More Birthday Fun

This past week, Bella's birthday fun continued.  We went to Greenfield Village to ride Thomas the Train, as she had wished.  We had fun with all the other activities they had there that day too.  

 Benjamin LOVES magic tricks.  He ended up choosing to watch this dinky little free 15 minute magic show rather than ride Thomas that day.  Good bye money which I spent on Benjamin's ticket.  I will never make that mistake again.  It was worth it though to make him so happy. He got selected to help out in the show and it was the highlight of his day.  That and all the great climbing trees he discovered the village has.

Our version of a backyard pool.  The kids did this last year all the time and the first chance they got, they wanted to do it again.  Something about cooling off in a cooler.  They just love it.  I love it because it uses a lot less water than those big, shallow kiddie pools.

As soon as the big kids finished and went over to a neighbor's to play, Christian got right in.  He loved it just as much.

Our other hot day activity - the river.  Christian has no fear here and thus, I do.

Without any hestiation, he'll stride right into the cold rushing water up to his chest.  I try to find places along the river where it's not so deep, so he can't get in too much trouble.  I have no desire to go diving into that sludge to rescue him.

He also LOVES looking at the ducks.  He'll follow them around and even get in the water after them.  He found this male duck sitting next to a dead female.  It sat there keeping vigil all afternoon and never left her, even as kids and dogs came close.  He just quacked warning quacks but never left her side.  No idea how long he'd already been there by her or how much longer he stayed.  So sad.  I googled it after we got home and found that this is actually pretty common behavior for ducks.  My heart hurt for the guy.  I wished I could have done something for him.

A few days ago we had one of those "I'm so bored, there's nothing to do!" moments.  I noticed our "warm fuzzy" jar and said, "You could have a pom pom war."  Don't remember where I got the idea from.  Probably pinterest, like all good ideas, but in any case, a strip of tape and two straws later, everyone was happy.  We used mostly white puff balls, with two green ones which were worth extra points.  They had to blow them across to each other's side until the timer dinged and then count up their points.  Except for the spit on the floor, it was a very fun, clean activity which lasted a long time.

Finally, Bella's last birthday bash - her party at Pump It Up.  I kept Benjamin out of school that day so he could join us too and I think he had the most fun of anyone.  They were both moving so fast I had trouble getting anything but blurs of color in my pictures.

Group shot.  Benjamin and 15 preschoolers.  So funny.  He didn't mind at all. He had a blast.  Bella (can you see her?  She's to Benjamin's left) had a great time too.  Pump It Up never disappoints.  We had Benjamin's 4th year party there too and it was just as much fun.

Benjamin was thrilled when one of the employees, completely out of the blue, offered to do some magic tricks for the kids.  He called Bella and Benjamin up to help him and then proceeded to do fun little tricks with pennies.  In this one he pretended to throw the coin through Bella's stomach to Benjamin against the red wall.  He ended up yelling, "oh no, it got stuck in your stomach!  Cough for me!!"  She coughed and he "found" it in her mouth.  "Eeeewwww, it's slobbery!" he declared.  The kids thought it was the greatest.  He did a bunch more that Benjamin's been trying to recreate every day since.  Such a fun day.  Now I think the birthday celebrations are finally over.  Time to get ready for Benjamin's!

This past weekend we went "treasure hunting."  Kelly told the kids were were going to look for treasure in the woods and they were stoked.  We got three geocache sites up at Kensington Park and had a great afternoon looking for them and riding our bikes around the park.

We were pretty tired of it all by the end.  Bushwhacking in the heat wears you out! Christian had the hardest time by the end.  Life's tough when those fallen logs are up to your hips.  I ended up carrying him and Bella back to the car and we shared a snack while Benjamin and Kelly looked for the last one.

I think Bella's favorite part of the trip was the food.  She ate 3 granola bars, a Cliff bar, 4  pancakes leftover from breakfast, and an applesauce pouch.  Then she whined the rest of the way home that she wanted more to eat and was still hungry.  She's crazy.

Today was Bella's last day of preschool, so now we have just 3 more weeks until Benjamin's done and then Summer!  I'm so ready to be done rushing Benjamin in the morning.  He just HATES getting ready for school.  It is such a struggle.  I found a book called "Let's play in the forest while the wolf is not around" which originated in a game to help kids get dressed in the morning.  We've played that every morning since and it was  pretty successful for a few days, but again today, he got bored of it and fought me on getting ready.  How can I have a girl who changes her clothes 15 times a day and a son who makes a war out of getting changed once!??!  We really need to spread the wealth around a bit.

Bella's Birthday

I found my camera, so now I can post some pictures.  (It was in the backyard, by the way - thank goodness it didn't rain last night!)

I asked Bella weeks before her birthday what she wanted to do for her birthday and she said, "I want to go to a farm, I want to ride Thomas the Train, and I want to have a party at Pump It Up."  So, that's what we're doing.  What??  Too much??  C'mon, you only turn 4 once!  No, actually, it's so easy because her preschool already had two of those things planned as end-of-year field trips, so all I had to pay for was the train ride!  She didn't know that, though, so I look like Super Mom and everyone's happy.  The day before her birthday we went to the farm.  Bella was in true Bella form leading the pack - first into every pen, first onto the hay ride, leading the entire class in an impromptu game of follow-the-leader around the field, etc.  She had a blast.

These are still from the farm trip.  She is in a different dress because she insisted on bringing a second dress to change into half-way through the trip.  The sheep got a bit of a strip show, but luckily everyone else had already filed out.

She was thrilled she got to touch an egg fresh from a chicken.  "It's still warm!"  I should put an egg in boiling water at home and see if it makes her as happy.

