Tooth #3

Sophia lost tooth #3 on Saturday.  It was one of the top front teeth.  She wiggled that thing until her fingers were sore! 

It looks like she's going to have a monster tooth growing in because the hole is enormous.  You can kind of see it in this photo, but I'll have to take a better one...and soon.  You can already see the adult tooth coming in already.

Addie's 6th birthday party

The girls went to Addie's 6th birthday party on Saturday. The theme was Littlest Pet Shop.  The girls arrived and were hustled into the grooming station where they were transformed into one cat and one dalmation doggie. 

Then they went to the craft station where they were each given a box to decorate as their pet carrier.  It was really cute.  The food was an assortment of animal food:  goldfish, gummy worms, cinnamon grahams that looked like dog biscuits, chicken fingers, etc. 

They played a few games including one shown in the pictures below.  Ms. Amy had filled up two cat litter boxes with prizes then she dumped oatmeal and small tootsie rolls on top of it.  It really looked authentic!  The kids each had to put on a blindfold and dig for as many prizes as they could get in 30 seconds.  They all loved it.

 

Sophia is studying Dr. Seuss this month at school and last week they celebrated "Wacky Wednesday".  The kids were encouraged to come to school wearing whatever they wanted. 

Sophia chose to wear her nightgown backwards.  Most of the kids wore pajamas to school actually! 

She also had on two different shoes.  We topped it off with 5 pony tails of hair flair.

Jonas and the girls

Aunt Claire and Jonas came down for New Years.  Sophia and Lilly had a great time with Jonas.  They played baby Jonas for a week after he went home. Here they are playing outside. It was a beautiful day...

January 2012

It feels like yesterday that it was just January 2nd and the girls were gearing up to go back to school the next day.  It's already the 11th!  Wow.   Time is flying.

We're selling Girl Scout cookies right now. Sophia and I went door to door on Sunday.  We made it to 7 houses before she petered out on me.  Lilly was tagging along and loved pressing her face directly on the glass to check to see if anyone was coming along to answer the door at each house!  It was cracking me up.

This coming weekend we will go out again and hit the houses on the other side of ours.  We only went to the left last weekend.  We'll probably knock on another 7 doors.

Lilly is obsessed with fancy dresses right now and carrying the purse around that Aunt Carol got her. Her purse contains much of what mine does....cell phone, lipstick, money, credit card, etc. and I've heard her refer to it as her mommy purse.  She insists on wearing her fancy dresses every waking moment. She even sleeps in them. I am, of course, the mean mom because I make her wear regular clothes to school. She fights me every morning and every day we compromise that she can put on a fancy dress immediately after school.

Wish I had some pictures to post.  I haven't taken any lately. 

Nana and her girls....

Nana and her girls at Hunt Club Farm, 2011

I haven't ranted in a while....

I hate blogging backwards! 

If I don't keep up with the blog then I fall behind and, to be honest, when I fall behind, all hope of me going back to blog about a past event really just falls into a very well-known thing called the black hole. I usually have very good intentions of turning back the pages of time and catching the blog up to date, but never get around to it.  My blog is missing some very important posts because I fell so far behind and never went back to catch up. 

Tonight for instance, I blogged about us going to Busch Gardens today, but I have yet to blog about the following:
Sophia and Lilly's holiday school show and Big Daddy's visits
Sophia's Christmas show at church
Sophia's choir singing
Christmas eve and Lilly's photo dressed up like a sheep. So cute.. . .
Christmas day
Nana and Poppy's visit! 

WOW....I'm really really really behind!  More so than I realized.  Well, enjoy the pictures below and you can catch up on a few of our missing posts. 

Ok - here goes - - -

My resolution for 2012 is to make a vow to maintain the blog in a more up-to-date fashion! 

Fingers crossed. 

Christmastown, Busch Gardens

We went to Busch Gardens this afternoon to experience their Christmas-town celebration. It was amazing and awesome! We all had a wonderful time and we didn't have one complaint or bad moment the entire 6 hours we were there.  We had a crash course on "how to survive a crowded amusement park without losing your patience"  this summer in Florida and we all put it into practice today.

It was 55 degrees when we left the park at 9:15.  It was 65 on our drive up there at 2:30.  Great day, trust me!

Sophia and Lilly enjoyed riding a few rides. Sophia made a friend, Rachael, while her family was standing in front of us in line for our second ride. They just happened to be from Virginia Beach and actually know friends of ours. It's a small world after all! (Can you tell, I'm still on my amusement park high?)

Will ran into one of his old co-workers and buddies from GMTI. Sophia saw one of her Sunday School classmates too.

We went into the Sesame Street Theater and watched a live performance by Abby Cadabby, Elmo, Big Bird, and all the usual friends. We were the last 4 people allowed in the theater.  Good timing! 

