silly gooses.

I came out of my bedroom tonight and found the girls had lined up all their babies and dolls in the hallway and were playing a game they learned at school.  Of course they were also acting silly as soon as I turned the camera on. 

little chef

The girls had fun baking and cooking today.  I love when they use their imagination like that. 

learning sight words and letters

So, a lot of my friends are on this new sight called Pinterest.  I decided to check it out.  While it is sort of neat and I've gotten some cute ideas from it, I don't see it as addicting like a lot of my friends do.  That being said, one of the things I DID get from it was an idea for helping the girls learn new things.  There was a picture of a little boy driving his cars on a white poster board with words on it.  The idea is to have the child park their cars on the right space.  Flash cards are boring, but I thought this might be a little more interested.  I was going to try and make it like a board game, maybe print out picture cards of some of the words, or figure out something for the sight words.  For Larissa I made a board of all the letters, upper and lower case.  I think I may have made it too cluttered though and I may try to redo it on 2 different boards, one with upper case and one with lower case.  I've been trying, but this child will not learn her letters.  Maybe this will entice her a little.  Here are the boards I made today. 

Sledding

Today the girls went sledding for the very first time.  They had a blast.  Despite it only being about 15 degrees, they did not want to come in.  They even convinced me to go down twice.  Skylar couldn't get a picture of me because of her mittens.  We all had fun, but it was too cold to stay out too long.  Larissa is in pink, Skylar is in blue.

getting ready for their first run down the hill

trying to get back up the hill

me at the top of the hill, them at the bottom. (it was not a big hill, but plenty big enough for them)

if you listen closely you can hear a small giggle as she goes by me

no worries, Larissa was laughing as soon as I turned the camera off.  When she got to the bottom she fell off the sled and planted her face in the snow. 

More Larissaism's

She is 3 years 8 months old.  (and keep in mind she didn't really start talking until she was almost 2 1/2) 

The other day she had all her babies sitting around the kids kitchen table.  As she was getting them all their food and drinks I heard her say to one baby, hold on just a second while I get this one situated. 

Today Aeslyn was trying to teach her how to do a headstand against the wall.  Tonight she was trying to do one for me upstairs and said, oh, this is a bit tricky. 

There are more but I just can't think right now. 

Cruise Professional photos

It took me a while, but I finally got the photos scanned into my computer from our cruise.  On one of the formal nights we took some photos and we were really pleased how they came out.  Here they are. 

The girls with Grandma and Grandpa Herbaly

Larissa was tired and did not want to stand up

This is the photo we used for out Christmas card

This is from our balcony dinner.  We got a free photo with it.  

telling stories

The girls were telling me stories tonight.  I was trying to get them on video but as soon as I got the camera out, they started acting goofy.  Here is the best I could get. 

SNOW!!!

January 12, 2012 and we FINALLY got measurable snow.  Of course we have no idea how much we actually have.  There are parts that have no snow at all, and drifts of about 6-8 inches.  The wind is really blowing making it quite chilly, but the kids were really excited to go out and play today.  Being so windy, we can only stay out for a few minutes at a time.  The wind chill is close to zero right now, and it's only getting worse.  After I took Skylar to school, I took Larissa out to finish some shoveling (that was a waste of time, you can't even tell now)  John attempted to go to work, but there were too many idiots on the road, so he came home and is working from here.  I was happy because then I didn't have to take Larissa with to pick up Skylar.  We warmed up some home made turkey soup for lunch and then I took the girls out to play again.  The wind is getting worse as the day goes on, so we barely lasted the ten minutes.  Now we're warming up inside.  Here are some pictures and videos.  Larissa was squealing with delight the whole time. 

photo shoot

Skylar asked me today to take pictures of her posing today. 

the girls jobs

As part of the new year, the girls obtained new jobs.  Larissa puts away the utensils and Skylar takes out the recyclables.  Then on trash day they both take out the recycle bins and bring them in the next morning. 

Skylar reading

she was being a bit of a goof, but here is Skylar reading a book.

outside fun in January??

As most of you know, we've had an unseasonably warm winter so far.  Yesterday and today it was in the 50's.  Yesterday we didn't really have a chance to get outside, but today we did.  The girls got to play outside at school, and then after lunch we went outside again.  We first went out front while we waited for Dexter to be picked up. 

