Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Rachel here. Yesterday was EG's 2nd birthday party. Just take that in for a second. :) We did a rainbow theme, and I'm so pleased with how everything turned out. I found this cute picture of a rainbow online... may have been ETSY. I knew I could get the job done, so I turned it into an adorable invitation... took me FOREVER... but OMG... so worth it.

There was a SERIOUS fear of rain. After the rain shenanigans last year, I knew I needed to be prepared to fit people in the house and keep them occupied. I dyed some rice and threw it into the water table (w/out water of course) and made a rice table. The kids LOVED it, and I now have rice all over my backyard... so it must have been fun. ;)Here's the array of rainbow colored food.

For favors I bought a silicone mold of the alphabet and made the children's names with melted crayons. They were a hit!Poor little Emma Grace... she didn't get a single thing for her birthday. ;)We are so thankful to have amazing friends and family who travel from all corners of the state (and beyond!). Each and every one of them continue to make our girls so happy... and perhaps Bryan and I as well. ;) I can't say thank you enough!

I'd also like to send out a huge shoutie to Mother Nature. It literally stormed all around us, and we didn't get a single drop. :)

Outside...

This week we spent the majority of our time outside playing. Check out our new fairy garden! Mommy transplanted our pots to a quaint little spot under a tree in our backyard. All of the cool wooden branch pieces are from Grandma and Grandaddy's house. Grandaddy chopped a tree down, and we've inherited some of the pieces... more on that later.
Mommy and Daddy got me a mortar and pestal to make fairy concoctions. They are hoping I'll leave the rain gauge alone... muahahaha!

'Tis the season for playing in the water. Mommy made blue ice cubes and little blue fish ice cubes for our water table. Emma Grace loved them, but sadly they melted within a few minutes. :(We also got a new pool! Hurray! Another high light this week was the abundance of strawberries we've been harvesting. We had so many, we decided to make frozen yogurt pops with them. They were scrumptious.

I have 4 DAYS of preschool next week, as it's my last week, so who knows what we'll up to. I know Mommy has tons to get done for Emma Grace's birthday party next weekend, so I can only assume she'll keep the two of us busy with projects. :)

A budget...

... 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...

... and here is the FREE version a la moi. Okay it wasn't really free, but we already had all the materials... so it was $30 I saved because of my resources. This kit comes complete with a roll and count game (roll the dice, whatever the number is... you place that number of pom poms on the dino card... once full, roll again to take them off... I made multiple copies, so it could be played like a game... first to fill up wins.), alphabet tracing dinosaur cards with matching uppercase/lowercase "eggs", dismantled dinosaur skeleton that is placed in water to be frozen and excavated, dinosaur stickers stuck onto glass stones to graph, dinosaur word families, number puzzles (1-10, 2-20, 21-30, 10-100 by 10's), and a lacing dinosaur. The picture is horrible, but hopefully you can get the gist by the above pic. I do need to purchase some more contact paper for laminating.The next kit... "Everything Fine Motor skills." This is so much fun!

A little of this... a little of that...

Mommy gave us the week off. We flew by the seat of our pants, and I won't lie... it was pretty fun. :) Mommy first made us over sized lacing beads from pool noodles. She saw these flower beads on Activity Mom and thought they were adorable. We walked into the dollar store the other day, and VOILA... pool noodles. Pool noodle + bread knife = over sized flower lacing beads. HOLLER.
Once Emma Grace got over her initial excitement...
... we used the new shapes as stamps for painting flower gardens. We'll try lacing later. ;)

Our new kit from Time for Tots came. To be perfectly honest... their ideas are fantastic... but the actual product was mediocre at best. Just not worth the money. We'll continue our subscription, and definitely continue to steal their ideas... Mommy knows she can handle creating these herself... with things we have on hand... for realsies.

Emma Grace played with glass beads. Sorted them by color... we also sorted some new 3D shapes Mommy got by both color and shape.I had my very first book fair Thursday and Friday. We meandered on in there bright and early Friday morning in hopes of finding something useful. We found 4 somethings useful. :) 4 great make and do art/science books... so exciting. I told Mommy I wanted to do a special project just this morning from my new book. She handed me one, and I picked this "cowgirl" made from a cardboard tube. We had all the materials on hand... FREE. Cute right? Summer is going to be so much fun!

Mommy and Daddy concocted this Alphabet sorting game when I started to show an inkling of naughtiness. Alphabet book, magnetic letter, Little People animals.

Daddy caught a ginormous beetle and placed him in captivity for me to observe. He was awesome.

I turned my freshly cleaned water table into a witch's cauldron. Much to Mommy's chagrin. ;) Not really... she's certain now though that I must own a mortar and pestal to make my concoctions.

With all that dirt... why not get a fancy bath. And by fancy bath, we mean water dyed red, bubbles flying, and washing our bath toys with shaving cream... it's the little things.

Our laid back week ended with my special Daddy time. I earned 15 extra minutes of awake time today to spend with Daddy. He wanted to do my princess puzzle with me. It was priceless. :)We also spent a BEAUTIFUL day at the playground, and took an impromptu trip to The Safari Park... more on those adventures later. Here's a happy week ahead to all! :)

Insects

Rachel here. I know for a fact I've already written and posted this bad boy, but alas it's missing... Hmmmm... Blogger has been up to some fishy shenanigans. ANYWAY... last week was bug week. I had tons of activities planned, but the girls kept busy with tons of other things besides what I had out for them. C'est la vie...

Reese is VERY in to quiet activities that she can work on by herself. Here are a few activities I printed off of Kidsparkz for her. She can be quite the little worker bee.
Emma Grace started this activity off by doing it for real. Matching the right colors together. Don't get too terribly excited though... it went downhill as soon as I put the camera on her. She's sweet like that. ;) Magnet bug puzzle.
Bug word puzzles from Kidsparkz.

Shape practice... creating a butterfly.

Ordering butterflies from small to large... Kidsparkz.

For Reese's Teacher Appreciation gifts, she used her finger prints to make little bugs... and a random fish... from her classroom... that she makes me say hi to every day. :)

Lacing bug patterns with pipe cleaners and beads.

Emma Grace's little hands aren't quite up to Reese's ability... obviously. She desperately wanted to bead, so I got out her letters, and she laced those.EG also pretended to master the color yellow. She's still telling me everything is yellow when I ask her, but she tells me what it is actually on her own accord. Yesterday I asked her what shape something was; she looked at me, smiled, and said "yeyow." She's going to be trouble.

New transferring activity I got from The Dollar Tree. I planned on using it this summer, but it had that new car smell, so I gave in. :)

Reese playing with her Alphabet Sensory Bin. She loved it but was way more intrigued with the tongs and lifting the items up instead of sorting them.

Here is Little Miss Independent... emptying her dishes from the dishwasher. :)She's growing up... and she reminds me of it everyday. :)