Marlee

Marlee is now 4. A month later and here is her birthday picture...

She requested a snowman party. Thankfully we had enough snow to go sledding. I didn't take my camera sledding, so I have no pictures of that. I also have my hat on, because after sledding for a few hours, I wasn't about to take it off since everyone came straight to our house afterwards for cake. :)

At 4, she is smarter than ever. :) She loves soccer. She tried volleyball, but wasn't super into it. She says she likes it now, but a couple times during practice she wanted to go home, and we didn't end up going back after one practice where we left early because I was fighting her to get onto the court. She loves to be outdoors. She is really into "exercising" with me. I started going to running club, and while we are out running, the kids are playing and they were having "races". It cracks me up! She knows all of her upper case letters, and their sounds. And most of her lower case letters (with the exception of d, b, q, p) which are pretty standard to get mixed up. We are working on number recognition, and we count all the time. She still skips a few in the teens, but she enjoys it. She is really into Daniel tigers neighborhood right now, and syd the science kid, so sometimes we "do school" and do different things. We also have done a science experiment...what dissolves and what does not with things around my house. She really enjoyed it. We will have to do it a few more times since that was the first time she has ever heard the word dissolve. She made predictions, and then we tested it. Afterwards she really enjoyed dumping all the water into different jars.

She is such a good big sister! She always wants to help Brekken (well almost always!). And she loves to show him new things, and play with him. She also loves to pull him around and try to make him do whatever she wants him to do. lol

All in all, we love her lots and lots!

Marlee's 4 year old questions

1.     What is your favorite color? pink

2.     What is your favorite toy? dinosaurs

3.     What is your favorite fruit? blueberries

4.     What is your favorite show? Dinosaur train, Daniel Tigers Neighborhood

5.     What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Yummy yummy banana bread

6.     What is your favorite thing to wear? Jeans and a shirt and socks

7.     What is your favorite game? Hide and seek, and tag

8.     What is your favorite snack? watermelon

9.     What is your favorite animal? Giraffe and elephant

10.            What is your favorite song? Jingle bells

11.            What is your favorite story? The big snowball fight

12.            Who is your best friend? Addie and Aurora

13.            What is your favorite cereal? Fruit loops

14.            What do you like to do when you go outside? Play soccer

15.            What is your favorite drink? Punch and lemonade and milk

16.            What is your favorite holiday? Christmas Eve

17.            What do you like to take to bed with you? My new little dragon

18.            What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Yummy pancakes

19.            What is your favorite thing to eat for dinner? Yummy chili

20.   What do you want to be when you grow up? A girl basketball player, because I don’t want to be in football because they tackle. I am not gonna be in football, I’m gonna be in basketball.

Kids..

Brekken turned 11 months near the end of January, and Marlee turned 4 a few days after. I can't believe I have a 4 year old! And that my baby is almost a year old. It's so crazy to me how time is just flying by!
Brekkens favorite word is no...and that is about the only word he says any more. Little turkey. He says mama and dada sometimes, as well as oh and he used to say hi, but I haven't heard that in a while. He crawls like a speed demon, and will walk if he can push something around...so some of his toys are bigger, and he will stand up and push them around while walking. He babbles all the time. He didn't inherit the quiet gene from his dad! He's gonna be a talker like Marlee and myself. :) He definitely tells me if he doesn't like something, by either screaming or crying. I think he is going to be harder to wean from nursing than Marlee. I had to go to Walmart last night to get diapers and they were still eating dinner when I left. Mike got him all ready for bed, and they were all playing just fine until I walked in. I tried to put some stuff away and he just followed me around crying until I sat down to nurse him. There are other times that I will have waited longer than I normally do (because we are either out and about or something else like that) and he will climb all over me, trying to eat my shirt. He reminds me of a little bird. It's cute! :)

Marlee...she is my big girl! She is usually so helpful! She likes to play with Brekken, although she has her moments of wanting nothing to do with him. She still loves dinosaurs, but I do see a little more "girly" side coming out of her. She now likes to play princess more, and twirl and dance. She has pretty much stopped taking naps now...which is a real bummer for me! She still has quiet time, because lets face it, every mom in the world needs a few minutes to themselves during the day.
She loves to go sledding, which is what we did for her party. It was a blast! We went a few days later with some friends and Marlee and her friend finally went down by themselves. She also learned how to go down a bigger slide at the park. It's cool to see her growing, learning and trying new things! She is really coming out of her shell!

I have an interview I want to do with her...and am hoping to get it done soon... :) Then I will post that too.

