Fun at the Farm!

The girls and I had a busy morning today!  (Jacob did as well, but he wasn't with us--he is in his summer clinicals now all day, every day.)  I slept terribly last night and was woken up by the girls a couple times each, and then Naomi decided she was awake and ready for her day to begin at 6:30 this morning, so I was exhausted and very irritable.  (Naomi led me right downstairs when she woke up and brought me to the kitchen drawer where I had put the watercolors, wanting to paint.  So she must have liked the watercolors yesterday more than I thought!)  We dropped Jacob off at the hospital at 8 and came home to get ready for a playgroup meetup.  Naomi wouldn't eat the breakfast I made for her, she didn't want to wear the shoes I got out for her, and Aleta wouldn't stop crying and screaming, so I had a really hard time getting myself and them ready and everything together for us to leave.  I came so close to just giving up and not going, but I didn't because I had RSVP'd for the meetup and the playgroup had given a headcount to the farm people (we were going to a farm for a tour of the animals).  This is one reason I really wanted to join a playgroup--so that I wouldn't give up and flake out on my plans when I'm too tired or too frustrated with the girls.  Because the farm was so much fun, and we would have missed out on it!

The farm was called Walk About Acres, and they have both guided & unguided tours.  Because of all of the young kids in our group, we just did an unguided tour.  They had chickens, peacocks, geese, goats, pigs, emus, and probably a couple more animals that I'm forgetting.  They have the place set up so that the animals are in different areas behind a fence, and they have a gravel road/trail going around in front of all of the animals so you can walk around and see them all.  I was afraid Naomi would be scared at first (since she was so scared of the penguins when we first got to the zoo!), but she really enjoyed seeing and watching all of the animals.

Looking at some of the animals...

Emus!

Looking at some goats...

She was pointing & saying, "Look!"

Thanks to Jacob, Naomi loves to use her hand as a gun to shoot people.  She makes this cute little "Ba BA!" noise when she shoots you, and she has even recently started to make a funny little noise and "die" when someone shoots her.  It's actually pretty cute.  Anyway, she thought it would be fun to shoot the animals at the farm, so every time we'd walk up to a new animal, she'd make her guns and shoot them through the fence.

She was shooting the chickens here with both hands.

When we got to the pigs, a few of them were eating.  Naomi and I stood there watching one of the pigs eat for a little while, and then she said to the pig, "Mmmm, that's good?".  I laughed so hard.  She is so funny!

They also have a bunch of bee hives at the farm, which I avoided, because I HATE bees and I'm terrified of them and anything else that buzzes & has a stinger.  But with their bees, they make honey ice cream, which you can buy at their little store.  Our whole group stopped at the little store to hang out at the picnic tables and eat ice cream.  I got a cup of chocolate/vanilla for both Naomi and me, and it was delicious!!  Naomi, who loves ice cream, wouldn't touch hers because there was a cat running around, and she was too distracted by the stupid cat.  All she wanted to do was run after it, so she ran around following it under the picnic tables and wherever else it decided to go, yelling "Doggy!  Doggy!".  She still thinks everything around that size with fur and 4 legs is a dog.  So I ended up eating my own ice cream as well as hers, but I didn't mind!

Aleta was pretty good the whole time, especially considering she was left in the stroller and mostly ignored while I looked at the animals with Naomi.  It was a little hard with the double stroller at the farm, because the big gravel made it extremely hard to push the stroller around, and it was a very bumpy ride for the girls, but I don't know how I would have done the outing without the stroller!

Peeking out of the top of the stroller at me...

Happy girl with all of her toys!

Watercolors

For our art project today, Naomi and I played around with watercolor paints.  I don't think they were her favorite thing, but we probably played for a good hour or so.  She mostly played with the water while I attempted to paint, but she did paint a little bit.  She wanted to have all of the paintbrushes for herself, even though she was rarely even using one.  I could only paint for maybe 5 seconds at a time before she'd grab my paintbrush away and I'd have to steal a different one from her.

Playing in the cup of water...

She was dipping her hand in the water and flinging the water onto the camera.  You can see a little drop of water in the top left corner, on top of Naomi's hair.

I painted a rainbow and a flower... I am so artistic, I know.  I painted the flower picture for Jacob... isn't it pretty? :)

Our pictures!

Memorial Day

We decided to stay home for our Memorial Day, so we spent the day playing and being a little lazy.  Some of us also decided it was time to catch up on some sleep--Naomi went down for a late nap last night after church at 5:00, and slept through the night until 7 this morning!  Then she took a 4 hour nap in the afternoon.  So in one 24-hour period, Naomi slept 18 hours.  Pretty crazy!

