In preparation for the sleepover, Tom reconnected the Xbox Kinnect. The kids tested out Fruit Ninja as the first game.
Category Archives: Videos
A 45-second job as done by a toddler
She likes to help and today I let her do it all. This is why things take forever when kids help. 🙂
Dancing with daddy
For a tiny while anyway.
King’s Castle, Part 3
He doesn’t want to build and then he goes through three bags a day.
A new playground!
We had an unseasonably warm 50° day so I took Katie to a new playground after we left Owen’s school.
As soon as we got there she was off and running!
She LOVES swinging.
And the bridge:
And then this happened and it was all I could do to just let her go—she’s way more daring than Owen ever was at this age:
Story time and volunteering in Owen’s class
As part of the Star of the Week stuff, family members are welcome to come in to do something special. We chose to bring in a book for me to read during story time. Of course, I wanted to read one of the cool books we’ve had specially made for Owen with his name in it but he wanted Pirates Love Underpants. 🙂
Hallway artwork:
Owen’s SotW poster on display:
Owen is Line Leader this week so he gets to do a bunch of things in the classroom (this will likely be super boring for anyone except grandparents 🙂 ):
Their Groundhog Day predictions:
Of course, Katie wanted to go sit with Owee during their other story.
But it didn’t last for long:
And that didn’t last long either… Soon she was back over playing with the toys:
“Mama! A lion! Mama! Mama! A hippo! Hippo! Chomp chomp! Crocodile! Kangaroo! Hop hop!” While placing each animal on the floor around her. 🙂
Trying to keep her occupied so she doesn’t bother the class:
I saw this and laughed. It seems to say a lot about kindergarten in one picture. 🙂
After storytime, I had agreed to stay and volunteered to help while the kids did their daily center activities. I lucked out this time and Owen got to be at one of my tables. 🙂
Katie is a bit more outgoing now and doesn’t want to stay in the play area while the kids are working so she kept bothering me and I finally just gave her a sheet of paper and let her color with the big kids.
What they sing before every snack time:
Birthday dinner, cake, and presents!
Even though we went to Red Robin this past weekend to celebrate Owen’s birthday… AND I took him a Five Guys burger on his birthday at school… We still went out to eat for his birthday dinner! 🙂 (Yeah, we like going out to eat.) 🙂 We tried a new pizza place that’s close to us and it wasn’t too bad. I’m actually getting sick of pizza so I had a Stromboli which was pretty good. And Katie was introduced to the Parmesan shaker. 🙂
When we got home we Skyped with Grandma Marsha and Uncle Rob, sang happy birthday, ate cake, and opened presents.
Then I gave Owen his gift certificate for the Magic School Bus monthly experiments. Before he opened it I explained it was from mom and dad, Gramma Jean and Grandpa David, and Papa and Grannie—and I was sure he’d be over the moon!! And of course he couldn’t have cared less, LOL. He just couldn’t understand that it meant 12 new experiments (like the volcano he just did) and kept looking at the paper like Aaaand?! I kept trying to explain it and I think he finally started to get an idea…but he probably won’t fully get it until the packages start arriving (it should be mid-month).
Things never turn out as you expect when kids are involved. 🙂
Santa says happy birthday to Owen!
When I made the Santa video for Owen at Christmas, I also signed up for a birthday greeting. 🙂
Notice at the end Katie is saying it’s her turn—because she remembered that at Christmas her Santa video came after Owen’s. She never did really understand that she wasn’t getting a birthday message now because it wasn’t her birthday.
This has been my day.
Katie has started whining about not wanting to take a nap…when I’ve said nothing of the sort. This was after I told her no about some random thing.
I accidentally took the video with SLO-MO on, so I edited it to put her big “I DON’T WANT TO TAKE A NAP” in slo-mo at the beginning. 🙂
I’m still working on how to get the real video with no slo-mo.
Edit: here it is, except it got cropped.
She loves mac and cheese!
Someone wants the cat food that came today.
Bath time is always so much fun!
Snow day!
Owen had a snow day, so of course we were all out in it by 8:30! (Well, I was out, but not IN it!) 🙂
Owen: Mama, can I brush the snow off this?
Me: Knock yourself out.
Owen: Mama, can I brush the snow off this?
Me: Knock yourself out.
Katie finds a hole in my sock!
Exploding volcanos!
This was a Christmas present from Aunt Beth and Uncle Jim and today we finally decided to do it. Owen was SUPER excited: “This is going to be AMAZING!”
Reading the instructions. We should have done this part before getting Owen involved. 🙂
As you can see, the “test” explosion wasn’t very crazy and the goggles really aren’t warranted. 🙂
The compilation video:
Swimming in Legos
I was watching the volcano experiment when I heard lots of Lego noise from the other room. I walked in to see this:
It’s snowing!
Katie would not be quiet about it snowing outside so of course as soon as I tried to record her saying something, this is what happened:
Katie found a Lego wand…
And loves Harry Potter… Leviosah!
Stacking and crashing
Owen reading to Katie!
There was no school today due to expected bad weather so I was cleaning and organizing the kids’ rooms while they played. Then Katie wanted me to read her favorite story (If you take a mouse to school) and Owen volunteered!
New tank inhabitants!
The tank has slowly been getting up to speed and we finally decided it was time to add some more life. Unfortunately, Petco screwed up the order and what we were supposed to get Tuesday (when Tom was home and could handle everything) we didn’t get until this morning (when Tom had overnight duty and couldn’t handle anything). I managed, but it wasn’t in my comfort zone (I’ve acclimated fish before, but not saltwater ones)!
