gingerbread house and santa

Here are some more Christmas type activities that we've done recently:

decorating the gingerbread house (Lilly didn't eat any of the candy!! Pete has eaten quite a bit, though)


Here's the half eaten Santa candy that Lilly put on top:


Downtown South Bend has a really cool Santa's workshop on the weekends during December. We went today and did all the activities:

Decorating a cookie and coloring at the college football hall of fame:


Taking a trolley ride:


Visiting with Santa (this is the first year we've taken Lilly to see Santa and he was surprised that all she wanted was a pink guitar- he even asked, what else and she said nothing! Super easy christmas for us this year! :) )


Another activity Lilly did was to paint her own pottery ornament. Pete, not having done this very often, let Lilly choose black as one of her colors and now the ornament is completely black. It's pretty funny! Anyway, I was SO excited about this activity. For those of you who don't know, I was a little obsessed with pottery painting when we lived in MI and a group of friends and I used to go every Wednesday to paint pottery. The woman who did the ornaments today runs a "mobile pottery painting" business that comes to you. I'm so excited to do this for parties and playgroups!

sprinkles!

I love to bake and I am constantly making cookies. Lilly's contribution is usually eating the chocolate chips or playing with the dough, so I wasn't expecting much when I told her we were going to make Christmas cookies today. I had the dough ready, so we just had to cut out the cookies, bake them, and decorate them. This lasted almost 2 hours!! I couldn't believe how into the cookie making Lilly was! She did think that sprinkles were meant to cover the entire cookie and be an inch thick, but oh well.

Oh- Lilly has decided that she now smiles for pictures with her eyes closed, so it's really hard to get any regular pictures of her!

yea for sugar!!


rolling the dough....I didn't think of aprons until 3/4 of the way through and her black jumper was covered in flour!

oh christmas tree!

Yesterday, we went with some of our friends to cut down our Christmas Tree. We've gone to the same place for the past 4 years, and I think we'll try a new place next year. It was very sad how little all the trees were this year! Lilly's goal was to "pick the perfect tree" and she did. She found one and said "that's it, it's our tree" so we got it (even though it has a huge bare spot near the top and is rather skinny). It was actually great weather for it - sunny and not too cold. There were no injuries (unlike last year when Pete got hit in the eye with a bungee cord), even though we did let Lilly use the saw briefly.

Lilly had a concert at school last weekend. It was pretty funny. She didn't sing any of the songs or do many of the motions, but just stood and looked. This picture is pretty much typical of her facial expression the whole concert. The other kids look a little confused too. She's the one in the red dress and patterned tights in the front row. They were singing "mele kelikimaka" (i didn't google that so I'm sure it's spelled wrong) during this picture.

Thanksgiving

This is a little late, but I was sick the minute we landed back in South Bend after Thanksgiving and am just now starting to feel better!! We went to Aledo, TX for Thanksgiving to stay with Pete's Aunt Ellen and Uncle AJ. Carolyn, Bill, Danny, Jane, and Peter; Liz, Trish, Pete's parents, Pete's Aunt Mary, and Pete's cousin, Adam, were also there. It was a lot of fun! Here is just one of our crazy stories:

We went out to dinner one night and had to wait about 40 minutes for a table. Once we sat down, Lilly gorged herself on chips. Then after drinking a huge glass of water followed by a huge glass of chocolate milk, she proceeded to throw up more than I have ever seen come out of a 3 year old before. And, to add to the fun, she got a bloody nose while she was throwing up. During the car ride home, while holding Jane's doll, Lilly said "hey Daddy, remember when we went to the restaurant and the baby threw up everywhere?"

Thanksgiving itself was great- the food was excellent. Lilly, however, did not partake in the traditional food. Here is what she ate throughout Thanksgiving day: Fruit Loops, a juice box, cheetos, vanilla ice cream, marshmallows (off of the sweet potatoes), and a peanut butter tortilla. Very well rounded and celebratory of the season, I think.

Enjoy the pictures!

Jane (in her bathing suit of course) and Lilly coloring our pilgrim puppets:


The kids in their turkey hats:


a balancing act:


cousins!


at the chilren's museum (lilly's favorite part was the fake grocery store...she filled up her cart until it was overflowing and when she was "checking out" she said "oh, i forgot something" and then she ran over and grabbed this huge lobster):






Lilly and Aunt Mary:


Peter- super cheeser!


at Build-a-Bear:


three silly cousins:

fairy houses

Here is my attempt at re-using our plastic bottles and also having a new fun toy for Lilly. I did not think of this on my own, but borrowed the idea from another mom's blog.

Lilly decorating the fairy houses:


playing with the fairies (polly pockets with wings):


reading to the fairies (because she has to read to everything- see halloween blog entry):


having the fairies do house work (sweeping, washing windows, checking out the chimney):


hanging the fairies from every spot she could find:

Trick or Treat!

Happy Halloween!! We had a great time trick or treating this year, even though it was SO cold. Lilly, luckily was dressed in a fleece outfit and wore her coat underneath, so she was set. After she received a lollipop at one house, she refused to let go of it (even though she was told that she couldn't have it until we got home) and she made me carry her bag since her hands were "full with candy." Here are some pictures of our day:

Carving the pumpkin (this is the only thing Lilly did - pose for this picture, then she wanted nothing to do with the activity):


Reading books to the pumpkins (because, why not? The pumpkins are good listeners):


A little off with the holidays, Lilly chose to read The Night Before Easter" to her pumpkins (although she did add a pumpkin and some trick or treaters to her story):


Here's the little wizard! (or, as she liked to tell her teacher at school on Thursday, "I'm a witch with lipstick and a magic wand." She clearly likes to accessorize):

Camping

Lilly decided to go camping in October. Luckily, it was indoors, so we didn't have to deal with the cold weather, the rain, or any bugs that were flying around. Her favorite part was, of course, the smores.

Camping with her dolls:


Making sure to share the graham crackers:


Not sharing the marshmallows:

Pumpkin Patch

My friend, Laura, and her kids came to visit us today. We went to the pumpkin patch even though it was only 46 degrees. At least there wasn't any snow! The place we went had this huge "jumping pillow" which none of our kids would go on (after we'd bought the tickets of course), a kids corral that had trikes to ride, a water duck game, and a cow train, an animal section (not exactly a petting zoo since you couldn't really get to any of the animals except a cat, which Lilly loved more than the other animals). Anyway, despite the coldness, we had fun!


Lilly picking out a pumpkin- she liked all the bumpy, odd shaped ones


The kids!


Since we've gone to the same place for a few years, here's a photo time line:

2007


2008


2009

Characters

We went to Open Book Fest at our library this morning. Lilly loved it and charged at every character she saw (I thought she might run the other way, but she was not afraid of them at all). Here are some pictures:

Lilly and her friend, Troy reading books:


Clifford:


Maisy:


a Wild Thing:

Fire Station

Lilly had her first field trip this morning to the Clay Township Fire Station. The kids were so cute and loved climbing on the fire trucks. They even got to spray the water with the hose (although I had to do this first before Lilly would even go near it - she has this fear of sprinklers and rain, so maybe it reminded her of that?).