Rachel here. This morning Emma Grace and I ventured out to find Reese some comfy cozy pants. My first stop is ALWAYS OUAC... ALWAYS. We are a one income family, on a budget, and I don't see any sense in spending full price on clothing that gets grass stained and outgrown before I can blink. I did in fact pick up a few pairs of cute pants, and these little goodies... vintage little tykes...
AND... these 3 vintage Playskool wooden puzzles.
SO CUTE!
Rachel here. Day 3 began with a full diaper of all kinds of goodness. At least I know she's not refusing to go poop... I'd never forgive myself. I once again filled her little belly with tons of liquids... only to decide to head to the grocery store. Because we've been out of town so much, we're literally eating on random pantry food... I was beginning to have "real food" withdrawal. Emma Grace wore a pull up out and about and kept it dry literally until we were walking up to the front door of the house. She didn't go again until nap time... where she was in another pull up. After nap, she had an accident outside (I forgot to take the potty outside with us... totally my bad), and then she peed on the potty twice. She's super cute when she has to go... "gotta go poo poos (it's always poo poos...)... hurry Mommy... hurry!" She's getting there... slowly but surely. I couldn't be more proud of her. I'm willing to stick with this as much as humanly possible. If we're home, she's naked. We're in town for the next two weeks, so I'm hoping we can get into a solid routine in that time frame. She's so proud of herself when she makes it to the potty... when she doesn't, she says "uh oh Mommy... I poo poos." Tomorrow is another day!
On another note... I've seen this idea numerous places but truly fell in love with the idea after our trip to the Portsmouth Children's Museum in early June. They have a grocery store section of the museum where they've collected empty food containers for children to pretend to shop. If only our playroom was bigger! I have big dreams for our new house, and so I've slowly started to collect "fun" containers. Thanks Gma Nita for the "Spic 'n' Span!"
The fun thing about some of these particular items is I was able to fill them... the pasta box has the bow tie pasta and ravioli I made Reese for Christmas last year... she thought this was hilarious.
We also filled the egg carton and "Country Crock" with pretend egg paraphernalia and slabs of wooden butter. I need to figure out how to make a play pantry because seriously... the girls have more kitchen stuff that one family should have... and it's growing! :)
Rachel here. Today I officially began potty training Emma Grace. She went all day naked except for nap/bedtime (nap... pull up/bedtime... diaper). If she went pee, she got to choose between an M&M or a marshmallow... 
... and if she went poop, she got one of each. She also got a sticker for her sticker chart (which I found online).
I had 3 full fledged pee accidents to clean up, 1 half potty half accident (she was peeing on the potty, got super excited, and jumped off in the middle of going!), and 3 full fledged going on the potty... one of which was POOP! I couldn't be more proud of her, and I'm super excited to get going tomorrow.
On another note... for dinner tonight I cooked green beans... from our very own garden!
Unfortunately I didn't cook them all the way... but Reese ate them anyway. :)
Rachel here. It's been difficult keeping up with the garden while we've been out of town. We're lucky enough to have a great friend who watered it on occasion for us, and was happy to be paid in squash and zucchini to puree for her wee tot. :) As we prepare to head out again this weekend, I decided to take a peek at the veggies to see what was up. I was MORE THAN thrilled to see that after 6 years of living here, we've finally been able to grow a damn pumpkin! And there are MANY to boot!
The tomatoes are also coming in nicely. I was able to pick quite a few cherry tomatoes, and the larger ones should be turning red in the coming weeks.
The loot we're taking to My Jen's house this weekend with us! :)
Along with veggies we have tons of weeds and randomness. Here is our pile of tree limbs that Bryan will be cutting for tree blocks for the girls. If you remember this was the particular venture that earned me Lyme disease... from which I can happily say I haven't felt any pain in a couple of weeks! Hurray!
We also have some type of veggies attempting to grow onto the girls toys and randomness on the back patio. Bliss.
