Emily's New Bike

We went for a walk the other day, and I realized Emily's bike was breaking and it was so small compared to her, so we decided it was new bike time.  She's in love with her new Dora bike; I think it's so funny that it came with Backpack and Map to put on the front of the handle bars!

Old vs New

Ready to go!

She stopped at the park and gave me the thumbs ups to show me she was going to go swing for a minute, then was off for some more bike action soon after. :)

Pine Cone Bird Feeder

Emily and I had a craft afternoon earlier in the week when I decided since Emily loves watching the birds so much, we should make a bird feeder.  Being the silly person that I am, I refused to make a post about it until I could actually catch a bird using it on camera. :)

Emily calls every bird she sees her birdie, and is always saying, "I wish I was a bird!"  So I decided to make a bird feeder out of things we already had around here, besides the bird seed that I made a special Target trip for (yay for it being on clearance!).  I told Emily we were going to take Bella for a walk and go on a pine cone "hunt", then I gathered the rest of the stuff.  I recommend news paper (for containing the mess), thread or string (to hang the pine cones), peanut butter, bird seed, a couple of spoons or spatulas, and bowls for the PB and bird seed.

All you have to do is lay the newspaper out, pick out some pine cones, put some PB in a bowl (so you're not getting gross pine cone stuff in your PB if you have to re-dip your spoon) and put some bird seed in a bowl big enough to roll your pine cones in.

Tie up your pine cone on a string, then take a big spoonful of PB and spread it all over your cone.  Put the sticky pine cone in your bird seed bowl and either roll it around or use your hands to scoop and pat as much bird seed as you can get to stick to the PB.  Hang it up outside somewhere and wait for the birds to find it.

We saw some eating off of ours the day after we put it up, but they have some kind of ultra-radar so getting a picture was the difficult part! :)

A Walk Around Our Neighborhood

This is a long post, but there are just lots of pictures.  :)

I love our neighborhood.  It's nice and calm and quiet, but people are friendly when you pass by and want to get to know you when you're playing at the park or walking the dog.  I love that we have tons of trees around us, it's relaxing, and lots of room to run and play outside.

This is where we live.  It's a little condo community.

This is our backyard.  When you walk up a short sidewalk outside of our front door (the opposite direction that Emily's going in the picture above), you come to this huge grassy area that's perfect for playing ball, having a picnic, running in circles,  or doing just about anything else you could imagine.

There's this great walkway that goes all the way around it, perfect for walks.

On the one side of the field there are the condos, and on the other side there's this ravine-type thing that runs the whole length.  It has lots of trees in it and a little stream in the bottom (there was probably more water back in the day), and there are lots of sticks and rocks and who knows what kinds of bugs or frogs or whatnot.  I bet little boys love to explore down there!

At the end of the field, there's a little playground that Emily loves.  It's simple but keeps her entertained, and sometimes we'll bring her sand toys and build things.

We usually take two walks a day, once around the field, and the other one around this great pond/stream-type thing that's in another section of our condos.  All we have to do is cross the street and go behind the other houses and we can see little waterfalls, bridges, and rocks with turtles hanging out on them.  Emily likes to make them dive into the water.  I didn't realize how big the pond was until we got the dog and started exploring more.  It goes almost the whole length of the street.

And since this post is already so long, I might as well throw in a few more pictures of Emily from our walk.  :)  Come and visit us!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Silly Conversations

I just wanted to share some of the silly but cute things that Emily said today.

We were at Target picking up a prescription, and I had to sign the little digital pad thingy.  Yes I'm sure that's the technical name for it.  She kept asking if she could sign it and I said no because it had my name and not her name.  So she says, "But I can sign your name!  M-O-M-M-Y, Mommy, that's your name!"  It was just a cute little moment and the guy at the pharmacy got a laugh out of it too.

I had a frustrating afternoon with her today; she's going through another week of Idon'tneedtolistentoathingyoutellmeitis.  But even among her complaining comes some kind of cute excuses.  I gave her a workbook page to do, and after she colors one flower petal she stops and starts frowning.  After I tell her to do her work she says, "But my muscles aren't strong enough to color anymore!"

We went to Devin's baseball game today and while we were there she was waiting for Alexis to show up so they could share some cookies.  Doug tells her Alexis will be there in like 10 minutes, and Emily says, "But my head hurts when Alexis isn't here yet!"

That's all for today, time to eat!

A Bit of This and That

There's not much to blog about this week, seeing as how it's been filled mostly with a puppy's bathroom schedule and a visit to the vet, etc.

Emily is starting to let her swim teacher push her a little bit more, but still is having trouble relaxing at all in the pool.  She let her push her all the way to the bottom of the pool to pick up some rings though; that was awesome!

