The Wood Book

On one of our trips to G'ma Suzie and Papa Joe's, Caleb discovered one of Papa's wood project books (aka The Wood Book). Caleb has been fascinated with instructions, which continues to baffle me because I still have difficulty reading the full direction even when cooking- I read the ingredients and then kind of just throw it all together... Anyways, the boy pours over his Lego directions with more intensity even then he actually plays with the Legos and one of his favorite set of directions is to our Wii Sports Resort video game. He even reads the directions to using the Wii remote game directions are not available.

So Caleb loves directions, of course he's going to love a book that is all directions for making things. It took a couple of trips to start remembering what he wanted when he asked for his Wood Book but would ask for it as soon as we got in the door.

Most recently, we were out there for Father's day and Caleb (while reading the Wood Book) decided that he wanted to make something from the book. Now the book contains all kinds of projects, bird houses, book shelves, tables and chairs, even toys. The boy wanted to make........... napkin rings.

Tea Party at Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve

 

 

 

 

My good friend, Kelly, invited Sadie and I to a mother/daughter tea party at the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve. (Don't worry, there were no politics involved. This was the old fashioned, fancy-hat and dress kind of tea party)

The nature reserve is located on a strip of what used to be farmland between St. Vincent College and Rt 981(?) I'm really bad with street names but it's across from the Dairy Queen in Latrobe and I think it's a beautiful spot. There's an old barn and lots of trails and growing things to look at. And on a side note, Winnie Palmer was the wife of golfing great, Arnie Palmer and it was her idea to preserve this land from being commercially developed. She also passed away some years ago from uterine cancer (the same that Mona had) and sadly wasn't able to see the fulfillment of her idea. It's still a beautiful spot and it looks like it will be offering much more to the community.

The tea party started at 10AM so that meant we couldn't have our usual leisurely Saturday morning. We needed to be up and dressed and out the door by 9. Fortunately, the kids were up early and we made it out there in time. Sadie happily wore her Easter dress and tennis shoes (I know better than to try and put dress shoes on this girl). Unfortunately, the little princess had a very busy Friday, no nap, up until 10PM Friday night and up at 7ish the next morning. This made for a grump instead of a princess. We arrived before our friends and I thought we could walk on the trails and take some pictures. My dare-devil child strangely decided to be afraid of the walking trails including the little 6 ft path through the butterfly garden. She completely flipped out and cried any time I tried to take her away from the front of the barn.

Kelly and her daughter arrived and we went in for tea. The tables were really cute with little flower vases and bowls of sugar cubes and miss-matched tea cups and saucers. The girls were happy to sit down and begin pretending to sip their tea.

Tea was served shortly with finger sandwiches, cookies and strawberries. Sadie got to have some lemonade from her tea cup (she's not a fan of tea) and she tried her first PB and J sandwich. Yep, she's had more peanut butter sandwiches than I could count but never ventured to add jelly to that and you would have thought that I was asking her to try brussel sprouts with the resistance I got to the PB and J but somehow she managed to get down 2 sandwiches. I did have to rely on bribing her with a cookie though.

She made it through the tea without having too many tragedies. There was the incident with the ice in her lemonade. I couldn't get over the tears from the little girl for having to eat an ice cube... but all was well once the rest of the ice cubes were removed from her lemonade. Then she split her lip. Truly, it's not a successful tea party until you've got blood on your party dress... It wasn't bad and we've actually gotten used to this happening. Sadie's chipped tooth is very sharp and often does some damage when she bumps her mouth. She was walking back to our table and simply bumped into a chair. I never thought that it would result in blood but sure enough, her upper lip was cut and bleeding. We put some ice on it and she had a drink of water and we were pretty much done.

We took the girls out for a little walk and then it was time to say good bye. It was a really cute event and I hope we can do it again next year.

April Showers

Yesterday was a bit of a rainy day but the sun came out for a bit and I was able to convince Sadie to go for a walk with me (of course, I just happened to have my camera). It was fun but she was a little disappointed at doing all that walking and not getting to go to the playground. I owe her a special trip this week.

