Lily turns FOUR!

Lily's birthday fell on a Monday this year, which happens to be her only day of the week that we don't have anything scheduled. We wanted to make her day special like we did for Ella. But we weren't going to throw her a little party or anything. After opening a few presents in the morning, we decided to start the day off at the Pancake House with B-Pa. And the extra fun and special part of the day was that Andrew took the morning off so he joined us!!

B-Pa and Lily at the restaurant and Lily taking a picture of me taking a picture with her new camera (her "big" gift from us).

After breakfast, we headed to the Mall of America. Lily has been asking to "go see the fishies" for quite a while so we thought it would be fun to take her to the Aquarium for her birthday. She also rode a couple rides and visited the Disney Store, the Lego Store and Apple (Daddy needed a new power cord) before returning home for the afternoon.


We had a quiet afternoon and then got ready to have B-Pa and Gramma Clare over for dinner. The girls even set the table (without me asking) and went about making placecards for everyone. I had nothing to do with this I swear (though, I have been known to use placecards in the past for big meals). Nana Mary would have been proud of them! We had Lily's FAVORITE dinner of cheesy potatoes and hot dogs (the adults had grilled hamburgers). And then we had cake and a few more presents.


By the way, we have worked with Lily on her name since this photo was taken. She now does the letters all in the correct order and her big "L" has the slide across the bottom instead of the top. ;-)

Lily had asked for a Kai-Lan cake. She had seen the party paraphernalia in the Birthday Express catalog I get in the mail. Well, Kai-Lan has not debuted at any of the bakeries around here yet so we had to improvise. I bought a bakery cake and there happened to be a bakery Kai-Lan Mega-Bloks set at Target. So we just plopped the figurines on the cake and Voila! Instant Kai-Lan cake!




All in all, I think Lily had a really great day! So hard to believe she's four already! Here's a couple retrospective photos for you...and then a slideshow of her day.

We decided when we were pregnant with Lily that purple was going to be Lily's "color". We had so much pink from Ella and we wanted her to be her own person even though she would be living in all of Ella's old stuff. So Andrew wore a purple shirt to the hospital for Lily's birth. This has become his "Lily shirt". Notice he's wearing it in the last picture.

And here I am at Lily's first birthday with a purple shirt on. :-)Believe it or not, this is actually a different purple shirt than I had on before. I felt I needed to wear purple in honor of Lily and Andrew pulled out his "Lily shirt" for the day. It actually has a hole in the elbow now. So he just saves it for special occasions.

Target Book Festival

The second weekend in September we attended the Target Children's Book Festival. We went last year and the girls had a great time. So we decided to venture there again. The festival is at Hyland Lake Park in Bloomington and completely free. They have crafts and games for the kids along with face painting, bounce houses, and a climbing wall. They also have a reading stage where various authors read from their books and kiddie entertainers (this year it was Choo Choo Soul from Disney) perform.

My main draw this year was that local author Susan Runholt was reading from her latest book. I have reviewed her middle-grade series on my book blog and also conducted an author interview with her. So I wanted to be sure to stop by so I could meet her in person. Here's the post I wrote on the book festival from the book blog.

And here's a slideshow of photos from our experience there:

First Days of School

Both Ella and Lily were very excited for school to start this year. The transition to kindergarten has been pretty smooth overall for Ella. She loves her teacher, Mrs. Fogarty as do we. She's really fantastic and has been teaching kindergarten for 20 years. It shows. She has a perfect personality for a kindergarten teacher. She has said some really nice things about loving having Ella as a student in her class. So of course, we're proud parents. :-) I volunteered a few weeks ago too and enjoyed seeing Ella in her classroom and putting faces with the names of the kids in her class.

Lily thinks school is great this year. She's in the Koala class with Ms. Debra at Partners Preschool. It's a 3 and 4 year old class. Last year she was in the young 3's class. I think she really enjoys being the "older" kid in class. She knew all the routines and what to expect. Much easier for her to transition from summer to school this year. Last year was rough. We've even started to do the drop-off in the morning. She's so cute. She gets out of the car and heads into the school with a teacher. She turns and yells, "Bye Mom!" as she walks in. Today, she told the teacher (one she wasn't familiar with), "I'm in the Koala class." So cute that she knew to tell the teacher where she needed to go.

I'm just going to put up a slideshow of the first day of school for the girls:

Where in the World is Andrew?

Andrew was in California the first part of this week for a couple days. He traveled down to San Diego for a meeting with the Padres. Here he is at the stadium. He made it back to Minnesota late Thursday. Worked in MN on Friday and then we left again to head down to Cedar Rapids for one night and are now currently in Galesburg, Illinois for our 10-year college reunion. He jokes that he sleeps in a different bed every night. :-)

Fall Randomness: Part 1

I'm liking the randomness posts, so you're getting more! ;-)

These two photos were our last day playing in the pool the second or third week of September. The sides of the pool were already deflated, but there was still a couple inches of water in it. And believe it or not, we had GORGEOUS weather in September. It was 80 degrees this day.



