Miscellaneous stuff from Jan/Feb

Sorry...couldn't think of a more creative title.

I've noticed that I rarely pick up the camera in January or February. Maybe it's the Christmas season fatigue. Or maybe it's because we're cooped up inside most of the time during those months and there are not many interesting things to photograph. Usually I can count on a few good snow pictures, but this mild winter was pretty much a bust in the winter wonderland department. One day we got a light dusting, and the kids went out and played for a bit. This is the only snow picture I have from the entire winter! Of course, in TN, a late March or early April snow is not unheard of. So I suppose there's a chance we could still build our annual snowman. But I think all the spring trees and bushes that are already in full bloom may not be too happy with that.

One day in January, we decided to go to the annual Boat Show in the convention center. Random, I know. But the kids had a lot of fun "driving" all the boats and exploring the yachts.

And even more random was the performance of the water-skiing squirrel. I'll let the picture below speak for itself.

At the end of February, Mimi and Papa came for a quick visit. The kids had fun "teaching" them all about dinosaurs. Fortunately for Mimi and Papa, there was no pop quiz at the end of the lesson :)

Ethan got an early birthday treat from Mimi and Papa...a stuffed triceratops! This newest addition has quickly become Ethan's preferred sleeping buddy, even displacing his beloved Doggie and Bunny Rabbit.

(OK, so this next one doesn't really count as "Miscellaneous Stuff in Jan/Feb because it just happened yesterday, but I'm too lazy to make a separate blog post.)

In preparation for Ethan's dinosaur party, we made dinosaur feet out of Kleenex boxes and sponges. They stomped around the house and had lots of fun. Now if I can just stop singing, "We are the dinosaurs, marching, marching."

Dino-Mania!

We have been invaded by dinosaurs. Big ones, little ones, herbivores and carnivores. Some with simple names and some with ridiculously long names. It all started with this book I checked out from the library. Ethan had expressed a small interest in dinosaurs around Christmas, so I thought this would be a good book for him because it's geared to preschoolers and has the most amazing pictures of dinosaurs. I had no idea what I was unleashing!

Kaitlyn and Ethan both quickly became obsessed with dinosaurs, spending countless hours pouring over the pages of this book. We read this book before every nap and every bedtime for quite a while. They learned how to pronounce (correctly, I might add!) all the names of the dinosaurs. Ever heard of a Micropachycephalosaurus? Yep, me neither. But it sounds pretty cool when it's coming out of the mouth of a 2 year old and a 4 year old. Seriously, their knowledge about dinosaurs continually astounds me. They can identify every single dinosaur in this book (and there are lots of them!) by sight. They can reliably tell me what they ate, how they defended themselves and distinctive features of each dino. So when they devoured all the information in this book, I decided to bump it up a notch and check out the National Geographic Dino book for elementary school kids.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there were a whole lot of dinosaurs that the first book left out! So we learned a new round of dinosaur names and facts. Ethan loves learning about all the meat-eaters. Pretend play centers pretty exclusively around our prehistoric friends these days. Today, I took the kids to a park with walking trails. They wanted to "look" for dinosaurs, so we pretended to see all sorts of reptiles. We occasionally ran away from an imaginary hungry Carnotaurus or looked up in the sky to see a Pteranadon flying overhead. Kaitlyn later decided that we were in the Triassic period today and she stated, "I'm glad we're in the Triassic period so that we don't have to see a Yangchuanosaurus or a T Rex. They lived in different time periods." You know, just normal conversations with a 4-year-old.

I'm not sure how long this obsession will last, but it's pretty cool to see them become mini "experts" in something. I'm going to keep feeding the beast as long as they're interested and excited about learning more. Our zoo has an exhibit opening soon with full-sized animatronic dinosaurs. Kaitlyn asks almost daily if the exhibit is open yet, so I'm looking forward to seeing their faces when they see some "real" dinosaurs. And I think we're going to take a day trip up to Dinosaur World in Kentucky this spring. It's cheesy, but the kids will love it. And I hear that Fernbank in Atlanta has fossils of an Argentinosaurus and a Giganotosaurus, two of their favorites. Roadtrip? Maybe they'll be paleontologists when they grow up :)

Ethan is having a dinosaur birthday party on Saturday. The theme is a shocker, I know. I'm in complete denial about my baby turning 3 next week. Stay tuned for pictures, not only from the party but from the last two months as well.

