Saturday Fun

Friday was a really long day for us.

Ally and I left for school at 730. I picked her and Erik up at 3pm and took them to swimming lessons. They swam for over an hour. Then Erik came over to our house after swimming to play for an hour until it was time to go to a family event at their school. We met Erik’s mom at school at 6pm. We had dinner at the pot luck at school, socialized, and had fun until 745 when we finally came home. Ally was exhausted, but went to sleep really well at 830. Which is great, since the night before she didn’t fall asleep until 10pm!

Needless to say we had one very tired girl on Saturday. After some her usual 2 Saturday morning TV shows and art we had breakfast and headed out to our town’s winter farmer’s market. We’ve heard really good things about it. It was pretty fun, a nice morning for a walk, and we stopped at the park on the way home.

If there are monkey bars at a park Ally is happy. This one also had a tire swing!

 

Becky set up a PB & J tasting plate for us using honey peanut butter. One piece was PB & blackberry jam, One was just the PB and the third piece was PB and Ally’s typical strawberry jam. Turns out the black berry jam was a hit – and after eating all of the tasting pieces Ally had a sandwich with PB and blackberry jam. I gloated a bit since that jam was my idea.

After lunch we sorted books and did laundry. These were daunting tasks. We emptied Ally’s bookcase and re-organized it and took about 30 books out of circulation to make room for new ones. Afterwards, Ally was so tired she decided she did not want to go to the movies – we had offered to take her to the new Muppet movie that is in the theaters. But she cried and said no – she was too tired to go and enjoy it. I suggested a movie at home, and so she watched Frozen for the 11th time. It is hard to argue with a girl who knows her limits. She is just so exhausted from the past two days she can’t really do much of anything. About 3 minutes after the movie was over and the tv turned off she was in tears again “because I don’t know what to do” after a couple attempts at coloring and a game I finally suggested a walk in the rain. She readily agreed and she and Becky are outside now.

I hope bedtime goes well. Its only 415 now and we need to make it until 7pm. For the record we did suggest a nap, but Ally does not like naps, and frankly they do make it harder for her to go to sleep. I have a feeling there will be more TV in our evening than we would like. Oh well.

Last Night of Daisy Girl Scouts

Ally and her friend Stella have been going to Daisy girl scouts on Monday nights for 3 years now. Typically you are only a Daisy for 2 years, but there was a mix up with registration and and whether or not girls could join in pre-kindergarten or Jr K as we call it. So they got 3 years. This term they had completed all of the Daisy badges so the volunteer did some Brownie work with them. They earned two badges, and now cannot wait to get Brownie vests and have it start again next year.

Ally and Stella outside of the center they have been attending GS at.

Afterwards we went out to dinner to celebrate. Violet had to get in on the picture too!

New Addition to the Crew

On Sunday afternoon Ally and I went to the mall. I had a few things to return, and way back in December I had promised to take Ally to Build a Bear in the Spring. (there were coupons in her Happy Meal all month). Please welcome Fluff:

We waited a really long time for Ally’s turn to have Fluff stuffed.

She held Fluff’s heart up to her ear so it would listen to her, rubbed her cheek for luck, I even gave the heart a kiss so it would know I’m the mommy. My favorite was that Ally had to jump a lot, because Fluff was a bunny and needed lots of hoppiness in its heart!

Finally it was done, and Ally brushed Fluff’s soft fur, and we made the birth certificate.

Then it was time to go home. Ally was so happy.

Grandparent Visit

Last weekend Grandma Debbie and Poppy came to visit.

Grandma and Ally played a lot of American Girl doll pretend sleepover.

They did art together, which was coloring pictures of penguins.

Ally was thrilled to watch Frozen for the 10th time with grandma and poppy.

After the movie they went to the park. They attempted to play ping pong, but it was so windy the ball kept blowing away.

At night before bed grandma read Ally a book.

Picture before church on Sunday.

Antarctica!

On March 21 Ally’s first grade class had their Antarctica presentation. It was amazing.

All week leading up to Friday posters were appearing with different animals and facts about Antarctica. One morning I made Ally pose under the Emperor Penguin chicks she made.

Finally on Friday it was the day. The students had decided to wear white, black and grey clothes so they looked like penguins while they sang several songs about Antarctica.

After the group presentation they students, all 49 of them broke up into “expert teams” where they showed off their paper mache creations and each student had a fact to tell us about their topic. One the left is Ally (in black) with Jaylinne and Oscar at the Emperor Penguin table. My favorite fact of the day was Oscars “an Emperor Penguin is as tall as me” how cool is that? Each student had written their facts on the back of their name tags. Ally’s is shown. Everyone was so proud of their work.

Maya and Alice with their humpback whale. One the right is the ice fish, the krill and the sea spider.

The great blue whale and the orca (killer) whale at the left. Flying high above in the classroom were the albatross and the skua birds.

Several kinds of seals; elephant, leopard and Weddell seals on the left, and at right, Erik with his team’s ice breaker boat.

One team did ice and the actual continent and at right is the colossal squid.

After I made the rounds of  the room, I cam back to Ally’s table and was so pleased to see Ally chatting with her friends and answering questions. Another parent took the picture at right and used an app to generate the painting-like quality photo. I thought it was pretty neat.

This is my favorite picture from the whole day. Ally with her fellow penguin experts, Jaylinne & Oscar.

Its hard to put into words how wonderful this event was. There were so many parents, and grandparents there to support the students and they had worked so hard and did an amazing job.

Mish Mash

 

We had a conference with Ally’s teacher recently and one of the things we asked was how much reading Ally should do every night. She said for first graders she recommends 15 minutes every day. That is time Ally should read to one of us or to herself. In addition to the 15 minutes, any ready we do aloud to her is great.

We talked about this with Ally and agreed to set up a “cozy spot” now called her “reading nook” for her to read in.

Ally usually scooters her way around town when we walk now, and one evening she looked so cute all bundled up in her owl hat, long coat and her pony tail swinging out the back I had to take a picture.

At church recently Erik and Ally has started sitting together. One Sunday they sat all by themselves in the pew – with their own bulletin and hymnals.

It was adorable!