Enjoying the outdoors...

Some fun pictures from our "play and picnic" day at the park last week. Even Diego got to come along!

We came home from the park, ate flavor ices and then played in the house for a while. Once Jeff got home, we ate dinner at McDonalds on their picnic tables and then came home and played outside some more!

Hey Batter, Batter ... Kaitlyn hitting the ball off our make-shift tee!

Playing "icecream cone" relay with Mommy.

Yellow Day!

Last week Friday was "Amarillo Day" at our house. It was a gorgeous sunny day. I started off the day letting Kaitlyn choose what she wanted to eat for breakfast -hoping that she would pick butter toast or scrambled eggs - something yellow. Instead - she picked pizza! So thats what we ate. Later in the day we made and drank lemonade and did a Lemonade tracing worksheet. We also did a sunshine alphabet activity where we matched some upper and lowercase letters. We sang You are my Sunshine and I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee. Just before lunch we packed a picnic and then we headed to the park for a day of play in the wondeful "yellow" sunshine! We played a game on the swings where Kaitlyn had to spot something "amarillo" at the park beforeI would give her an underdog. She thought it was so fun! We even brought along a yellow balloon so we could play a "keep the sun in the air game" which was mighty fun until I attempted to kick the balloon and popped it - oops!

Doing Dishes ...

I used to think that Fall was my favorite season. And every year come August, I do decide that Fall is my favorite. But for now, after a long winter, I think that Spring is my favorite! It is so wonderful to get the outdoor toys out; Kaitlyn is just loving it and so am I. We had so much fun having a tea party, making soup and washing dishes in her water table last week. I am already looking forward to many more sunny Spring/Summer days!

Washing the Van....

Last summer, one of Kaitlyn's favorite things to do was to help me was the car. It is for that reason that I wasn't surprised that she wanted to wash the van on the first nice day of this Spring. The van was filthy from a trip down my parent's dirt road the night before so I was eager to satisfy her request. Unfortunately, her favorite sponge somehow disappeared over the winter but she settled on a new green one and the scrubbing began. She did a great job; lucky for me, her favorite part to wash is the wheels. (I hate that part - so we make a good team). She even helped me dry the van off and then spray the dirt out of the driveway. The sunny weather was such a blessing!

Garage Sale Time!

Yippee! Hooray! Woo hoo! My favorite time of the year has begun ... garage sale season! Kaitlyn and I headed to some sales last Thursday after gymnastics. She is becoming quite the little shopper herself - always helping me look for bargains. With a drink, snack and Diego, she was content in the stroller for about 40 minutes of shopping - which I was so thankful for. Afterwards we drove across the street to the park and played and picnic-ed; it was a splendid day. We came home and played with the new toys in the sunshine.

Kaitlyn playing with her "new" toys!

Spring Cleaning ...

... has begun. I actually found an easy way to clean my blinds this year - thanks to a tip from our friend Brad the professional window cleaner (http://www.bradswindowcleaning.com/) . Now if only we didn't have an infestation of little black flying bugs that decided to stick to my clean blinds..... argh!

Rainstorms, Thunder & Lightning

Last week Kaitlyn and I spent some time talking about rainstorms, thunder and lightning. We found a really neat website with great sound effects where she could click and make it thunder and lightening on the screen. We also learned a fun storm safety rhyme, "When thunder roars, go indoors." We setup houses in the living room and then pretended to go play outside. Then we took turns pretending to be the storm and "roaring" and then the other person would run inside their little house. We also did some math and literacy lessons too. First, we did a measurement activity where we measured the size of some "puddles" with some rain-boot footprints. Then we did a literacy activity where I put a bunch of raindrop shaped blue picture cards that started with "/R/" into a bowl of cotton balls (cloud) and Kaitlyn pulled them out and stressed the "/R/" sound. And actually the intent was to have her pull the cards out of the bowl but right away she decided that she wanted the cloud to rain on her ... silly girl!And then we did a science experiment to where we learned about absorption. We filled a bowl with water and then estimated how many cotton balls it would take to soak up all the water - "Lots" was Kaitlyn's guess. She is slightly limited in her estimation skills since she doesn't know any number higher than 20! :) After we soaked up all the water we took each cotton ball and squeezed all the water back out of the "cloud" to make it "rain".

After I figured out what a "plastic dish scrubber" was (Thanks, Grandma Jo) we did a craft where we painted blue "rain" (paint) on paper with a dish scrubber and then glued a thunder cloud on the paper. And finally to end the lesson, we geared up and went out and played in the rain. There was no thunder roaring, thank goodness) Kaitlyn wanted Diego and Pink Bear to come out too so we found them a waterproof bag and they came along. We found a few puddles to splash in and then Kaitlyn wanted to play bubbles so that is what we did. We had a riot because the bubbles all stuck to the wet ground so it was almost more fun to be the "bubble popper" than the "bubble blower".

Afterwards, we went inside and had hot chocolate - well I did anyway; Kaitlyn just ate the marshmallows. Who says you can't have fun on a rainy day!