This week my sister-in-law, Lori, asked me to make a cake for her to give to her daughter's (Anastasia) boyfriend.  I was more than happy to do it!  It was of the smiley face from the move "Watchmen".  You know, that crazy one with the blood on it's face.  Strange cake, but fun to make!  Emily thought it was, "Beautiful, Mommy!!"  Hehe. :)

Yesterday I went to a friend's baby shower (Amber).  I had a lot of fun sitting and talking and seeing all the baby stuff, and she's such a stinkin' cute pregnant person with her tiny round belly!  I'm so glad I got to go.  After the shower Alex, Emily and I went to Nick & Suzanne's for dinner and some family time.  We had some yummy salmon and it was good to see everybody and see how Nick's knee is healing.

Today is mostly a lazy day; yes!!  Here's a picture of the latest cake fiasco to keep you happy until the next time...no pun intended!  ;)

Broccoli

When is the last time you saw a kid take a big bite of broccoli like this...

And end up looking like this??

It happens every time Emily is around the stuff.  She's so strange!!  I can't stand broccoli, but it's really one of Emily's favorite foods.  I swear she's going to be a vegetarian when she gets older; getting her to eat her meat is like pulling teeth, but stick broccoli in front of her and she plows through it like they're M&M's!  Not that eating your veggies is a bad thing, but she's four, and she actually did a little happy dance when she found out there would be those little green trees on her plate last night.  Blech!!

One More For The Scrapbook

Today was Amanda's little boy's 2nd birthday party (Jack) and I was able to make him an Elmo cake to go along with the theme.  I hadn't ever tried one of those shaped cake pans before, so it didn't turn out bad for my first time.

Bella

I'd like to introduce our newest family member, Bella!  

We're all in love with her, and she's happy here already.  We picked her up yesterday and she warmed up to us all fast while we played.  I felt like we had a new baby in the house when we went to bed.  We were listening to make sure she went to sleep and waiting for her to start crying to go to the bathroom.  She actually slept until five, so that's more sleep than we thought we'd get. :)  Lucky for me, Alex took her out into the cold at five in the morning.  She's had lots of play time and long walks today, and she's laying on my lap snoring away right now. :)

Showing Alex some love...

I haven't been able to get any pictures of Emily playing with her yet...she was just warming up to her last night and is getting more comfortable with her today, so hopefully I'll get some good ones soon!  For now, here's Alex and Bella...

He is so excited to have her!  He looks like a happy little boy with his puppy in this one...

Ducks

It is the most perfect weather for being outside today!  After swim lessons this morning and lunch when we got home we made sure to get a lot of outside time.  We started out by going for a bike ride, which didn't last for long because it's been a while and Emily's legs supposedly got tired (it's a start, we need to do it more often again).

There is this great little duck pond that we would pass by every day on the way home from Emily's preschool.  Every day I'd pass by and remind myself that we really needed to go and hang out there, but like so many things, we never got around to it.  Today was the day!  We stopped and got a couple of super cheap loaves of bread on the way; I love fun for $2! She was so excited to follow the ducks and see which ones would eat out of her hand.  She didn't count on them being so brave that they'd try and steal bread from her now and then.  And I found out the ducks hiss...I didn't know that!  I laughed at myself because I'd see one hissing at another and my motherly instinct kicked in so I'd purposely not give the mean duck any bread.  I'm such a dork! :)  We stayed for at least an hour, although I could have sat there and relaxed all afternoon.

  

Her favorite part seemed to be throwing little pieces of bread in the water and watching the tiny black ducks all scramble to get a piece of it. It was so fun to watch her laugh at them, and I loved the little jump she'd do every time she'd go to throw another piece really far!  This is definitely something we can add to our once a week list.

Day One

We started the week off pretty easy, and had a great day.  Breakfast and Sesame street in the morning, then a couple of worksheets out of some preschool workbooks we bought over the weekend.  She still gets excited about tracing things and writing letters and numbers, it's very cute!  I wonder how much longer that will last though. :)

I painted my toenails the other day and actually used a color other than red (it's very rare, trust me) so Emily decided she needed to match me.  I was all too happy to have an ultra-girly moment and give her a manicure and pedicure!  When I paint her nails she shows them to people wherever we go, so precious!

We had lunch and then she faked napping for half an hour before I decided it was time to go and check out our local library.  I'm horrible, this was Emily's first time to a library!  We read a few books and signed up for their weekly story time that starts on the 31st and lasts 9 weeks; that should be fun!

After the library we came home for a simple afternoon of Philadelphia Chickens (it's a kid's CD), some drawing, and Emily dancing around while I went through and organized her drawers.

It was a simple day but really nice to have the time together and a nice preview of the months to come!  We kept busy enough to not get bored and whiney.  Oh, and thanks to Daddy's great idea we finished off the night by meeting him up at Chuck E Cheese after he got out of work and had some family fun time and bad pizza. :)  I looooove Skee Ball!

Mmmm!

I'm finally getting a little better every day for the last few days, and Friday was my first day of not sitting on the couch all day.  I was in charge of making the main dish for Alexis' 5th birthday, so it was a lasagna night.  Yum!!!  Look at that mass of cheesy, saucy goodness!

Last week was Emily's last week in preschool so I'm sure this week we'll have lots of pictures to share.