Lucas can Read!

These last few weeks I feel like Lucas has made some huge advancements.  It's like something in his brain just clicked and now he can read.  He can actually read really well.  I'm surprised sometimes at what words he can pick up.  He's been practicing his writing too.  We got a white board and he will sit there and try to spell different words.  He does a pretty good job on his own, but needs help figuring out some of the harder words.  I took a video of him today because I want to be able to remember when he started being able to read and write.

He can read a lot of our books too, although I'm sure some of that is just memorization.  He has a really good memory!  He gave a talk in primary a few weeks ago and we sat down and wrote it the morning of.  It was only a few sentences long, but it had big words like forgivness, and after going over it a few times, he basically had it memorized.  I think he just kinda looked at the words and either read it or used the first letter of the big words to remind him what word came next.  He got up there in front of everyone and read/recited it.  I was so impressed.

He has been in to math lately as well.  This is another area where I think memorization helps him, but I think he understands the concept too.  He knows 1+1, 2+2, 3+3, all the way to 10+10. Sometimes he plays with the calculator and punches in numbers to see what they equal.  I know I'm biased, but I think he might be a genius!

Baby Boy's Nursery

When I found out we were having a boy I started thinking about how I wanted to decorate the nursery and what I wanted his baby blanket to look like and this idea of an airplane applique quilt popped into my head. I looked at a couple different ideas on pinterest and then came up with my own design. It's always a bit tricky finding fabrics that you love, but I found some really cute ones. To do the applique part I cut out the different shapes and then sewed each of them onto the middle panel. This part wasn't too hard and considering how cute it turned out, I would totally do it again.

Lucas was very interested in the whole process and watched me make most of the blanket.

I'm so in love with how it turned out!

I used grey minky fabric on the back, and silky binding for the edges.  Both of my kids so far love the minky and the silky binding so I had to keep it up.

For decorating the rest of the nursery I wanted to do it as simple and cheap as I could. I used yellow fabric in the quilt so I could keep the yellow curtains I made for Paige. I already really liked the room for the most part, I just needed to change a few of the more girly things. I used airplanes as my theme. I kept some of the same art work that I had up for Paige, but I needed one that was a little more boyish and I wanted something that went with the airplane theme. I couldn't find anything I liked from the original artist so I just copied the same style and made my own. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

And here it is on the wall with the rest of the art work.

The only thing left to change was the mobile. I didn't think butterflies were the right way to go. I found some really cute ideas for airplane mobiles online, so I got some paper and made my own. I'm in love with how this turned out too! It's pretty simple but really fun.

Look at the cute little airplanes.

And here's pictures of the whole room.

Someday we'll change out the photo for one of the new baby, but for now it still has a picture of Paige.

And this hasn't really changed at all, but I have to have my comfy chair!

I really like all the little airplane elements I've added to the room.  And overall it was a pretty easy change from how it was before, but still really cute for a little boy.  I'm going to wait a while before I get any of the other boy stuff ready.  I want to keep Paige in the crib until we're ready to move the new baby from the bassinet, and we have a while before that happens.  It's hard for me to not move her and get everything ready right now, though.  I've really been nesting and I just want to get everything into place.

I can at least start planning out how I want Lucas and Paige's room to look.  Any ideas on how to do a cute room for a boy and a girl?

The Beach!

My Nieces and Nephews were visiting this week and wanted to go to the beach, so I convinced Ryan to take off work and we all went down to Santa Cruz for the day.  The kids had such a good time and got so dirty.  I think they were made for the beach!

This is how you do the beach in style.

Exploring the tide pools.

And feeding the sea anemone.

  We had such a good time.  It was so nice to be able to go as a family - a nice little break in the middle of our week.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Ryan has always thought it is a little silly when I insist on celebrating St. Patrick's Day.  I'm not entirely sure exactly how Irish I am, but I know there is some in there because my Grandma is like half Irish and we have always celebrated St. Patrick's Day with her and our extended family.  It's a tradition in our family, and just as much a holiday as Halloween.  We always get together, have yummy food, and back when my grandma would host, she would teach us Irish jigs and we would make toasts and well wishes for the family and the year.  This year my mom invited us down for dinner.  She has been babysitting some of my nieces and nephews so Lucas had some fun cousins to play with and I got to have our traditional dinner without having to make all of it myself.  Yay!

