Busy Bodies

We've been up to a lot this summer. I've been trying to do more creative activities for Elena. She has fun, and she's able to do a lot more now. 

This was our ivory soap experiment. Ivory soap in the microwave. It's actually really cool.

Samuel finger painting

We made "Frozen" slime. Elena made cookies with it.

We made a pirate ship. She likes "Jake and the Neverland Pirates," so she often says things like, "Yo ho, mateys, away!" and "Oh, coconuts!"

The kids bathed the baby doll

 Elena played with dinosaurs; Samuel wasn't interested for long.

We built a marble run! We used pom poms, though, so Samuel wouldn't choke. He still puts everything in his mouth. I'll be happy when he stops doing that.

Playdough

Elena wanted to show me how well she can balance. She took some strange positions.

He's my little man.

They made sun catchers

 
And kinetic sand might be my new favorite thing. It feels awesome! Samuel was totally amused for an hour and a half, and Elena played with it for over 2 hours.

When it's super hot outside we try to find fun stuff to do inside, and I'm trying to keep them busy enough to not want to watch tv as much. Elena asks me every day when she'll be able to start at her new preschool. We decided to change schools for next year (even though the preschool she attended last year was great) because our pastor's wife has her own program that's awesome and more affordable. Elena met her, saw the school, and can't wait. I'm excited for her. She is so social now and loves playing with other kids.

Elena is 4!

I almost cried today, because in the midst of celebrating Elena's big day, it hit me that she really is 4 years old. I look at pictures of her when she was younger and I'm just blown away by how she's grown. In the last year she grew just shy of 3.5 inches. That's crazy! My little girl is on the tail end of the toddler stage.


How does it go from this

to this?

And in one short school year, from this

to this?

It all goes too fast.

My little sweetheart woke up to balloons. She helped bake a chocolate cake yesterday, and she got to frost it herself today. We went out for frozen yogurt after I picked her up from school, then we came home and she opened a present. Then when Jorge got home we sang her happy birthday, had some cake, and then went to Chucky Cheese for games and pizza. We figured that it was okay to have cake before food today; it is her day, after all! Here are some pictures of her special day.
 

 

Her birthday party is in a week and a half, so she'll get two celebrations.

I feel so blessed to have this little girl.

All About Elena

Elena is my sweetheart. She just finished her first year of preschool. She will be doing 3 weeks of the summer program at preschool, though, because she loves playing with other kids. When she had 3 weeks off for winter break she was so anxious to go back and play with everyone, so I thought that 3 months off would be too much. 

She is kind and loving, cuddly, funny, creative, imaginative, and always likes to try her best. She loves to laugh, and she loves her daddy.

She cares about other people and animals, and she asks at bedtime who she can pray for.

The other day when we were outside Jorge got rid of an ant (Elena is scared of bugs, including ants!) and she asked where it was. Jorge told her it was gone, that it had died. "It died?" she asked. "Don't worry," Jorge said, "it probably just went to heaven." She replied, "No, it's not supposed to die. God is supposed to take us to heaven when it's time, but it's not time for the ant to die." I'm amazed by the conversations we have with her sometimes.

She loves to color, and is a bit of a perfectionist. Every time she comes out of the lines she has to inform me. 

Sometimes she's willing to smile for a picture. 

She's silly.

Here she's trying to get some dinosaurs out of ice eggs I made for her. She used salt and water. This age is so fun; she gets such pleasure out of simple things. The word "activity" brings such wonder and joy to her. I'll tell her "We're gonna do an activity," and she gets so excited and anxious to start whatever I have planned for her. A lot of these activities are done during Samuel's naptime because they're a little too advanced for a one-year-old. Sometimes they'll do them together, but he'll start wandering off after a little while.

She loved the tunnels that the salt made in the ice.

She loves playing with her toys, and she liked playing with the dinosaur babies and making sure they were taken care of. She put me on babysitter-duty a few times.

And of course she had to show them to her daddy.

I'm so thankful to be caring for such a thoughtful, loving, fun little girl. And she's growing so fast, I'm amazed.

Backyard Fun

Have I said yet that I love spring? We've been outside so much, and the kids love it. I've been trying to do fun stuff to keep them amused. We've been playing a lot with water. The water table is filled up every day. They love to play with it, and it keeps them cool.

And they've been playing with the water ball. Samuel mostly just stands next to it trying to catch the water in his mouth.

 

And we've been playing with ice lately, too. I froze a bunch of "treasures" in a container. I made one for each of the kids, but it kept Elena busy for a lot longer. Samuel wandered off after awhile, and then he came back occasionally. Here's Elena trying to dig out some treasure. There were buttons, beads, bracelets, gold coins, etc. 

I gave them salt and squirt bottles with water. We've done a few ice projects since this time, and we've learned that ice cream salt works better than table salt and is a lot more fun. 

Elena was so excited every time she got something out of the ice, and she's been carrying all the trinkets around for days now. Her jewelry box is now her treasure box.

One day I put mud in containers for them to play with.

 

The table looks pretty messy here, but the kids stayed surprisingly clean. Elena had no mud on her, and Samuel just had some smeared on his clothes, but I just stripped him down before going inside.

 And they play on the wiggle car. Elena loves it.

 

Our outdoor space has been great for them this year. Not long ago we had no lawn back there, and I can't imagine going back to that.

 

Auntie Amy's

Things have been a little busier than usual. The kids and I stayed at Amy's house for several days while we had people working on our house. The kids had a blast. Samuel loved the big dogs, and Elena especially liked having other kids in the house to play with. Samuel did pretty good with his naps while we were there; I was pleasantly surprised. He's still an amazing sleeper, but usually he has a hard time the first couple of naps when we're away from home. I didn't manage to get any pictures of the kids with Amy. Usually Jorge and I travel together, so I take a bunch of pictures while he's watching the kids. I realized when I was leaving we didn't take a lot of pictures and Amy didn't want to take any since she was still in her pajamas and without make-up. Next time . . . Here are some pictures of the kids that I managed to take.

Samuel loved this little chair in the kids' room.

 Elena found Mikayla's dress-up stuff and put on a ballerina outfit. So here she's a ballerina.

Luckily the kids did okay during the drive. I did stop on the way home because Samuel wasn't sleeping and he was super fussy and hungry. But it was okay. And it was so nice to have a long visit with Amy. Elena was looking forward to it for a long time.