After Dexter left we went to the park.  The girls were so happy to play in the park. 

Rissy climbed all the way up there by herself

swinging with her babies

Skylar preferred to keep rolling down the hills.  Sorry it's sideways.  I can't figure out how to flip it around. 

Skylar ****UPDATED****

Skylar got a tag reader for christmas.  It's a little pen that will help her read.  There are special books that go with it.  When she holds the pen to different parts of the book it does different things.  It will read the entire book to her, she can point to each word and it will tell her the word, or she can slowly drag the pen across a word and it will sound it out.  In the week she's had this pen, she made big strides in her reading.  She's really paying attention to the sounding out of words and she's been able to sound out some longer words lately.  This morning she looked at my shirt and sounded out FOOTBALL.  Just now she sounded out DOODLE.  I think she will be reading easily before she enters kindergarten in the fall.  So proud of her.

*****UPDATE*******
Tonight, Jan 6th, Skylar read me her first book.  my mom had given me some books that are good for kids just starting.  We sat down tonight after she had been reading with her tag reader for a while.  The first book we read was about a rat and a hat.  The first few pages went like this:
A hat
A tan hat
A tan hat on a rat......

it goes on with words that rhyme with hat.  By the end she was reading words like tan, rat, hat, cat without sounding them out. 

Next we read a book about a fox.  She read this book much much faster.  I told her we will read some books every night and she was very excited.  She was so proud of herself for reading these books.  I gave her tons and tons of hugs and told her how proud I was of her.  She then told me, momma I love reading, books are fun. 

My next project is to make flash cards with sight words on them.  She had trouble with words like THE, AND, ON.  I will have to work with her on those words and I think she will be reading in no time.

These crazy kids

I swear these kids keep us laughing all day long.  Here are a few of our recent conversations.

Today the girls were eating a cheese stick and a slice of summer sausage for a snack.  Skylar was standing by John and John asked for a bite.  Skylar said no and John said, I'll give you 3 m&m's for a bite of your summer sausage.  Skylar still said no and Rissy comes running and shoves her cheese stick in John's mouth.  He takes a bite and she said, 3 m&m's please.  lol.

Yesterday I went out by myself to return the movies to Redbox.  While I was gone John was getting dinner ready and had some recyclables to put out.  Skylar's new job is to take out the recyclables so she grabs the stuff and takes it to the garage.  She comes back in and tells John, I like what you did with the garage.  It's so nice and clean.  I can run around.  John asks her, is there something missing in there?  She says, oh, the car!!  We should tell momma that the car isn't in the garage anymore.  John says, I think she knows.  (I was IN the car)  What a silly goose. 

Skylar got a little tic tac toe game in her stocking this year.  A majority of our games end in a Cats's game.  Skylar always says, oh it's a kitty game. 

Rissy walks around singing "Waka Waka Eh Eh, it's time for Africa"  It's so cute. 

Dancing Queen

just thought this was super cute.

Happy New Year

Well, we really had no plans for New Years Eve this year (or any year).  It is John's birthday so I always leave it up to him to make the plans.  He always chooses to spend it with his family.  My parents took us to breakfast, and then we had a few errands to run.  We then spent some time playing games with the girls, and playing with their babies.  For dinner we went to the Hy-Vee buffet (our local grocery store actually has a really good buffet with Chinese, Italian, Chicken and a salad bar)  On our way home we stopped to get some movies.  We got the Smurfs for our family movie night, and then Friends with Benefits and Crazy, Stupid Love for us. 

Getting ready for the Smurfs

settled in

We all enjoyed the Smurfs.  Skylar laughed and laughed.  Even Larissa watched more than we thought she would.  We let the girls stay up a little later than normal, but we still put them to bed about 8:30.  Letting them stay up late does not guarantee them sleeping in the next morning.  In fact it usually means Larissa will be up overnight, or extra early the next morning.  It also guarantees 2 crabby children, and usually a crabby mommy.  It's not worth it.  As it was, Larissa had me up at 4am that morning (but she did take a nap for us) so I definately wanted them in bed at a decent time.  I only made it up until 10:30 myself.  It was a nice day spent with the family.  Good bye 2011, hello 2012.