Birthday Party!

Wyatt wanted a construction cake, and Lillian wanted flowers and butterflies, so I did my best.

Fruit kabobs for snack!

Balloon painting!

What party is complete without playing with balloons?!

Teddy Bear sandwiches.

Coloured cream cheese rolls and bagels

Hope everybody had a great party.  It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun too!

Lots of pictures!!

Picnic Time!

New play dough.

Pecky and Checky, our chickens.

Another picnic.

Our new toy cat!!!!

Everyone loves when Grace brings her face paints!

Just vegging!

Big thank you to Oden for bringing your chicks to show us!

Being silly with the doll clothes!

Ali, Bronwynn and Lillian like to play hair dresser at nap time.  Ali put every clip and elastic into Lillian's hair for this do!

Oden's chicks are so cute.

Thanks to Bronwynn for bringing Rosey, the hamster, in for the day.

In this picture, you can see the caterpillars last molt (old skin) beside the crysalis.  We are still waiting for the butterfly to come out.

Anthony is such a great helper this summer.  Here he's pushing Oden on the tire swing.  He also showed all the older children how to get on and hold on to ride the tire swing.  Love having him home from school:)

Bronwynn likes to ride Lillian's bike, and Lillian loves getting a ride on her rack.

Bird nest

If you look closely, you can see a mother bird sitting on her nest.

3 of her 5 eggs hatched.

We enjoyed peeking at the baby birds.  Until one day, Lillian, Wyatt and I checked on them, and they left their nest.  That afternoon their mom was frantically calling for them, but we could not find them and they did not come back.  Hopefully they were ready to leave the nest and we just gave them the little nudge they needed!!!

Our feild trip adventure!

We ended up having a beautiful day for a picnic and a walk to the school.  On our way to the school the wheel fell off my double stroller. That was okay, we just moved Eddie and AJ to the wagon and Grace and I carried our stuff. I forgot that this winter, we bent the frame of the wagon. Will had fixed it, but said it might not be very strong. Well we got quite a bit closer to the school then the frame on the wagon bent again, and we had to abandon it on the side of the road too. Lillian, Anthony and Bronwynn helped us carry the sand toys, and AJ walked the rest of the way with us. Edison walked part way, and Grace carried him the other part.  Luckily Grace's mom came to our rescue!  She picked up our stroller, and dropped off my bike trailer/stroller for us, and Grace's Papa bent the wagon back so we were able to limp home our supplies!
At the school, we had a blast on the climbers and in the sand. Please check back after the weekend for photos!
Thanks to the Reid family for your help today!

from caterpillar to butterfly

Anthony found another caterpillar on Tuesday. When we showed it to Bella yesterday, she said, "it's cocooning". She was right! Today we can see the caterpillars old skin - it molted for the last time! Now we can see the chrysalis. We are excited to learn about metamorphosis. Bronwynn is so excited that the caterpillar is making a racoon!! We are reading, 'From caterpillar to butterfly' by Deborah Heiligman. Stay tuned for butterfly updates.

caterpillar s

We are continuing working on elect skill 5.3 (5.2 for infants) fine motor skills. For the older children we used scissors again to cut strips of paper, then we taped it to a toilet paper roll. We used a hole punch to make a hole for antennaes with pipe cleaners. Then we used glue and pompoms and googly eyes.  They turned out cute!
The infants have been using an old Kleenex box and putting toys in it and taking them out of it. Meal time is also great for us to practice picking up small and large pieces of food!

swimming lessons

Anthony, Lillian and Bronwynn had a great morning for swimming lessons! They all did really well both while in the pool, and while waiting for the others to finish.  We got back to daycare to find some sleepy boys who were just waking up and ready to play outside with us!  Everyone had fun on the bikes today!  The older children helped make some cookies for snack tomorrow.  I felt a lot more awake/energetic this afternoon. I think relaxing by the pool on Tuesday mornings will be good for me!