One of my favorites was a sea star… Unfortunately he arrived in less-than-stellar condition and we aren’t sure if he’s going to make it. But, he’s so cool…as soon as I put him in the tank, he burrowed into the sand. From sitting on top to completely buried took about five minutes!
And I had forgotten how cool feather dusters were, too:
And some corals…
And the kids’ favorites—the clown fish!
Or Nemos as Katie calls them: Katie was excitedly showing them her Nemo: “Look! They’re the same Nemo!”
And another favorite, the anemone:
They are intelligent creatures. I put him in the tank where I wanted him to be—where I’ve circled in the photo below. It was a nice little shelf in the current where I thought he’d look great. But he had other ideas. When I came back to look at him about 10 minutes later, he had flipped himself off the ledge and was upside down in the sand! I figured I’d help him out and flip him back over and then just leave him for Tom to deal with when he got home. The next time I came back and looked at him, he had scooched across the sand and wedged himself under the rocks (where he then stayed)! Simply fascinating.
After everyone is settled I’ll actually clean the glass and try to get better pictures!
I wouldn’t let her go outside to play with Owen after school.
Owen was playing by himself and
A. I wanted to give him that autonomy and
B. I can’t trust him to watch her (and I didn’t want to go outside yet again).
She was not happy.
Two hours of jumping!
So we made it to the trampoline park today for our two hours of jumping. And we learned two hours is too much—but one hour isn’t enough, of course.
Here’s a montage of Katie (we had to stay in the Under 46″ section while daddy and Owen were out in the big arena) and then Katie and Owen (he needs some practice at the hoops!).
In the dodgeball court:
Watching Owen:
She’s got the ballerina moves!
This is what she wanted to wear jumping today.
Katie loves brushing my hair
Normally I don’t let her because it’s curly and brushing it would be disastrous…but today it was straight so I let her at it.
Sparty wins!
Some of us were a little excited about the win! I’m not a sportsball person, but even I was nervous the last few minutes!
Mall fun…and then no fun.
First we stopped at the Lego store just to see if there was anything on Clearance. Just under $200 later…we left there and headed to the play area. On our way out, we stopped to gather the kids at the building station and a mom complimented us on Katie being polite—she said her son dropped a piece and Katie handed it to him, he said thank you, and she said you’re welcome! She said it was very unexpected from a 2yo. YAY KATIE! 🙂
Then we hit the mall play area. It was complete chaos because most parents are lazy and don’t actually parent their too-old and too-tall and too-aggressive kids and let them RUN WILD while little kids are trying to play in an already-congested area. So we didn’t stay long.
Then Katie wanted a ride. She loved it! (Sidenote: it was 75¢—seriously?!)
And then Owen learned the hard way not to beg for McDonald’s. We were near the food court getting them small treats at the customer service kiosk and he saw McDonald’s and wanted it. Tom and I said we were going to Red Robin instead. He kept asking for McDonald’s and I told him we said no and to stop asking. He asked about three more times…so he lost Red Robin. He was not happy about that (and neither were we!) but hopefully he learned his lesson. On the way home he asked about four times if we were going to Red Robin for dinner. Nope, not for lunch, not for dinner, not at all today. (Apparently he didn’t learn his lesson about repeatedly asking for things.)
So it was a mostly good day. 🙂
Trader Joe’s, fish, pizza, escalators, and bouncing!
Tom wanted to go to a fish store to see what they had—and of course the kids wanted to go…so we all went! On the way there, we saw a Trader Joe’s (which we hadn’t been to here yet) so we stopped to pick up a few things. I tried to get Owen to push the kid-sized cart and he was having NONE of it and turned into a grouch. Fine. So then we hit the fish store and the kids loved that but then it was almost lunch time so I searched Yelp for something close by…and we ended up at a really yummy pizza place at the Springfield Mall! Well, then since we were at the mall, we decided to check it out (we hadn’t been there yet, either). And that’s when Owen discovered the escalators. Well, he had been on them before but this time he LOVED them. And he’s old enough now that he will go on them without us…which he did. A few times. 🙂
Katie wasn’t too sure and held daddy’s hand pretty tight.
This was Owen’s third and fourth trip around the escalators. Like mother, like son…I remember doing the same thing with my cousins Lisa and Lori (though at a little bit older age) at the Saginaw Mall! 🙂
And then as we were headed to a store I wanted to briefly look in…we ran across a bouncy place. YES. IN THE MALL. So in we went…and let the kids run wild for 30 minutes! (Contrary to what you see in the pictures, there were a bunch of other kids there!)
As a last special thing…on our way out, we stopped to get frozen yogurt!
Santa was here! He left bags!
The kids slept in until after 6:30 (normal).
He loved his new shoes—they have FLAMES on them! A size 3 if you can believe it!
Digging into her bag!
A Pirate Lego game!
The Frozen headband had to go on right away!
TUTU PANTS!
She got a Yoda ornament and put it right on the tree. She also got a fragile Princess Sofia ornament and of course wanted to play with that one!
She got her own old iPhone so there are no screaming fights about sharing Owen’s.
Owen was SUPER EXCITED about getting this dollar store skateboard! He had mentioned a skateboard a few times I didn’t pay any attention because I had already bought all his stuff—but I saw it at the dollar store Christmas Eve when I went to pick up a few stocking stuffers so had to get it.
From walking in to the last stocking present opened, it was just under 30 minutes! Phew!
Watching their videos from Santa
Santa emailed the kids! 🙂
