More pictures

After her first day of school, A- and G- helped with the yard. They filled up that whole trashcan with trimmings from the hedges!

A-'s invention: "It's taped to mommy's door and I got the idea from a hotel and basically how you do it is you have tape, tape it to your wall, and then you do it however you want and then you put it somewhere you can find that would be good. "

First day of Kindergarten

So she doesn't love getting her picture taken....

But she was excited. Until she spilled milk on her clothes and had to change. But I promised her she could wear the other outfit on Tuesday and that pacified her. She didn't flip out though, was just mildly cranky, which, I have to admit, I would have been too.

I can't wait to hear how it went...

Mother's Day present for Oma

Here's Oma's belated Mother's Day present.

A- drew and I embroidered.

And the girls doing their first embroideries. Very free form-avant-garde.

And the girls sitting with Oreo while I did a little gardening.

Snow!

We had a good couple inches of big sticky snow today. With the snow from two days ago (overnight that melted by midafternoon), we've probably broken some kind of record.

Both girls played in it at least twice today, completely exhausting our minimal collection of mittens and hats which of course got soaking wet almost immediately. R- helped A- make a big snowman, it was great snow for rolling. A- came in several times competely excited needing buttons for the front and I gave her a carrot for the nose. Pretty exciting stuff for a five year old that has rarely seen snow, let alone enough to actually play in.

G- says "no!" for "snow" just like A- did.

Random tidbits:
- A- has taken the saying "freezing cold" to heart. Apparently "freezing" is a good adverb to indicate "very". As in "freezing hot outside" and "I'm freezing hungry."
- G- can say "Oreo", the guinea pig's name, but of course it comes out "Loleo".
- A- is into skipping and hopping on one foot and jumping jacks. G- tries to imitate, of course.
- A- actually wanted to use her Lincoln logs today. What! Purchased for Christmas two years ago and pretty much ignored. She's in a building mode. Also liking 20 piece jigsaw puzzles. There must be some spatial development going on in that brain.

Pictures to follow.

Five years old!

A- turned five on the 10th but we had her party on the 9th. Three friends came over and we made a little picture frame craft (gotta love my Usborne books for craft ideas!), had lunch and cake and a pinata that A- has wanted for two years and we finally remembered to include. Oma and Opa were here to help her celebrate.

What a great birthday - she was so excited about everything.

Afterwards we went to the park to celebrate Valentine's Day with some playgroup/La Leche League friends. The weather was great, just like it was on the February day when we brought her home from the hospital.

Her big present was a guinea pig whom we named Oreo. She has wanted a pet for months (years?) so she was quite excited. And neighbor S- had even gone with us to the park so she got to go with us to pick out the guinea pig!

Really almost Christmas

I can't finish Christmas until the girls fall asleep and that is taking... awhile. So I might as well put up some pictures from church this afternoon. For once, A- didn't fight me on what to wear. G- of course did because she had to wear a diaper and she's been diaperless during the day the last week or so. We went to the family service at 4:00 and had a busy day before that making Rice Krispie treats and sugar cookies and playing hide-and-seek.

Here they are after church:

Can you feel the sisterly love?

This was G- yesterday helping her new stuffed animal to go potty:

Almost Christmas

It's almost Christmas and I never posted about Thanksgiving! R- was working so the girls and I went to Ohio. We seem to be on a once a month plan. The weather was unseasonably warm when we got there but turned colder. G- got to see her favorite horses again.

The girls are playing with rice in the laundry room right now. Unfortunately, they poured kool-aid into the bin of dry rice so it's sticky now. I'm ignoring it for awhile before I throw them in the bathtub to de-sticky. They both have colds, and I think A- has pinkeye, but it does look a little better today than yesterday.

We (meaning me) did a lot of cleaning yesterday and today made some chocolate covered pretzels for gifts. I'm psyching myself up to make some sugar cookies. We're also babysitting a friend's beta fish.

I've been wanting to record G-'s word list. It goes something like this (not necessarily by frequency of use or emergence):
mama
dada
more
nur-nur
stepstool
uh-uh (for "no")
no
baby
ball
guh-guh (for "car")
two
bye-bye
'lo (for "hello")