New Year's Day

We were blessed with beautiful weather on New Year's Day, so we took advantage of it and headed to Radnor Park for a hike. It was a great way to start the new year!

Christmas 2011

The kids set out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for Rudolph (sorry Dasher, Dancer and crew--you're out of luck this year!). When they woke up the next morning, the first thing they wanted to do was check to see if Santa ate the cookies. They came into the living room, glanced briefly at the presents that Santa left them, and made a beeline for the plate. Santa was a bit of a messy eater, leaving lots of crumbs on the plate.

Once it was established that Santa did indeed eat the goodies they left, they turned their attention to the gifts under the tree.

Here's Ethan modeling his new rain boots. He loves wearing them around the house. Seriously, he probably puts them on several times a day. Maybe he's just happy that he has a pair of shoes that he can get on and off all by himself. Now we just need some rain to splash around in.

One of the gifts from Mommy and Daddy was a huge box of art supplies to be shared by both kids. In the box was a foam crown for each kid to decorate, and Kaitlyn couldn't wait to do hers. I think this was the first thing she played with after opening her presents. I like the craft stick embellishments :)

Gran and Papa Bell joined us later in the morning, and the kids had fun opening a second round of presents.

The day after Christmas, we left for Memphis to spend a few days with Jeff's family at Jess' house. The cousins had a grand time playing with each other. And we got to celebrate with Jeff's parents as they had their 40th wedding anniversary! Congratulations, Greg and Linda!

Our kids got to go bowling for the first time. I knew there were bumpers for kids, but who knew that there were these cool ramp things too?!?! The ramps made things a little more fun for the kids and gave the balls enough momentum to knock down several pins. Kaitlyn even picked up a couple of spares :)

With the exception of a couple of elderly leagues, we had the whole place to ourselves :)

After bowling, we went to the Collierville square where the kids could climb on some old train cars that are open to the public.

It kind of looks like a train is bearing down on our unsuspecting family, but I assure you that these tracks were inactive and all the trains were not moving :)

Passing some time on the square by catching up on the daily news...

Mimi and Papa with all four of their grandkids.

December Fun

The Christmas festivities started this year with our annual OC Family Breakfast with Santa. This year, Kaitlyn got to go through the rotations with her BFF Hannah. Everything is SO much more fun when you have a dear friend to experience it with!

We ate breakfast and made reindeer ornaments (which I thought were quite complicated for the preschool set!).

And then we saw the big man himself. Santa! Kaitlyn had no problems with him at all. Ethan wasn't quite so sure. When he first sat down, he insisted on leaning away from Santa and turning his face completely away. In the picture below, we had managed to convince him to at least face forward for a picture, although his body language still communicates his distrust of the strange man in the red suit. But there were no tears, which is a huge improvement from last year! Kaitlyn's requests were a globe, a snowglobe and boots. Ethan asked for stamps (the ink kind, not the postage kind).

What Christmas would be complete without a visit to the Opryland Hotel? I think the kids had forgotten just how spectacular it was because their jaws dropped open and their faces were full of amazement when they first entered and saw all the lights and decorations. They loved the giant trees. It's so fun seeing the world through the eyes of a small child.

Then it was time for Christmas parties and programs at school. For the first time, Kaitlyn and Ethan got to be together in a program! And when they saw each other on stage, they made sure to wave at each other. So cute! Ethan didn't sing a word of the songs, but he did shake his bell with gusto when it was time. Kaitlyn's class was the oldest class on stage, and they were told repeatedly that they had to set a good example for the little ones and sing loud. She took that responsibility to heart and found the courage to sing out on stage for the first time. She was quite proud of herself...and of course we were too! Maybe in two years, Ethan will start singing in his programs too :)

After the program, it was time for class parties. Ethan's party was short and sweet--perfect for a bunch of 2-year-olds with short attention spans!

