On the first day of Christmas...

Before getting to the meat of my post, I just have to share a rare find: Jillian is SMILING!

My poor girl isn't happy unless she's being held (help!) so I rarely get to take a photo of her while she's smiling. Isn't that a cute smile? And please let's not forget the legwarmers. melt...

I had a friend ask me today if I had any ideas for doing a 12 days of Christmas activity with my kids. Funny enough, I have a few ideas that I have bookmarked and have always wanted to try out, but haven't had the opportunity to do so. Until now...

I got the book out a couple of days ago and looked it over again. These follow along with the carol, "The 12 days of Christmas".

Traditionally the 12 days starts on Christmas and ends on the 12th night, January 6th. La Befana's night.

Anyway, I promised her I would get the list posted so here I am. All through the house not a creature is stirring not even the spouse! (I just made that up! Clever, no?)

1st day: Make an ornament for the tree out of salt dough and paint a bird.
2nd day: Read a story about turtles or make a game of slow/fast (like red light/green light).
3rd day: Learn a few French words and use them throughout the day or cook something French.
4th day: Practice phone etiquette. (Never hurts to start early, right?)
5th day: Go out for donuts. (Get it, golden rings???)
6th day: Dye eggs. (It's not just an Easter activity.)
7th day: Make origami swans.
8th day: Make chocolate milk. (Or hot chocolate)
9th day: Do some new dance moves.
10th day: Pretend to have a knighting ceremony.
11th day: Use a bubble pipe to make TONS of bubbles!
12th day: Make a drum out of an empty Kleenex box and a balloon.

There you have it! Looking back at my list I think I WILL do this. Only thing is, we are packing up to move the first week of January. I might as well give it a go, right?

Spring Camp: Day Five (and my 101st post!!)

Wow, didn't realize that I'd hit 100 posts! And I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversary of blogging. I should plan an update post just so we can see how far I've come in one year of my friendship odyssey.

Anyway, our last day of camp was yesterday and it was bittersweet. It is a lot of work to coordinate and plan a week-long camp, I won't lie. But it is so fulfilling when I see the little ones having a good time and giving the moms a chance to interact with other moms makes it all worthwhile.

Friday we had 4 campers and one had to leave early as he was not quite ready to listen to mommy. :(

We:
*Sang our welcome song.
*Read 10 Little Monkeys.
*Sang "The Itsy Bitsy Monkey".
*Read What do you say when a monkey acts this way?
*Sang "Five Little Monkeys".
*Our first craft required the kids to recall the last story we read. (They had to put three pictures from the story into the correct order. In reality this craft was still a little over their heads, but I did test it out on D beforehand orally and he aced it. I guess the photo part was too much.)
*Our second craft was to decorate a jointed, cardstock monkey with their name, stickers, glitter, colors, etc.
*Then I gave out their awards (everyone got an original one) and their bags with all of their crafts and songsheets from the week. I found the bags in the dollar spot at Target and thought they'd be PERFECT:


I didn't get many photos from Friday. It seemed to be a busy day even though there were only 3 of us there, ultimately. Here's a photo of most of the books we read this week. **Not all are represented.


I did put together a slideshow of the week and have them burned to discs ready to deliver this coming week. I did this for the first camp and got many thank yous and even one sweet compliment, "You made me cry!". Course I set it to music and that always makes the slideshow a bit more sentimental.

I have a really fun mommy playdate on Wednesday with my neighborhood group. We are attending a home tour/auction in the morning and it's a Derby theme! I bought a hat at Target this afternoon and still have to try it with my dress. I have to drag out my maternity dresses and see what I've got!

Spring Camp: Day Two

Today was an awesome camp day! All 6 campers showed up, ready to go! They all wore their shirts and we took the cutest group photo outside beneath the big oak tree in the front yard. Miraculously we were able to catch some shots of all 6 kiddos looking in the same direction at the same time!!

Today we:

Sang our welcome song.
Read "Who's in the Jungle".
Danced to the song, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".
Read "Rumble in the Jungle".
Craft #1: make a lion face on a paper plate.
Craft #2: put the spots on the giraffe. (The kids LOVED this craft!!)
Took our photo.
Had our snack.

Here's a few photos of our day:


Working on our giraffe's.


Working on our lion faces.


The complete lion faces.

Check back tomorrow for Day 3!!

Enjoying the view???

Here's my view today...can you guess what we've been up to??

This week we participated in one of the coolest playdates thus far: Vincent VanGogh's birthday celebration. Each toddler was provided with a canvas, paint, paintbrushes and sunflower cutouts. A classic VanGogh piece was on display and the tots were instructed to make their own. There were 5 of us in attendance and all 5 did something different! I have to brag and say that D was the ONLY tot to do the WHOLE thing on his own. He pointed out where to put the sunflowers and I glued them down. Here is his:



Pretty impressive, huh? I think this kid's got the artistic gene in him yet.

This week we also witnessed the "supermoon". Daddy and D make it an event to go out and say goodnight to the moon as often as possible and I was able to catch this sweet moment the other night:



I pinkie swear that the next post will be all about my Spring Camp. I have 3 of the 6 shirts made and ready to post.

Tonight it's off to the fish fry. We are meeting two other couples and their tots so that should be a lot of fun for all involved!!!

Happy Friday, everyone!!

8 days and 4 stitches later...

I'm so sorry I haven't updated in a while! I have just been falling in to bed lately and haven't really had any down time during the day to sit and post.

Last Wednesday we did one of the best playdates I've ever participated in (Halloween costume parade being #1). We met three other moms and kids at a local pottery place and got to choose an item to paint! I have always wanted to get D a personalized birthday plate for him to use for his birthday breakfast so we chose a birthday plate.

We painted it light blue and then D put his handprints on the plate with dark blue paint. Then I filled in the letters and added his name to the bottom. It should be ready for pick-up this Friday!! Here's the boy in action:










Unfortunately, the next day was not so good for us. D was running in the living room and ran RIGHT into the corner of the coffee table!! We had to rush to the ER and he ended up getting 4 stitches. Poor baby...
Look how gnarly this boo-boo is:




Please forgive the MESSY face, he had lasagna for dinner and we were bribing him with ice cream so that I could get his band-aid off.

This week we started our fall camp. I'll post separately about that later. I've got some great crafts for the little ones to do.