Halloween

I know this is late....but I finally got my pics off my camera. :)

Pumpkin carving...




Minnie Mouse
My little elephant


We packed a lot in, in a short amount of time...We went to a "carnival", came home at 4:30 ate pizza with Grandma and Grandpa, then went trick or treating from 5-6, came home, fed Brekken and took him to the babysitters...then went to watch the UW game, because amazingly they were here. Marlee loves UW. So we had fun. It was just a lot of business all at once. :)

Marlee loved trick or treating this year. And Brekken stayed home with Mike while I took her trick or treating. Amazingly it was a super nice evening so we didn't even have to wear coats...YAY!

A little mix up...

Marlee heard me talking to our neighbor on the phone the other afternoon. We were talking about how the kids should play together...either at her house or at ours...

I said "Oh yes, it doesn't matter to me which house, but Marlee's been dying to play with them for the whole week!" The conversation went on a few more minutes, and I think I may have said it again...randomly.

When I got off the phone Marlee came up to me and says "Mama, I'm dying?"
I said "What, no you're not dying! Why would you think that (clearly not thinking about my previous statement, and my mind was reeling!).
"Well, you said I was dying on the phone."
"Oh, I did say that didn't I. You are not dying. It's a phrase. But I meant excited. I should have said excited shouldn't I have?!"


Thankfully it didn't go much farther than that...but I just thought holy moly, I really need to pay attention to what I am saying! She was in the other room, so I didn't really think she was listening. :)

Beautiful!

Today, well actually this whole week has been beautiful! It's been in the 60's, which is awesome and oh so scary at the same time. But I guess we can't change how the climate is being affected by the world, (well we can IF everyone did something...but anyhow), so I try not to think about it. And just go with the flow.

I got to teach my class today, so we did scarecrows, and a Thanksgiving countdown chain. It was fun...I have no photos of it, but we essentially did this craft from No Time for Flash cards. And obviously just a chain of cut papers, and glue on one end. We also read two books...The Scarecrow boy (or something like that, and a countdown to Thanksgiving one. (I don't have them in front of me.)

Anyhow, afterwards, we met up with some friends at the park and took a lunch. I can't believe it was nice enough for us to do that...to be able to hang out in sweat shirts and have the kids play. We were there from about 10:45-2:00 it was so nice. We met some new friends also, which is awesome!!! I love meeting new people with kids Marlee's age. And actually I met this girl who her daughter is 4 (just turned 4) and then her other daughter is 9 months. Which is awesome!!!

Marlee has been really into wearing sunglasses lately. In fact we were at the park for about 2 hours and she comes up to me and says the sun was getting in her eyes, so she needed her glasses out of the truck. It cracked me up. And she has also been into wearing her hoodie with the hood up. So this is what she walks around looking like all the time...

 And this is her doing her pucker up face. She cracks me up! :)

And here is Brekken at the park.

While he can army crawl, he doesn't usually go far if we are outside. He was content to play with a toy, and a sippy cup for an hour or so. I also of course fed him, and when we had gotten there he was sleeping. We also tried the swing, and not thinking about it, I swung him a little hard, and he was done. I almost had a heart attack. But I was also swinging Marlee, so she was saying higher, higher, and I just started pushing both of them, while talking to a friend...yea. Mother of the year award right here. lol

doll houses...

I have been thinking about Christmas for a while now. I start thinking about it in about August...well the end of it anyways. I don't usually buy stuff, but I start browsing to see what I want to get the kids, and pricing things out, and start making lists of things I want to do/get for everyone. And I also start some of my hand made projects...and when you do handmade with two kids, you have to start early to get them finished in time! :)

Well, I found this doll house probably in August, on our FB kid swap. If you've looked into doll houses, they are not cheap. Mike thinks I still got ripped off, but then we went to Walmart today, I showed him that the one they had there was $90. And I got mine for cheaper. There are a few little scuff marks that I couldn't get off, but really, Marlee is 3 and doesn't care if it's used, or if it's brand new.

Well, I had planned on having that be her big present for Christmas. And then a couple weeks ago, my mom came and she saw it. She never asked about it after that day, but I knew she knew about it. And has probably spied it a few times since then. Mike and I talked about it, and decided to give it to her now. Today was the day. I went downstairs, brought it up, and cleaned it. She played with it from 9-6. I had to force her to go outside for a little while (which is really unusual-especially if Mike's out there).

