Valentine's Party

I love going to holiday parties at Karsten's school. Unfortunately, I had to miss his Christmas party but I felt super guilty so that won't be happening again!! It's so fun to see him interact with his friends and to learn more about the friends we hear about every day. It quickly becomes apparent where he picked up some actions, both good and bad.

After bringing the healthy snack to the Halloween and Christmas party, we were ready to bring the sweet treat to the Valentine's party.  We made chocolate dipped marshmellows with Valentine sprinkles.  I had heart picks to put in the marshmellows, but I didn't get a picture of that.  Oops!


I arrived a few minutes early and got to hear a Valentine story.  It amazes me how his teacher, Mrs. H, has such great control over the class.  They were all sitting so quietly - criss cross applesauce spoons in the bowl (aka - sit cross legged with your hands in your lap).


Let the festivities begin.  Earlier in the morning, they got to hand out their Valentine cards to each other.  So, they had already seen all of the goodies they would get in their bag.


These were the Valentine's that Karsten gave his friends. I can't claim the cute monster design, Jenn did a quick search and found these printables. The googly eyes formed a little ring the kids could wear.
 

But the kids were too excited by all of the candy to spend much time with the Valentine's that didn't have any candy.


Karsten was at the special helper table today because his friend Jaxon chose him to sit there with him.


We managed to get a picture together before I headed back to work and he went to music class. It was a fun party - can't wait for the Easter party!

More snow!

When we came out of church on Sunday, it was snowing!  We were surprised because we weren't expecting the snow.  After a brief quiet time for Karsten, he got to go outside and 'help' Scott shovel the driveway yet again.

I think Karsten enjoyed having Scott all to himself for a while.  He sledded while Scott cleared the driveway.


But Scott managed to take a few breaks and have fun sledding.




He even got on the sled - I admit, I wished I was bundled up playing outside with them!


It was a short hill - we need to get our sled out on a real hill!


Snow much fun!


On the first 'snow day', we put food coloring in water balloons and stuck them outside.  I saw it on Pinterest and they are supposed to trun out like giant marbles once you take the balloons off.  Since it had been too cold to go outside and see the marbles, they had a chance to REALLY freeze.


The green dye didn't make it all the way through this one, but it caused a cool effect.


You can see the little frozen droplets of water inside the balloon.


And what better way to warm up from playing in the snow than with hot chocolate!

Cool dude - and his sidekick

I wanted to get a picture of Karsten in his leather coat because I think he looks so adorable and grown up.  I asked him to stop moving and look at me.  As soon as I said this, Liam ran over and stood next to Karsten.

Coloring

We have two budding artists at our house.  Liam has watched Karsten color and draw more recently and has decided that he likes to color too!  Now, Liam sometime likes to color on things other than paper (counters, desks, coasters), but we're working on that.

He uses his left hand and right hand interchangably.  Just when I thought he was consistenly usig his left hand, today he is using his right.  So, we'll see which he favors over time.


As long as he's having fun with his creations, that's all that matters!


I wish I had those amazing eyelashes.


Coloring is very serious business.


I have a feeeling we'll have lots of masterpieces to decorate our home.

Opening Ceremonies

On Thursday night, I told Karsten all about the Olympics. We talked about the different sports, the opening ceremonies and medals.  The medals were most interesting to him and he grabbed his soccer medal and asked when he could watch people get medals like him.

I was surprised to see that events were on Thursday night and not the opening ceremonies.  So, we watched some skiing, skating and got in the Olympic spirit.

When the opening ceremonies happened on Friday evening, we were ready.  The boys thought their light sabers worked just as well as the flags the athletes were carrying into the stadium.




After seeing the McDonald's commercial where the athletes bite their medal, Karsten asked why they bit their medal, then gave it a try with his medal.


Over the next two weeks, we'll spend lots of time watching figure skating, skiing of all sorts, and many sports we would never dream of watching if it wasn't the Olympics.  But, that's the fun of the Olympics - I can't wait!

Wordless Wednesday - Liam says Hi!

Snow Day!

The weather says we're supposed to get 7-10 inches of snow, so school was cancelled for Scott and Karsten, I worked from home and Liam stayed home too.  When I got up, there was no new snow on the ground, so I thought about going into the office for a few hours.  Then I realized that was silly because I would spend so long on the road driving home when the roads got bad.

Snow started falling heavily around 8:30am and continued all day.  The boys wanted to play outside around lunchtime, but we convinced them to wait until later when there would be more snow.  When they got up from naps, we bundled them up and headed outside.

Isn't he a precious snow bunny?


Liam wasn't so sure about the snow.  He kept saying 'no, cooooold, no, no' then he would back up further into the garage.


In contrast, Karsten ran for a snowdrift and jumped right in.  I wanted to be right behind him, but I wisely remembered that I had my camera on.


Our driveway is pretty steep so we thought we might be able to sled down it.  No such luck - we only went a few feet before we stopped.


Liam eventually came out of the garage to tell me that he wanted his bike.  I started to explain why he couldn't ride his bike in the snow, then realized there wasn't a good reason why he couldn't.


Scott and his shoveling 'helpers'


Karsten wanted to slide down the snowy slide, so we went out to the backyard.  Liam wasn't interested in going down the slide, he just wanted to brush the snow off the swingset.  That was a busy job given all the snow we had.


Adding more snow to the slide


There he goes!


He kept asking Scott to add more and more snow so he could do it over and over.


We eventually headed inside because we were all frozen.  I think this much snow will be here for a while, so we'll get to play again soon!