May 2016 - Weeks 2 & 3

Mother's Day weekend we needed to get out of the house, so we had some gift cards for Gameworks and decided to the take the kids.  Maybe we shouldn't have. . . .  They enjoyed several of the games, but got frustrated with the things they couldn't do and it just ended with a lot of crying.  But here are some pictures of them having fun.

First time for air hockey.

Racing other cars with daddy.

Sunday morning (Mother's Day) the girls had their Sunday School awards before church.  They both did really well throughout the year learning memory verses.

Katelyn in the middle.

Brooklyn on the left in black.

The girls made me this with the babysitter (we LOVE having my cousin Jessie babysit).

Katelyn is orange, Brooklyn purple, and Madison blue.

Katelyn also wrote this card for me, that just makes me want to cry.  She is such a thoughtful kid.

There was also a picture that she drew.

Because Katelyn had her field trip the Thursday before Mother's Day, they had the moms come to school for pampering the following Thursday.  It was a lot of fun.  The kids were so excited.  Katelyn gave me a few gifts they had ready, served me some food, painted my nails and pampered me.

Overall, we have had a very cool May and have been spending a lot of time outdoors.  We were also able to pick up a new bike for Katelyn with a great deal on a brand new bike from Craigslist.

Brooklyn's drawings of Olaf - her drawing gets better by the week.

Katelyn's new bike.

She's HUGE.

Lots & lots of swinging lately.  Madison wants to swing all day long.

Lots of chalk always going on at our house.  The neighbor girl likes to come play with them.

Twinning!  They love each other.

We've been going to the park more lately.  Here we were meeting some friends.

Here are a few more random pictures.

Messy eater.

The first time Katelyn painted her own fingers & toes.

Katelyn made this 'Family Flag'.   (Bottom right is biking.)

Sunny Days in February & Garage Organization

I am struggling a little with the flow of this new weekly blogging format.  I like the topical posts that I used to do better, because I felt they were probably more interesting to follow along with than just a weekly update of 'here is what we did this week.'  However, it is much easier to make sure I actually stay on top of the blogging when I do a weekly post on around the same day each week.  So please (if anyone is reading this ;-) ) bare with me while I try to get the flow of this down and figure out what is best.


We have been having some wonderful weather the past few weeks (possibly even too warm), so I am trying to get the kiddos outdoors a little more.  The unfortunate part of that means more baths/showers (not my favorite part of parenting), but I guess it is worth it, right?  Katelyn doesn't have school on Mondays and Fridays, so on the very rare occasion where I'm not working and we don't have appointments, I try to do something fun with them.  Last week we went to the park on Friday.  There happened to be another girl from Katelyn's class there that day too, so Katelyn had a blast.

Lunch Time!

On Saturday, we had a work day in the garage.  We bought some new shelving and moved some things around so that the kids will hopefully have better access to their toys.  Before it was just all in one huge tub and finding balls/helmets/toys could be difficult.  It was beautiful outside and we pretty much spent the whole day in the front yard. 

We love chalk at our house.

The finished product

 I might still pick up some more baskets and we need to get rid of a few basketball (I think 5 is too many), but I am really like it so far.  Our hope is that the bikes will stay far enough to the right so that they don't block everything else.  Fingers crossed.

On Tuesday, Katelyn celebrated 100's day at school.  She had to bring in 100 snack items (she picked marshmallows) and she had to turn in a project of her choice last week that included 100 items on it.  After looking through some ideas on Pinterest, she decided to make a skittles rainbow.

The highlight of my week was that they opened a new Hobby Lobby less than 10 minutes from our house on Monday!  So, of course, I had to go this morning with my mom to check it out.  Brooklyn thought these flowering trees in the parking lot were cool and wanted to go stand by one. 

The sun was a little bright . . .

Funnies of the week:
- I found an ice pack in the trash the other morning when making lunches and I asked Katelyn why it was in the trash.  "It's not cold," she said.  Evidently she thought that because it was no longer cold, it was broken.  I promptly took it out and put it in the freezer.
- Why is it that the only time flip flops fly off a kids foot while riding a scooter is when you are in the middle of a 5 lane road?  This of course happened to Brooklyn (aka Speed Racer) while walking to Katelyn's bus stop yesterday afternoon.

Leaves & A Picnic in the Park

In Katelyn's birthday package from her grandparents, there was a leaf book for both her and Brooklyn that Kyle's mom made. 

The girls enjoyed looking at the books and I thought it might be fun and timely to do a unit on leaves.  We got a few books from the library that were leaf themed and did a bunch of worksheets that incorporated leaves.


I thought it would be fun to do a craft gluing leaves onto a wreath and have the girls collect the leaves.  We took a walk to the park and the girls collected leaves on the way.

Picking up brown leaves.

As you can see from this picture, most trees still have their leaves

Watching her sisters play.

Katelyn wanted me to take her pic after she climbed up the slide the entire way (we were the only kids at the playground).

Brooklyn headed up the slide.

Always happy.

Picnic time!

My reading materials while the kids were on the playground.  If you know me at all, you know what kid I am reading this for. ;-)

It was a beautiful day.


We made the wreaths the next week.  They didn't turn out too great as we do live in SoCal and don't really have much variation in leaf color other than green and brown :-).  But it was still a fun learning experience.

I had good intentions of doing a Thanksgiving unit after the leaf unit, but I ran out of time.