Quack! Quack! Quack!

Summer fun day,

feeding the ducks!

It's been pretty quiet on this blog lately, but that just means we are having a good time enjoying summer.  This summer fun activity wasn't a quiet one.  It was so fun to listen to all the quacking, and flapping of feathers.  This was the boys' first time really of feeding the ducks.  I realized when I put this on the summer fun list that we'd never really done it except when April was probably 2 or 3.

They loved it...

There were plenty of Ducks, Canada Geese, and pigeons to feed at this particular spot.  We were pretty much surrounded the whole time.

There was one non Canada goose.  You know, the big white ones that make a loud honking sound (you can see it in the back in the picture above)?  April was pretty much scared of that goose the whole time because I mentioned they can get a little pushy for food.  This one wasn't very bad, but she still kept her distance.

Feeding ducks is fun.

Once the food was all gone, and all the birds realized it they started going back to their business.  We stayed and watched them for a while.

Happy summer!!

Is this enough?

I don't know, do you think she needs some more horse books?  According to April, no.  I'm thinking she will definitely still be asking for a horse book of some sort every time we go to the book store for many moons, but I think she finally realized that she has a lot!  She even found a few more after this picture was taken.

My girl and her horses...books that is.



They don't have nearly as many of their "favorite" thing book collection, but I didn't want to leave the boys out.  So, they went around and collected their favorite books too.

Aaron's Star wars colleciton...



And, Aric's car book collection.  This kid loves cars, and especially loves his hot wheels books...

This is the place...

We'll be hanging out at a lot over the next 12 months.  The Evergreen aviation museum.  We are now the proud holders of a year pass to this new and exciting place for us.  We are excited to learn some great new things each time we go!

They have a great playground outside.

Cool things that all little boys (and big ones too) LOVE to look at.

Lots and lots of wings and things.

Airplanes inside and out.

A fun little kids area to explore.







We plan to visit lots, and they have many many programs too!  Who wants to come with us?  We can take guests too!

Baby Alex, 5 months

Oh sweetness!!

Now that Baby Alexander is almost 6 months I figured I should get his 5 month picture up before it's too out of date.  He is:

*not rolling over yet (I think this is mostly due to the fact that he doesn't get much floor time because his brothers won't leave him alone)

*loving his toes and holding his feet

*trying some new foods like rice cereal, bananas, apples, peas, and sweet potatoes

*17 lbs.

*a healthy happy baby

*excited to drink water out of my cup when I'm drinking

*interested in everything I eat

*a giggler

Our summer fun bucket list

Here is our list for this summer.  We have already started, and it's ever changing to fit our family and time schedules.  All the activities we have done so far have worked out to some sort of fun though.  Like yesterday, we set out to ride the WES train, but I forgot that it only runs in the morning and afternoon, so instead we went to a new library that we'd never been to (in Wilsonville).  It turned out that we could sign up for their summer reading program and they were having their story and science hour soon so we stayed around for that.  The kids had SO much fun.  We will have a hard time going back to our library's story time after that.  Anyway, that's what this list is all about, discovering new things and places and enjoying summer.  What are we going to do today?  We go to our summer fun poster (pictured above) and take a strip from one of the ice cream cones.  Here's the list!

1.  Make a stepping stone craft

2.  Go to homeschool or used book store and pick out a book

3.  Make a summer craft

4.  Go swimming

5.  Go ice skating

6.  Sleep under the stars, or at least stay up late and look at stars.

7.  Ride the WES train

8.  Paint t-shirts for 4 of July with puffy paints.

9.  Go to Bush's pasture park in Salem

10.  Do a jigsaw puzzle

11.  Have a free lemonade stand outside for neighbors (the kids are very excited about this one)

12.  Go see cars 2

13.  Take a nature walk.

14.  Ride the carousel

15.  Feed the ducks

16.  Go to water park at the air museum

17.  Go to Uwajimaya (Japanese store)

18.  Go to the museum (whatever museum we currently have membership at which would be the air museum right now)

19. Make summer cupcakes

20.  Go to the butterfly garden

21.  Make desert island pudding (a recipe April has in her American Girl magazine)

22.  Collect river rocks to paint

23.  Go pick bluberries

24.  Do patriotic activity pages

25.  Make fruit smoothies

26.  Go buy fireworks 2 for each kid

27.  Make Jello watermelons, and Jello flag

28.  Have a field/olympics day with games

29.  Make homemade ice cream with our ice cream ball.

I have highlighted the things we have already done this summer so far.  We may not get to everything, and if there is one that we cannot do on a certain day we just re-draw. 

Kindergarden with Aaron: word play and more

I think it's time to say that we've officially moved onto kindergarden with Aaron now.  I don't have all his Kindergarden curriculum yet, but we'll keep going during the summer with this in mind. 

We really are going to work on his reading readiness this summer.  We have started to play with words using Carisa's you can read printables (I tell you that woman is amazing with her school printables and programs, which is why I use them so much.)  So, this is what we've been up to in preschool Kindergarden the past few weeks.

He started with the words 
the 
see 
a 
and

Here are the word puzzles:

A huge part of sight words is doing word play, basically seeing and playing with the words over and over again in different ways.  I decided to give this a try with Aaron.  Here he is writing the words on a white board.



We made the word see out of zoobs for more word play.  I also wrote the 4 words outside on the sidewalk with chalk and had him ride over the words as I said them.

