take me out to the ball game

last night i took the girls to their first "real" baseball game. i've been wanting to all summer but it's been so stinkin' hot that we've had to wait. molly kept insisting it wasn't her first game since she's been to many of her uncle alex's high school games. nonetheless, it was a the first game in a stadium. we went to the t-bones game for a more relaxed atmosphere, not to mention it's cheaper!



 

i like the t-bones games because everyone just goes to have fun. there's no booing if they totally blow it or if there is a disagreement with the officiating. don't get me wrong, i love competition and all the rivalry and the way fans get into the games but sometimes it's nice to just watch a fun game.

not to mention, these two sillies don't exactly sit still and like to move around. the fact that their weren't many fans there made that possible. we had half a row to ourselves and we weren't up high so moving around was very permissible.

they got so excited whenever sizzle, the bull, came out on the field and wanted to see him. he finally came to our side so we high-tailed it up the steps to try and meet him. once we got close, sophie was terrified. clinging to my leg and hiding behind it terrified. molly, loved every minute and he stopped to take a picture with her.

we had some play time on the swing set during the sixth and seventh innings and were fortunate that the nice man checking bags and purses allowed us to bring in our snacks and water. i assumed it was like the royals game and they allowed you to bring food and drinks in.

the t-bones end their home games for the season on sunday so i'm glad we made it. it was the absolute one thing i wanted to do with the girls this summer. check it off my summer bucket list!

first day of the last year of preschool

the day molly has been anticipating since the end of may finally came today...school! this girl has a love for learning and loves school. she would have gone all summer if she could have. we've been counting down the days and today was it! molly woke up singing (as she usually does), hopped right out bed and ate a cheese omelet with chocolate milk for breakfast. she marched right upstairs afterwards and got dressed. then, requested her hair be braided. easy, and done. she was ready to go!



when we got to school, molly walked right in like she'd been there just yesterday, hung her backpack, sat down at the table and got to work! 

molly seems to have a great teacher and the year is looking to be a great one. although, i think she may be disappointed that she doesn't learn all that she's planning on academically. one of the first things she told me when i picked her up is that they didn't work on spelling because it was the first day. she's ready to go back and is glad she only has to wait a day.

if you're on pinterest you've probably seen the questions to every year on your child's birthday. well, i completely forgot on their birthdays so i decided to do it on the first day of school. here's molly's 1st day of preschool interview:

favorite color: purple and pink

favorite animal: monkey

favorite toy: polly pockets and my baby

favorite food: peanut butter and honey

favorite thing to do outside: call my friends on the phone and ride bikes with them

favorite song: Jesus loves me

favorite book: tinkerbell books

favorite t.v. show: caillou

favorite movie: peter pan

favorite fruit: pineapple

favorite thing to do with mommy: make art projects

favorite thing to do with daddy: go fishing

favorite Bible story: Jesus heals the sick girl

favorite restaurant: dinosaur restaurant (t-rex cafe)

favorite sport: gymnastics

favorite outfit: polka dot shirt

best friend: maggie

when i grow up: school teacher

hard to believe in a year she'll be in kindergarten 5 days a week, all day long. i'm going to miss that girl when she's gone all day!

our morning at the weston red barn





this morning the girls and i went with some friends to the red barn in weston, mo. we had been once before around halloween last year to see the animals and look at pumpkins but this trip was even better! we saw chickens, geese, turkeys, and goats. the nice lady working there showed all the kids how to feed the geese and chickens grass so they wouldn't accidentally try to eat their fingers!  

molly was successful in feeding the geese however, they became more interested in a stroller that one of the moms had and left before sophie could try her hand at it.

here the girls are feeding the chickens. sophie continually called the chickens over, demanding they eat and tried forcing grass into their beaks! she wasn't so successful in the feeding department!

trying to lure the chicken with some grass.

here the nice worker is helping the girls feed the geese. sophie must not have had a long enough piece of grass because it nibbled her finger while trying to take the grass.

we picked apples after seeing the animals. this was so fun! i have never (that i remember at least) picked apples. the girls absolutely loved it. molly took care to look for holes and bad spots on the apples before picking.

i love that the apples were close to the ground so the girls could reach with out having to be picked up. sophie didn't take much care in the selection process; she just picked. she didn't do too bad though!

here sophie is moving on to a new tree.

there were so many apples and lots of trees to choose from!

tasting one of her apples. these girls are loving the apples. they've already each had three today! molly has big plans for me to make a pie as well.

