Virginia Playground & Sleepover

After the party, we all headed over to the neighborhood playground to play "haunted bridge" inspired by Scooby Doo. Daddy was a very good moaning ghost. : )
Shenan's neighborhood has a really wonderful rolling/sledding hill that the girls had a ball rolling down. Even Annie took a turn!
Then we all rolled down together (including me)! And the girls all rolled into a pile! : )
Hey girls, this is supposed to be a SLEEPover! There was no sleep to be had for a while. Lots of reading Scooby books, though. : ) Until . . .

Note to Self: the way to get kids to sleep during a sleepover is to tell them the time when they have to go to sleep, remind them a few minutes beforehand, and then sit outside the door and "shhhhhh" them every time you hear a sound. Works every time. Thanks Laura! You're a genius!!!

Shenan's Birthday Party

This weekend we traveled to Virginia for Shenandoah's really cool Scooby Doo & Star Wars birthday party!
It was a pajama party in the early morning, with doughnuts for breakfast! : ) Leia, of course, wore her dinosaur pajamas.
Watching Scooby Doo was one of the highlights of the party, and we had try to prepare Leia Rose for some of the monsters involved. : ) Note her hands over her ears. : ) It didn't take her long to LOVE Scooby Doo, though, especially when one of the episodes featured dinosaurs!
And Leia was the one really excited about Shenan getting the game "Operation" (and Daddy, too, who kept commenting on the new ailment: brain freeze, in the shape of an ice cream cone). Leia's excitement stemmed from her having the Dinosaur version (where you excavate bones trying to prevent the dino from roaring). : )

We gave Shenan (& Armelle) this really cool Wild Water Slide for both of thier birthdays. It's the same one that we have, and the only one that protects your ribs with a cusion of air. : )
The children also played "Pin the Control Panel on Darth Vader." And I was INCREDIBLY proud of Leia Rose for not being scared of the Yoda on the poster!
Here's Leia Rose's reaction to where she stuck her control panel. : )
Poor little Shenny, being the first one to play, was very upset that she didn't get the control panel in the perfect spot. Her Mamma told her a special secret that made her smile, . . . and the smile grew even bigger when she saw that she wasn't alone in the conrol panel struggle. : )
Everyone LOVED the really cool Darth Vader pinata! (I thought it was so cute that Shenandoah was on a first name basis with Vader, . . . calling him "Darth." Ha!) Shenandoah pulled the strings until she found the one that opened the pinata, and out came candy, lizards, punching balloons, and . . . whoopie cushions (a Worrel family favorite)!

Then the whole group headed outside to try out Shenan's new zipline. Leia had lots of fun!

And Annie continued her usual pastime of pressing on screens (like she's not supposed to).
And Annie's other favorite activity? Ripping tissue paper. I'm so glad she had fun at the party, too! : )

Driveway Art +

Leia Rose was very inpsired by her special "Femo" beads she made this week in African Art, and she began creating on our driveway as I frantically got ready for our little trip this weekend. When I went outside to see her creations, Leia Rose proudly said, "Look Mamma, I made hearts to show how much I love my friends! This one is how much I love Maddie . . . "
"This one is how much I love Jessica."
"And THIS one is how much I love Shenandoah!!!"
And here is Leia Rose's self-made map of the world! Check out the North Pole and Antartica! Then from left to right it's South America, Asia, Australasia, Africa, and North America. She was quick to point out that the positions of the coninents were her interpretation. : ) So wonderful all of the things she's learning these days in Montessori. : )
And as we got on the way to Virginia, Leia Rose wanted me to take a picture of some Sister Love. So here it is. : )

Panera with Kevin

This was a special Valentine lunch, in that Kevin brought Valentines for the girls! : )
But Leia's ultimate goal of the lunch was the "squeezie" of yogurt that she got with a kids meal (which she had wanted since seeing Shenan and Armelle have one last time).
Kevin and Leia (especially Kevin) made friends with the little girl sitting next to us. At one point, the little girl told Kevin something about "his sister," (meaning Leia) but Kevin replied, "I am not a girl! . . . We are not together!" This made me laugh really hard because it kind of sounded like Kevin was leaving himself available for other dates. Ha!
And here was a game (albiet a distracting one) that Kevin and Leia created by themselves. It was called "Climb-ey Down." They would stand up on the booth, putting their hands up top like this, and then fall down while making a kind of "aaahhhh" sound.

Picnic & Sand

After school today, we had a nice lunch/snack picnic in the yard, enjoying once again the record-breaking February weather.
And Leia Rose made a really cool "house" with large sticks and a pine straw roof! (Leia took a very well composed picture, I think. She was really worried, though, that I would knock the roof down. I didn't.)
It wasn't long before the Richards joined us, and Leia and Chloe spent lots of time on our swings and then lots of time on their bikes. (I love how Annie is peeking at me from inside the wagon here.)
Just a little side note: We found a great way for Leia to ride safely down our driveway (and for me to pull her safely back up), just loop a jump rope around the back seat!

