Fun, fun, fun

Today we had a great day. Hooray for Saturdays! We slept in until 6:30, had some fun snuggling/giggling time in bed, then got to laugh at the surprise of looking outside and seeing SNOW! (I'd heard the forecast that accumulation was possible, but I didn't think about it at all until I looked out the kitchen window - surprise!) Amanda was so excited and wanted to go outside, so after breakfast, we dug out the winter gear (well, only part of it - should have found the snow pants - did that later) and explored the new landscape.

My rosebush and garden flag in the snow

Green tomatoes covered in snow:

My girl covered in a dusting of snow:

A close up of more roses - so pretty I thought

Hmm, the camera took on a bluish tint on these.

She was so funny, she kept doing face-plants in the snow. Look Mom! Then - boom - falling face first. Brrr!!! It was chilly out.

Finally she got cold, so we went in and I put her in front of a heater and then into warm dry clothes. After bumming around for an hour or so, we headed down to our local Earl May's for a Harvest Festival or something like that. I don't remember what it was called, but they had pumpkin painting, face painting, a bounce house, and free popcorn (well, they always have free popcorn). Here she is painting her pumpkin:

She had a puppy dog painted on her cheek, then went back later for a little girl ghost on the other cheek (you could tell it was a girl b/c it had a cute pink bow on). She wouldn't let me take a good picture but kept coming closer and closer, but I decided this was a pretty cute picture of her right up against me, if you ignore the little bit of the my camera's black lens cover. You can sort of see the puppy cheek painting. Her glasses were on and off, depending on whether I remembered to put them back on after she had been in the bouncy house. The second picture is to show off her cute Halloween cat shirt.

Bouncing fun (forgot to take off the glasses at first, but she was the first kid in there, so it didn't matter).

Right before we left, we went outside and got some quick pics in the cutouts they had set up for the day. Not a typical Halloween picture with the snow!

And Amanda recriprocated by taking a picture of me:

Later, she couldn't find anyone home to play with, so we were going to go on our own sledding on the hill just 2 blocks away. On the way there, we found Taylor was home, so she got bundled up and came with us. Very fun! All I had to do was sit on the side of the hill, hold the sled while they got on, let them go, watch, clap, and wait for them to climb the hill (repeat). When they were tired of that, they wanted to go to the playground, so we dropped Taylor at her house to change into dry clothes (she didn't have snowpants), went to our house for a pottybreak (and a book for me), got Taylor and went to the park, where they played for about an hour and a half while I read my book (yea!). Then back to our house where I fed them some supper (Taylor's family eats very late and we eat early, so since she was hungry she ate some with us). They watched the end of the Little Mermaid movie and then we walked Taylor home. Hooray that there's a little girl on our street who also needs a friend!!

Actually, Friday night we played with Taylor, too. After school, I took the girls to the playground, then Taylor went home, then came back and ended up eating with us, watching the first part of the Little Mermaid, and we had some popcorn. It was a little bit of a party night for us! It was great - I was happy to have an easy, pleasant night since my week had been pretty crappy (went downhill on Wednesday, tanked on Thursday, and just stablilized again Friday/ Saturday).

Friday, her class was going on a field trip to the pumpkin patch, so here she is that morning, all dressed up and carrying her lunch (in the sack she'd designed in school the day prior). It wasn't snowing yet, but it was still going to be a chilly day!

The previous weekend, we had another fun Saturday. Cindy & Keith came up from Lincoln and spent 3 hours or so with us. Cindy helped me by hanging out with Amanda, fixing some play necklaces of Amanda's that had broken (they're still together - good job, Cindy!), and walking down to the optician's place and having Amanda's glasses adjusted (they always seem to be sliding down her nose). Keith helped me by taking care of a large tree limb that had fallen down (diameter maybe 7-8 inches? More than I'd want to handle with my little saw - I need to get a chain saw)(insert "Tim the toolman Taylor"'s man grunt here). It was great timing for their helping visit as the limb had just fallen the day before. Keith also helped me take down and break down an old table I'd stored in the corner of the basement as my tool table and in the process, made a shelf out of part of the table top for a VHS/DVD cabinet I have which was missing a shelf. (Barb, the cabinet works GREAT - thanks for finding it for us!) It's been awhile, so let me mention that Family Rocks!