55 apples! 10 pounds! we have a lot of apples! not too bad on price either. it came out to $1.80/lb. just a bit higher than the grocery store sells them right now. and it's more fun to eat them because we picked them. we'll definitely be visiting again for more apple picking this fall! 

summer olympics 2012

the olympics have been so enjoyable over the past two weeks. molly cried today when i told her they would be over tomorrow and she would have to wait until she was 8 for the summer olympics to be back on. we've watched more t.v. and had it on in the background these past two weeks then i think we do in two months! so worth it though. molly is a big USA supporter and loved watching to see how many points we had or if we were number one. she finally figured out that we live in the united states (after asking a billion times when i'd tell her the united states athlete was performing).

gymnastics (of course) was probably the favorite sport around our house. molly hasn't stopped flipping. not that she really had before the olympics but it seems more prominent now. the girl constantly has to be flipping off the couch, standing on her head, doing somersaults and cartwheels. lifting a leg in the air, etc. she's even trying to perfect cartwheeling off her balance beam and asked me if she would need to use chalk on her hands during gymnastics class. i assured her it wasn't necessary just quite yet. sophie's quite the little somersaulter as well and is looking foward to turning 3 so she can take gymnastics too! oh, molly will be in the olympics so she says. look for her in 2024!

swimming and diving were also fun to watch. molly perfected the backstroke at our pool and tried out synchronized jumping with another little girl. she'll be a multi sport olympian! sophie in the mean time is attempting to swim underwater and is convinced she is when she holds her breath and puts her mouth in the water and walks in the pool. it is the cutest thing ever. i need to remember a camera next we go so i can capture this achievement!

sophie enjoyed horse jumping and they both tried their hand at rhythmic gymnastics with a large ribbon we have. molly learned a little about volleyball and liked watching the girls dive on the ground to hit the ball.

we did a few fun/learning based activities to go along with the olympics as well. here they are.

painting the olympic rings with homemade puffy paint. i found it on pinterest at this site: http://www.housingaforest.com/microwave-puffy-paint/  it's kinda puffy when you microwave but didn't look at good as the example. still fun and the girls loved it. don't over cook - it will burn!

 molly took great care in making her rings. she's my little perfectionist when it comes to art!   

 sophie's final product! hard to see the puff but it did work a little!

                        
 molly's final product! notice the burn mark. paint was a little thin in this area. the thicker the better and the more puff!

 here the girls are working on some educational activities. this learning pack came from 3dinosaurs.com. sophie is making a color book. she had to look at the colored word, then color the ring to match.

 molly is working on pictures of her favorite events. then she wrote the name of the event and i wrote down why she liked the event.

 counting practice

 more counting practice.

sophie did a matching puzzle game with different girls playing different sports in the olympics.

molly worked on a puzzle of the olympic rings and medals.

 sophie's finished work!

molly's olympic drawings.

















it was a fun olympic year. i'm looking forward to the winter olympics and so are my girls!

pool time fun!

we have a fabulous pool in our subdivision that we visit almost daily for an hour or two. the girls have turned into little pool rats and always ask to go. after molly's initial fear of the water and plunging in and swimming underwater again and solving sophie's burning eyes from sunscreen. fortunately the stick is working.



 this little floating turtle has been a favorite in the pool this summer and perfect for sophie because she feels like she's swimming. she picks her feet up and starts kicking away. it is also a favorite with other kids at the pool.

here's molly plunging in and swimming underwater. she's doing so well holding her breath and seems to be able to do it longer each day. tonight she figured out how to swim on her back! now if we could just get her brave enough to take swim lessons...she's petrified of the big pool.

jumping in is on of molly's favorite things to do. she pretends to dive by jumping in and then swimming underwater quickly. 

 swimming is so much fun but tiring too. because of molly's gymnastics on mondays we can't swim that day. we tried one week and she was so sluggish and tired. this monday we had a little swimming fun on the deck with our little people and polly pockets. the girls thought this was lots of fun

molly gave her people a lot of swimming lessons and both girls enjoyed dropping the people from way up high saying they were going off the high dive.

of course, there was also the opportunity for the girls to get a little wet!

we also constructed a pool out of our wooden blocks in the basement for the girls to play with complete with a slide and diving board and also lily pads (remembering our paola pool). the girls had a lot of fun letting their dolls go swimming, jump off the diving board and slide down the slide. our giant strawberry shortcake served as the lifeguard for our pool.