On her birthday we did the usual cake, decorations, presents, singing, etc.  She also got to pick what we ate, where we ate (she chose Mexican for dinner), and pretty much everything else we did all day.  Drove Benjamin CRAZY!  "It's not fair!!!" was shouted at least a dozen times.  "Wait 2 months and it'll be your turn," is hard to deal with at 5 years old.  We also had an all day fashion show as she couldn't decide which of the great new outfits to wear, so she wore them all over the course of a few hours.  Thank you Mimi and Grandma Dalton for the wonderful clothes.  She was giddier over those than anything else she received.

Today she celebrated her birthday in preschool with a crown she got to decorate, everyone singing to her, and a snack of her choice - croissants with strawberries and whipped cream.

Saturday we're riding Thomas the Train, and next week will be her party at Pump It Up (an inflatable bounce house place.)  I'll post more pictures then.  I like this way of celebrating birthdays because it's not such a let down when the day is over.  It just keeps going and going and going! :)

She's actually also excited to see her doctor for her 4th year check up.  She wants to know how much she's grown.  I want to know why she's 4 and still can't keep things out of her mouth!!!  She's the most orally fixated child I've ever met.  Coins, jewelry, toys (especially legos and polly pocket items), clothes, pencils, and not to mention her thumb, are in her mouth all day long.  I say "Don't eat that; it's not food! Spit it out!" probably 25 times a day.  Alas, you take the good with the bad, right?  We love you Bella! :)

Happy Birthday Sweet Bella!

Isabella turned 4 today!  She is an amazing girl in many ways.  So outgoing, friendly, and loving.  Loves to cuddle and hug.  She is very much a people person.  Loves being the center of attention.  Will do anything for an audience.  Mostly for that reason, she's the terror of her Sunbeam class and I feel deeply sorry for her teacher, but at home she is a lot of fun.

She gave her first talk in Primary on Sunday.  She got up in front of everyone and recited her talk without fear.  Projected her voice and spoke clearly and I couldn't have been more proud.

The other day Benjamin fell off his bike while trying to ride without hands and she came over to him as he cried and said, "I'm sorry you got hurt, Benjamin.  I'll let you have my turn to pick TV if you want."  They get 30 minutes of TV a day and they trade off picking what to watch.  It was Bella's day to pick and they are very careful about keeping track of turns, but she gave it up to comfort him.  That's true love.

I took her swimming alone on Friday for the first time.  Benjamin just wasn't in the mood, so it was just us girls. We had so much fun!  I haven't laughed that hard in weeks.  She is such a generally happy, bubbly girl.  Benjamin's moodiness rubs off on her too often, but get her alone and she's a crack-up!  Very optimistic and light-hearted with such a contagious laugh!

We wish you a wonderful coming year, Bella.  We love you!!!

(Had planned to post pictures from her birthday activities today, but I can't find my camera!!!  Ugh.  I think I spend more time looking for things than any other single activity all day.  So frustrating!  Glad I don't have an even bigger house!  Anyway, more pics to follow when I find my camera.)

Almost Summer!

We're not quite in Summer mode yet, but it sure feels like it.  These last couple weeks we've done so many fun Summery things again that we hadn't done all Winter.  Greenfield Village (finally reopened!), the Zoo, water play in the backyard (which always becomes mud play after a short time), backyard picnics with friends, boating on the lake and hikes nearby, and Soccer started again.  So much fun!  I love this time of year!

Creepy Crawlies and other Cool Stuff

We got some petrie dishes on Amazon a few weeks ago and have been having a lot of fun investigating bugs.  First we got a bunch of ants and watched their behavior for a while.  Fascinating how they circled the dish, found each other and started to work as a team.  They spent long periods of time in a huddle, talking things over.  We also collected grubs, worms, and beetles in various dishes. The most recent one we did with rolly-polly bugs.  Once we'd collected them and observed them in empty dishes, we placed various foods in the dishes to see which would attract their attention the fastest and hold it the longest.

We also placed a wet paper towel one half of the dish and saw if they would stay on the dry side or on the wet.  We made half dark and left the other light to see which they preferred.  If I'd really wanted to make it educational, I'd have had the kids write down all their predictions and findings, but it was some great weather on those days outside and we were just having fun in the mud, so we did it all orally.  Forgot to take pictures too, unfortunately, on all but the last ones.  We'll definitely be doing more again sometime.

Another cool thing we did recently was make a circuit out of lemons that lit up an LED light.  Not a lot of power coursing through those wires, but it was pretty fun to see it light up using nothing more than fruit.  The second pic is without flash, so it's blurry, but you can see the light better.

They'd had so much fun making their marshmallow-toothpick structures a couple weeks ago, that they wanted to do it again.  I thought we'd try a different medium this time and so we used cheese cubes.  Paired with crackers, it made a fun snack and activity.   Although they were so against breaking their structures in order to eat them, that I ended up wasting quite a bit of cheese!  :)

Benjamin had a day off school last week, so we attended a magic show during which the magician did tricks with balloon animals.  Benjamin was fascinated and desperately wanted to make his own.  Here are his first attempts - a pretzel and a dog with no front legs.  Not bad for a beginner, I'd say.  I looked up instructions on line and tried it myself and Bella begged me to give her my first dog balloon creation.  They all stupidly unwound within minutes and were back to being snakes, but it was fun.  I mentioned to Benjamin that he could practice and get good at doing those and make a little money doing it at fairs or places like where he's gotten balloon animals in the past.  "Really?  I could earn money for my balloons?  Let's go sell my pretzel!  I need some money.  Can we go sell my pretzel?  Please?!"  Some how the words "practice" and "get good" passed him by.  I guess it's nice to be confident in one's abilities.