Catching Up: The Past Few Weeks

What a wonderful past few weeks we've had!  The weather is finally getting cooler and Rich's days off work have changed (he's finally off on weekends) so we've been able to enjoy lots of fun activities together.

 

Katie and I met Knox and Julie at the nature center for their class for little ones.  The theme was "Animal Homes".  The kids got to place animals in their "homes" on a feltboard.

 We also got to go outside on the trails around the nature center.  We watched the turtles and fish in the pond....

 ...and walked on the trails.

Knox still comes over a few days a week.  Katie and Knox have so much fun playing together.  They love digging in the now empty garden.

We've been going on walks together after dinner since the weather has cooled down.  Katie's favorite thing on the trail...playing in the gravel.

Mommies favorite thing on the trail...getting flowers from Daddy!

We also got to announce that Katie is going to be a big sister!  Her baby brother/sister is due on May 7.  Katie's getting some practice on being a big sister by playing with Knox's little brother, Brex.

Katie and I planted some mums in the barrels on our back patio.

Baby girl is into dressing herself lately.  She wants to wear a hat a lot and always wants to wear our shoes.  Here's one of the outfits she's put together.

Here's her hat again and one of her new favorite stuffed animals...her pink dog.

Daddy made Katie a felt board for her room.  She has had a lot of fun playing with it and I can imagine many, many learning opportunities that can come from this simple toy.

Katie wanted to sit with the big kids at story time last week.  She did really well sitting and paying attention.  She didn't stay with the big kids the whole time but, she tried really hard to sit still and listen. 

Lillie is all healed up after getting spayed.  Katie and Lillie love each other sooo much and can get into all sorts of trouble together.

We had our local parade yesterday.  Katie really enjoyed the parade...she collected the candy from the street and put it in the many pockets of her overalls.

 

Knox came to meet us at the parade, too.

There was a little petting zoo after the parade at the local park.  Katie ran right up to the goats and the cow with no fear.  When it came to petting the tiny chicks it took a little bit to talk her into it but, when she finally did she enjoyed petting them, too.  Funny how she ran up to the big animals but, was hesitant about the tiny chicks.

Katie got to have one last day playing her pool this week...the wind storm on friday blew the pool into the fence and popped it.  But, hopefully we're in for much cooler weather where outside doesn't mean we have to stay in the pool to keep cool.  Katie's loving her swing and loves being swung very high.

 

Because of the over 100 degree temperatures (and the mosquitoes) Daddy moved some of Katie's outside toys into the almost completed den.  Katie got to play in her car and on her slide in the relative cool of the den.

Art is always a favorite activity but, she surprised us the other night when she painted 5 pieces of paper.  After each piece was done to her satisfaction she would hand it to us and say, "Oooohhh petty (pretty)!"  She was very proud of her artwork.  Of course she had to do a little artwork on herself, too!

We thought maybe it was time to start really working with sorting so I got out the pom poms and some containers to sort colors.  I thought Katie would be very enthusiastic about this new game...boy was I WRONG!  She enjoyed throwing the pom poms all around her room and occasionally placing one of those pom poms in a container but, basically this activity was a flop.  We might try it again in a few days, maybe with Katie in her high chair.

Knox and his mommy got to join us for storytime on Thursday.  The kids were very excited to see each other.  They made their art project together and looked at books while us mommies got to talk. 

Play dough is becoming a new favorite, although Katie still enjoys an occasional bite.

Katie's been helping cook a lot more recently.  On Saturday morning Katie and I made a breakfast casserole.  She helped stir the eggs, cheese and sausage together and pour it into the pan.

The nicer the weather gets the more walks we've been able to go on. 

We also got to pull out all the dead/dying vegetables in our garden and the morning glories out from the barrels on the patio.  I can't wait to plant some mums and pansies for a little fall color on the back patio.

Katie found one of the last marigolds and carried it around all morning.

This week's been interesting.  It started off with me having a sinus infection...then Ms. Katie got a fever.  We thought she was starting to get a cold like I had so we took her to the doctor.  They did a blood test to check for some tick related illnesses because we had all recently been bit by ticks.  The doctor also did a west niles test "just in case".  Katie got over feeling bad pretty quickly and by Thursday she was almost her normal self.  Thursday the doctor called and said she had a mild case of west niles.  We were surprised but, not too worried.  Since Thursday Katie has been great!  No fever, no sickness, nothing.  We know we had lots of prayers coming her way and we are so thankful for them!  Consequently we didn't get many pictures this week but here are the few we managed to get.

 

 Katie enjoyed playing with playdo and making a playdo sculpture out of all the random items I gave her to play with.

 Daddy and Katie played with sidewalk chalk on the back patio.

 

 

 Katie and I made some chile rellenos.  She helped shred the cheese (and sample the cheese), crack the eggs and stir the eggs and milk together.