"Croco-gators"

We have been reading a lot of books lately that have animals in them. Many have alligators or crocodiles, but when you ask Kailyn what they are she says "croco-gators":) Such a silly girl!

What in "carnations"?

We went to Lakewood Floral and picked up a couple of white carnations to use in our Valentine's day science project. We put the flowers in a vase with red food coloring in the water. I told Kailyn only that we needed to watch the flowers and see if they changed. I then asked her what she thought might change and she was pretty educated in her answer! She told us that the water would go up into the flower and the flower would change! Not a bad answer for a three year old:) At least twice last night she walked up to the table and got really excited claiming that her flower had changed! We took that opportunity to explain that it would take time for it to really change! She is so proud of her flowers (as you can tell from the picture).

Mommy's Little Helper

We have just purchased a whole cow and our large freezer in the garage is chucked full of beef, so a bunch of miscellanous stuff came into our freezer in the house. So everytime I need something I need to empty out a bunch of stuff. While I was retrieving things from the freezer for dinner last night, Will was taking everything I took out and was lining them up on the counter! Thanks for being such a big helper buddy:)

Marble Hearts

Monday morning the kids were up bright and early (suprising because they stayed up late for the Super Bowl)! The morning was beginning to drag so we got started with some of our Valentine's Day crafts. We cut a heart out of cardstock paper and put it in a box. Then we took marbles and dipped them in red, purple, white and pink paint. We put the painted marbles in the box and the kids rolled them around on their hearts. It makes a really cool pattern and they are really colorful! Even little ones like Will can do this and it's a self-contained mess:) The hearts turned out great and Kailyn is already singing some of the songs I taught her for Valentine's day.

Will needs to stand up or he's too little to really move his box around!

Here's the finished hearts! They look great kids:)

We also had time to build a fort before lunch and the kids just sat underneath it and read their books. My kids could spend hours just looking at and "reading" books. Kailyn has even begun to read some really repetitive stories (like Brown Bear, Brown Bear) to Will. Too cute! I love that you guys are so easily entertained and love books:)

Kailyn's Handprint

Every year when the kids turn another year older, my mom has them put their handprint on a tree with their name on it in the playroom in the basement. She had the wasted space under the basement stairs painted with a scene from the Berenstain Bears and it has several trees, one for each grandchild (and some for future grandchildren). Each kid gets a tree with their name on it and they put a handprint on the trunk every year around their birthday. While we were there for the Super Bowl we had Kailyn put her three-year-old handprint on her tree! She did very well considering she had a large crowd watching.


Ryan had Kailyn practice before putting the paint on her hands!

Kailyn's finished tree!

Super Bowl Sunday Funday!

On Sunday we were able to go to my parents' house to watch the Super Bowl with some of my aunts, uncles and cousins. It was so nice to catch up with everybody and see what God's been doing in their lives. The menu was just a bunch of appetizers, so we decided to try a new recipe that we had seen on the food network: mexican potato skins. Kailyn was already up from her nap when we decided to start making the potatoes, so she got busy using our little potato head scrubber and cleaning the 18 potatoes in the bag! She was soaked and got water everywhere, but she had a good time helping!


My mom had a big bowl of candy left over from a youth retreat the night before and the kids loved the special treats that they found. William had a great time eating his sucker (of course right after his bath) and getting sticky! Thanks Mom and Dad for the great food and time with family:) We love you!!!

"Uncle" Aaron

This weekend we celebrated "uncle" Aaron's birthday with a wii party! Kailyn and I made a special cake and everyone brought awesome food to go with the burgers. (Before everyone came Ryan had to work on our grill because we had flames coming from the control knobs on the front the last time we used it:) "Uncle" Aaron came over for a while on Thursday night too and this is the picture that I was able to capture. After Kailyn took him to her room, both the kids snuggled in the big comfy chair (uncle Aaron's favorite) and read books together for a good 10 minutes! "Uncle" Aaron is such a good sport:)