Kristin's 30th Birthday Celebration

For my 30th birthday, Drew planned a great, fun-filled weekend!  He invited my parents, and my sister's family to join us for a Cincinnati Reds baseball game.  Then after the game, my parents would take Jenna and Grant back to their house while Drew, Hannah, and I stayed at a hotel in the area and did some shopping on Saturday.  Unfortunately, the weather did not agree with Drew's plans, so we had to split up the weekend and postpone the baseball game for another day.  Drew, Hannah, and I still went down to Cinci that weekend, and had a great time with lots of shopping and uninterrupted adult conversations!  :) 

The baseball game was rescheduled for May 10th and, once again, the weather was looking "iffy."  The forecast called for lots of rain and possibly thunderstorms.  Just as we got to our seats it started lightly raining, so we just moved back a few rows until we were under the awning.  The rain didn't last long and there weren't any thunderstorms, so the weather turned out to be pretty nice!  The game was a lot of fun and even Jenna and Grant really enjoyed it.  Grant was mesmerized by the fire that would blow out of two torches whenever the other team struck out.  And of course, what's a baseball game without food?!  We enjoyed the $1 hotdogs, popcorn, soft pretzels, and ice-cream.  Hannah did alright, but this was pre-pacifier, so she required a lot of walking and bouncing.  Drew was GREAT though and held her the majority of the game, so I could enjoy my birthday gift.  What a great guy I have!!  :)

Daddy and his Hannah

Jenna eating (and wearing) her ice-cream

Grant using two hands to stuff popcorn in his mouth.  Ha!

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Daddy with his two big kids

Love my sister!  Isn't she just beautiful?!

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Kelley bought some cotton candy and let Jenna and Grant try it for the first time.  I was shocked to find that neither of them like it.  What kids don't like cotton candy?!  :)  I'm not complaining though.

Jenna loves her Aunt Kelley

View of the field - I promise we did watch some of the game amid all the picture-taking and chatting.  :)

The boys

The girls - minus Hannah.  She was asleep in her car seat.

At the end of the game, they had an AMAZING fireworks show.  We thought they would just set off a few fireworks and that would be it, but it was unbelievable!  It was even better than Troy's 4th of July fireworks.  SO GOOD!  The kids were mesmerized by them.

Drew and Hannah enjoying the show

 

What a great 30th birthday celebration!!  Thanks Drew for planning this and making my birthday extra special!  And thanks Dad, Mom, Kell, and Brian for joining us!

Week 27 - Letter W

Wow, have I gotten away from blogging and from doing school with Jenna.  The warmer weather makes me want to spend every minute outdoors with the kids as opposed to inside doing school.  So we've taken a break for a few weeks and have just started getting back into it this week.  I'm determined to finish the alphabet - we only have a few letters left! 

BEFORE we took our hiatus from school, we had done letter W - I just hadn't blogged about it.

Our memory verse that week was 1 John 4:19 - "We love Him because He first loved us." 

Some of our W activities...

Wikki Stix

Watermelon Lacing Card

Size Sort

Letter Maze

Prewriting Practice

Color Puzzles

Phonics Page

Number Writing

Letter Writing

Letter Hunt

Number matching file folder game

Watermelon coloring page

Watermelon Shape Puzzles - Jenna wanted to put them together like a pizza

Patterns

I just had her put the watermelon slices in order by the number of seeds.

Do-a-dot page

Cutting Page

Cut and paste - I thought she did a great job!

Grant likes to pull out some file folder games while we do school.  He has a few favorites - one of which is the snake game.  He has to match the colored grass to the same colored snake.  I attached velcro pieces so he can stick them on without them moving or falling off.

Watermelon puzzle

For her ABC book, she colored the "W" like a watermelon with a little bit of green on one side and red on top with some black seeds.

Letter W pattern blocks

She made the letter W on the geoboard all by herself!

Then we added the W to our coconut tree!

So of course we had to have some watermelon this week!  It's one of the kids' favorite snacks.

As Grant would say...DEE-WISHUS!!

They pretty much devoured this container of watermelon.

Hannah 3 months old

Happy 3 months, Hannah!  

Hannah has found her hands and it looks like she's trying to reach for objects - or at least move her arm in the direction of objects above her. 

I did take dairy out of my diet and we were seeing a decrease in her fussiness; however, we didn't know whether that was because of the lack of dairy or just because she was nearing the 3-month mark and many times early fussiness can start to improve around 3-4 months of age.  So the doctor suggested I bring dairy back in my diet and see whether it bothered her...and it didn't. Yay!  So it doesn't look like she's allergic to cow's milk. 

Her fussiness has gotten MUCH better (although she did cry the entire day on Mother's Day - ha!).  We've been able to lay her on the ground more and she's even fallen asleep numerous times by herself when laying on her playmat - amazing!  Neither Jenna nor Grant would do that!  Just this past week she's finally started taking a pacifier and that has made a world of difference.  She seems more content.

Hannah also sleeps about 12 hours at night.  Again, AMAZING!  Jenna and Grant weren't sleeping through the night until 8 months of age and even then we considered sleeping through the night them sleeping consistently from midnight to 5am!  ;)  Thank you, Hannah!!

 Here are all three kids at three months of age....

Jenna - 3 months old

Hannah - 3 months old

Grant - 3 months old