Here he is with his beloved Miss Julie. I know it looks like he feels the same way about her as he does about Santa, but I promise that he loves her :) He was just being a little shy.

Santa and Mrs. Claus came around to all the class parties. Ethan only got close enough to snatch a candy cane, but Kaitlyn was all about hopping up in his lap.

And here's Kaitlyn with Miss Kristy. We've had several teachers at Otter Creek now, and we've loved every single one of them!

So when school gets out for two weeks, we have to find other ways to spend time with friends and get some energy out. So we had the Brown girls over one day for some welcome distraction. They all wanted to sit together while they ate their snack.

And somehow, they all managed to fit in the closet when they were "hiding" from the pretend tornado that was apparently about to destroy the house. Good to know that we've got tornado safety training covered!

More about Christmas coming soon!

Halloween

This year, we had a princess and an Indian join us for Halloween! (native American? American Indian? not sure what is PC for this costume!) Kaitlyn was quite certain that she was going to be a princess this year, but it was a toss up between Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty for a while. We finally settled on the latter (which thrilled me because it was the princess costume with the least amount of glitter on it--do you know how hard it is to get that stuff out of your carpets?!??!?!)

Ethan could care less what his costume was, and he was happy to wear whatever costume I could find for cheap at the consignment sale :) I'm guessing this may have been the last year that I'm able to get away with that!

The kids had Halloween parties at their school. There were 4 Spidermans in her class! Guess that's one popular superhero! The kids went "trick-or-treating" in Miss Pat's office and upstairs in the church offices. Then they came back down to their rooms to decorate cookies, eat snacks and play games.

Here's Kaitlyn decorating her cookie.

Parents are asked not to come to the 2-year-old Halloween party because it's so hard for the little ones to say goodbye to mommy after a party. But since I was there for Kaitlyn's party, I got to get a sneak-peek at Ethan when his class did their costume parade through her classroom.

A couple of days later, our church had their annual trunk-or-treat. I have never seen so many adorable little costumed kids in one place! Kaitlyn and Ethan could barely carry their pumpkins full of candy by the time they were done.

And these next two pictures have absolutely nothing to do with Halloween. But they were taken on the same weekend, so therefore they are being put in the Halloween post. The John Tune airport had another fly-in, so we went with the kids. We've been to several of these fly-ins now, and we've noticed that each one seems to get better and better. This time, there was a real helicopter and an open-air biplane that the kids could climb in and pretend to fly. And on top of seeing all the pilots arriving for the event in their planes, we got an up-close-and-personal view of a helicopter taking off and landing. Needless to say, the kids (and Jeff!) were enthralled!

First and Last

Our church family said goodbye to a precious place last month. Our congregation moved to a new building a few years ago, but the church preschool/kindergarten has remained at the old site while we built an addition to the new building. The new addition is now complete, so the school moved into the new digs over fall break. The Otter Creek school has been around for 50+ years, so it's hard to say goodbye to such a treasured history in a building. Many children have traveled up these steps and through the fabled red door. I had to snap a picture of Kaitlyn as she walked up the steps for the last time.

And I'm so glad that Ethan had the chance to start at the old building this year. At least he, too, will have a little bit of history at that place. His classroom door is the one with the smiley face :)

Of course, the new school building is incredible and more well-suited to the kids' needs. And it's nice to have the school be back together with the rest of the church. We're looking forward to making more memories there!

The last day at the old building was also the day for Kaitlyn's first field trip. She was beyond excited about going! The only thing that would have made it even better is if she could have ridden on a school bus :) Her class went to Walden Farm in Nolensville, and they got to pick pumpkins, go on a hayride, pet farm animals and run through mazes.

Here's her class posing in front of a wagon.

The crazy face picture...

Kaitlyn with the pumpkins she picked out.