we also have a fun strawberry shortcake pool toy that we've played with quite a bit. lots of pool time fun. i think our next pool fun activity will be a playdough pool or ocean or both. i haven't decided yet.



potty training!

potty training, here we go! sophie's taking the lead and wants to use the toilet! hooray! she's going to prove me wrong. on memorial day, i purchased two more boxes of papers diapers (mainly because i got $20 off for buying two but also because i didn't think she'd be potty trained in 3 months). i'm now hoping i can return the second box (for cash, not store credit but that probably won't happen since i don't have a receipt). for the past month, i have let sophie try out the toilet whenever she asked. sometimes a little poop came out, most times, nothing. however, she was excited. then she lost interest, and then it came back so we bought some underwear. how lucky for sophie that walmart sells frog underwear. we've been talking to her a lot about using the toilet and last week she saw her cousin (who is only 9 days older) wearing underwear. this helped spark some interest so we began experimenting with underwear. she's only had a couple accidents. pooping is so much easier than peeing. never has she told me she needed to pee but she'll tell me she has to poop and then goes. this girl spends so much time in the bathroom "trying" because she wants to go and she knows if she does smarties are waiting for her. i think this is one reason we haven't had many accidents...she's in the bathroom all. the. time. it's exhausting sometimes! oh, well, whatever works. she constantly tells me she's done with diapers but i'm not sure i'm ready to venture out of the house in underwear. i mentioned to her she'd have to wear a diaper to story time at the library tomorrow and she got so upset. maybe i should give it a try? i just hate for her to pee all over the library carpet.... she's so proud of herself and is her own best cheerleader saying, "yay, sophie" each time she goes in the toilet. molly is also very into sophie using the toilet and usually has to accompany sophie to the bathroom each time. she takes great pride in letting me know when sophie is ready to wipe and even "taught" sophie to wipe while i was in the shower yesterday. she always wants to know what underwear sophie will pick out to wear. tonight we took a walk and i made sophie sit on a towel, folded multiple times, just in case. she fell asleep and molly continually checked to make sure sophie was still dry. actually, now that i'm thinking about it, molly was probably the most instrumental part of sophie's potty training interest because i'd catch her whispering to sophie when she'd use the bathroom, "do you want to try" and then come running to me letting me know that sophie wanted to try. she invited sophie into the bathroom many times when she was going. aren't big sisters great? so here we go...day 3 tomorrow. molly was trained in a weeks time...i'm wondering if sophie will be just as quick. my guess is no, but we're moving in the right direction! 

ants and picnics

we have finished our unit on ant and picnics except for a few handwriting sheets that molly will continue to work on. the girls are having so much fun with the activities...it makes me excited for our next unit! here are our final activities: patterning to make a tablecloth. sophie caught on quick to this and knew exactly what color she needed next. this was not a challenge for molly but she still had fun. she turned it into a race (of course, sophie can't finish before her) so her tablecloth was a little off...

 then, the girls used their finger, or fingers/hand in sophie's case, to make ants crawling on their tablecloth. i think there was an ant on almost every square!

molly practiced writing A's and P's

 sophie colored on a dry erase board for a bit but quickly grew tired of it so we sequenced dinosaurs. she preferred this activity and did great! she's learning so much, so quickly!

 molly and i played a build an ant game. she won every time! sophie played once, but again, her patience level was just not there. finally she was the designated dice roller.

our last activity was a picnic at the park. i had high hopes that we'd be able to picnic in an area without a playground. i wanted the girls to just experience an open field, eating, and playing with a ball or running around. however, we pulled into the park (a new one for us) and there was the playground.

 making silly faces while eating was a fun thing. after we ate we played some duck duck goose around our picnic sheet.

 and then the playground. it was a neat playground with lots of different spinning things. molly loved them all while sophie was a bit scared. the cautious side in sophie is coming out, i think.

 much to their resistance, i made the girls stop playing on the playground and go over to the open grassy area to play with their balls. molly learned to drop kick, kinda and we played catch. i was a bit disappointed in their lack of creativity and enjoyment in the grassy area. they're so creative and imaginative in almost every situation but molly asked me what they were supposed to do. i'm blaming it on the playground....they wanted to go back and play on it. oh well, we will try again...in an area without a playground and maybe bring some kites along.

coming up next in our summer school: caterpillars and butterflies.