Thursday, April 29, 2010

Georgia's NEW Gym

I've been meaning to share these for awhile- Georgia's gymnastics class! We started at the beginning of the year, and she'd call it her "new gym", since her "old" gym was the one she went to in Birmingham. Somehow the "newness" never wore off! She loved the trampoline, swinging from the trapeze, sliding down the zipline, and monkeying on the bars.
Practicing handstands

Georgia and her gymnastics-BFF, Addie, always jump together on the trampoline- ALWAYS! :)

The zipline- it's so funny to see them crash into the red wall at the end! And they all love it!

Up, up, little monkey! She also got really good at doing a forward roll over the bar!

At the end of each 6-week session, they have an "Awards ceremony" and each kid gets a ribbon. They should really just call it "Parent's Day" since it's just an excuse to bring your camera and snap multitudes of pictures (which only a fraction of will come out since they're all moving the whole time and you have a wiggly brother in your arms)!

Georgia loves her teachers and HAD to sit on Miss Tanya's lap to cheer on the other kids as they got their ribbons. And, of course, Addie HAD to sit with her!




We're taking a break from gym right now to do swim lessons, but can definitely see us getting our little monkey back in her leotard in the near future!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Spring Days

I know- I've been seriously slacking in my blogging. I've also been slacking in letter of the week-ing! My excuse? I've been trying to finish a sewing project (yes, I'm still doing that, or trying to do that!), and I've also found an old friend- reading. I love getting lost in a book for a few hours, but being a mom of 2 toddlers leaves little time for that, unless it's Curious George stories. Both are things that take up my 2 hour nap-time slot, and leave no time for blogging! So I'm putting the others aside for a few minutes to blog a bit for you!
Not that we've really been up to much... the weather has been wonderful. (You know we really haven't been doing much when I start out talking about the weather!) But really- it's been beautiful and we've been out enjoying it, knowing full well the Florida heat is right around the corner. So we've gone to the beach, and enjoyed popsicles, and played on the swing, and watered the flowers and practiced our basketball skilz... and had fun! Enjoy some pics- I know that's what you really come here for! ;)








Monday, April 19, 2010

Letter of the Week: G

Last week we had an exciting letter- G for Georgia!! Of course, whenever I'd try to get her excited about "G for Georgia!" she'd tell me "and G for George monkey!", referring to her BFF Curious George! Although I missed several key photo op's for this week, let's take a look at what I did capture:
G is for Guitar- We copied the Sellers and made a G-guitar. Georgia really liked doing it and tried to "play" the guitar when we were done. And she kept saying, "like daddy's guitar!" And, yes, she did get to help daddy play the guitar one night, but that was one of the photo op's I missed!


G is for Garden- we did some major planting for Grammie & Grandad's house one day. We filled 12 pots of all sizes with a variety of pretty flowers. Both kids loved helping- they put on over sized garden gloves and had their shovels and were throwing the dirt out of the pots faster than I could put it in! They happily "helped" me for about 2 hours, but since I myself was up to elbows in dirt, I missed the gardening pictures. You'll just have to trust me that they were adorable gardening helpers! Here's some "After" pics:



G is for George's Garden- Georgia's buddy Rollins gave her this great Curious George Prehistoric Garden kit for her bday, and this was a great week to get it out and planted. We mixed the water & dirt, laid out a gravel path and added some lava rocks, then carefully planted our seeds. Then we put the top on, put it in the windowsill and hope something grows! :)
Little brother read the directions from my lap while Georgia planted.



G is for Giraffe- We read Georgina the Giraffe about a spirited giraffe that gets herself into trouble by showing off. A fun book Grammie gave us a while back! And I tried and tried to think of a giraffe-craft, but time and imagination ran short!

G is for Georgia!- We have a name puzzle for Georgia that I'd put away high on a shelf b/c 1) she'd outgrown it and could put it together really easily, and 2) I was afraid she was going to lose a letter! But we got it back out for this week and she enjoyed putting it together again, pointing out the G's to me, and spelling out her name. Then we traced the letters onto a big piece of paper to spell Georgia and she colored them. She still is NOT into coloring and refuses to learn how to hold a marker/ crayon/ pen more correctly- any suggestions on how to encourage this? Particularly holding a utensil better?


G was Great!!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Letter of the Week: E

First of all, sorry to those who have been missing our Letter of the Week posts. I never realized we had fans until I missed a few weeks! ;) We've been busy with selling & buying houses and, well, life, and I also realized one other important factor that started imposing on our Letter-time recently...