We had some shopping to do also, so when we got back, she was excited to get to play with her dolls again. I am super excited she likes it so much, but kinda surprised she didn't play with her dinosaurs at all today. She has been a dinosaur girl for so long, it throws me off not to have her play with them. Mike even tried to have her dinosaurs use the house along with the people, and she told him that was not okay.

Brekken even likes the doll house. He was trying to see inside there, and Marlee would talk to him from one side and he would laugh and laugh and laugh. And she would start laughing too. I am excited to see the interaction between the two of them! It's been so fun!

And I even got some of it on video...I swear they don't do as much once I get the camera out, and you can't see their faces very well, but it cracks me up!

Are you thinking about Christmas yet?

school

I have mentioned before that I am not going to put Marlee in preschool. At least not this year. Probably not ever, unless I decide to put her in public school in kindergarten. I am still on the fence about that.

Anyhow, we are doing some "school" over here. This week I found some printables from 1+1+1=1. We were doing a letter a week, and then life got crazy around here and we didn't do anything for a while. We went to the pumpkin patch last weekend which was a lot of fun. So I thought we would have a little theme of pumpkins this week. Carissa had some stuff on pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns, so Marlee got to learn a new word. Last weekend, I had asked her if she wanted to carve them, and she said no. Then yesterday after we did some of this stuff, she asked if we could put faces on our pumpkins. It was cool to see that. We will be carving them with Daddy home, so he can help. :)

Marlee is super into cutting right now. She's not so into coloring, but cutting and gluing are her favorites at the moment. And we also got to do math with these, which is always a plus. I have a harder time doing math with her than reading just because my brain doesn't really work like that I guess.

Anyhow, here are the sheets we did. We also played a dice game, that was graphing the other day, but don't have photos of that. :)

 I had to help her draw their mouths...but she really enjoyed this. She also really liked me making one of the legs, and her making the other. :)

park fun

I am trying to suck it up and play outside more. It's not that I don't like being outside, it's just that my friend who always went for walks with me and my BFF moved. And once you get used to walking, playing at the park, and all those fun things with someone, it's so much harder to go by yourself. Some days I am really good at it, others not so much.

The other morning I made plans with some friends to have coffee at the park so our kids could play, and we could still have time to chat, without having to keep our kids in check the whole time we were at a resteraunt having coffee. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Yep, that's how I roll. :)

Anyhow, I didn't take my camera, but have been trying to take a picture every day of things we do, or in general...so I used my cell.

His fingers are super dirty from playing in the wood chips. Thankfully he doesn't really try to eat the wood chips. But he sure does have fun! Marlee and her friend, were running around like crazy kids, so I didn't get any more pictures of her. :)

This past week

Of course there was the crazy aspect of the week, that I just wrote about, but then there were a lot of fun things. Mike was off all week, and we got to hang out at home. It was nice. We got some things done around the house that we needed to do, and also did some things I have been wanting to do...:)

We had our first snow of the season last weekend. So we were all bundled up and outside at 8am last Saturday. If I haven't mentioned it before, Marlee's favorite book is Snow Day. We have been listening to Christmas music (well she has in her room), since last Christmas, and we have been reading snow day since this summer. She has been super excited for the snow. :)

So we had a snowball fight, made snow angels, and they rode in the sled...

Then Marlee and I went to get our hair cut...

And now we match...we both have bangs. :)

Then we got our family pictures. I am so bummed that i completely forgot to get pictures of just Mike and I. I don't usually pay for pictures...and the one time I did, I forgot to do that. I even thought about it before and had a whole list of things I wanted, but then some stuff happened and they were post poned,. and then I forgot. :(

Then we went fishing. We had a lot of fun. Although we didn't catch fish, and it was freezing that day.

 The only thin we caught was this big stick. lol

Then my sister came and we went to the pumpkin patch.

 My children don't cooperate very well with pictures of them together. Brekken was interested in the dirt, and Marlee wanted to go back to where her cousins were, because they were picking out tiny pumpkins. :)

 Then we went shopping and found this cute hat. :)

Marlee 3 and a 1/2ish...

Marlee is a little over 3 1/2. We are on the down hill slide to 4, and I keep thinking, where did the time go? How do we almost have a 4 year old? It's crazy to me. It's fun to watch her grow and learn, but then there are things about the world that I want to keep her from also. I don't even have to go into that, because if you're a parent, I am sure you have the same worries.

Anyhow, she has been super cute lately, and I am going to try to remember all of the cute things I wanted to share... :)

The other day we were talking about babies, and what all of her babies names are...(at least the ones we were playing with), and she said some name, and Mike pops up how about Barry Mannalo (I have no idea how to spell his name), and Marlee says, well how about Bunny Rabbit. I have no idea why I thought this was so hilarious, but we all cracked up.

