Lessons

A little while back it was brought to my attention by a neighbor that Elsie will be old enough for preschool this fall!! YIKES!!! But I am still undecided if I should send her...lots of conflicting feelings and ideas. This information still got the wheals turning and I thought I want to do mare teaching at home now. So I looked back at some posts I saved from an on line mothers group I am part of. There were lots of ideas of web sites that are helpful and have great free info on them. One of these web sites actually has a curriculum to follow. Now I don't think it is perfect and I am adjusting it to fit our needs but I am doing the lessons every day. Bascially there are 26 weeks in the preparatory curriculum the one that gets you ready to get ready to learn to read. Each week has a theme, a vocabulary word, a color or shape, a letter, a number and a nursery rhyme. On Monday you introduce the theme and vocab word and then each day you introduce one more thing. You leave each thing up on a poster for one week and then slowly change it out for the new theme, letter, shape and so on. It seems to be working quite well for us so far. Elsie likes her lessons and participates pretty well. She is not into the number flash cards I made but I think that is because she has never liked flash cards...numbers are hard for her right now. But she knows most of her letters (she knew them before we started these lessons) and she is great with colors. If you want to check this out or look at there more advanced curriculum here is the link. Here is our poster with all the things we are learning about right now.

Cutting paper

I am not sure when this began I should have written it down but I guess I am getting lazy. Elsie can cut with scissors. She uses these super cool scissors of her grandmothers that are completely plastic no metal edge or anything. So there is no way to get cut. They cut pretty well though you can't get too close to the edge or else you loose the ridged surface to cut.

Stoller Backpack

Yes you read it right...a stroller backpack. After we perchased the hiking backpack Elsie came up with this...

Hiking backpack

We love to go for walks and also like to hike...though we have not done very much hiking for a while. But we are planning on doing some soon and so we made a somewhat big purchase for us...a frame backpack to carry Elsie in. It is a very nice one as far as I can tell. You can even detach the straps and reattach them to a lower height so it can work for both of us. Though I can't stand up off the floor with Elsie in it with out a hand to help pull me up. So our plan is to go on lots of walks with it to get Will in shape for the hikes we will be taking too. Since we live in such a beautiful area now and with so many mountains we thought we should take advantage while we can.

Treasure Hunt

We have a tradition of making treasure hunts for each other on special occasions. It started a long time ago when we were first married and there have been many of them made (especially by Adah for Will) for birthdays, fathers days, mothers days, anniversaries and valentines day. This one happened to fall on Valentines day. I ordered some BBQ from our favorite BBQ restaurant in Kansas City and had it shipped to us. I hid it in the fridge and took Will through the house looking for clues only to end up where he started the kitchen searching through the fridge for his supper. He loved it and so did I!!! I think this is one of the best presents I have come up with in quite a while. Here is a link to the web site for Jack Stack BBQ if you are interested in ordering any. The baked beans are awesome!

Just a few photos

Here are a few photos to keep all of you happy!!! I know I don't post that often but life is busy and it is a pain to download the pictures!!! But I do try to keep current photos of Elsie up so you can all see how she is growing.

Decorating Cookies for the first time

Here is a shot of Elsie decorating cookies for the first time. It was also my fist attempt at making sugar cookies from scratch. Over all I think it turned out really great! We got a huge thing of cookie cutters for Christmas. So we spelled out Happy Birthday Grandma with cookies. Then Elsie's aunt, uncles and grandma came to decorate with us. Luckily we were able to send some of the cookies home with people...there were a ton of cookies even with I cutting the recipe in half!!! The only thing I will change for next time is to try to take the cookies out before they brown so they are softer.

Not up to too much

I am writing to say we are still alive. We have not been up to very much so that is why we have not posted anything for awhile. Elsie and I have been having lots of fun having play dates and getting to know more people out here. Will has been working hard at the resort and increasing his eBay sales on the side. I will have to look though my current photos to try to post some of Elsie soon. She is growing bigger and learning more and more. She knows most of her letters and is not working on her numbers. We try to have lessons on these things during the week and are liking it a lot. We still go to play group each week and might start going to a second play group soon. That is all for now. We hope all of you are doing well.