Baby Brother! It was just recently I gave in to his demand of no more morning naps, and that took away the time Georgia & I had in the mornings together. Because when you try to do letter activities with little brother around, you end up with him like the picture above, pulling on your leg, crying & whining because you won't let him eat the crayons or color on the walls with markers or smear the glue stick into the carpet... Not that we don't like to have a little brother hanging around, but it makes craft time a little more challenging!

So, after the fun of Easter it was a perfect time to learn the letter E. In fact, the first day of E week, I asked Georgia what letter Egg starts with and she promptly said E! So she was way ahead of me this time! Here's what we did for E:
E is for Egg- for our E we glued different color Eggs into the letter E... pretty simple, but she loves gluing! (Not that you can tell by the picture below ;)


E is for Easter Egg Tree: I saw this idea here and thought it was cute because you can trace your child's hand for the tree, and who doesn't love a little "hand-tracing" craft!? Gotta do those now while their hands are little and cute! ;) Then we colored little eggs with markers and crayons, and yes, I helped color b/c, again, she really wasn't into the coloring. And I was! Then she glued it all into a tree- very cute!

E is for Elmo: On Saturday we went to the new Seaseme Street kids park at Busch Gardens. Georgia was excited to ride the kiddie rides, climb up the big tree house, and watch Elmo, Abby Cadaby and other friends dance in the show! It'll be a great place to go play this summer!



Everyone was Excited about this Excursion!! :)
Hopefully we'll get back into regular letter-ing, and even find some letter activites that are little brother friendly!

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Saying Goodbye to Home

Almost 2 weeks ago, we packed the kids up and flew up to Birmingham for 3 whirlwind days. After 6 months, we were finally closing on the sale of our house and had the task of packing up our remaining stuff and signing all the papers over to the new owners. Looking back, those 3 days seem like some sort of strange dream, brought on by hard labor and little sleep. But knowing that final lifeline to that time and place has been cut is reality. And now we just look forward to the next place the Lord will put us!

I thought I'd already said goodbye in my heart to our home there when we left in October. Because, by the time we left, it didn't even look like our home anymore- it was clean, staged and ready for selling! Certainly not the chaos we lived in with 2 babies and a dog! I was fine with the idea of emptying out the final furniture and passing it on to be someone else's home. Until we drove up and saw this...
all the daffodils in bloom! My mom & I planted 2 bags of bulbs under the Bradford pear just after we moved in. Every year they faithfully popped their sunny heads up, a sure sign that spring was coming! So, yea, that kinda got to me. But our movers were soon to arrive and we had a house to empty!

So, just in case you're planning to move, just an FYI- the largest POD is advertised to hold a 3-4 bedroom house. This is FALSE! Despite the fact that we already had a Uhaul trailer worth of stuff in Tampa, we still had a garage-full of stuff left after we filled the POD. And I mean FILLED the POD. So, a new adventure began...
Garage-full of stuff and nowhere to put it...

Our plan had been to put everything we had left in the house into the POD, which would be shipped south, and all 4 of us fly back to Tampa. But now we had to activate Plan C. Plan B was to just leave some stuff, but since there was a garage-full, it was too much to leave. Plan C involved renting a truck and Larry driving it, alone, the 10 hours back to Tampa, while I flew back, alone, with the kids. The least-favorite plan by all involved... but it was happening. Of course the only available truck was in Calera, a good country drive away. And I emphasize country b/c this is where we picked it up...
Outside of the office there was a waiting room...
with refreshments available...

but at least they had our Uhaul! Honestly, that little trip into the country was just the comic-relief we needed that long day!
And we filled that baby! Thankfully Larry's drive was long but uneventful, the kids did great on the plane for me, and all of our stuff, though in various places, is at least in Tampa. And the best news is we hope to have a place to put it all, under one roof, in mid-May when we close on our new home down here in Tampa!
My good little flyers! Thank you Lord for Curious George and paci's!

We didn't get to see or spend enough time with all the loved ones in Birmingham that we would have wanted to see, and we apologize for that! Hopefully the miles between us will not keep us separated! A very special thank you to the Phelps for their hospitality and kid-wrangling, we love you guys! All are welcome to come visit us in sunny Florida this summer! :)
Did you know it is impossible to get a picture of two 1-year olds and a 3-yer old together? Impossible!! Thank you for sharing your toys & momma, Logan! :)
Is it over, yet? Yes... until we have to move it all back in the next house! :)