She has been using the word enjoy a lot lately, but she doesn't quite understand the meaning. I can't even think of a sentence how she uses it wrong, but it cracks me up.

The other day she told me: Mamma get off your phone because  me and Daddy and Brekken want you to hang out and spend some energy with us.

She is a huge football fan. I mean huge. She's not my daughter....she is def. her daddy's daughter! :) We went to support our local high school on Friday night. She was so excited to be there, she even cheered for the wrong team when they would score. We went to the opposing teams side for a few minutes because our stadium doesn't have a ton of seating now that they switched places, and it was kinda crowded on the other side. But then we found the people we had went with (the guys took the kids, and we walked up there), but they didn't go together so we were all split up. So while we were walking on the track over to the other side, there was some pop corn on there. Marlee says to me, Mama, I wish we brought some popcorn! I said Well, maybe next time we could get some because I don't have any money today. She of course says "I know Mama, that's okay." Silly girl.

She learned yesterday how to do a somersault all by herself. She is pretty proud of herself!  I was going to put her in dance but decided that I didn't want to spend the money at the first dance studio, and the other one is almost doubled in price, so we are opting out this year. I am going to enjoy one more leisure year, and of course in the spring she will play soccer. And apparently t-ball, because her and Mike have been practicing, and it's her new favorite thing. She can throw the ball pretty far, and she can bat really well. I was hoping that would be one sport we could skip...and maybe later in life we can, but we will probably do it next summer.

We are the only ones of our friends who isn't in preschool. All of my SAHM friends and all of my working mom friends have their kids in preschool. Since I was a teacher, I opted out of this...but Marlee has been talking about school a lot. So now, we do "home school." She gets all excited because it's our time to read, play games, and practice things like counting, abc's and rhyming. She loves to rhyme.  We were going to make an alphabet book with some coloring pages, but she's not that into coloring right now, so I think we will start doing the letter crafts that I have seen on some blogs. She really likes to do projects. And we are going to really start focusing on counting to 20. She goes all the way excepts she still skips 13 and 15 for some reason. Once she gets counting them down, we may start doing some number recognition, but for now, we are just playing...and having some exposure to all of these things. :)

Daddy's little helper

Marlee is a Daddy's girl. All the way. If he's outside she's outside, if he's watching sports, she is too. They like to pick on me, and play silly "tricks" on me. They are two peas in a pod.







They were trying to figure out what was wrong with our automatic sprinklers...and they found it...the pipe is busted. :( Maybe next year we can fix it. She wanted to be right there with him, skirt and all. :)

June

Playing catch up. I thought I had put my pictures on the computer last month, but then I was going back to figure out when I took a particular picture, and it was in June. The middle of June. Ack!

We were all dressed up for something...in the middle of June. I have no idea what now...maybe breakfast with Mike's parents for his dad's birthday, but really I am not sure.







These are typical, I guess when you have more than one person in a picture. I really wish Brekken's eyes would have been open in the first picture because it is such a good picture of Marlee.

I'm going to play catch up for a while...we are now in relaxing mode of summer...all of Aug. I still have things I need to get done, but we are done with soccer, and swim lessons, and all the other little classes Marlee did. Which were all fun, but now we get to have lazy days of swimming, playing at the park, raspberry picking, and probably going back over the mountain at least once to do some canning with my family. :) So I plan on being able to blog a little more.

Soccer

She is loving soccer! I am so glad I put her in it! The first night I was a little worried that she was going to be scared, and want to sit by me until the end, but she didn't. When we got there she was excited (and had been all day), and then we saw a couple of friends so we talked with them. When the coaches called them, she left me (even though I was supposed to go with her), and went right up there to listen to them. She didn't look back at all. It was so cool to watch! Then they played some games and got out the ball. The first night all the parents were in there too, so it was kinda a cluster of people. But it was so fun!





She kept wanting to carry the ball, because she was scared someone was going to take hers.













She wanted to go to soccer the whole day the first day. I kept having to say it's at 5:30. "Mom is it 5:30 yet?" No Marlee. It's 2:00. "Is it time yet?" Not yet. It's only 2:10. And on it went...until it was time. :)

I am just glad she was excited for it! Her grandparents and uncle came the first night, and our friend Tyler came the second night. Daddy has yet to get off work in time. :( Hopefully this week he will be able to.