St. Patrick's Day

We're neither Irish, nor Catholic, but Logan's favorite color is green and Riley spent all his free time building "Leprechaun Traps" after being jealous about the treats and mischief at Savannah's preschool.  I decided (at 12 am, which is when my best inspiration always strikes) that I'd go with it, so, here's what I did.

 The leprechaun mischief.  This involved a skein of yarn, some tape, and a package of green balloons.  Luckily the kids are having a "sleepover" together tonight, so I only had to sneak around one room!!

 In the kitchen I drew a picture and threw down some glitter.  I have 0 artistic skill, I know, so no laughing at my leprechaun!!

 Also on the table are goody bags for the kids.  Each kid got a shirt, bracelet, 7 Up, crayons, gum, granola bar, lollipop, and jello.  The boys have flat green shirts and green "lucky" bracelets.

Sk8r Girl

Savannah just finished her first set of ice skating lessons thanks to Grammy and Papa!! The first time we put her on the ice to practice, she absolutely amazed us because she took right to it!!

Classes, however....well....that was a different story.  Savannah has such a compassionate heart that she would have rather spent her time holding hands with another girl who was always at the back of the class than concentrating on the teacher.  I have to admit, I am a bit of a "stage mom", so this drove me absolutely BONKERS.

Savannah had a great time, though!! I think I'm going to keep her out of the next session and skate with her myself through SAM 4 or 5 and then we'll test her out and do lessons again.  She's so cute on the ice, though, and most weeks (this week she was sick, again, so I made her wear pants) she insisted on a leotard and skirt.  Love.

Logan was obviously very proud :)

Ahh, that's more representative of our skating outfits of choice :) 

CC Science Club: Chinese New Year

Yes, yes, this happened in January.  So sue me.  We use a book I picked up at the library, but you can also get it on Amazon.  For the January lesson, we talked about phase changes.  

First, we read a few books about the Chinese New Year.  Then we made a Venn Diagram about the differences and similarities between the Chinese and the American New Years.  The kids did really well! 

Next I did a demo by making poppers that were completely unsuccessful at the library (using off-brand alka-seltzer and water in an old-school film canister, which was really hard to find!) but worked at home.  It was supposed to tie in with the "Fireworks/explosions" portion of the Venn Diagram.  Next we separated into groups and showed how a liquid (vinegar) and a solid (baking soda) can produce a reaction in the form of a gas (carbon dioxide), which we could see by inflating a balloon over a soda bottle. 

Helpful hint: Use a paper cone to pour the baking soda into the balloon.  Measure the vinegar into the soda bottle, and then attach the balloon to the top of the bottle.  When you stand the balloon up, the baking soda goes in, but you've got all the time in the world to attach your balloon, unlike if you try to mix the elements and THEN put the balloon on top. 

Then it was time for snack and crafts!! The book (and my original plan) suggests doing mini egg rolls, but since there were supposed to be too many kids to have it at my house (fully 1/2 of the people who RSVP'd didn't come), we were at the library and I wasn't sure what our kitchen options were going to be, so we did popcorn (get it, it's popping/exploding?)

Then the kids worked on a really simple craft that I based on a Pinterest find. This was also a second choice, the first choice craft involved paint, which I decided was a bad idea at the library, but the kids seemed to enjoy making puppets, and they're younger, so this was good.

 We had a great time! The science club idea seems to work well for us and for our CC friends! I didn't take any pictures from our February club, which we had this week on Monday, but we did polymers using Teflon Tape and plastic bags.  We had fun learning we could stretch vertically and distort the images and then pull horizontally and realign the molecules! Our crafts were just fun heart-shaped foam activities from Michaels.  I had a bunch of events that all happened on the same day, so a CC friend greatly blessed me by saying she'd bring a craft.  I really didn't feel like I fit in our community at the beginning of the year (I still don't) but I've been very supported by

In Which We Start Bow-way

!!!!!

I was so excited this morning to take Savannah to her first Ballet class!! I have been waiting to buy her leotards and ballet slippers since the day we had her ultrasound!  She's so much fun because she loves being a tough guy with her brothers most of the time- but will just as quickly switch gears for a tea party or to give her baby a bottle.


You aren't allowed to watch the class, which is hard, but since I used to teach figure skating to little ones I totally understand :)

Logan was especially cute this morning- he was so excited to "see his princess sister go to bow-way for the first time!" He was just so proud of her, and it was adorable!!

Totally made my day! My favorite part of being a mommy is seeing my children love on each other.  I hope they keep that up forever!