Leia Rose and Mia enjoyed some long, peaceful moments petting their pet kitty named "Taco." : )
And Leia and Chloe made a "sand cake" on the top of an old tree stump as well as a "sand sign" that was what Leia called "a cat attract." ; )
But it was Annie who REALLY had a blast in the sand! It took going over to Mia's to remind me about the joys of sand. Why the heck haven't I taken Annie to our own sandbox yet?!? Well, I have been afraid she'd eat it. Well, today she DID eat some. ; ) But not too much. We'll be playing in sand a LOT more often now, I think (and taking a LOT more baths). ; )
But on the downside, . . . look at this dirty child!!! But who cares! I'm willing to sacrifice a little cleanliness for lots of real FUN! ; )

Observation at Artgarden Montessori

Today was my very first "Parent Observation" at Artgarden. I learned so much about my child and her classroom experience! Up until now, I have held back for a few reasons. 1. Leia Rose is a very independent child, and there have been times (like right after we first had Annie) that she considered any entrance into her schoolroom as an invasion and 2. Playing with my little Annie love takes up ALL of my time in the mornings. ; ) So today, off Annie went to Miss Laurie's, and off I went to Artgarden. I opted to not take any pictures so as not to disturb anyone and to sit right in the middle of the action (instead of up above) to truly be immersed in the classroom. (Actually, those two decisions were hard for me, . . . considering my "disease" of picture-taking. Ha! And as for sitting right IN the classroom, I was afraid I'd be in the way. I really wasn't.) ; )

The first thing I noticed was that there was a huge drumming sound coming from the side of the classroom. Turns out that Mrs. Schnell brought her African drum today for the children to play, . . . and the kids had just had chocolate coins as a part of their celebration of Tet (Lunar New year). So Mrs. Schnell and Mrs. McDowell both said that this was a "really high-energy day" as opposed to many others. Quite honestly, except for the drumming, I didn't gather any feelings of chaos. It seemed like a nice environment of learning, as it always is. Of course, Leia Rose did come up to me in the midst of the loudest drumming moments and say, "All that is, is the drumming that I hate." Ha! And as she walked back to the "work" she was doing, I noticed that her crocs made her look like a little Dutch girl. They turned out to be REALLY great inside shoes! : )

I finally saw why her teachers always talk about Leia being so "busy." Leia Rose was either doing a work, getting a work, or putting away a work. There was no wandering around for Leia. She always had a plan. : ) When I arrived, Leia was doing a dot-to-dot of a Rhinocerous, and then coloring it in. When she put that work away, I noticed how quickly she sorted the colored pencils into their proper places. (And for some reason that surprised me.) Then se did some rubbings of African animals, and traced their names in both English & Swahili underneath. She gave the first one (the elephant/tembo) to Jessica. : ) And then she gave the rest to me. : ) (Laura, you'll notice the names of the animals in our beloved Jungle Drums!)

[It was here that I noticed the difference between Leia Rose (one of the older extended-day students) and Ava (one of the younger students). Ava spent most of my observation time dancing in front of the CD player that was playing lots of fun African songs. The rest of her time was spent wandering around, although once she stopped at the hanging beads (right beside me) to pretend they were jump ropes. She also came up to me, ran her hands over the rhinestones on my shirt and said, "You are pretty!" Ha!]

Then Leia Rose began working on something at a table a little further away from me and noticed Lorenzo working beside her, tracing a turtle puzzle, at which point she said, "Whoa! That's AWESOME, Lorenzo!" [And it was cute to hear Mrs. Schnell give the same type of praise, with the word "awesome" to Sophia doing something else.] In the middle of her work this time, Leia Rose randomly got up, came over to me, and said, "You're the best Mom in the world!" Then she asked for help from Mrs. Schnell to write, "Happy Valentines Day." (And it was interesting that Mrs. Schnell held Leia's hand holding the pencil while they both wrote it together.) And then I got the most spectacular Turtle Valentine in the whole world!

It was really fun for me to see some of the works that I hadn't really seen, like the easel and the moveable alphabet and this hanging-bead work with little number tiles, . . . but most importantly, I learned something about Leia Rose that I never knew before. Leia Rose is very much a Good Samaritan. No matter what she was doing, or how immersed in a work she was, she ALWAYS was the first person to get up and help (without anyone asking) if one of her fellow classmates dropped a work, . . . which seemed to happen often. First, Jack dropped a bead work and then Ethan dropped a work with a whole bunch of cards that spewed out everywhere. And there was Leia Rose, the first to offer a hand to help! What a little Beacon of Hope! And it was observing this quality that made me the proudest Mom in the world today.

ANNIE (finally) WALKS!!!

Tonight Annie walked for the very first time!!! She walked from the loveseat in the living room to the coffee table, which is exactly three feet. It took her about five steps. Just long enough to be "harder" to get down and crawl and then stand up again. : ) And what I love the most about these pictures is that when she really lets go of the loveseat, and really tries with all of her heart, she sticks her tongue out to the left (which you see in every single picture after she lets go). : )



And what encouraged Annie to walk? (With Leia Rose it was seeing Daddy put a silly cloth block on his head,) With Annie it was . . .

. . . Rosaries!!! : ) Annie has always loved Rosaries, especially when we say our nightly decade together. She's always going for them, . . . couldn't pick a better way to learn to walk than right into the arms of Mary our Mother! : )