G's Open House

Last night we all got to see what Gianna is doing in preschool. She was so excited to show us everything she does at school. Her teacher seems pretty great too, always patiently explaining things to her students and to the parents.

When we had Open House when I was teaching, we would send notes home ahead of time saying this is not a parent conference opportunity, this is just to show what we do in school and you can schedule an appointment with me at a later time. Well it took everything in me not to ask about Gianna last night! I wanted to see if she is on the same level as the other kids, if I can work with her in any way at home, etc, etc. But I refrained. That didn't stop other parents though. Maybe part of the reason I didn't ask her teacher about G was because every other parent was doing the same thing and I couldn't get a word in edgewise! Gianna did a great job showing off. Here are some pics of the big night:

Sorting. She lines them all up first, which you can see with the blue figurines.

Hanging up socks on a clothesline. Her teacher said this was a big hit with the whole class.

Boom loved it all, but especially the kitchen and baby stuff!

I have flirted with the idea of homeschooling someday. After seeing all the things these kiddos do, I know that I won't ever do it for preschool age. There is so much going on, and I couldn't possibly do as much for them! I am so pleased with her new school!

The City of Serap

Gianna has been obsessed with ballet lately. Um, she hasn't taken a ballet class in her entire life! This is all pretend, probably encouraged by some of her little friends who actually DO go to a ballet class. She gets really specific with the details. Her ballet teacher's name is Mrs. Fallergic, and her lessons are in Serap. I'm not sure if she is getting that from taking Sarah (Matt's gf) and adding a 'P' or if she is actually saying syrup, or maybe a combination of both? Anyway, you have to drive the car to the airport and then fly to Serap, so its pretty far away. Instead of running or walking, she does a series of ballet hops and leaps. She dances around the room whenever there is any music on and always calls it ballet dancing. I am currently looking into lessons for this summer.

She pretty much insists everyday that she wear her 'ballet" shoes. Here she is about to go cook up some grub in her kitchen. She has her baby in her apron pocket like a baby kangaroo!

Another Bathroom Update!

Pre- grout. You can see the blue spacers.

Post- grout. That white grout ups the gorgeousness, if I do say so myself.

And here is an in between pic of our cabinets. Right now, there are 4 coats of stain on the vanities. Hopefully just 2 more to get the desired color. We are trying to get it to match the color of the floor in the bedroom. Oh and like the wall color? We mixed white paint in with the bedroom color and got this pretty light blue-gray color.

Pajama Day

Poor G got sick last night. It started with a low grade fever and followed with a little midnight puking session. It always seems whenever she gets sick in the night, Chris is the one awake and has to clean up. Thankfully it wasn't that bad as she hadn't eaten any dinner. All morning she has been milking it though- much more whiny and the tiniest events set her off. I think she is just not 100% yet. After giving her a detox bath, she insisted on wearing jammies so she could be snuggly while she watched How to Train your Dragon on the couch. Poor angel girl.

Soup in a can, perfect for a little sickie!

Boom sure didn't feel sick!

So we pretty much spent the day in our jammies with blankets. G just had to have her blanket wrapped around her, even when playing with her dollies.

Quick Take

I don't have much time to post, so I will just leave you with a picture. Chris and Weinpel worked all yesterday and today and came up with this FABULOUS design. Right now it is drying and waiting to be grouted and sealed. I am so excited!

I Love Aldi's!

When I was a little kid, I always thought it would be cool to bring a play grocery cart into the grocery store and actually put stuff in the cart. Soooooo thats what I did with Elia today while G was in preschool. I needed 1 thing at the store (which quickly turned into 5 things). Santa actually found the grocery cart at Aldi's for $9 so it was very fitting for me to take her to Aldi's with it! She was a bit confused at first but as soon as I let her put something in the cart, she knew exactly what to do. Such a fun little outing for us!

Cheesing for the camera!

Minnie Minnie Mow

I want to post about Elia's new words before she comes up with a few hundred more. The best so far in my opinion, is saying her sister's name. About 2 weeks ago, she started saying just "G." She would run around after her and say geeeee geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Hilarious. Then about a week ago I caught her saying Geee-ana a few times. Now finally this past weekend she started saying Gianna. If she says it too fast it sounds like john-a. SO cute. G likes it too.

