Play Group

We had play group at our house yesterday. I taped all this paper down on the floor with an idea in my head of all the kids working together to make one huge rainbow. You win some, you lose some. None of them were interested in that. So, it basically just became a place for them to come back to and color when they felt like it. Abi and Sara colored the most.

Toward the end we went outside and had some fun with sidewalk chalk, played with balls, and played outdoor group games like Duck Duck Goose and Ring around the rosy. It was fun.
Here is John, Gabe, Abi, Sara, and Alex

Gabe and John

John wanted to make a "hopscotch" after I did.

Abi and Alex playing on the one I drew.

Silly Abi

Abi was so over tired last night that she had a hard time going to sleep. She was finally in bed and then we heard her calling out what sounded like, "I'm wet!" So, I went to check on her. She was actually saying, "I'm dressed." She had pulled this dress out of her closet and put it on along with her hat and the baby carrier as a backpack...

She also had on a shirt under her dress as a 'slip'. She was so proud of herself.

More walks and parks

When Abi and I got back from the park we decided to go meet our friends over by their apartments to go to a better park and on a little nature walk. Abi wanted to wear her gardening gloves.

She had a great time climbing on all of the toys with Alisse.

and spinning Jake

Here they are as we start the nature walk

There were quite a few ponds along the way. This one had fish and geese and ducks.

Abi did so well. This ended up being a really long walk and after having already walked to and from our park she and I were pretty exhausted by the end of it.

She found this stick and called it a fishing pole.

At one point she made this little dirt tower she was pretty proud of. I was glad she had those gloves on!

Picnic at the Park

After school Abi and I went on our St. Patricks Day picnic. I packed us pretty much the same lunch as Doug's although Abi had apple juice instead of Mt. Dew. We packed it all in her new monkey tote from Targets dollar section that she will be using for library books so that we could carry the food in a green bag as well.

We walked over to the neighborhood park and set up camp behind a bench to try to shield ourselves from some of the wind. We ate and then she played on the toys for awhile. We love picnics so this was a highlight of the day.

this was the first time she decided to play on the 'spiderweb'

Our little monkey

On the walk home she was doing this speed walk thing sticking her elbow up really far. It was so funny.

This morning

Sometimes it is harder to get Abi dressed before pre school. Usually she just wants to stay in her jammies or dress in some crazy thing. Today it was easy. I told her that if we caught a Leprechaun in our trap and she wasn't wearing her special St. Patricks Day green shirt that he would pinch her. She gladly got dressed after that. She loved her shirt so much that she stood in front of the mirror for a few minutes.
We went down to the front room and saw that the trap had indeed been set off. Abi was so excited and a little nervous too I think.

Then we opened it and realized that the little Leprechaun had been able to squeeze out the hole in the side of the pull ups box but his hat hadn't been able to fit through so he had left it behind along with some gold coins, some green chocolate, and a little clover notebook, pencil, and stickers. She was SO excited!

She quickly opened up one of the chocolates.

For breakfast we had Lucky Charms of course.

I found out that Abi does not like Lucky Charms. She asked for a leftover waffle (yuck.. they never taste as good the day after!) instead. I put some of the hat marshmallows on it but she quickly threw them away. Weird.

Then we put on The Happiest Millionaire (I know it's not a great shot but it was the best I could get of our tv) and danced around to the "I'll always be Irish" song about 5 times.

Abi then made a little fort on the floor to wait for Alisse to get here for Pre school.

Alisse was excited to put on the Leprechaun hat!

We made Leprechaun puppets with paper bags. I thought it was funny how Abi was coloring with a crayon in each hand. I used to do that too.

Then I gave them blank rainbows and we colored a different colored stripe in each one so they could glue on mini marshmallows onto the appropriately colored stripe. They did really well at this and seemed to enjoy it a lot although it took a long time.

I had originally planned on doing this rainbow instead and had put it aside when I decided to do the other rainbow, but Abi found them and really wanted to do them. So, she and Alisse used the dot painters to color in the white circles on these rainbows...

Then we played bingo. It was funny... I said we were going to play Bingo and they immediately ran for the music box and pulled out maracas and the microphone and streamers and started singing, "There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o". The bingo cards had a picture of a Leprechaun and a rainbow but the rest of the squares were letters. They used Skittles to mark them.

In the last few minutes while waiting for Andra (Alisse's mom) the girls decided to dress up. I had to wait in the front room to be surprised. They came out like this...

Alisse was the bride and Abi was the bride's mommy. I'm not sure what they are doing in this picture...

It was a really fun morning and I really got a kick out of their dress ups.