This evening, Naomi and I made and decorated sugar cookies for Memorial Day!  I wasn't sure how it would go, but Naomi had a lot of fun!  While I flattened the dough (I didn't realize I had no rolling pin, so I did my best with my hands) and cut out cookies, Naomi mostly played with the flour and made a HUGE mess.  She kept spooning more flour onto the table and then spreading it all over the table in front of her until she eventually pushed it all onto the floor.  When I finally put the flour away, there was flour EVERYWHERE.

Making the dough

She's saying, "Cheese!"  She is covered in flour!

For the decorating, I kept some of the icing white and colored the rest blue, and I bought red, blue, and white sprinkles.  I iced some cookies for Naomi and gave a bowl with each kind of sprinkles.  I tried to show her how to sprinkle them onto the cookie, but she decided she'd rather dump a huge pile onto the cookie, and of course make an even bigger mess.  She would dump a pile onto the cookie, spend a few minutes eating some of the sprinkles, and then dump a bunch of the sprinkles onto her chair.  Eventually, the cookie stuff was everywhere, and Naomi was completely covered in flour and colored sprinkles and icing, so I put the rest of the cookies away for me to decorate later.

"Where are all my sprinkles?"

It was definitely a successful activity in that Naomi had a ton of fun, but oh, what a mess she made!  I had decided before we started that I was just going to let Naomi play and have fun--no matter how much of a mess she was making.  So I let her dump the flour and cover herself and me with cookie dough & flour and dump the sprinkles all over the floor and grind them into her chair with her feet... and I'm glad I did. Because she had fun!  It took forever to clean up though.  I wish I had taken a picture of the table and floor before I cleaned it up, because it was terrible.  I also forgot to take a picture of Naomi's face before I wiped it all off--her mouth and cheeks were COVERED in blue from the sprinkles.

Keep in mind, this was AFTER I wiped Naomi's face off.  You can see the mess she made of her chair behind her.

This is what her feet looked like when we were finished.

Our finished cookies!  I actually had to throw away the ones Naomi decorated because she dumped them onto the floor, icing-side down.

This Week's Goal

Ok, so last week, my goal was to get out every day and do something fun with my kiddos... and I almost made it!!  The only day I missed was Saturday, and it wasn't really my fault.  But I tried my best, and the rest of the week was ridiculously fun!

This week, Jacob starts clinicals on Tuesday, which means I will be at home without a car unless I want to deal with dropping him off and picking him up every day, which is rough with two kids and nap schedules.  I will be doing that a lot this summer so that we can go places, but it won't be every day.

So I've decided my goal for this week is to do some kind of fun, hands-on, artsy project with Naomi every day at home.  Today, in honor of Memorial Day, I think we are going to make sugar cookies and decorate them with red, white, and blue icing/sprinkles.  It's gonna be fun.  And delicious.  So stay tuned for pictures!

the rest of our week

I was so wiped out from all of our fun on Thursday that I was too exhausted on Friday to do much.  The girls and I spent the morning at the playground, so we did make my goal of getting out of the house and doing something fun, and then Jacob & I spent the rest of the day/evening cleaning & organizing the house and working on our food storage.  I also finished a little house project--I have been trying to figure out what to hang on the wall by the kitchen table for a while now, but it was hard to find something that I liked for the kitchen that I was capable of making and that wouldn't cost me anything.  I finally found an idea for something that I kinda liked a couple weeks ago, and I was able to finish the project and get it hung up on Friday.  I think I like it... it will do for now, at least, until someday when we have money and can buy real wall art!

Centered on the wall behind the kitchen table

Close-up!  There's something about the teapot that bugs me... but it was the hardest one to draw and cut out... I am not an artist!

I have to admit that on Saturday I was not able to get out of the house with the girls to do anything fun.  My goal was to get out every day last week and take them somewhere fun, but I just couldn't do it on Saturday.  I had planned to take them to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning to get some yummy home-baked treats, but I ended up having to work, so it didn't work out.  Then Jacob was gone with the car for the rest of the day playing paintball with his brothers.  I did make a delicious dinner of sweet & sour chicken, though, so the day wasn't a complete waste!

I was going to post the video I mentioned yesterday of Naomi playing with the food coloring in the tub, but in today's world, I am slightly worried that some crazy person would think it was inappropriate.  So I won't be posting that one.  But here's a video of Aleta babbling in her crib in the morning!  (Ignore the vacuum handle and boxes mess... we had recently finished cleaning and boxing up too-small baby clothes.)

Also, here is Aleta's 5-month picture with the giant caterpillar... she is getting so big!!  I completely missed taking a 4-month picture, and her 5-month picture is like 10 days late, but oh well.  I try my best!

Our Freakin' Awesome Thursday!

