Monday, November 17, 2014

Cold Snowy Happenings

Well, its is OFFICIALLY winter in Minnesota!  IT is FREEZING here!  It is currently -1 degree windchill as I write...and its only November!  Yikes!  Anyway, here are a few things we have been up to this week...


First Snow








Swimming Lessons


Video: Colton is now getting his eyes wet all by himself!

Video: Colton used to hate swimming on his back and would squirm out of it each time.  He is doing so much better!

Larkyn watching her siblings swim :)

Art Projects

Making new place mats (laminated posterboard)

We have used these placemats for almost a year at every family dinner...and it was time to update!

Here are the kids new creations

With it getting dark by 5 now, and we don't eat until Paul gets home around 6-6:30, we often do some sort of art project before dinner to help pass the time in a fun way!

Painting

Painting

Play Dough

Baking

Kids "hammering" the Oreos into Oreo powder

Rolling the Oreo cream cheese mixture (before dipping in candy coating)

These white chocolate chip pumpkin snicker doodle cookies (recipe from my sister) are so addicting!

I rolled the balls, Colton rolled them in cinnamon sugar, and Summer added white chocolate chips on top.  No egg in the dough so its delicious sampling ;)
The kids and I had quite the adventure making these peanut marshmallow bars...after the first layer was in the oven we realized we were 2/3 cup short on corn syrup because we doubled the batch!! We had quite the adventure calling neighbors and running around in the snow to get the remaining 2/3 cup :)

Puzzles

Colton is LOVING puzzles lately and this was the first time he did this 24 piece all by himself!

Kids will often pull games or puzzles to work on while I am folding laundry

Bethel Visit

My mom and I drove to Bethel to see my cousin Jenna!

While there we saw Uncle Eric's brother Andrew

Grandma K, Larkyn and Jenna

The kids were excited to see Ms. Kae - Uncle Eric's mom who works in admissions at Bethel

Girls Date to the Theatre- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Summer watching the show (held at my old high school)

The girls!

Summer driving Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Summer proactively walked up to/met/ and chatted with several members of the cast and LOVED meeting them!  She is very excited to be in HER musical next month!!

Daddy's Girls

Daddy and Larkyn

Daddy playing dress up with Summer

Dairy Queen Photo Shoot

My friend Jessi and her girls were asked to be on the cover of World of Dairy Queen Magazine- but they needed a little boy with them...so they invited Colton!

We arrived at 9:30am at the DQ in Edina (near the DQ headquarters) and Colton did great for the whole photo shoot!

Summer was AMAZING at cheering her brother on - I was so proud of her!

After they were done with the "cover" photo shoot, they took some pictures for the inside of the magazine, and invited Summer to join them!

The kids were asked to eat their ice cream cones (tough job, I know!) but were replaced with NEW ones after they ate part of them (so the photos would look fresh)

The ice cream cones that never ran out...

It was really fun to watch the photo shoot and how they did everything!

These four sillies had so much fun together and were treated to a free DQ lunch after the photo shoot

Learning

Summer has been loving writing and sounding out words.  She writes probably 6 notes a day to varous people, sounding out the words as she writes them.  It is fun to see what she comes up with as she mixes the sight words and family names she knows with sounding out words she doesn't know, for example spelling "who" as "ho" and "what" as "wat" and "house" as "hos".  I am very proud of how she is sounding out her words - just in the last two weeks she has dramatically improved!  This particular note is for Uncle Ty, and our current verse of the week.  She asked for help on the word "commanded" and "Deuteronomy".  It says, "Ty so be careful to do what the Lord has commanded.  Deuteronomy 5:32"


She is also very interested in sign language lately and asking lots of questions.  So we looked up a video on youtube to teach us both the sign language alphabet.  Here is the first time she did all the letters by herself (though today when she did it she is much faster than this video shows!)
 

Colton has been very interested in rhyming words and rhyming any words he can.  Here is a video of part of our dinner conversation.


Here is their verse of the week:


"Our Time"

Life gets busy...So busy!  Paul and I often connect around 10 or 11pm over a bowl of cereal.  This is our favorite kind!  I LOVE our cereal dates, and to me this picture represents a great part of our life right now.


Thursday, November 13, 2014

Larkyn 4 month dr. appt

Even smiling at weigh-in!

Our little peanut is 12 lbs 1 oz (6th percentile)

She is 23.5 inches long (7th percentile) and has a 16" around head size (59th percentile)
Healthy little girl!

Snuggles with Mommy during naptime (a little fussy after 2 shots but not too fussy to give the camera a smile!)