Happy Valentines Day!

This has been a wonderful weekend to celebrate love! Chad and I agreed long before this weekend that for us this year, we wanted to focus on our love for each other and how it's an everyday thing. We didn't feel the need to bask in all the commercial-ness of it. In fact, there weren't even any Hallmark cards at our home! (I did make Valentine goodie bags for Nathan's friends and classmates, but that's part of the fun, right!!!). Chad's love for me is enormous, and one weekend isn't nearly enough to contain it all! We spent all weekend focused on our love for each other, for our family, our friends, and the love the Father has lavished on us. Saturday, Chad fixed us breakfast and then he and Nathan played in the snow while I organized inside. Then we headed to the circus to celebrate Izzy's bday! Our evening was made complete by some delicious dinner at Moose Cafe followed by rejoicing with Matt and Emily when they told us of their engagement! Sunday morning we worshiped with our church body, enjoyed a family lunch, a long 3 hour nap, and then headed to dinner to officially celebrate with Matt and Em. Chad even wrote me a love letter... 2 pages of hand written goodness... just for me! Thank you baby! Lots of love to everyone!!! Happy Valentines Day!

ooooooooo!!!!!

I'm so excited! I finally figured out how to get these pics bigger on here! Check out this link to learn how!!!

Wordless Wednesday (almost)

What would a boy do without his beloved trains?

Thanks for taking the pics Lucy!

Izzy's party!!!

Feb 7th, Izzy had a her 2nd birthday party and it was such a great party! You can check out her family's pictures from that day by clicking on this link to their blog. It was at a local horse back riding stable and it was a real treat! They had a party room where the kiddos started off the celebrating! No birthday is complete without a hug from your best buddy!

Izzy loved opening presents.

Gearing up for riding the real horse!

The kiddos all sat so politely on the bench listening to instructions about riding the horse.

First up? The birthday girl of course!!! She loved riding and had such a serious look on her face. Baby Piper even got to pose for a picture atop the horse, although she didn't ride. Nathan was eager to go second and he was up and on that horse liked he'd done it a million times.

After riding, the kids could brush a small pony, have their hands painted, get temporary tattoos, or do arts and crafts. Perfect to keep all these tots busy!

Before long, it was time for cake!!!

Family picture!

Family pic including grandparents and baby Piper

Group shot!

A huge thanks to Bethany, Tim, and Izzy for having such a fabulous party. We are so blessed to have you guys as friends and we look forward to loving on your little ones for years to come! Happy Birthday Sweet Izzy!!!

Silly Snoozes

Nathan loves to wear hats, and this "ho ho hat" is no exception. Often he asks to wear it to bed. Isn't this a silly pic?

Got milk?

Nathan is 100% better!!!!! Thank you all for praying!!!

Best Buddies

Tot with fever School

Nathan is 26 months old.

The last two weeks have been a blur! Nathan's had strep or a fever for the last two weeks and so we're just now climbing out from under the weight of the germs. One on one learning activities in the quiet of our home (aka tot school) are comforting to Nathan and so he requested tot school sometimes while he was sick. Here's what we've been learning about the last two weeks...I still find Nathan using both his right and left hand equally for all tasks and I'm beginning to wonder if he'll be ambidextrous! We did a lot of coloring this week and I love how Nathan is really starting to "color"! He uses various colors and fills in different parts of what he sees. These activities are from two of Carissa's different tot packs: "word world" and "big machines".

Building a tower with stacking and nesting cups from IKEA. This continues to be quite a challenge for Nathan.
AUTOMOBLOX!!! These are a huge favorite, probably Nathan's favorite toy at the moment. I love them too!!! I highly recommend them!
Pushing the cars under the bridge. We also worked on "around Bailey", "under the table", through the tunnel", and "over the squares".

1:1 correspondence, a little same and different, and learning to share with Bailey. :)
I would NEVER let my child drink out of a bowl like a dog... especially if that bowl was the dog's... and I most certainly wouldn't photograph it and post it on the blog. Only my friend Shelby does that.

We made this "zoo" out of trio blocks to replicate the zoo in Goodnight Gorilla. He loved reenacting the story.
Instead of putting the animals in the cage, he put the zoo keeper and his wife in there! Hahaha!

Puzzles puzzles everywhere!
I got Nathan a baseball, soccer ball, football, tennis ball, basket ball, and soft ball and we've been learning what you do with the different balls. Here's a baseball lesson!

Playing games and reading books with Daddy is a huge favorite in the evenings!

I tested out "touch math" with nathan and asked him to use the dot markers to complete the numbers. I'm not sure I'll teach math using touch skills, but it was fun to work on amounts corresponding with the actual numbers.

We used dot stampers a lot these last two weeks. We made a valentine and a flower, filled in pages from makinglearningfun.com, and used one of the Shafer's ideas... I drew shapes on a paper and lined up the colored dot markers in front of Nathan. Then I asked him to put a "blue dot on the square" or an "orange dot on the star". It was a great exercise in listening and following directions!

I was inspired by this post to try a hand and arm print tree by Lauren. I adapted it a bit and this is how it turned out!
I was inspired by Carissa in this post, to try some pre-writing skills with Nathan. I didn't have the cool templates like she did, so I made something new. Using glue, I made "barriers" out of glue and outlined them. Then I asked Nathan to draw in the middle. It turned out to be a great activity!

He did quite a bit of drawing, coloring, and painting this week... Check it out! The picture in the center at the bottom is what he wanted me to draw (he and Madison and a car (he's gonna drive to see her he says)) and then he colored it in. The two pictures surrounding it are more following direction activities... color the middle circle orange... the triangle purple...

Trying to teach the concept of coloring in the lines by using glue as a boundary.

Playdough, great for all kinds of learning fun!

Last, but not least, I'd seen this idea on many blogs but I can't remember where! Nathan is using push pins to "trace" the letters of the alphabet. He was much more interested in just making holes in the construction paper after a while. We'll try again some other time! :)

Do you have a tot? Do you play with your tot? Did you know tots learn through playing? Join us in "tot school" this coming week. To check out other blogs of moms with kiddos the age of yours, read Carissa's blog! It's so much fun!