A card for Cinderella

It's so neat to watch the girls as they are starting to learn to read and write.

Emma has started asking me to spell things.  This time, she was making a card for her Cinderella doll.

You have to read from left to right, then right to left.  We're still working on getting our letters in the right direction, and when to use capitals vs. lowercase.  But Emma's handwriting has improved drastically in the last few weeks.

Kites

Of course, after Emma went kite flying on her day, everyone wanted to go.

This was the day after the snow.  You can see it was 99% gone within 24 hours.

Julie's wearing her puppy dog hat.  It's black and white, so sometimes she insists it's a panda bear hat.

Love, love, love this one.

They also went to the playground (I stayed at home).  This was the week that they started playing on the "big kids" playground.  There are two at this park - the little one rated for, say, 2-5 and has a fence around it.  The big one still scares me.  It's probably a good thing I stayed at home.

They worked on going down this corkscrew.  This works just fine.  But there's another park that we go to that has something similar, but it's more like a DNA helix than a corkscrew, meaning they get about one revolution and then get their foot caught on a bar.  Emma kept trying to get it to work the same through brute force, but kept kind of tumbling down it.  The one at this park, though, is the real deal.

Pingu

I'm honestly not sure where Pingu comes from, and perhaps we are the only ones watching it.  My dad got the girls hooked on it, watching it on his Kindle Fire.  It's also available through Netflix, and we've also now got a DVD.  The girls think it's absolutely hysterical.

I think that Pingu has a sister, and my dad has convinced the girls that her name is Pinga.  

So, at the grocery store, they have a bunch of helium mylar balloons up at the check outs.  One is a penguin, and the girls are convinced it's Pinga.  So, every time we go into the grocery store, they start saying really loudly "Look, it's Pinga."

And even more loudly?

"Pinga poppered (their word for farted) in the tub!"

Yeah, apparently there's an episode where Pinga farts in the tub.  And apparently it's hysterical.

Surprise

I am literally editing photos as I blog these days.  Meaning, I take lots of photos and don't look at them again until I get to editing them.  At this point, I'm still about a month behind.

Meaning I just found this gem that my dad took of Lefty (using a fish eye lens, I'm assuming).  It totally makes me giggle.

Snow

I mentioned that it started snowing while we were at the children's museum.  It was a really wet snow, and wasn't sticking to the roads (it was above freezing), but when we got home, it snowed enough to go out and play in.

They mostly wanted to throw snowballs.

At me.

Greg got some snowballs started for them to make into a snowman.

I think the snowman was half dirt, but it was a blast, and a nice surprise on a Saturday afternoon.  The snow was falling just faster than it was melting.  It stopped snowing while we were out there, and by the time we went inside, we had "used up" all of the snow in the front yard.  The back yard was barely covered, between having less grass and the fact that it was above freezing.  Most of the snow had melted by that night, and the snowman hung around for only a day or two.

Children's Museum

We went to the Children's Museum again while my parents were here.  Pretty sure we've already gotten our money's worth out of that membership two months in.

Grandma and Julie working on a cake

Emma and Rebecca climbing

More hair drying

Racing cars

Julie, filling up Becca's race car

Grandma and Papa finally got someone (Emma) to try out the wind tunnel.  They'd all been afraid of it in the past.

Playing in the water

Eating lunch.  Julie was trying to keep her cake pop away from Papa.

While we were eating lunch, it started snowing!

The rotating exhibit had changed since the last time we were there.  Sponsored by a local "cash for gold" company (I wish I were kidding), it was a "treasure" exhibit, with a pirate ship and pirate dress up clothes.  So funny.  

Captain Emma

J, raising the Jolly Roger

Spying

Becca makes a fabulous pirate. 

Another part of the exhibit was using metal detectors.  I don't think pirate uniforms were required for this, but they sure looked cute.

Emma's Day

Rebecca also got a day with Grandma and Papa, but somehow Papa forgot his camera, so no photos.   But Becca got the first day, and did go bowling, too.

Emma got Friday, and the wet, gray sky was finally clearing.  They did go bowling, because once Rebecca went bowling, everyone wanted to go.  Rebecca went first and got bumpers.  They didn't mention ramps until Emma went on Friday.  The girls were comparing their scores, and each of them kept saying, "I'm a superstar!"

Later, they went kite flying.

Valentine's Day 2013

We started out with a sweetheart breakfast at the girls' school.

Then a busy day at work for me, but I did get some special flowers.  The funny part is that I only get flowers at work - they can't go home with me.  Our cats try to eat them, and end up dumping a vase if they get hold of them.

I ended up leaving work a little early, because I had class all night, and wanted to see my Valentines.  We got them a set of hand bells for Valentine's day.  They were a big hit.  They came with a couple of songs that were color (and number, but the number stickers on the ends of the bells didn't last very long) coded.

I caught her laying on the ground and was tickling her with my foot.