Ladies Weekend

Back in February, we sent Greg away for a weekend to go skiing, and had a crazy ladies weekend.

After dinner on Friday, we went in search of some more of these Disney MagiClips dolls.  (You can see the package for Merida on the table with Emma and her doughnut.)  We got a few of the mini princess dolls for Christmas, but they came with rubber clothes... which a) tear, and b) the girls' cant put on themselves.  But the MagiClips?  The dresses are kind of like clothespins.  You squeeze the bottom of the dress, and just stick the doll in.  Magic, indeed.

Anyhow, we picked up some doughnuts for dessert back at home.

On Saturday, I took the girls to the Children's Museum.  Had to stop for coffee on the way.  Turned around in the drive through line, and this is what I see.  I probably should have just turned around and gone home.

Uh, that's a lot of fiber, Bec.

Climbing.

Pulling herself up.  That's a giant stomach behind her, in case you were wondering.  We got close enough to look inside, and someone went down the little slide, but all of the "stomach noises" freaked Julie out and she wouldn't go near it.

Balance beam.

Working together on a puzzle.

Taking care of (?) a teddy bear.

Cruising around on crutches.

Teamwork, once the boys finally got out of their way.

Love the looks on Julie's face in these two.

We also tackled Valentine's Day cards this weekend, which seemed like a good idea at the time.  I found this idea on Pinterest, and it seemed easy enough.  (The purple was a different brand of paint, and sometimes it would make a "bubble" to actually fill in the heart shape, which was pretty cool.)

The problem I quickly ran into was that they were producing much faster than I could find drying space...  and they each made 25-30...

So, um, yeah.

And then I started worrying about the cat stepping in wet paint.  (All water-based, but still.  A mess I really didn't want.)

And of course, all worth it in the end.

Emma's Big Book of Boo Boos

I wish I could remember exactly what boo boo this was.  But I love the way she's drawing eyes with eyelashes (like on the snowman).

Snow lady

Emma made this snowman all by herself - drew the circles, cut them out, glued them together.  Drew the buttons and the face.  And added eyelashes and lips all on her own.

(Oh, and I have no idea why it's black, other than that was the first sheet of construction paper she pulled out.)

Pumpkin Art

I had some thin wood pumpkins from ACMoore that I bought for the girls to paint. 

Apparently, though, I forget how quickly we paint.

So I supplemented with some little wood pumpkins leftover from one of my projects.

They blew threw those, too, and still weren't ready to be done painting.

So I pulled out some paper ones.  This went fine, until Emma started using her fingers.

My first reaction was to yell "Noooooooooo..."  (And I'm sure I did.)  But I'm trying not to impose my OCD tendencies on them.  And I'm trying to say "yes" instead of "no" as long as no one is going to get hurt.  So I let them go to town.  Plus, at that point, it was less effort than trying to keep a separate paintbrush in each color of paint.

The results:

Crafting

Back when we were at my parents' house in April, before my brother's wedding, my dad made a quick little stool for the girls to use to be able to reach the toilet and the sink.  They didn't really have any use for it, so the stool came home with us.

If you're in to crafting, you may have seen recently that Target has a new kid's craft line that includes a couple of packages of paper tape.  Scrapbookers have been all over it.  I figured I'd pick some up, and share it with the girls.

Well, they had other plans.

Apparently, the stool need fixing.

I thought it might be done at this point.

Silly me.

They came back later and laid down a layer of perpendicular pieces.  

You know, for strength.

I'm realizing now that I typed that that I don't have a picture of the finished product.  But just try to imagine all of those colors and patterns, squared.  Awesome, no?

We had to ban the tape after this, though.  I found tape on the walls, on their bookshelves, etc.  The worst was on their little craft table and chairs, though.  It DID NOT come off like washi tape does.  It actually came off the walls and bookshelves with no problem, but I learned that AFTER I tried to get it off the table.

Well, last Monday wasn't *that* quiet

I was all ready to start a post about the rest of last weekend's adventures, but the I realized that I had a couple of pictures from our lazy Ladies' Day Monday last week.

I mentioned that we painted...  Well, Becca got bored quickly, but Julie and Emma kept going.  (Actually, Becca took dry paint brushes and was beating them against the bathroom wall.)  And then they started giggling.  A lot.  Apparently they had decided to paint Julie's face.

Emma helping her clean up.

We also played trains.  They really love the IKEA train set.  I love that they love train tracks.

We also did lots of coloring.  I snapped this picture because Emma's coloring is starting to becoming recognizable - she is starting to try to stay in the lines.

And one more ... Becca got into the punches again and wanted to punch "rocket ships."  (Take that, Jenni Bowlin banner punch.)  I am so jealous of their mental flexibility.

Rainy Day

"Here, mommy.  It's a rainy day."

Julie and Becca finally figured out the watercolors last weekend.  Before, there paints were pretty much all black because they insisted on combining them all.  They created some masterpieces.  Julie kept telling me hers were "rainy days."

Love.

We finally got Emma straightened out a bit, after she saw that her sisters could paint with color, and she  just kept painting a big black blob.

Stuff I Missed, Part 1

With the December Daily, there were some other random pictures I missed sharing throughout the month.

The grocery store "toddler club" sent some glasses in the mail that make Christmas lights look like snowflakes.  Pretty cool.

 Julie's idea of coloring right now is to put a little scribble of crayon on every single page in the coloring book.

 Becca was counting her crayons as she put them away, and she'd say "Count with me, guys," which I think she's picked up from Mickey Mouse Club House.

 Sleeping on the morning of Christmas Eve.  They had a rough night and all ended up sleeping on the floor.

Emma's first identifiable drawing - that's a "pot-a-miss."  She added the circle stamp right before I took the picture, and she told me the circle stamp was his belly.

Artists

We did some painting this weekend. We started with some paint-with-water (which are surprisingly hard to find).


Then we moved on to watercolors.




The poor red, orange, and yellow didn't stand a chance next to the black. Apparently they figured you can paint a rainbow if you dip your brush in every color.