This used to be the girls' garden... flash back to the Hoda and Kathie Lee adventures from the spring. This summer has been SO EXTREMELY HOT AND NASTY OUTSIDE that it's received ZERO attention. :(
Can't wait to play catch up outside... once the temp "cools" down a bit!
Rachel here. In addition to traveling, we're working on the house... as usual. While Bryan was working on a BIG HILARIOUS project (more on that later), I was in charge of cleaning out the garage. I stumbled upon some of my old Barbie stuff, decided to pull the rest down from the attic, and all shenanigans resumed. The girls are beyond in love with my old stuff, and Bryan is beyond in love with not having to pay for any of it... it's a win win! Sadly enough, many of my Barbie clothes did not make the decent from the attic... who knew Ken's awesome pleather jackets didn't have a 20+ year shelf life?
You can tell me... you're jealous aren't you? ;)
... maybe it's not so bad after all. ;) Rachel here. I just finished my second knock off kit, and I'm so nerdily excited! I took on the dinosaur kit... the $30 version from Time for Tots... 
The next kit... "Everything Fine Motor skills." This is so much fun!
Rachel here. This is for any of the grandparentals (and whomever else) who are interested... to the right I've updated the girls' wish lists. I even went ahead and separated the lists... one for Emma Grace and one for Reese. Hopefully this will make "what's for who" a little less confusing... basically they share everything anyways. I did however JUST find a LeapFrog Leapster for Reese at OUAC, so I've added some games for her. SO EXCITED!
Rachel here. Etsy rears it's ugly head again. :) So my new favorite Etsy shop is Time for Tots. (<- visit it... it's really cute!) Their learning kits are ADORABLE! $30 is a little high for me to pay though for materials I have a lot of already. I did go ahead and "order" the Kit of the Month portion because they are adorable. We'll get a new learning kit every month that represents the season/holidays in that month. I'm really excited because I know the girls will love them. I'm going to attack as many of them as I can by myself and then order the ones I'm really in love with. Honestly it's a matter of finding the materials on Oriental Trading from what I can tell. The issue is... with O.T. you have to order a dozen of everything... ANNOYING... but I do have spare materials in case any of my friends are interested. :) My first project was this Number Themed Sensory Tub.
Reese and I dyed the rice this evening, I printed the numbers chart and the "I Spy" list, the container and magnetic numbers were picked up from The Dollar Tree, and the rest of it I already had... you're looking at a whopping $2 spent on stuff we didn't already own. TFT was charging $15+$5 s&h... DEAL!
And it all fits nicely in my box. :)
The next plan of attack...
The dinosaur kit! I've gotten so much of it done tonight already! :)
Rachel here. Long story short... Bryan and I canceled cable. Well... sort of. We reduced our ridiculously expensive time consuming garbage filled package to... basic... bum bum bum. It was traumatic at first but has proven to be a blessing. Instead of watching "The Real Housewives of" insert tragic city here... or "Teen Mom"... I've pulled weeds, gone through a ridiculous amount of ridiculous things that we own and purged, and I've managed to finish some projects around here that I just "didn't have the time" for. LAUGHABLE. Truth is we have TONS of things to get done around here before listing the house in less than a year, and the only way to get motivated for me was to get rid of the #1 distraction around here. Two projects I've managed to start/finish have been for the girls. First, I finally started collecting mini items for the girls' alphabet box. 
Each box houses a different letter... of which is filled with items that begin with that letter. It'll be what I use when teaching Emma Grace her letter sounds. For Reese I made little baskets... this works much nicer, takes up less space, and is more permanent. Reese likes to pull all the drawers out and play with the different items. I have a long way to go in finding items, but here is what our "B" drawer looks like so far:
I'm also using it to house some of our other printed materials like the girl's moveable alphabet cards.