Hope you like these!



I've always wanted to get a shot of one of the kids wishing on a dandelion and finally got it yesterday :-)





This graffiti wall is sooo cool! I used it for my cousin's sr pics last year but I'm thinking of doing another shoot with both monkeys at the wall in the near future.




This face is just priceless! I couldn't get her to smile naturally at all (she was so moody all day yesterday) but I love this anyways.

Soccer 2010!!

This week the kids started their first season of soccer camp. Every Monday evening until June, they'll be running around a field working on learning soccer skills and at the end, they get to keep a soccer ball.

The camp is non-competitive for ages 4-6. I asked if Sadie could sign up (even though she's only 3) and it turns out that there were several younger siblings who were hoping to play. So Sadie's in, on a team with a few other 3 yr olds and while it was a rough start for her, she eventually liked it and got into it.

Caleb, on the other hand, was so excited from the start. He happily introduced himself to the coach and gave him high-five. Then he was all about listening and then practicing kicking, dribbling and stopping the ball.

I spent so much time watching them and giggling. I hope they have as much fun with it as I did growing up.

A Couple More Easter Shots

My it's been awhile!

Well, too much to cover in a short post but I was asked by my DH if I would post Easter pics of the kids some where that he could see them at work (right now all my pics are on Facebook)

So here they are...

We had a fun time out in Derry at G'ma Suzie and Papa Joe's. There was a ton of food, an Easter egg hunt and plenty of sweets. The kids even cooperated some so that I could get a few Easter pics of them.

Snow storms and Bookstores

Well, what a start to 2010. That's the last time we get the kids bikes for Christmas. Any other year, we'd be having a heat wave and I'd be going crazy trying to come up with things to do for the kids. This year, we've been stuck inside and still going crazy trying to find things to do.

30+ inches of snow! Absolutely crazy! It shut us down for a week. We did manage to get the kids out in it a bit but even then there was too much snow for them to do anything in. Poor Sadie was confined to the shoveled sidewalk. She attempted to make it to the backyard one afternoon but she just kind of fell on her face and when she started loosing her boots, I said that's enough.

In true Sadie fashion though, she was able to come up with her own games. Apparently Sadie has an extensive interest in collecting snowballs and her collection covers most of our yard. While Daddy shoveled, Sadie collected her snowballs and carefully his them back in the piles of snow. It was so cute to watch. I really wish I had taken video of it. We managed to get Caleb out in the snow too and took a couple of walks down the street. Sadie picked up more snowballs for her collection on the way.

Caleb enjoyed the snow only until his gloves got wet. As soon as he could feel the wetness, he was done and ready to come inside.

The kids missed almost 2 weeks of school. That was not really fun. While they played pretty well, towards the end of week #2 they began to really start picking at each other. We made it back this week for 2 days but today school was closed because of more snow. I'll be so happy when spring gets here.

Since we were stuck inside for so much of the time, the kids had to come up with new games. Well, recently, Caleb decided to open a bookstore in his bed. He lays out the his books and Sadie gets one of her bag and shops. He'll also happily tell you that his bookstore also sells toys (and this week keys when Mommy locked Pappy out of the house). He's also been known to show movies in his bookstore and they'll climb into his house (his bed) and sit there pretending to watch movies. Unfortunately, many of the movies that Sadie requests are not being shown (he can be such a stinker).

His bookstore is appropriately named, Caleb's Bookstore. Maybe he'll be opening a chain. But don't worry, he's still a policeman and he'll quickly tell you that but it's nice to see him branching out. He's also been following Handy Manny and dons his trusty tool belt to fix things throughout the house- like the elevator button? Well, he still likes to go along with a script but it's so great to see him pretending more and more these days (and not just going along with whatever wackiness that Sadie comes up with).

Well, I'll be posting snow pictures later but that's all for now.