Outside Classroom

I know we are going to be spending a lot of time outside this spring and summer, so I want there to be plenty of things outside to entertain the girls.  We already had a small chalkboard outside, but I really wanted to do more with this idea.  So now we have three large, framed chalkboards outside! 

We aren't quite through with the third one and we are also planning on hanging another board (same size) to be our paint board.  The girls will be able to hang their papers on this board and paint away...and the mess will not be inside the house!

The chalkboards will be great as we play school and have an outside classroom for the girls! 

Now we just have to do some landscaping.  For the landscaping, my plans are to plant flower seeds (with the help of the girls), so that these flowers can be their flowers that they plant, water and watch them grow.  I think Aubrey will expecially enjoy this. 

We are so lucky to have such a handy husband and dad!  Look at the cute flowers he made to hang on the fence too!  The flowers are just particle board that was left over at one of his job sites and I painted them with paint we already had in the garage.  He also made a mud box for us to put our shoes in before coming in from outside.  It's made of particle board (which means it was free).  I've painted it and plan to put all of our footprints inside it.  I'm trying to get up the nerve to actaully do this with the girls.

Hopefully we can accomplish this...more pictures to come of all of our projects!

Our Little Pianist!

We got this cute little piano mainly for Aubrey and Anna this past Christmas (did I mention we got it for free from a friend of Danny's sister), but Alexandra seems to enjoy it more than them!  She will crawl into the playroom, pull herself up in front of the piano and bang away!  Music to my ears!

Carrots, Anyone?

There are a lot of lessons learned when you have small (and I'm sure big) kids.  Another lesson learned for me...never leave food on the table unattended!  I was feeding Alexandra her carrots and Aubrey started yelling for me to help her in the bathroom.  I got up to go help Aubrey and when I returned (just a couple of minutes later), this is what I found.

Anna quickly took advantage of the fact that Alexandra's food was on the table and Mommy wasn't there!  Alexandra is normally not a messy eater, so I had not even put a bib on her.  Needless to say, Alexandra won't be wearing this shirt anymore because the carrot stains did not come out!

I think Alexandra enjoyed it as much as Anna!  I didn't get any pictures of Anna because I didn't want her to think what she did was funny or cute.  This would only lead to more attempts to feed Alexandra!

Anna's First Black Eye!

This picture was actually taken about 5 days after she first got the black eye.  Typically Aubrey is the accident proned child who runs into things all the time, but this time it was Anna!

Danny and I were out for the night at a wedding shower and some wonderful friends of ours, Joy and Andrew along with their little boy Gabe, offered to come and keep the girls for us.  The girls and Gabe were watching a movie in the playroom and Anna turned and ran into the corner of the door on the TV armoire.  

It looks a lot worse than I'm sure the accident really was.  I'm really surprised that she bruised this much.  It has been two weeks now and you can still see some bruising under her eye.  It has taken forever to go away.  I hope this is the first and very last black eye she ever has!

Anna loves her Cody!

Tight Spaces

One morning, I couldn't find Alexandra, but I could hear her.  I looked over in the corner of the living room where her toy basket is, but still didn't see her.  It sounded like she was behind the couch???  So I got down on my knees and looked under the sofa and there whe was! 

I guess she found a shortcut!

She looks happy in this picture, but about 5 seconds later, she started screaming becuase she couldn't get out from behind the sofa!

She has not attempted this trick agian!

Razors, Knives and Ladders

Doesn't sound like a good title for a post about children, does it?  Well, we are quickly learning that we are going to have to do a lot more child proofing to our house with Anna than we did with Aubrey.  Anna is now tall enough to open doors!  I always keep our bathroom door closed just so Anna can't get in there without me knowing.  I discovered her new found skill of opening doors a little too late. 

First, she went into my bathroom, opened the cabinet (that has a ponytail holder around the knobs so that she can't get in) and somehow managed to get her hands on a bag of disposable razors that were in the very back of the cabinet.  She then took the bag of razors to the playroom to play.  When I discovered her, the razors were all out of the bag, she had taken the top off of one and had cut her thumb in two places.  She wasn't crying, she was just holding her bloody finger up for me to see.  Naturally, I freaked out.  The cuts were not too bad.  Once sliced the corner of her fingernail off and the other scraped a small top layer of skin off.  I could not get her thumb to stop bleeding!  Finally after about 30 minutes, the bleeding slowed down enough for me to put bandaids on her finger.

Secondly, with her new height, she can now open drawers in the kitchen.  What was the first drawer she opened?  The silverware drawer with steak knives.  She got a knife out of the drawer (all while I was on the phone) and was scraping it all over the front of a kitchen cabinet!  Luckily she didn't do too much damage to the cabinet and I was able to get the knife from her before she damaged herself!

The ladder incidenct actually happened a couple of weeks ago when we accidentally left the door to the bathroom open.  I had the ladder in the bathroom hanging drapes and left it up so that Danny could finish hanging them when he got home.  After he got home, Anna went missing, so we went searching and this is where we found her. 

Lego Castles

Everything these days is about princesses and castles, so naturally, Aubrey wants to build castles with her legos.  Here are two of her masterpieces!

So this is the one that Daddy helped her build...

and this is the one that Mommy helped her build. 

Can you tell we have a construction guy living with us?  I was going for tall and Danny was going for nice and sturdy castle!