Today was an awesome, fun, extremely busy day!  I started the day off with taking Naomi to the Lend & Learn library for their last day before they close for the summer (and possibly forever, if they don't get their funding for next year... Boo!!).  Because it was their last day for the year, they did a Messy Day outside, where they had tons of fun little stations set up for the kids to play at.  They had water tables with tons of toys, baby pools filled with toys and duckies and water, a couple sandboxes with toys, a station with shaving cream to play in, a long table covered with paper & paint supplies, a plastic tub full of bubble stuff & bubble wands (Naomi's favorite), cups & potting soil & flowers so you could plant your own flower to bring home with you, balls & a mini parachute, numerous mats/blankets set up with cars or giant blocks, and probably quite a few other things that I'm forgetting.  It was pretty much awesome.  Naomi and I spent most of our time at the bubbles station & paint table.

Bubbles!  Naomi's favorite thing in the world.

 

One of the water tables

Naomi's first experience with paint... she loved it.  (I just haven't been brave enough to try out paint at home, yet.  That, and we don't own any paints.)
Also, take note of how clean she is here.

Concentrating on her art.

And this is her "Cheese!" face when I am taking her picture... see how messy she is now?

They also had an ice cream truck that came and gave everyone free ice cream!  So Naomi had her first ever popsicle... she was not quite sure how to eat it off of the popsicle stick, so she eventually started eating it like an ear of corn.

hahaha Check out her hair.

Eating it like an ear of corn...

Yum!

 

Ok... there are a lot of popsicle photos.  But she's just so cute!

They gave everyone a bag of goodies as you left, and everyone went away with a prize (depending on a number on the sticker we were given when we got there), and there were bins & boxes full of free second-hand kids' clothes that were donated.  So we went away with some clothes for the girls, a bunch of new books, and a few other random toys.  Basically, it was awesome and Naomi & I had a blast.  We are doing a Messy Day in June with our playgroup, and I can't wait!!

Naomi went down for a nap when we got home from the Messy Day, and I got Aleta ready to go to our playdate!  This playdate was for the 0-1 age range in our playgroup, and although I could have brought Naomi with me (the mom hosting has a 2-year-old daughter as well), I wanted a little one-on-one time with Aleta.  And Naomi needed her nap, anyway.  So I took advantage of the fact that Jacob is off of school this week, and I left Naomi at home.

The mom hosting the playdate today made what she calls a "Redneck Waterbed", and it was awesome!!!  She got the idea from here... they explain how to make it on that website as well.  Anyway, Aleta was tired and fussy, so she cried as soon as I put her on it, but it was still an awesome idea.  Someday, I want to make one for Naomi... I'm pretty sure she would absolutely love it.

Some of the other kids enjoying the "redneck waterbed".

I also tried out the kiddie pool with Aleta, but she started screaming as soon as I put her feet in the water.  So we spent most of the playdate on the blanket playing with toys.

Some of the other moms/kids enjoying the pool.

Not the greatest picture of me... but I had been playing with my kids outside in high-80s degree weather all day.  So don't be mean!

Playing on the blanket.

When Aleta and I got home, she went down for her much-needed nap, and Jacob made dinner (spaghetti) for the rest of us!  Then Naomi and I left to go to Discovery Time at the library.  They had books out to read with your kids, some activities to go along with the books, and then some other things for the kids to play with.  Naomi spent the whole time crawling through and playing with the caterpillar tunnel... she loved that thing.  Every time another child would crawl through, she would giggle and giggle--she thought it was the funniest thing.  I tried to get Naomi to sit with me to read, but she just wanted to run around.

Happy girl!

When we finally made it home for the night, I gave Naomi a bath.  We added some blue food coloring to the water to make bathtime extra fun tonight.  Naomi thought that was pretty great!  (I took a little video with our flip camera, but honestly, I am just too exhausted from our day to upload it... so I will add it tomorrow.)

Finally, by 10:30, both kids were asleep, and our freakin' awesome Thursday was over!  Go ahead... tell me I'm a freakin' awesome mom... :)

Today I had planned to take Naomi to an activity at the library called Dance Fitness for Kids.  But it was in the morning, and after our incredibly exhausting (but also fun!) day yesterday at the zoo, I just couldn't get up and ready and out of the house on time.  So we spent our morning lazing around the house and recovering from our fun-filled zoo trip.

Around lunchtime, I was finally feeling up to doing something other than laying around, so I printed off a bunch of zoo animal coloring pages, and Jacob, Naomi and I colored!  When we were finished, we showed Naomi how to hang them on the fridge with magnets.  Until now, Naomi just used magnets as toys to play with on the fridge and other magnetic surfaces.

Sorry, this one turned out a little dark.

Finished artwork!

I had to work this afternoon/evening, but I wanted to take Naomi to the library to read when I got home.  We had to stop at Papa Murphy's to pick up our pizza first, which we then dropped off at home for Jacob to pop in the oven.  But when I hopped back in the car to drive over to the library, Naomi freaked out!  She didn't want to leave again.  So we just walked to the mini playground at the end of our row of townhomes and played there until dinner.

Sliding!

The little playground equipment by our townhomes.