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")

Halloween

Halloween was exciting this year. Net-Net was here and the girls dressed up like Ohio State cheerleaders. A- wanted to trick-or-treat with her neighbor friend so we met a bunch of kindergarteners at another neighbor's house and A- went with a big pack of 5 year olds.

This is the girls before we left for trick or treating. G- is trying to smile for the camera.

We went with Net-net to the Pumpkin Patch for our annual picture with the measuring stick.

On Saturday evening, we went to Trunk-or-treat at church. A- got her face painted and we got this awesome picture of her and daddy.

Miscellaneous

Some recent photos:

The girls loving daddy reading time. Sometimes he even reads the actual words.

Preschool, daddy helped her make a stairstep with the number rods.
From the child that used to never be able to play by herself. "Look mom, I made a ship." Looks more like a train to me, but if it's a ship, it's a ship. The counting bears are passengers.
Completely on her own, from the idea to the execution, I swear. She learned to spell exit while on airplanes to and fro from Ohio.
On the Pumpkin Express train last weekend.
G- on the Pumpkin Express. She got woken up to get on the train so not her finest moment, but boy, doesn't she have pretty eyes?

G- today. She took the carriage from the Fisher-Price castle and drove it all over the house. Then disappeared. I heard noises coming from the vacuum closet and opened it to surprise her and got a gorgeous smile so I talked her into hiding again so I could capture it. Yes, she's wearing a bathing suit in October. No, it's not warm outside. Yes, she has purple paint on her chest. I was cleaning and left some paint out that A- was using while G- napped. G- decided to use it to paint her left hand, her chin, and her chest. Yesterday, the girls were playing in the car where I had inadvertently, and stupidly, left my purse. G- got my lipstick out and had it smeared over one leg and her face and A- had put some on her lips, sort of, and had gotten A-n-n-e written out on her leg by the time I got there. Hey, at least they were sharing.