This Week: November 16-22

We have some exciting news to share for Paul!  He got an amazing promotion at work!  He will now be doing his dream job--what he hoped to eventually do when he received his CFA a year and a half ago, but hardly believable that he would land this job so soon!  We are very proud of him!  While he has had to spend a bit more time on work lately, he is so great about spending time with the kiddos!  Some of my favorite pictures from this weekend are when patient Daddy sat quite still for over 50 shots from Dr. Summer and Dr. Colton (shots were so much fun to administer because of the hilarious reactions they received from their patient).  They of course checked his heart, ears, eyes, mouth, toes, ... etc.

On Sunday, Summer and I went on a date to see Fiddler on the Roof, a play going on at the high school I used to attend.  Summer has an amazing memory and loves to be on stage, and I would imagine she will someday be in her high school play :).  She and I had a blast, and it was the first time I felt like I was out with a friend when I was out with my daughter--she was a perfect angel and required no parenting--and I look forward to many more dates like this with her as she gets older.  It was so much fun to see the anticipation on her face each day it got closer to her date and her whispering to me that morning in church several times, "Today is our date, mommy!!!!!"  Here are a few pictures, as well as one of Paul and Colton at home watching football together :).

Here are a few other pictures and videos from our week....

Lunch Playdate with Friends at Ms. Rachael's House

The girls: Summer, Adry, Adelyn, Addison

The boys: Ian, Colton, Rylan

The girls loved the dress up box, and all dressed up as various  princesses

Colton loved the vacuum....

And the pool filled with balls

BSF verse of the Week: Matthew 8:27




Swimming Lessons







Gymnastics




Preschool



Community Center Open Gym

trying to learn hula hoop

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Colton's favorite--basketball!

One of the dads randomly organized running games...so fun!

Appointments (Dentist and Hair)

Coloring before dentist appt

looking good!

Getting Summer's split ends cut off and putting a few layers in to even out growing out her bangs

Colton's first successful haircut with no crying...I think it helped having his sister next to him this time!

 

Having fun around the house

Puzzles

Tunnels and Roads

Cars

Art Projects

Playing dolls...

Colton told me he he needed to change (Summer's doll) Nikki's diaper...He said: "Nkki. Poopy diaper. Diaper Change." and proceeded to wipe her bottom with Summer's pretend wipes!

Playing Playdough

Shape Sorter

Pop Up

Cooking and Baking with Mom

Our neighbors gave this to Summer when they were done with it--a little roller coaster set.  Colton had a blast watching the cars go down the track...see next video:

Updates

Colton is now able to answer questions like "What did you do today".  He told me after BSF when I picked him up that he played "bubbles" and "blocks" and had "fun".  Grandma K watched him while I took Summer to the dentist and he at dinner that night told me "piggy bank. Grandma. Summer's Room."  He also told us he played blocks and read books with her.  We tried to recreate the conversation on video later...didn't turn out the same of course!...there are quite a few times I have NO idea what he is saying!  None the less, here is the video...



Summer is doing great with reading "at" and "ad" words as well as a few others.  We picked her up a beginner reader book after library story time this week and spent a while one afternoon learning how to sound out the words.  She is great at sounding out the first letter, but often has trouble putting the word together if it is an ending she is unfamiliar with.  She still loves to "pretend" to read, however, and has MANY of our books completely, word for word, memorized.  A current favorite among both Summer and Colton right now is a library book called IT'S A TIGER! and here is a little video of her "reading" it to Daddy and Colton.  Her dramatic reading has her whispering parts of it, so if you want to hear it, feel free to start in the middle or closer to the end :-)

P.S. Colton in the Spotlight

As I was putting together this week's blog post, I realized I wanted some video of Colton's new conversational style...he is talking so much more.  I took a few random videos Friday afternoon just so I could remember his little voice and how he communicates at 19 months...they are nothing special, but I will add them onto this past weeks post as a P.S. :)

 Here we were drawing/coloring and I was helping Summer spell some words, but I just let the video roll to see what Colton would choose to talk about....