Funny how we had good timing all day, actually. We got to be first in line at the "Kids Karousel" and Sophia had first pick at the horse that she wanted to ride. There is only one bubble-gum pink colored horse and that is the presise one she wanted.  Luckily Lilly likes to ride on the non-moving benches. I rode beside Sophia on a white horse. Fun!

We also saw some penguins from Sea World of Ohio and Atlanta, I think...
They were really pretty.

Poppy gave Sophia and Lilly some money to spend today at the park and, as usual, that's what Sophia worried about all day. How was she going to spend her money?  In the end she bought a small stuffed Clydesdale horse replica. We saw some huge, real ones today. They are big!

Lilly opted to get nothing. In fact, I will have to remind her that she has some money to spend.  I think I'll hold onto it for a while and surprise her after the luster has worn off all the Christmas toys.

Both girls fell asleep in the car on the drive home. Yay!

  

In case you were wondering???

Gingerbread House

On Sophia's last day of school before winter break (which was Friday the 16th!) she made a gingerbread house.

I think she did a great job. She also made the golden wreath below.  Lilly gave me a silver imprint of her left hand and I have it hanging with the gold imprint of Sophia's right hand that she did in her 3-yr old classroom.  They are simply priceless.

Hello Kitty

The girls each got a Hello Kitty shirt at Target last week.  They couldn't wait to wear them to school.  They also both love to wear their warm winter boots!

The real Santa

 The girls know that every single Santa out and around town is not the real Santa Claus, but they did meet the real one today!  Sophia swears he was the real one because he told her that flying makes him tired. And, he had a real beard to pull it all together.

Lilly didn't want to sit on his lap. We didn't force the issue. 




Sophia was literally too big for his lap.  He tried hefting her up without any luck a few times. He finally decided to pull her up onto his lap....using all of his might.   Sophia told him she wants an American Girl Doll.   

Little Poser

I really like the outfit that Lilly had on the other day so I asked her if I could take a photo.  I just kept snapping because she kept posing for me. Take a look.  

Thanksgiving

We had a nice Thanksgiving with Will's family in Northern VA last week. I went out shopping at 9PM on Thursday night to hit Toys R Us for some good Christmas deals for the girls.  When I got back I discovered Will asleep on the couch.  He decided to go and get sick with a version of the flu and it lasted through Saturday evening.  Miraculously it disappeared after I drove home and presented him with his new *Black Friday Special* Playstation 3 game!

Lilly and Sophia got a kick out of playing with Jonas. He's walking and starting to babble now.  He and Lilly really hit it off and made each other laugh a lot. Aunt Claire put up the princess castle and had a tunnel coming out of each end of it in between their bedroom doors!  What a fun way for them to spend the morning.

We went to lunch and the playground on Friday afternoon.  Sophia and Lilly attempted to ride down the slide with Jonas, but he decided it wasn't for him this year.

Good grades

I'm really behind on keeping up with the blog.....bad grade for me!

Will and I went to parent/teacher conferences for the girls on Nov 8th...and they are both getting good grades.  Well, Lilly doesn't officially get graded yet, but Sophia does...and she has all Outstanding (equivalent to an A) and Satisfactory (equivalent to a B) marks.

Here's Lilly's answers to the questions her Mrs. Harden asked her:

Q: Favorite Friends
A. Lizzie, Colin, Victoria & Sophia

Q: Favorite Activities:
A. playing at home, playing at school, playing at the playground, getting stickers on my papers, singing songs, dancing with Belle and playing with Cinderella.

Q: It makes me happy when....
A: I hug Da da.

Q: When I grow up I'm going to be...
A: a big kid!

Q: I like to go
A: to the playground.

Sophia can write her numbers all the way to 30. She can count by 10s all the way to 100. She can write all the upper and lower case letters.  And she knows way more about the solar system than I do!

She's going to be tested out of Reader book 8 this week and she's learning short vowel sounds.  She also understands digraphs: th, sh, ch & wh.

She just started math book 3.  She's currently learning to identify the following shapes: pentagon, octagon, hexagon, trapezoid & rhombus and she's studying how to count in manipulatives of 2 and 5.  WOW!

Dance Class

The girls are really enjoying dance class this year.

Lilly lo.  She really absorbs what her dance teachers tell her and she comes home and practices.  Sometimes she even plays "dance class" and she's the teacher.  She sings the Buzy Buzy Bumble Bee song that she sings in her own dance class and then proceed to yell at everyone in the class. It's so funny. 

She also plays school and she's Mrs. Harden and she just yells at her students to clean up and get in a straight line, etc. 

And sometimes she yells at her pretend friends when she's going to sleep at night. She screams at them over and over to be quiet!

Sophia likes dance class too, but I think only because she gets to see Haley (and Abby, a new addition to the class when she's feeling up to it). Speaking of Abby, she just spent the week in the hospital after catching the stomach virus that 5 other kids in the Kindergarten class had the week before last. Sophia was lucky to dodge the bullet, but poor Lilly got sick Sunday night and stayed home from school on Monday. She was all better by Tuesday and ready to rejoin her classmates.