My mom asked me to bring dessert, so I got online to find something delicious and green.  I'm not a huge fan of things being dyed green that aren't supposed to be green.  Our traditional St. Patty's Day foods are either already green, or we just eat them the color they are supposed to be.  I found a recipe for lime swirl cheesecake bars.  I had a bunch of fresh lemons, not limes, but since the lime in the original recipe needs green food coloring added to make it really green anyway, I was okay with adding the food coloring to the lemon juice to make it more festive.  Green isn't too far off from yellow.  I pretty much followed the recipe exactly except I substituted lemon juice for lime juice.  I like lemon a little better than lime anyway.

I had my little Lucas helper to help crush up the graham crackers.

He probably worked at this for 15 minutes.  It was the perfect distraction for him while I made the lemon curd.  Oh Lemon Curd!  Why don't I make you more often?  You are delicious!

Once assembled and swirled, the cheesecake looked pretty yummy!

I was surprised that once it was cooked and cut up, it looked exactly like the pictures from the recipe.  Rarely does the stuff I make look as put together and perfect as the staged stuff.  I was pretty impressed at myself.  The bars were AMAZING!  I will definitely be making them again.

I told Lucas that morning that we needed to wear green for St. Patrick's Day.  He asked why so I showed him a couple pictures of shamrocks and leprechauns and instantly he was sold on the whole St. Patrick's Day idea.  He found everything green he could - green underwear, green shirt, green socks, green shoes, even his pants had a little green on them.  While I was working on the dessert, he colored himself a green hat to wear.  He is pretty creative.  I printed off some pictures for him to color and he cut them up and turned them into a hat.

I think Lucas was the most excited about going down for dinner.  He has gotten very in to holidays lately.  And here are all the cute little kids enjoying their corned beef, carrots, and green honeydew melon.

I think Lucas and Paige ate almost half the melon between the two of them.  And here I am in my green getting ready to dig in.

Dinner was so yummy.  And three of my uncles came for dinner and my brother John and his family, so we all had a good time spending time together and letting the kids run around.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Teaching Preschool

I've been the preschool teacher the last two weeks.  This is probably my favorite time teaching so far.  The group we have right now is really good, and the kids liked the stuff we've been learning a lot.  This month we've been learning about ponds and the types of animals, insects, and plants that live in and around ponds.  On my last day of teaching I decided to take the kids on a nature walk to the stream by our house so they could explore something similar to a pond.

Zac was the first one to show up, so he, Lucas and Paige read books while we waited for everyone else.  My friend took Paige for me so I wouldn't have to chase after her on our nature walk.  That was probably another reason why I liked teaching preschool so much this rotation - I had friends take Paige almost every day.  Paige has a lot of energy these days and is an expert at getting into trouble so she's a bit of a handful.  Teaching preschool is almost easier than having to take care of Paige!

Here's Lucas and Alyse inspecting the water for tadpoles.  We were really hoping to find some to catch.

We had little plastic containers and spoons to gather up samples of plants and mud from the pond to make our own mini ponds.  I scooped up algae and muck for the kids.  Some of them were more excited about it than others.  Here's my cute little preschoolers.  We were missing one of our usual kids.  I like having such a small class to teach and they are a pretty well behaved group.

And here is Lucas's mini pond.  He had a fun time tromping through the grass, exploring for stuff to add to his collection.

And as always, we ended class with snack time.  I made the kids popcorn and they ate it like frogs by sticking their tongues to the popcorn.  We had a fun two weeks!

Just Like Mommy

We've been bad at taking photos and updating the blog lately.  I have been working on nursery decorations for the new baby that I hope to post soon, though.  Paige has been doing a lot of funny things lately that I wanted document.  It's funny because most of these things are things that I did when I was a baby.

She has been making the most ridiculous faces lately.  Some of them are silly, but most of them are grumpy faces.  My mom told me I used to make the grumpiest faces at the doctor when I was a baby, and I have a pretty good grumpy/crusty stare I use as an adult to put people in their place.  I'm sure she means these faces to put us in our places, but I just laugh every time she makes one.

Paige and Lucas have been playing a little better lately.  He still doesn't let her do much or touch pretty much any of his toys, but every once in a while he makes up a game for them to play and she plays right along with him.  It's pretty cute.

Paige and Lucas have both been really in to dancing lately.  Paige's favorite is dancing on top of the table.  I loved dancing when I was a baby and would always dance on the table for everyone.  Another way that Paige is just like her mommy.  I tried to get pictures or a video this morning but this is the best I got.  I swear these kids will dance for hours but as soon as I pull out the camera, all of a sudden they are done and will refuse to dance any longer.

I did get a video of them dancing in their room a few weeks ago.  Paige usually gets way more into the dancing, but since I pulled out the camera, she decided to just play with her phone.  Go figure.  Oh well, at least for part of it she's showing off her moves.