Purplicious

Last year, my uncle cleaned some kid stuff out of his house, and we ended up with boxes full of books.  Every few months I go through and pull out a few that Miss A and Little J might like. Recently I found Pinkalicious and Purplicious.  Both have become big hits at our house, especially Purplicious, I think because Miss A loves to paint.

Purplicious begins and ends with Pinkalicious painting.  At first the other girls are making fun of Pinkalicious for liking pink so much, but in the end, there is a girl painting a cake will blue frosting.  She says her cake doesn't look right, and she needs some pink because, "Pink is Powerful."  She mixes the pink paint with the blue and makes purple.  So, that's exactly what we did.  Miss A loved mixing the colors, and painting her purple masterpiece.

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Miss A loved this activity so much that soon after, we mixed colors again.  This time instead of just pink and blue we also mixed blue and green, and pink and yellow.  I put the paint in paper bowls so the mixing would be (hopefully) a little less messy.  We included Little J in the mixing this time, and she enjoyed it as much as Miss A.  By the end, even Daddy was involved, and both girls were covered in paint (funny how that works).

Sisters

Miss A and Little J are playing together more and more these days.  And they're pretty adorable to watch.  When Little J wakes up from her nap, she's quick to look for "Aa-bell" (it probably sounds more like apple).  When either girl gets some one-on-one time with E or I, they ask for the other.  Even on her birthday, Miss A was a little sad to be leaving Little J at day care.    

Sometimes though, Miss A can get a little rough with Little J.  She forgets that Little J is still, well, little (thought she's a tough little girl).  As you can see from the picture below, wrestling is becoming a frequent occurrence.  I feel like it won't be long before Little J wins these matches.  She has found that grabbing Miss A's hair is a good strategy.

'Nastics

Last summer, Dora had a big gymnastics adventure.  Nick Jr advertised this adventure for weeks and weeks before it was finally on.  Miss A love Dora, so gymnastics (or as she would say then, 'nastics) was about the coolest thing.  So for her birthday, Nana and Papa got Miss a 'nastics lessons. 

I think Miss A was the very youngest person in the class.  The youngest age was three, and she turned three just a week before starting.  She was really shy at first, and looked at me with big, confused eyes when I sent her in the first day.  But she loved gymnastics, especially the trampoline.  And this week, E and I finally got to watch.  

The school had a little show, and each class showed off what they could do.  It was fun to see what she's been doing in her class all these weeks. A little balance beam, vault, bar, somersaulting and, of course, the trampoline.

Our 2013 Garden

E has been very busy with projects this spring.  This weekend's big project was a new garden box.  We inherited a small garden box from the previous owners, and have grown a few things every year, but it was just a little too small.  This box is 4 feet by 8 feet, giving us twice as much space, and I think it looks a whole lot better too!  We managed to get the box built while Little J took her afternoon nap on Saturday, then all four of us worked on planting the garden on Sunday.

We wanted the girls to help with planting the garden, and hopefully Miss A especially will help me water and weed this summer.  Last year we grew green beans in our garden.  Miss A thought it was awesome to go pick the green beans and eat them.  They were her after dinner "treat" while they lasted (how is she mine?).  She still loves green beans, so we're hoping that more veggies in the garden this summer will equal more veggies in the girls' tummies!

We ended up planting green beans, peas, carrots, peppers, squash, zucchini and cucumber.  Hopefully all the rain coming this week will help our plants get off to a good start!  Anybody have tips for gardening with little ones?

Sprinter Cookies

We went to a Twins game a few weeks ago where they handed out buttons that said, "I survived Sprinter at Target Field."  I think Sprinter is the perfect way to describe most of our spring this year.  Most of March and April were cold and snowy.  We got one beautiful weekend at the end of April, then last Friday, May 3rd it snowed.  Again.  So Miss A didn't have to twist my arm to make cookies.  She was invited to a friend's house for a play date, so she told me we needed to make cookies for her and Miss E. So, while Little J napped, Mommy and Miss A baked (and ate far too much cookie dough).  A good way to spend our snowy afternoon. (This week is finally nice, so all pictures are SOOC... no time for editing when I can see the sun!)

We used the recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookies I saw on the back of the Market Pantry Milk Chocolate Chips at Target.  They were SO good.  Soft, thick and peanut buttery.  We WILL make these again (probably soon).