He really enjoys this worksheet, finding the words and circling them each with a different color.

He really wants to do more science.  He loves making a tornado in a bottle.

Then he wanted to paint the tornado on paper.

This is another new thing for our school time.  He is starting to figure out legos!  He got a few small lego sets for his Birthday and he can do a lot of building by himself just by looking at the pictures.  It's so perfect for him.  He just loves to build, and will take the time to get it all done with me helping as needed.

He doesn't like cutting, but he does a sheet from his cutting book every day.

The shelf from a day of school time with all the drying activities.





 

Last day of preschool, finally!

(this post really should be back dated to May 20, the last day of preschool, it took me a little while to get it posted :)
From the first day of preschool...

...to the last!

They had a little program on the last day of preschool, and sang some songs about God.

A whole year of preschool has gone by!  I'm so glad he's done, and now he's home for Kindergarden.  He had a fun time going to preschool, but it was a long road at times.  Some days were really hard to get him to go, and to keep him excited all year long.  I almost decided to pull him out in March, but was able to convince him to stay just a little bit longer until it was all done.  He said he missed me at preschool!  That's why he didn't want to go as much anymore towards the end.  Well, I don't blame him, and I loved that he missed me.  It was hard for me to make him go, and I really didn't want to go through the sadness every day for the last month of school when he didn't want to stay anymore, so he actually finished 3 weeks earlier.  I told him that he could be done, and I could tell that just made him so happy.  His teacher invited him to come back for the last day party though, so we did.

The party

They played outside after the program for a little bit while the party was getting all ready inside.  Then they came inside and split into groups.  They had 5 or 6 stations that the groups would rotate around to do a special activity.  Aaron's group did the jump house first...

Then his group came inside and made a spiral mobile thing.  Aric was included in everything, and loves preschool.  I think I got most of the pictures of him in all the activities.

Aric was playing in the sensory bin before he realized that he could go do a fruit kebob...

Then, they did a fruit kebob.  See, I don't remember why I didn't get a picture of Aaron doing this.  Probably because I was trying to keep track of Aric in all the chaos.

Finally a picture of Aaron!  Now his group frosted and decorated a cookie...

(the kebobs and cookies were a part of their snack that day too)

Then, they went outside to do a scavenger hunt, but I didn't get any pictures of that.  April got to hide all the little toys for the scavenger hunt.  She got to help a lot at the preschool throughout the year, and loved it.

After the party I was glad to finally be done with preschool. 

Piano talent!

April started piano at the end of March, and she just had her first piano recital.  She played beautifully.  I think she may have missed one note, but otherwise sounded great.  She played "cheerful chimes", and it was short but sweet.  The boys wanted nothing to do with sitting so it was a good thing she was pretty early on in the program.  Even in the short video clip you can hear how distracting they were.  I felt so bad for the audience, for April, and the other pianists.  

 I still can't believe she's playing so well and has only been playing for 2 months!

A simple joy: picnic at the farm

A while back I used to post once a week (usually Friday's) about something simple that brought me great joy during the week.  I really want to start doing that again.  It really gives me a chance to reflect on my week and try to find the joyful moments because I know that I have many of them, and they are usually from something very simple.  How often those sweet moments of joy get buried in the chaos, laundry, dishes, and noise that happens all week long.  Well, I want to remember as many of those moments as possible, they keep me going when the joy doesn't seem to be anywhere around.

As I was thinking about this I was trying to think of the joyful moment from this past week.  It wasn't coming to me at first (they usually don't).  I mean, I thought of a lot of good things (and many many bad things) that happened this week, but what I was looking for was that moment when everything in the world just seems perfect.  That minute or 5 minutes or half an hour where you just feel like everything is good and right.  Well I'm so glad I thought about it more because I remembered our impromptu picnic at the farm this week!  We have a really neat farm here close to us and I love it.  It sits just outside of town, and it's like a little getaway.

I was out running errands with the boys on Wednesday right before lunch and decided to grab some food and take them out to the farm to play and have lunch.  The sun was coming and going behind some white fluffy clouds, and none were threatening rain so it was nice.  They have a pretty fun play area, and the boys just had a ball.  There was a tractor to sit on, a big stack of tires to climb on, trikes to ride around, tubes to hide in, and more!  They have beautiful flowers all around, and the goats and sheep are just on the other side of the fence.  The boys loved watching the animals.  I was sitting there just watching them play and enjoying the peace, the sounds, the wind, the spring air, and hearing my boys running around laughing.  It truly was one of those joyful moments that day at the farm.

Then we went over to look at the animals after lunch.  It amazes me how kids feel such a connection to animals.  My boys could have been there all day looking at the goats, sheep, bunnies, and chickens.  It's so fun to watch them.  They even got to see 3 baby goats only 1 week old named Hickory, Dickory, and Dock.  I never knew baby goats were so adorable!  Of course I didn't have my camera with me for this trip.  I tried taking some cell phone pictures but gave up quickly.  We were having such a good time I dind't want to worry about pictures.  I was just enjoying time with my boys at a beautiful place.

I know, it's so simple, being at the farm.  But it was a joy to me.

What was your simple joy this week?

I didn't get any pictures from this trip, but...

This is an oldie of April (age 2) feeding a goat.  Not the same farm or goats, but very similar in feeling.  So fun to watch kids with the animals!