Winter Fun

Here are some pictures of things we have been up to lately:

Making holiday treats (with lots and lots of sprinkles). Each Christmas Eve we bake cookies and bring them to our local fire station. The firefighters always let the kids check out the fire engines, which they love:

Having a surprise visit from Santa. Samuel asked to try on Santa's hat and Santa replied "Well, only if I can wear your hat!" 

We went to see The Nutcracker (disclaimer: it was the Max and Ruby version of The Nutcracker, designed for young kids, so it wasn't the real thing, but more of an introduction to what The Nutcracker is like.) You can only barely make it out in the picture below, but Becca insisted on packing a gift bag full of ribbon and wrapping paper scraps and bringing them with us to give to "a stranger at the nutcracker", as she said. (should I be concerned that she wants to give presents to strangers?) We gave it to one of the ushers who looked like a grandmother, and she was very nice about it. The performance was at a beautiful restored theater called The Embassy Theatre. You can kind of see some of it in the picture below (if you look past the part where it looks like Erin's head is on fire. Ushers are apparently good at accepting gift bags of ribbon, but not so good at taking pictures.)

Becca has been asking to try ice skating, so we went one afternoon with Aunt Erin and Uncle Mark to a local rink that has ice skating and also happens to have bounce houses. Both kids overwhelmingly preferred the bounce houses to the ice skating, and as you can see in the picture below, Samuel is not eager to get back on the ice any time soon. His feet kept hurting because instead of gliding them across the ice, he kept picking them up and taking tiny steps. Becca was a wild woman on the ice and it took me AND Erin to hold her up so that none of us fell. After about 2 times around the rink, she told us "I'm ready to go in the middle now. On my own." Um, I don't think so. She was so excited and wiggly, she could barely stand still on the ice without falling one way or the other. 

Happy New Year everyone! I will try to be better about posting on our blog in 2014! 

Gnome Hunt and Fairy Houses

I took the kids to an event at a local farm back in September. We went on a walk in the woods to find hidden gnomes, and then they built fairy houses using materials they found in the woods.

Finding a gnome.

A gnome!

Becca's fairy house.

Samuel's fairy house (for very large fairies apparently.)

Becca and her finished fairy house

Samuel's finished fairy house

Both kids really liked walking around in the woods (there are no woods near our house. Heck, we only have 1 tree in our yard, which is great for fall raking time, but not so much fun for exploring). Becca is a nature collector and brought home a big bag of treasures - nuts, seeds, sticks, etc... Samuel didn't bring anything home, but he had a lot of fun building his fairy house (mansion?) At one point, the instructor actually restricted Samuel from bringing back any sticks that were larger than he (Samuel) was. That's how gung-ho he was about building this. I don't think he was at all interested in a fairy possibly living there, but he just wanted to build, build, build.

First Day of School

Was the 1st day of school back in August? Yes. Am I super behind on updating our blog? Yes.

Here are the kids ready for their first day of school:

Live from Fort Wayne, It's Sunday Night...

Our blog has been sadly neglected for the past few months since I went back to work the beginning of August. I have tons of things I want to post here, and will try to get to those soon. In the meantime, here are a few videos of Becca attempting to tell a joke tonight. (It sort of looks like she is wearing a purple mink stole in these videos, but it's actually just her bathrobe.) Oh, and in case you thought 4-year-olds were ready for stand-up comedy, spoiler alert: they aren't. But she is super cute, so that counts for something.

Princess Tea Party

Becca went to a Princess Tea Party this week. It was a program through our Parks and Rec Dept. There were about 10 little girls there all dressed up in princess dresses. They got to make hats, play games, decorate cookies, and play with an (empty) tea set. She had a lot of fun! I think her favorite parts were eating the cookie and dancing on the stage in her princess dress.

Elephant and Piggie

Both Samuel and Becca LOVE the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. This week Elephant and Piggie made a guest appearance at our library so we went to see them. The kids got to have their pictures taken with Elephant and Piggie, hear some Elephant and Piggie stories, and make some puppets. Here are some pictures:

Muncie Children's Museum

Last week the kids and I met some friends at the Muncie Children's Museum. This museum is great! It is a lot smaller than the Indianapolis Children's Museum so it is WAY less crowded (actual quote from the person at the admission desk when we bought our tickets: "We have 4 families here today so it may be kind of crowded."). Samuel's favorite thing there was a real semi-trailer truck that kids can climb in and pretend to drive. Becca's favorite was the area set up as a small town where kids could play in the post office, store, vet, dentist, etc...

Here is a video of Becca playing in the vet's office, a video of Samuel climbing up the ant tunnels, and then some pictures of the kids enjoying other parts of the museum. If you live anywhere near this museum and have young kids, I highly recommend checking it out!

Samuel at the top of the ant hill climbing structure.

Becca petting Speedy the tortoise.

Future mechanic #1.

Future mechanic #2.

With our friends Helen and James.

Samuel's favorite - the truck!