Every year at the preschool co-op the awesome teachers prepare a Mother's Day Tea for us moms. Its complete with gifts and the kids bringing us food and then they embarrass us with funny facts about ourselves and hilarious pictures of us. Enjoy.
Our family tradition at Christmas time is that the girls get to open one gift on Christmas Eve, usually it is matching Christmas pajamas. I try to make them every year, but sometimes I end up making a last minute run to Old Navy.
Exactly as given to me, spelling and all.
Tuesday, on my birthday, Willow had her first Kidshine performance. The theme was happiness. Setlist as follows:
We celebrated Willow's 5th birthday on Friday with a cake and presents, but her birthday party wasn't until today. After much nailbiting on my part, 11 kids with their parents showed up today at 2:30pm. Kids played with play dough, floam, wiki sticks and more. They climbed trees and swung from branches.... I hope all had a good time.
Today, the day after thanksgiving, Willow turns 5. I still remember giving birth to her - at home sometime between 1 and 3 am on the day after thanksgiving in 2004. I am a horrible example for moms, I can NEVER remember birth times. Hard to believe that 5 years have gone by. She is a pretty cool 5 year old. Jim and I are happy to be celebrating the end of the baby years of our lives and looking forward to the cool kid/preteen/teen years.... we hope!
This morning, Jim had to go to work so Kyla and I took Willow out for breakfast. Good times were had by all, especially since I allowed them to sit at the counter instead of a table.
From Willow's Birthday Breakfast |
I have been working really hard to get the girls to bed at reasonable times and into a routine before school starts up again. So far its been going well, with both girls asleep before 10pm, but that also means that both of them are up at 7:30/8am every morning. That will work out great for school, but its hard for me to adjust since I am such a night owl.
Because of the early wake up times, by the time it gets to be noon, everyone is a bit crazy and bored. The "witching hour" used to be about 4 on our old schedule and we could survive til Jim got home, but now that its noon I am having to come up with lots of afternoon activities to distract them. One of our favorites.... playdough!
Now, playing with the dough makes them happy, but making the dough from scratch makes them even happier. They love to help measure out the stuff, pick out the coloring, and watch the mixer go around. We tried a lot of dough recipes before we found one that is 1. easy and 2. a great consistency. Here is ours, made in the stand mixer with the dough hook: