Chore Chart

Ally is loving girl scouts. This session the girls are working on earning their Daisy Flower badge - and each petal of the flower represents a part of the Girl Scout Law:

Last week she made a chore chart and in order to earn the ornage petal "responsible for what I say and do" she was supposed to perform each task each day and then we put a sticker on the day to illustrate that it was done. Then we brought the completed chore chart back the girl scouts the following week.

Girl Scouts meets on Mondays so our week started on Tuesday.

Tuesday's chore was to wash dishes:

Wednesday to do laundry:

First we sorted the clothes from the hamper in Ally's room and here she is putting her dirty clothes in the washing machine.

Learning how to fold the clean dry clothes and put them in the laundry basket.

Thursday's chore was to "go to school" Ally said one of leaders at Girl Scouts suggested that as a chore, since it is something they as children are responsible for doing.

Ally was quite brave and adventuresome playing afterschool.

swinging from a very high rope

hanging


Friday's chore was set the table.

We had friends over for dinner so Ally set the little table for her and Stella and Violet.

Saturday was clean your room:

Becky helped Ally empty and sort some containers that Ally stores things in. Ally's room is usually very neat - but that is because she stores things in baskets or bags. So there is not much clutter or mess visible but there is mess. I think Ally was relieved to have some help putting away things.

Taking craft supplies to her craft storage area.

Sunday's chore was sweep the floors.

Ally was so excited every day to accomplish her task.

Monday was feed the cats.

The completed chore chart - with a sticker for each day that she accomplished the task. I think its fair to say that she conquered the task for the week - which was to "do what I say I will do".

Silly Slide Pictures

In honor of the first day of Spring

Crazy Psychedelic pictures of Ally in the slide:

All done with pictures now


Ally has been counting down the days to Spring - she drew a huge flower on the calendar to represent Spring. The weather today and this week is unseasonably wonderful.

First Taste

Ally's first taste of Girl Scout Cookies:

We let her pick a box out a few weeks ago when we placed our order. She chose "Do- Si-Dos" or peanut butter patties - depends on where you live as to what you call them. Its the peanut butter sandwich cookie. Here she is opening the box.

a tentative bite

chewing and processing the taste

these are great!

Here Ally is eating her second cookie!!!

Its fun to still find and celebrate "firsts" even though Ally is 5 years old.

Another Alice Playdate

Alice came over for an after-school play date again. It was a spectacularly warm and sunny day for March.

The girls started on the swings.

Then moved on to the climbing structures.
Alice is such a ham sometimes!

Ally was proud to show off how she could climb on the outside of the structure.

They had so much fun.

I usually ask Ally if she wants one more swing on the bar before we leave. Alice wanted one too. I thought it would be a great picture of them both hanging on the bar next to each other.

But neither one can reach the bar.

So I would lift one girl up, then the other, then get my camera and try and grab a shot before one of them dropped.

Oh they laughed and giggled and dropped before I could get a picture. Just so I would have to lift them again.

Finally though with the promise of popsicles on the way home they held on long enough:

walking into the store for popsicles

yummy

this is how they walked home from the park - so they could each hold the popsicles

it was a riot

As usual they had a blast together.

Weekend with Grandma Debbie

WOO WOO Grandma Debbie is finally here!!!!

Ally was super excited last Friday - Debbie came for the weekend, weekly swimming lessons started with two of her good friends, she has had lessons with Stella for almost a year now, and recently Willow joined in. to make the excitement even better, when we got to the Rec Center for lessons, there was a gymnastics meet in progress! So we sat and watched that while we waited for our friends to arrive.

Ally asked to have Grandma sleep in her room, so we made Ally a bed on the floor out of her old crib mattress and Debbie shared Ally's room all weekend. Ally loved it. The first morning they made snowflakes in their pajamas.


Debbie and Ally made cookie lollipops and had an afternoon of fun and Becky and I went to the mall and fabric store.
We all had lunch together after gymnastics and as soon as we were done eating Ally said to me "you and mama are going to leave now right?" with a HUGE smile on her face. She had really been excited about time just her and Debbie.


Ally and her lollipop cookie.

Sunday morning the 3 generations were doing some serious crafting. Above is paper flowers to decorate our house for Easter.

Below they are all gathered around the sewing machine looking at the Easter dress Becky is making Ally.

Becky sewed and Debbie, Ally and I went to Ally's school to play on the playground. The building was open so we showed Grandma Ally's classroom and the cafeteria. Here they are in front of a bulletin board of Art from Ally's class. There is a circle around Ally's project.

Outside Ally had a blast on the tire swing.

Debbie had fun too.

After lunch we went back out to the park down the street from our house. Ally rode her bike.

Beautiful warm sunny weather, a funny loving Grandma and a happy silly 5 year old made it a great weekend.

Guat Girls Early March Gathering

The weekend before last we got together with the Guat Girls and went to a program on Latin music and story telling.

Unless I held her this is how Ally looked most of the time. She was extremely clingy. No surprise, considering it was a concert and a crowd of people.

So I got up and drummed - Ally took this picture.

She did eventually join Rosa, Gabi and Roxie to try out the drums.

Here are all 5 of them (from left to right) Roxie, Rosa, Alice, Ally & Gabi



After the show we went to dinner together at a restaurant - big step for us to be out in public together - and we had 3 other Guat born siblings with us so it was quite a crowd!


Gabi, Ally and Rosa had so much fun sitting together and goofing around!

Writing

Becky and I were so amazed to watch Ally learn to draw and color and create. Its the same with writing. It is fascinating. I made Ally a book over the weekend and I drew the lines on the paper so she could write the words in herself and told her to work on the writing and sounding out the words.

This is the first page.

It says I was in the car.

I think she decided this book is going to be about Florida - and we had a grey rental car and it was sunny there. I can hardly wait to see the rest of the book.

In Florida she did this picture all by herself.

Ally, 2 kinds of swings and it says I am with the swings


She recently learned how to draw 5 point stars.
I came home one night and she left this piece of paper out for me to see.
Her babysitter told me it was for Mommy.
Above is one side and below is the other side of the page.


Stars stars stars

Ally drew a cat recently too.