Here is just a little clip of my conversation with Colton....


Here is Summer and Colton sharing Summer's candy.  I love this little conversation between the two of them because I often hear a similar one...if we pack cereal to eat on-the-go in the morning, this is a common backseat conversation I hear while I am driving...



I just love being able to "talk" with Colton now...and communicate so much more.  He is his own little person now and loves to try to talk "as much" as Summer :-)

Our Week: November 9-15

This past weekend Paul and I went out on my "birthday date".  We stuffed ourselves silly at one of my favorite restaurants for burgers, fries, and delicious malts and then went to the Mall of America for kid-free shopping :).  I love spending time with my hubby!  My parents had the kiddos for the evening and took them to Chuck-E-Cheese for their first time.  The took a lot of video and pictures on their phone, but I'll share my favorite video-- Colton driving the car game with Grandpa..as well as a couple pics....

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa, for taking great care of our kiddos while we went out on a date :).

Here is a video of Paul playing football with the kiddos....love Summer's giggle and Colton's  little hands trying to catch the ball...




During the week we had a pretty normal week.  We got to meet Summer's friend Addison's new little baby sister Tenley, which was a highlight!  (Only I was having such fun holding her that I never took a picture!)  Here are a few other random pictures and videos from the week....

Colton sat down and propped his feet up on the stool.  I thought it was so funny!

Summer continues to LOVE gymnastics!

Watching the big kids at gynmastics

Park date with our naighbors

Making a "train" on the slide with our neighbor girls

Making a "book" road for Colton's cars to drive on

 I have seen and loved these dot markers for a while, but haven't been able to find them in the store, so I finally ordered them online.  They came this week, and we made good use of them!  The kids (both of them) love using them.  With Summer, we practiced writing her "hard to write letters" (K, X, and Z), we made two number books (1-10 and 11-20), and did addition.  With Colton we practiced colors.  He loved putting the caps on and off too!

Dotting mommy's "Z"

Making blue circles

Amazing how well they both sat and loved the dot markers!  (Perfect for a 21 degree day!)

Number book #1 "in process"

Our creations on the counter ready to show daddy when he gets home

Summer's number books: She would dot over the numbers I wrote and then make the corresponding number of dots below.  She did all of them completely by herself  and then I checked them.  She did them all correctly except 15 (I had to cross out two dots), 16 (I had to add a dot), and 20 (we needed help counting).

Our first dot addition worksheet

She likes writing 8's the best, so we did one page with the answer all equaling 8 :)

This was this past week's verse of the week.  Below is Summer saying it from memory.  I am loving doing these because in order to teach it to Summer, I have to memorize it too!  We all have fun quizzing Daddy at dinner (and Summer loves "helping" Daddy learn it!)

Summer's verse of the week:


At library storytime, they not only read books, but they sing songs and do different rhymes.  One particular rhyme works on numbers and counting. Here are the lyrics:

Five little monkeys swinging in the tree
teasing Mr. Alligator can’t catch me….can’t catch me
along came Mr. Alligator quiet as can be
and snapped that monkey out that tree

And so on it goes until there are 0 monkeys left.  Of course there are fun actions to make when the alligator SNAPS the monkey out of the tree.  The kids played "crocodile" with this song for the longest time while we were doing the dishes one night so I snapped a little video....





Here are some videos of Summer's swimming lesson this week.  The first is her putting her head under all by herself (new in the past 2 weeks) and the second is of one of her favorite parts of swimming lessons: "walking on the moon".





That is all the pictures and videos I have of this week,but I should add that Colton's talking is advancing rapidly.  I really should catch it on video sometime so I can remember it, but he is often stringing together 2 and 3 words now and communicating so much verbally.  He still loves to do everything "self" (by himself)!  He is very excited that he can take the grapes off the stem and eat them just like Summer does. :)