Our Week: October 11th - October 17th

Here are a few snapshots from our week:

My Birthday:
We celebrated my birthday last Sunday because we had our couples Bible Study on Tuesday night (my actual birthday).  However, Summer was SO excited that it was my birthday on Tuesday that we decided to play it up ;).  (She gets REALLY excited about birthdays)  So, I let her decide what special treat we should have to celebrate my birthday and we went to Target and she got to "pick out" cupcakes for my birthday.  She even stuck a candle in and sang to me--too cute!

Going to get a treat for Mommy

This one!

Since it was Tuesday, we went to library story time.  We also picked out new books to bring home.  While Summer and I were picking out books, Colton and his buddy Ian were doing the "motor vehicle" puzzle together.

We went out to lunch with some friends after story time, and it went quite smoothly having all the 3 year old sisters and 1 year old brothers sit at the same table!

Paul's family always sings their "traditional" birthday song each birthday, and they sent me this fun multimedia presentation video of them singing "The monkey birthday song".  Definitely talented!





I had a lot of fun getting to celebrate with my mom on Thursday -- we went out for lunch and had a great time catching up :).

I felt so special and loved by family and friends!  I think my favorite part was watching Summer get SO excited about it being my birthday!

Sibling Stuff

One of my favorite parts of the week is watching Summer and Colton enjoy playing together so much!  They are really doing a great job sharing, taking turns, and enjoying each others' company.  Summer is so good about helping Colton do things he can't do by himself, teaching him things, and comforting him if he is sad/frustrated.  Colton loves watching his big sister and tries to do everything she does, say everything she says, and act how she acts.  Here are a few snapshots of the two of them together from the past two weeks....

Squirting glass cleaner onto paper towels to help mommy clean

Definitely more finger prints after cleaning the mirror than before, but pretty cute helpers :-)

Dressing up in mommy and daddy's clothes

Playing in the sandbox

Here is a video Grandma captured of them playing Ring-Around-the-Rosy

 Learning

It is amazing how everything the kids do, they are learning, and how the smallest games and activities create fun learning tools!

We are continuing to work with Colton on colors (right now everything is "boo" (Blue)) and trying to coming up with learning activities that are full of action!  So we pulled out a Twister mat I got at a consignment sale last year and used it as a tool to practice colors for Colton and the directions "left and right" with Summer.  Here is a little video of them playing Twister with some dancing thrown in for fun :-).  This will definitely be an activity we will repeat in the coming cold winter months...it passed a good 45 minutes on a rainy afternoon in no time!

 One of the books Summer got from the library this week was called The Great Graph Contest , and after reading it spawned our math lesson for the week.  Together we created a fruit loop graph. I created the graph paper, but Summer did the rest--and LOVED it.  Here are a few pictures of our project as well as a little video of her learning how to "read" the graph.

First Summer looked to see what colors of fruit loops were in her bowl, and found matching crayons to make a key at the bottom of the graph.

Then she glued fruit loops onto the paper according to color, one in each box.

Her final graph looked like this.

 Here is a video of her learning how to "read" her graph.

We also practiced her "S" a bit more in the salt tray.

Practicing tracing Mommy's "S"

That's all the pictures I have of this week!  Off to bed! :-)