Dress up clothes

Elsie got a lot of dress up clothes for Christmas and it has taken her a little bit to get interested in using them. But they are definitely becoming a fun thing to play around with. I found her all dressed up in her cape (on backwards of course) and a hat I got at The Children's Place Outlet for a dollar, I love that place.

A visit from Aunt Charity and Greg

We are always excited to see people that don't come around that often. So we were happy to have Charity come out for new years. She brought Greg which was super fun too. They got a little skiing in while there was still some snow left...we have not had new snow for quite some time now.

Visits from friends

Because of the holidays we had several friends from our Boston days who where coming out to visit family. So we managed to steal them away for a minute to see us too. I only took pictures of one such encounter but to the rest of you know that we loved seeing you too!!!

Christmas 2009

Well Christmas came and went but I have to blog about it a little bit. We had a great Christmas season here with Will's family. I made a big dinner Christmas Eve with ham, potatoes, veggies, sweet potatoes and rolls. All of Will's siblings came over and his mom and grandfather too. We had a fun time eating and chatting. After Grandpa went home and Elsie was in bed we sat down to play some games. We ended up stying up until 2 am and all crashing in various places in our house after the game was finally done. We came up with the idea just that day that Will's mom and siblings should sleep over and have Christmas morning with us. So that is what we did.

Elsie woke us up far too early in the morning and we all dragged ourselves out of bed. It was fun to have everyone there. We began with using our nativity set to act out the birth of Christ. We then moved right onto the presents. Elsie got to hand out the presents after I told who to give them to. When she got to open one herself she liked it. The only problem was she was not that surprised since I had bought all her presents for her with her in the cart with me...maybe next year we will go on a few solo shopping trips. Her favorite present was the stickers that her Grammy got for her. She looked at them and excitedly exclaimed "STICKERS". Will, Elsie and I also had stockings but we broke tradition by accident and opened them after all the presents. After the presents where opened we made a big pancake breakfast for everyone.

Later we went to Will's moms for a little bit to see her there and to eat some more food. We ended our day at Will's dad's house with more presents and a big turkey dinner. We spent the night there with Will's siblings and had fun playing games and hanging out for the next day or so.

Christmas Eve after dinner.



Christmas morning

I made this cape and apron for Elsie and so far she seems to like the cape better.


Will wrapped some of our presents in fabric and used ribbon to tie them up. He used something like a 100 yards of ribbon on this one.





At Will's dad's house.

Swimming at the rec center

Since Will and Elsie like to swim so much we decided to go to the local rec center to go swimming. The most fun thing about this pool is all the play things and the big slide. It also has a lazy river and a zero entry area too. Elsie loves to go down the big slide with mom or dad holding her up at the end so she will not go under the water. We have been back a few times and each time it has been a lot of fun...I consider it a wholesome recreational activity.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!! I am so excited for Christmas this year because Elsie might actually get it. But then again I bought most of her gifts with her there...so maybe next year will be the good year. I have been thinking a lot about the whole Santa thing and trying to figure out a way to make Christmas more about Christ. I am not sure if I have figured it out yet but we do have a nativity that Elsie can play with and a great book about Christ's birth story and I plan on telling her again and again about that story!!! What else can you do right??? I am not sure if acts of service will really make any sense to her yet but I am thinking about what to do on that front too. I just don't want to get all warpped up in the commercializations of Christmas.

Here we are decorating our tree together.

Santa

Santa came to our ward Christmas party and to our amazement Elsie actually sat on his lap. Of course if he had not been giving out candy canes I don't think she would have done it!!!

Snow time Fun

Elsie likes the snow. Here are a few photos to prove it.

A visit from Grammy

We were so happy to have Grammy come out to visit us. We did lots of fun stuff with her but most of all it was great to have her here. She read to Elsie a lot and played with us and had a good time. We went to see the lights on Temple Square, we saw music and the spoken word and went to a few other church sites.

Our trip to Kansas

As I said below we hitched a ride with some of or best friends to Kansas. It was a fun ride with two toddlers but we made it and with only one car sickness episode! It took us from 6 am to midnight but we did it in one shot. After getting there our friend passed us off to our other best friend and we were good to go for about a week of fun. We hung out a lot and went shopping and to appointments. I had my birthday there so we had cake and went to a movie...it was a blast!!! The best part about it was watching the kids play!! They loved being together again!!! Thanks for a great time. We miss you already.