Another word is "mon." It means come on. I am constantly saying this to Gianna at the grocery store or when we are out walking and she is lagging. I always say come on Gianna! When we are about to go outside, she always turns to G and says 'mon!!

She was (and still is) obsessed with Elmo, partly because I think it was so fun for her to say. But she has semi-moved on to Minnie and Mickey mouse. I have a stuffed animal of each that she loves to carry around. Whenever she see one of them, or sees one on her diaper(huggies), or even better, if a friend has a minnie or mickey item, she can't stop saying minnie minnie mow. Especially when a friend has a minnie or mickey related item, she goes crazy and says minnie minnie minnie mow. So cute.

Sneaky Peek

This weekend, we did a little bit of this:

New easel from Grandma. Love it! Elia finally learned how to say Gianna. So sweet!

But mostly, we sanded and vacuumed all weekend. We can see the end of the tunnel to our bedroom/bathroom remodel. The goal is to put tile in over Chris' 3 day weekend coming up. That means we need to paint the bathroom ceiling, walls and stain the vanities.

So why all the sanding and vacuuming you ask? Well, remember we scraped all that wallpaper off to leave quite gross ragged walls. Instead of spraying texture, we decided to go with flat texture. Which means Chris mudded and sanded and mudded and sanded numerous times. This weekend was all about sanding it all down. And since we decided to stain our bathroom cabinetry, that means even more sanding. All this sanding has left the bathroom very dusty, which then blows over into our bedroom. My job today was to vacuum both rooms twice. So I thought I would snap a few of the rooms.

View from the hallway. Look how delicious those floors are! Oh, and thats our new KING bed!!!

Both views from the bathroom door. I don't want to put our ugly mirrored doors back on, I'm thinking maybe a large curtain?

Dusty dusty but its going to be beautiful!

Boo Hoo Woo Hoo

Gianna is moving up in the world.

Dressing up with Soph

Tuesday was her first day of preschool. Monday night I went in her room to check on her around 10pm and she was still awake! I think she was really excited. I had butterflies myself.

Showing off. She wore her embroidered shirt so everyone would know her name on the first day.

In her classroom. They are working on the letter M.

Chris went in late so he could see his little girl off to her first day of school. We went and got kolaches first at our favorite donut spot and then headed over to St. Catherine. We walked into the building, said hello to the director, and she led us to G's room. Her teacher, Ms. Tiffani, was there with the classroom all set up. She showed Gianna where to hang her coat and backpack, and then started talking to her. I knew it was time for us to go, and I started to tear up a little. Chris and I both said goodbye to her, but she was so transfixed on her teacher that she didn't even notice us. Didn't even notice as we walked out the door. Probably the easiest first day of school ever! On the way home Chris and I were talking about how big and grown up she is and thats when I shed a tear or two, but besides that, I didn't get too emotional! Elia and I caught up on shopping and a little bit of cleaning when we got home. I asked her where Gianna was and she said nigh-night? It was cute. When I picked her up, her teacher said she had a great day! When Elia saw her she ran up to her and gave her a hug. She is going to miss her every Tues/thurs!

So proud of my girl.

The Littles

I like to refer to all the grandchildren as "the littles." They were all pretty darn cute this visit.

This is Elia's typical hair in the morning.

Austin and Elia are at the age where they are really anxious in a new environment. So if Mom/dad and Grandma/Grandpa/aunt/uncle/cousin/babysitter were in the same room, it turned into an instant whine(scream)-fest. Once the wedding festivities were over my mom would make Megan and I leave the house as much as possible so she could enjoy her grandchildren. There was one morning when I left the house with Elia screaming and crying bloody murder and literally as soon as I was 1 minute away, she was a perfect angel and stayed that way the whole time I was gone. So thats pretty much a look into the future of daycare. She is going to make me feel as guilty as possible as I leave but then have the time of her life while I agonize over leaving her etc. Mom bought all the littles matchy footie pajamas and also got them shirts with each of their names embroidered on it. It was very difficult getting a good picture of all 4 of them (hhhmmmmm, sound familiar?) but here are a few to enjoy:

The last day we were there we took a quick trip to the Science Center.

Discovering

This is hilarious of my dad!

WOW!

Oh how we miss everyone!