Yay! We had a lovely day last weekend and so we went to the zoo! I forgot how nice and FREE our zoo is! Ali loved seeing the giraffes and Elizabeth loved seeing the baby monkeys. I love getting outside and walking around. (On the other hand, being at the zoo sometimes makes me a bit sad because almost every animal description says "Endangered"....and what in the world do we do about that situation for EVERY animal?? Does the zoo ever make you happy and sad at the same time?)
Yes, Our baby kitty, Ty-Ty, is ONE year old! I can hardly believe this year has gone by so quickly...I remember the day we brought him home from the shelter...(sniff, sniff). Okay, okay so I haven't always been in love our cat Ty but Ali really wanted to wish him a happy birthday! (We knew he was born in March sometime so she made up the date...March 10th it is!) So we made some cupcakes to celebrate. Can you tell this was REALLY for the girls??!! (We gave Ty some Fancy Feast!)
Lillian and Caroline were over playing and they helped us to frost the cupcakes! This vanilla cake recipe is SOO yummy...the girls didn't have to twist my arm too hard to make it! (It's from Williams Sonoma cookbook "Kids Baking".)
Look at these cute Daisy Girl Scouts! It was so fun to take them here! The fire fighters did a great job at entertaining the girls and they even took them for a ride in the fire truck!
Elizabeth learning to use the mouse...she likes the Starfall website with Ali's help.
Ty sleeping in the sun...so obviously he needed sunglasses...right??!!
The girls dressed in their spring clothes...they can't wait for it to be warmer also!! :)
Playing with shaving cream...fun AND it smells great!
Love it when it warms up into the 60's and it feels heavenly...I open the doors and I don't even have to be persuasive to get the girls to go outside. Today it's back in the mid-40's to 50's and I hate being stuck inside again! But soon it will be spring and nice...I can't wait!
I got out some of my teaching things for March...I love talking about leprechauns and making leprechaun catchers and leaving the girls little treats from them! But I have to be careful because last year I said that I corrected something on a poster when I was making it and Ali said, "But you said the leprechauns made us the posters." OOPS!
I haven't been as inspired recently to keep up with my own scrapbook but I love working on the girls'. I decided a year ago that I wanted to give them each a special scrapbook when they graduate from high school. So of course I had to start working on it 14 plus years ahead of time!! :) I just want to highlight special memories and try to keep it all in ONE book each...so I decided to make holiday pages where I put one picture from each year. And then I have other page spreads like "Grandparent Time", "Family Traditions", and "Favorite Activities". I love putting this together! The biggest problem will be keeping these books a secret from the girls...I am BAD at keeping secrets...let alone for 14 years!! :)
This is the Family Traditions pages where I included all of the activities that we enjoy doing as a family...like pumpkin patches, decorating for Christmas, and Easter egg hunts. I wonder how these activities will change as they get older...will they still go to a pumpkin patch with us when they are teenagers???!! Maybe then I'll have to have pages titled, "Activities I enjoy WITHOUT Mom and Dad!!"
I really loved planning and leading our last couple girl scout meetings. One was in preparation for "World Thinking Day" where all girl scouts learn about different countries so I brought out some of our things from Japan (when we lived there 10 years ago). It was fun to have the girls try using chopsticks to eat edamame and popcorn! They wrote their names in Japanese characters and made some oragami paper airplanes and fans! It was really fun and we have a great group of little girls!