We had pizza for lunch, and after Cindy went on a quick search-and-destroy mission dusting the living room and bedrooms, while sending Keith around to dust the ceiling fans, I finally physically shooed them out of the house (actually getting my house clean would have taken more time than they had). Then Amanda and I zoomed across town for a baby shower for my friend Angie, whose baby boy Matthew was born Aug 31. We had fun at the shower. Amanda was the only older child and everyone seemed to enjoy her. She got a little antsy about halfway through, and Angie/Matt took a bedroom/nursing break, so we got to take the little dog there for a walk. Served many purposes - kept Amanda from hassling the dog with wanting to pet/hold/hug it, stopped me having to keep telling her to leave it alone, and gave us both some exercise and fresh air. Here's Amanda with the shower baby and Angie's mom:

After the baby shower, I ran some errands at a couple of stores and then we headed to a different part of town to see Amanda's preschool teacher, Ms. Boidee. We'd been trying to arrange a time to visit and it finally worked out, so even though it'd been a fairly full day and it was 7pm before we got there, I wanted to fit it in as Amanda'd been asking about it a lot. It was a great visit - I think we left between 8:30-9 (late for us, but worth it). Ms. Boidee chided Amanda about being naughty at school/after-school and said that people should be able to know "her" students due to how they behaved and how well they did with their classwork. Amanda told her she would be good and would get green (good job) cards instead of yellow (warning) cards. (It didn't totally work, but more on that later). Ms. Boidee has a HUGE rotweiller. I was so surprised (but I'm always surprised to find out that people pick rotweillers). I guess because she likes kids and teaches kids, it's just the last breed I would have expected her to have. She was an ok dog for me, but would not leave Amanda alone. It was tough to visit with the sound of her smacking her body or big paws/claws against the back door if she was put outside, and tough to visit with her being hyper in the house with Amanda hiding behind me and then thinking she could just get down and pet the dog. Not quite - doggie wants to play with you, as in, use you as a toy! So great to see Ms. Boidee, though. One bad thing was that Amanda kept calling her by her new teacher's name - both are 'B' names - shoot! Hopefully it didn't hurt Ms. Boidee's feelings, although she did sort of kid Amanda a little bit about it.

Ok, flashback a week prior and we were in Kansas to visit Aunt Patty & co. We hadn't been down for awhile, and that weekend happened to be their little town's festival weekend, Kountry Klatter. It was a nice, hot weekend, and we had a great time. Amanda made a chalk picture in front of the library (you would think she'd have won a prize, considering her aunt/godmother was judging the age groups, wouldn't you??? Just kidding..), did some crafts, got to sit in the front of a fire truck:

Ride a train several times (not to mention hang out with cousin Abby and Abby's friends):

and play on a big air obstacle course/slide with cousin Brittany. Good times!

Later, Abby showed me her progress with her new instrument, my old flute:

She's really doing well - good job, Abby!

It was a fun weekend. They had a parade on Sunday, so we brought home a big sackful of candy.

We got to see Josh a little bit, although he mostly hung out with his friends. Saturday night, Brittany had a babysitting job and Amanda & I went along. Amanda played with the couple's 4-yr-old, and they had a good time. I think her name was Hailey. She was great, in that she didn't really let Amanda boss her around too much. At one point, Brittany was taking care of Hailey's little brother and the two girls were taking turns performing for me. It was so funny, Hailey would introduce Amanda, "And now, Amanda is going to sing a song for you. Let's hear it, Amanda!" and then a flourish with her arm for Amanda to come and take center stage. Amanda would sing a made-up song, like "The witch in my heart" (the Wizard of Oz was on), and I'd do the obligatory clapping, and then Amanda would introduce Hailey's song and say something like, "Take it away, Hailey". Such seasoned professionals! Too funny.

They had prize drawings all weekend for kids and adults, and the kids' chances were 4/$1, so I bought $3's worth. Midafternoon Saturday, after I had taken Amanda to Patty's house for a nap (due to her being naughty and sassy to me), Abby came home and told us Amanda had won a prize and we were supposed to get up there quickly before it was gone (you got to choose from the prizes that were left if you won). Amanda was awake, so I got her shoes on and we hustled the two blocks uptown. There was a table of kids' bike helmets and a few other prizes I can't remember. I asked them again how it worked and they said we just picked whatever we wanted, "And we suggest you pick the large one on the end!" That prize was a cute little blue girls' bike! They were so excited for her to win the bike. Abby showed me a gift bag with some girly bracelets, etc, and I told her not to let Amanda see it! Last thing I needed was for her to want the sack with trinkets when she could have the bike! She was excited about the bike, too, and then the people in the community building said they didn't feel right about her leaving with a bike and not a helmet, so I picked out a new pink helmet which came with elbow and knee pads! So great, since she's been worried about getting hurt after she scraped her knee riding on her birthday.

Oh yeah, I guess I did mention in a previous blog that Uncle Keith & I had put new training wheels on the bike she had. Yes, she had a bike, but the Kansas folks were so excited to have her win the bike, I hated to say, "Well, she already has one", plus the one she has is older and a bit big for her, so what the heck. Now she has two bikes. Here she is on her new bike (this was when we were back at our house), decked out in her new helmet and pads (the helmet is on just for show - I hadn't sized it correctly yet, so she actually wore her old helmet when she was riding). So cute!