Come Play With Us

Honorable Mentions

We have had a few *firsts* in the last few weeks that I felt were worth mentioning.  

I did french braids in C's hair the other night.  This marks the *first* time she actually sat longer than 30 seconds for me to do something to her hair.

Here she is running to the mirror to check them out.  

Here is her reaction.  I think she was yelling "I like em, Mommy!  I like em!"

Other big news, E got her first tooth last Friday!  We have been waiting for it to come through, and she has been having a little bit of a tough time with it.  Yay!

I don't think you can really see it in this picture.  But it is there!  The smile is darn cute, though.

E also figured out how to pull herself up on stuff.  I quick snapped a picture before she stood herself up because I didn't want her to crash and burn, but she can actually get all the way up and standing.  At 8 months, EEK!  

It is a little bittersweet that this is the last time I am going to get to experience all of these wonderful first moments.  But of course I love getting to see them!

MTM

Today's Muffin Tin Monday was a "no theme" day.  I had so much fun doing the movie theme meal a few weeks ago, I decide to try another.  I chose Mickey's Adventures in Wonderland.  This has been one of C's favorite movies for about a year.  

I always have these great ideas for things and then when I try to put them together, they look really terrible.  Case in point:  the Cuckoo Bird.  I first tried to make him out of olives and pretzel sticks, which was a disaster.  So then I had to try grapes (of course I didn't have green ones), and that turned out slightly better than the olives, but not much.  Then I did a naan and ketchup clock, chocolate milk (Goofy's Chocolaty milk party), then a cheese question mark (the mystery mouskatool), Mickey Mouse chicken nuggets, and yogurt with magical shrinking sparkles. 
I let her watch the movie while she ate, as a special treat.

Even Miss E got into the mix!  Pureed apples for her today.  I am excited for when she gets a little bigger and can join in the fun more.  Mostly she wanted to chew on the muffin cup!

This is what was left.  C ate most everything except the clock.  Oh well.  I even ended up giving her more nuggets.  

 

Saturday Date

Andy and I had a nice day together on Saturday the 18th.  His parents watched the girls so we could go to a Twins game. We were able to get tickets from my cousin and her husband, who have season tickets.  

Target Field was great!  My company did all the testing and inspections on this project so it was really neat for me to be able to see the finished project after having so many people put so much time in on the project.  Andy and I both thought it was beautiful.  I really thought it was amazing that one minute you are walking the street in downtown Minneapolis, and the next minute you are walking off the street right into the stadium. 

My guy Joe. 

 Outdoor baseball!  How great.  Harkens me back to the good old days at the Wade.  

 

MTM

This week's theme on Muffin Tin Monday was shapes.  Since we have been working on shapes a bit, I did three shapes: Circle, Triangle and Square.  

Circles:  Grapes and Kiwi slices

Squares: Parsley Potatoes and Ham cubes

Triangles: Cheese and Naan Triangles.  

This is what C's plate looked like after she was done.

  
 As I expected, she didn't touch the potatoes and ham.  Actually I had her taste one of each.  "Don't like this, Mama."  She did eat two of the kiwi fruit slices, and was the first time trying kiwi.  I also thought it interesting how she put all the ham in with the potatoes.  This was a fairly successful meal, we are in a pretty picky phase lately.  

Twins!

Andy and I are going on a  much needed date!  We scored some Minnesota Twins tickets (thanks Karma and Jason), and are headed over to the new Target Field for a game today.  

 Go Twins!

MTM

This weeks theme for Muffin Tin Monday was Movies.  I had decided a while ago to do The Little Mermaid.  I asked C on Sunday night what her favorite movie was, and she told me Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses.  I thought about trying to do a muffin tin meal to go with that movie, but couldn't come up with any decent ideas.  So I went back to my original plan.  I will say ahead of time, my grand idea for the mermaid didn't come out anywhere near as cute as it was in my imagination!

So we had "sand" (cottage cheese) with an oyster shell and pearl, Ariel (my Jacked up looking mermaid) (buttered bread with sprinkles), stormy ocean jello, flounder fishy crackers, Ursula the Sea Witch hot dog, and the cheese ship.  

C ate a little bit of everything except the jello.  She was delighted when I showed her the plate though.  We watched The Little Mermaid while we had our "picnic".  

