of Spring Break before Zach and Riley have to go back to school.