First day of school...yay?

We figure we should be good at this- 2 years ago she went to a daycare/preschool 2 days a  week.  Last year she went to a preschool 3 days a week.  So you'd think just adding one day to a grand total of 4 days a week for for 4 year old kindergarten wouldn't phase me.

Wrong.  I bawled my face off of course.  Who wouldn't miss her????

Forster was feeling a little down too.

A little tickling cleared that right up.

Cookie postcards

I got to participate in 2 performances Peter and the Wolf sponsored by our local library a few weeks back.  It was so well done and fun to play, that I was just thrilled to be invited to play with them.  Imagine my shock when I went to the library last week and they announced that as a thank you for playing, I was getting AN ENTIRE YEAR OF NO LIBRARY FINES!!!!!!!!  Which was welcome, since I had over 9 bucks in fines already that week :)  So I decided to keep one of the books that was super late and spend some more time with it.  Since it was FREE!

Check this out - cookie postcards!  You make some shortbread cookies - the recipe the book called for was alright, but I'm sure there are better ones out there.  This was:

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 8 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup sugar

roll out a bit of dough...

Cut them into rectangles and place them on a greased cookie sheet.  Cook them at 325 for 10-15 minutes.  Let cool completely.

I made some wee cups with foil and put a few drops of food coloring in each.

Paint!

That says "I *heart* mom"!!

That was so easy WE could do it!

FHE = AOK

Boy howdy is it humid here!  So our family home evening this week took us to a really awesome bit of Wisconsin nature - Pewit's Nest

 Oooooooo!

 Sand!

Hot but happy, and homebound.

thwth!

Solei made her very own panpipe this morning!  She found it in the book, read the instructions, and made it all herself while I was distracted and trying to do the dishes.   I was shocked!!  I put up a post on ATreblemaker about it.  This girl never ceases to amaze me.

All about Forster

A few weeks ago Forster's speech therapist was asking me how many words he has in his vocabulary, and I could remember about 5, but during the course of the session I kept adding to the list.  She said that's fairly common - and a list will help us understand where he is now and give us some hope for all the work we're doing, so I'ma gonna make one.

If you are just tuning in, our dear boy is talking just below the state benchmark so we get therapists in here like we are some cool club.  They keep saying he's such a physical kid that he doesn't care about the verbal yet, so we have to try harder to get him to introduce new words into his diet.  It's very cool to have these nice therapy ladies come in and get charmed to pieces by Forster.  WE think he's pretty fabulous, but it's lovely to see him sharing the wealth :)  He really doesn't care very much about verbage, he spends his entire day trying to get people to jump, run, play and wrestle with him.  Solei, by the way, is much closer to the ground than Jared and I, so the poor thing usually has a hysterically giggling Forster jumping on top of her.  It's so dang funny that even she laughs about it.  Sometimes :)

I took this of him just as he jumped on me - notice how his face is saying "AAAAAAANNNNDDDDDD...  ATTACK!!!"  This is pretty much the look I see all day long.

So here's the word list I can think of.  I listed it phonetically because it's way cuter that way - and brownie points to anyone who can understand what these all mean!

Reh-ee... seeehhh.... GO!
nana
peaaaa-sh
Jesuh
bah-uhl or bah bah
up
dow
no
yeah or yeh-shshsh
oh-tay
bawl
awl duh
uh, tee-oo, fee, fohhr, fie, sih, seh-en, ey... (he loses count at this point and after he fumbles around for a few words trying to remember nine, he yells:) TEH!!!!
aynk oo
mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama
dada
oh no
why
oh mahh
no....s
mahw
eeee-r
jooos
coooo..l
hi
buh bye
chow chow (okay, that one is actually Portuguese, but he still uses it when he is with our Brasilian friends!)

(and these 2 are sound effects)
chooo choooo!
chirp chirp (Solei loves this one.  She tries to convince everyone he's actually a cricket)

There are plenty of things he'll say if you tell him to.  And when he parrots back "I love you" - you know he means it.  His hugs are the most honest, awesome hugs that were ever hugged.

Oh, and he has proven my theory that if you read Dr. Seuss' ABC book to a child ad nauseum, they'll learn the alphabet ahead of schedule.  Since he's not talking as soon as Solei was, I'd just assumed everything else would be at a slower pace (I know, I'm still a novice at this parenting thing).   I didn't realize anything had sunk in until we were at the library a while back and he started picking up the wood letter blocks and telling me the name of each one.  I started screaming and bawling.  The librarians know me, so it wasn't  huge surprise.

he will NOT stay still lately - the only way I could get a picture of him smiling was if I let him chew on one of Solei's barrettes!

He'll be 2 in just over a month!  We've got Solei who is full of sunshine, and Forster who is full of mirth.  You couldn't ask for a better pair!  We are seriously lucky... and so are you, if you come visit :)

We love to see the temple....

We hit the ATL this last week and had an amaaaaazing time.  One thing we got to do was head to the temple to take pictures of the kids like I did with Solei back in 2008.  This was Solei then...

And this is her now:

Here's one I snagged of a very tired Forster:

Our fiddling star!

She's playing the VIOLIN!!!  Woohoo!!!

Graduation!

I have to admit, the idea of a preschool graduation ceremony seems ridiculous.  But the sight of this melted even my cold heart:

There was singing.  SINGING!!

We got seriously lucky with her preschool this year.  Her teacher was amazing and because Solei was fine academically, she really focused on her social skills - manners and classroom etiquette.

This is the face of a girl who - drumroll please..... can WAIT HER TURN!!! (sometimes)  That's worth a ceremony!

Happiest Mother's Day to all!

I couldn't have asked for a more perfect Mother's Day. From the amaaazing hand-delivered breakfast that included an entire bowl of bacon, to the Primary kids who managed to sing the right words beaauuutifully in Sacrament meeting despite the fact that I had all their cue cards in the wrong order.

I asked Jared to take some pictures of me and the reasons why I'm getting pampered so beautifully on this Mother's Day.
Trying to keep these two kids still for a nano-second is just impossible.

I know that motherhood is a wonderful, important job, but there are gazzillions of women doing it right now on this earth, far better than I am. I recognize that - and yet Heavenly Father gave me these incredible kids to get to grow with.

I feel like the luckiest mother on earth. Thanks to all of your for your amazing examples, I hope your day was just fantabulous!

The revenge of the bovines

We braved the rainy chill today to celebrate the return of the cows.  If you had a good ARM you could probably throw a rock from our driveway and hit one. Yeah, our neighbours are cows.

Solei wanted to pretend to be a cow, Forster wanted to swing and watch them, and I kinda wanted a burger.

Happy Easter!

Growing up, my mom dressed us to the nines on Easter and always got a big family picture of us in our finery, with our Easter baskets.  I don't know what she did when there was a one year old around, but we were less than successful at capturing that one, poised moment.  Let's face it, we're never poised anyway...  so here are a few of the *best* representations we got of our Easter selves.

The Easter Bunny sewed these baskets up, all by herself.  No joke.  I'm shocked too.

The kids were kinda thrilled.

Aaaaand, the finery.  We have some dapper menfolk, the closest we could get of a picture of the two kids together, and a a darling lady.

And in full disclosure, here's the more typical pictures.  Happy Easter, everybody!!!

Perks of living in a small town.

The local grocery store has a mechanical pig. The price of this magical experience?  One sweet nickel.