ButterWoodPeat 2010

So the girls and I had a great weekend away.  It was the first "girls trip" and I am sure there will be many more to come.  AND, Andy got a whole weekend at home to himself, which he really needed.  He sure seemed refreshed when we got home.  I was pretty nervous about 3 hours in the car with a 2 year old and an 8 month old.  It actually went really well: no hysterics, no emergency potty stops.  I was armed with snacks strategically packed and easy to reach, a couple favorite toys kept aside for E, and of course an extra pacifier.  We stopped once on the way up, and once on the way home.  Both times for food breaks, but we just did a bottle in truck, and a run through a drive thru for some french fries for C.  

Friday night we had dinner at my dear friend Lisa's home.  It was wonderful chaos with 7 kiddos running around playing.  E and Baby C had a lot of fun rolling around and climbing all over each other!  

Saturday morning we met up for the Harvest Fest Parade.  I wasn't able to get a picture of ALL 9 kids like I had hoped, but we caught 7 out of the 9, as E and Baby C were napping in strollers at the time of the picture.

The kids really cleaned up on the candy!  I had talked to C on the way to the parade and wanted to make sure that she understood she needed to still be careful while collecting candy during the parade.  We have been working really hard with her on watching for cars and not going into the street if she sees any, so I think because of that she was afraid to go out into the street to get the candy.  So I did a lot of trying to get her to go pick up candy.  She really didn't want to do it.  It is probably ok that she didn't get all that much candy, though!

After the parade we went over to the park pavilion for a while and visited with old friends.  Then we headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's for a nap before Tom and Destiny got there with the kiddos. Amy and Ken came out as well. 

My two sweet girls

          Look at those happy kids!  I love this picture.  

All in all, it was a really nice weekend.  I had a lot of fun, and I think the girls did too.  I have been thinking about the future and all the fun things I am going to get to do with my girls.  I hope to be able to do some traveling with them when they get a little older. I love to travel, but Andy is more of a homebody.  I would love to be able to have a couple little travel partners!

Pre Butterwoodpeat

The girls and I are heading up to Cromwell this weekend for Harvest Fest (aka Butterwoodpeat).  I am really looking forward to this weekend, as my group of high school girlfriends has added 4 babies since last year, and also we haven't had ALL of the 9 kids together yet.  This is our kid group from last year

Now add 4 babies!  Should be a fun time.

This will be Cora and Elin's third parade this summer, so they are parade professionals now.  Here was my favorite float from last year's parade.

  Yep.  A cow.  

Muffin Tin Monday

I saw a fun idea to do Muffin Tin Monday and thought we ought to join in the fun.  The idea is to put the meal in a muffin tin, or other muffin container.  Simple and fun!

So here was our first muffin tin meal.  Cherry Tomato on a stick, Teddy B Sandwich (Jam and Marshmallow), Cheese on a stick, Banana chunks, Annie's Snack mix, Craisins.  

 She pretty much ate everything.  All that was left was a little snack mix and a few craisins.  I have been trying to get C to eat sandwiches, she has been fundamentally opposed to sandwiches for quite some time now, and she actually ate this one!  Granted it was probably more like cake than anything else, but hopefully this broke the ice on sandwiches!

Labor Day Weekend

Andy went up to the cabin on Saturday to do a little LABOR, so the girls and I went on an outing.  We went to get C her very first official haircut (in a salon).  This was due to Daddy telling me that he has tried and tried to get a pony in her hair but his fingers just don't work that way.  So we need something that can just be brushed and ready for the day.  He also mentioned that "something needs to be done with those sides". So off we went.  We headed to Kids Hair, Inc in Woodbury.  

 She did very well. (Of course the sucker helped!)  Andy said it was going to be much easier to take care of, which I guess was the point.

We did a little more shopping, including Babies R Us (E needed jammies) and Stride Rite for some new tennis shoes for C. It was a fun day.  Our first all girl shopping trip!

Andy and I have been saying over and over that Little Miss E is going to be TROUBLE once she gets her wheels working.  Well, she has been scooting all over the place, and here is a little example of what we mean.  This happened while she was unattended for about 30 seconds:

I might be a bad mom because I took the picture before I removed the choking hazard from her mouth....but dang she is cute. And quick!

We did a little bit of finger painting this weekend too.  C had an excellent time, and I would say the best part was when she discovered that her hands were blue!  

Look, Mommy!  My hands are BLUE!

Labor day has taken on a whole new meaning for me in the last two years, since I had two very important labors in that time period.  July 7, 2008 and January 17, 2010.  So, today I celebrate how blessed I have been with the two biggest joys of my life.