Here's to getting things done around here! :)Rachel here. My package just arrived from Oriental Trading, and I just about died. I knew I ordered a lot... but holy cow. This is to get us a good start on summertime shenanigans. I'm getting more and more nervous with summertime approaching and knowing Reese will be back home 24/7. She's been doing such great things at Montessori that I'm afraid I won't be able to keep her attention. I've been searching for lots of open ended toys and arts/crafts, and trying to match up some of the things we have here at home with some of her favorite activities ("work") she does at school.
As far as arts/crafts supplies... we have a ton already, but I wanted to stock up on some things we didn't have and things we run out of quickly. I ordered some special paper that'll bleed color... one of Reese's favorite transferring activities (I'll share more on that later), liquid water color paint, regular washable paint, some ceramic markers (can be used to draw on ceramics... we have tons of random tile around here), different shaped sponges, "jewels", buttons, and a bag of wooden beads.
I also picked out some painting trays (we were using egg cartons and ice cube trays, but the depth was a pain in the butt for mixing and whatnot), some pipettes (for transferring water and liquid water color), and some plastic needles in hopes of working on some stitching activities with Reese.
I thought these tongs were pretty cool. They have little holes in them... the idea is to find bugs, catch them with the tongs, and observe them. We'll use them in our sensory boxes and for transferring more than anything I'm sure.
I've been wanting to get some of these test tubes forever now. We can use them to mix colors, to house "i spy" games, and I even found a really cool magnet activity that they can be used for. The possibilities are endless, and we're super excited.
This is something I've seen all over the Montessori world and was excited to find it for a great price. The idea... Reese will put shapes on the cork and hammer the little tacks into the holes to hold the shapes in place. The reviews were great, and I think she'll really like it.
I couldn't get Reese a specific "toy" and forget about Emma Grace. I found this really cute sensory matching game. Basically the shapes are in the bag, and you have to feel for the correct "shape" to fit into each block of wood. It'll be great to learn shapes, animals, colors, etc... 
And our newest sensory bin! I'm so super excited about this one. I had been wanting to make this one since we started these bins, but wasn't sure of what all we had. Bryan and I did some work in the attic, garage, and shed this past weekend and found virtually ALL of this stuff. The only thing that we didn't already have were the little seeds (the little red and blue wooden flower beads... they were from the wooden bag of beads mentioned above)... AWESOME! I think the girls will love the garden bin. The weather here in The Burg has been amazing, so these bins will soon make their way outside on the back porch... much easier on cleanup.
Now the goal is to house all of this stuff. I have some shelving closet type things and some bins out in the garage, and then there are numerous nooks and crannies inside that house everything right now. My goal is to get everything in one central location where everything can be found and kept without me pulling my hair out in order to put things together. I'd really like to find an old curio/china cabinet that I can paint to house all the arts/crafts materials. I've been looking on Craigslist, but I'm just not sure what I'm willing/wanting to spend. Looks like a great goal for this summer... hello yard sales! :) 
Some things we've been working on together... The Zip lock bags have shaving cream + a couple drops of two different colored food coloring + little hands that squish = color mixing. 
Rachel here. Here's the cape that I made for Reese. She picked out the fabric herself. Flashy huh? ;) The green is some crazy sequin thingy, and the pink underneath is velour. Very Housewives of just about anywhere. I did the "r" emblem with felt and sewed that on by hand, and then used the machine to put the two pieces together. I still need to attach some velcro for the attachement and am seriously considering taking out that top stitch to redo it. Both fabrics were very bouncy, so it was very hard to keep in place. In general, I'm pretty happy with it and will definitely be making one for Emma Grace (but probably out of felt and fleece).
One of my other projects was going to be to make Reese an "I Spy" bag. I found them all over Etsy and thought they were adorable. It was just something I wasn't looking forward to making because I am NO seamstress. I happend to find one used at Once Upon a Child and nearly fell over. $4.50! A little bit of cleaning up, and we're good to go!