Lily creative finds ways to entertain herself sometimes when I'm busy at home. She built this "fort" all by herself and had a grand time hanging out in there with her animals and playing her V.Smile video game player.



We helped Gramma Clare celebrate her birthday on September 20th by going out to breakfast at the Pancake House.


Looking at the birthday card that Ella and Lily made together for Gramma.


We had a few BUGGY experiences in September:
We came home from the Pancake House to find this GIANT moth in our foyer.

Ella kept it in her Butterfly Garden net house, but we let it go a few hours later.

We have this weed patch on the side of our driveway...yes, one more thing I never have the time to get to. Little did I know it would lead to an impromptu science lesson for me and Lily. :-)

We did plant a few flower seedlings in there this spring...it was not this overrun with weeds at the time. And one of the star flowers bloom from time to time. So the girls go over there to investigate every now and then. One morning when Lily was checking it out, she came and got me to tell me she found something outside.

Don't you love this cheese-o smile.

This is what we found:

We had fun watching it for a bit and then came inside to look it up on the computer to see what it was. I had no idea how to look it up but tried "fuzzy orange brown caterpillar" into Google. And it came up right away. It's a wooly bear caterpillar. We learned it turns into an Isabella Tiger moth. It actually eats in the fall, finds a nice place under a rock or log to hibernate throughout the winter then makes its cocoon and transforms into a moth in the spring.

And here's Lily showing Ella the caterpillars. They ate for the day and then moved on. It was fun to investigate them and figure out what they were.

Aloha Birthdays!

I decided early on this year that we were going to do a joint birthday party for the girls here at our house. Since their birthdays are only two months apart, and we have grandparents and other family members who might travel to help us celebrate, I thought it would be easier to plan one party in the middle of their two birthdays. And then I convinced Andrew this was a good idea. ;-)




We chose a Hawaiian theme so the girls couldn't argue about what type of character party we would have. We sent out the invitations and we had a great response! We had a total of 16 kids and 24 adults! Unfortunately August 29th wasn't the most tropical of days and everyone had to sort of hunker down in our house because it was "freezing" outside (by summer standards). The games we had planned for outside, moved inside and we all had a cozy good time. The kiddos played a fish bean bag toss game, Scooby Hula Doo (throwing a hula hoop around our giant stuffed Scooby Doo), the limbo, and temporary tattoos.



The girls did a great job of sharing their birthday. They each got their own cake with candles to blow out and we saved the gifts for after the party. There was no way I would be able to keep track of who gave us what if they were opening them at the same time with 14 other kids surrounding them!



All in all the party was a grand success...very loud....but a success! And we might try it again next year. Not sure the girls will let me get away with it two years in a row. We'll see!

Okay, I think I'm officially all caught up on summer! Now, hopefully, I can get caught up on fall before winter gets here...oh wait, we already have snow, guess not. ;-) Pictures forthcoming.

Holly's Arts and Crafts Corner: Scrapbook Collage Pumpkins

I subscribe to several photography blogs and I lurk about checking them, often they are great resources for me to learn fun tips and techniques. One of them is for Emily Southerland, a St. Louis photographer. Her blog encompasses more than photography and she recently posted this fun craft project! I had been wanting to do something to make pumpkins to add to our leaf/tree wall and this was perfect!!

Since I am not an avid scrapbooker at all, the girls and I headed to Michael's to pick out a few sheets of orange-themed scrapbook paper. And then came back to do the project. (Lily actually went down for a nap so Ella and I started the project and Lily did hers when she woke up).

What you'll need:
--Different orange/pumpkin-theme scrapbook paper (or you can use colored construction paper as well)
--One sheet of green scrapbook paper
--Packing tape
--scissors
--marking instrument that will work on packing tape



Directions:
Rip up pieces of scrapbook paper into piles (I ripped the paper into strips and then let Ella rip them into smaller pieces). Lay out three or so strips of packing tape (5-8 inches long), either vertically or horizontally, depending on what type of pumpkin you would like. You can add more strips or make them longer, depending on how large you'd like your pumpkin to be. Place ripped scraps of paper on the tape. When finished placing paper, cover completely with more packing tape (in effect laminating your pumpkin). Either let your child cut out the pumpkin shape freehand, or draw the shape on the back and let them cut along your lines. Make sure they don't cut the stem off.


(By the way, I don't usually condone kids sitting on the kitchen table, but you know...she was having fun.)





Again you can use this technique to make any kinds of shapes out of any colors of scrapbook paper.
Other ideas:
--blacks/grays (or purples) in the shape of a bat and add googly eyes
--Use various greens to make a Christmas wreath (add red for a bow or balls/berries on the wreath)
--Use various reds to make hearts for Valentine's Day
--Greens for shamrocks
--Pastels to make Easter eggs


Left to right on the pumpkins: the first two are Ella's, the middle one is the one I made, and the right two are Lily's.

All caught up on craft posts now...back to regular life updates coming soon!