Painting Pumpkins

While the girls and I were at Rock Creek, I let them each pick out a couple tiny pumpkins and/or gourds.  We picked out a couple for Chris, too, and a few days later, we had a family pumpkin painting party. 

It was all fun and games until Elizabeth started painting her hands and face. Ha!

Emily with her two rainbow pumpkins and her baby blue pumpkin

Addie with one of her masterpieces

Chris's gourd and pumpkin

My sunset gourd with my little frog

Artwork

I love the front of our fridge right now. Addie's most recent self portrait, drawn at school on Tuesday, is right there, reminding me of how big she's getting!

Emily's coloring is really blossoming. She loves making sure all the white is covered. She gets really focused and covers the whole page with beautiful colors!

An older self portrait by Addie still hangs below her new one. I love this one because it's mixed media. Her clothes are represented with bits of napkin.

I loved this one that Emily did with a giant stamp pad. I asked her if I could have it and she told me to write "To Abbey Love Emily" on it.

And here's some Mom art. I look at this every day to try to remind myself to soak it up.

June Fun

Addie's flying high with Dad

Trying to get Elizabeth to walk, Chris would always find a toy she was really attached to and then hold it just out of her reach. One evening in June, the toy was this magic wand.

Go get it!

A step! Hooray!

A little Frozen humor, since Frozen has been a favorite in our house for quite some time now, especially since Addie bought the movie with her birthday money back in April.

We went to a friend's house and did tie dye, and the outcomes were magnificent...

Elizabeth and I were always up to something fun while the big girls were at their Wednesday fun mornings at Little Lights. One morning, Elizabeth found this bucket on the deck, so I filled it with water and let her splash around.

The bucket splashing gave me the idea to bring our kiddie pool up to the deck, where we have some shade from the awning. That afternoon, all three girls splashed around.

Grandpa John came over for an afternoon visit and read stories to the girls. It was a big hit for the girls, and Grandpa became a regular character in their imaginative play.

DeeDee also came over for one of her frequent visits, and we walked along the cottonwood trail, where, of course, I had to have everyone pose for a a few pictures. I especially wanted to get pictures of Elizabeth by the tree as she was wearing a hand-me-down outfit that had once been worn by Addie in front of our tree. Click here for a blast from the past.

Oh June, the beginning of summer. Warm winds, not scorching hot yet, everything green, summer excitement in the air.

Our First People

I've been waiting for this day to arrive, the day when real people made their way into Emily and Addie's artwork. They've told me that shapes in their drawings were people before, but on March 30th, about a month after turning three, Addie was doing some post-breakfast drawing when she produced this lovely depiction of DeeDee.

The artist, hard at work

After seeing my extreme excitement (there was quite a bit of jumping around and giggling) over Addie's picture of DeeDee, Emily decided to try her hand at people-drawing.

Here are Emily's people...

Nice portraits, girls! :)

Morning Art

CeeCee and PopPop stayed with the girls while Chris and I went to my cousin Christa's wedding in Sedona, AZ. Emily and Addison made some beautiful thank you artwork to send to Michigan.

While the big girls got creative, Elizabeth played in the kitchen, one of her favorite things to do these days.

Morning Activities

I needed to empty the dishwasher this morning, so Emily and Addie got to have some fun stacking Cheerios while Elizabeth ate breakfast.

Then I got to re-load the dishwasher while Elizabeth played with her new window toy (a re-purposed toy package) and Emily and Addison got to bury and dig for coins in their playdough.

January Favorites

We had quite a few snowy days in January. One warm snowy weekend day, Chris took the girls out to build a snow fort. Addie didn't stay out for long, but enjoyed watching Emily and Dad through the window.

Elizabeth has been watching her sisters play ever since she was born. Now that she's on the move, she is able to get in on their play more and more. It's always fun to watch all three of them playing together.

Being on the move, one of Elizabeth's favorite family room obstacle courses goes under the table and through the woods.

Addie's a big helper around the house, and in January, she became obsessed with "fixing" the chairs after every meal. She would gather her "tools" - a rag, a fork, and a spoon - and work hard fixing all the screws.

Found a piece of food in this one

Proud Helper

This was quite a sweet moment. It had snowed and I put Elizabeth next to the window to look out at the white landscape. Emily and Addison both got so excited to tell Elizabeth all about the snow. They got down on either side of her and told her all about it.

Peek! Love this girl's little tongue. She's showing it off a lot these days.

Emily found that she was able to shimmy herself into Elizabeth's snowsuit and enjoyed sliding around the floor pretending to be a baby.

We got a mini trampoline from the neighbors a few months ago, and the girls have taught themselves to flip over the bar. It's been a great source of indoor exercise on all these cold winter days.

Tunnel play with Dad!

Believe it or not, the girls were almost three years old before they got to experience the messy fun of finger painting.

One of Addie's favorite things to do is play with her box of dress up dolls and My Little Ponies. She likes to line up the dress up dolls after getting them all dressed and ready to go, and then plays pretend with them. Sometimes they're going to a party, sometimes to school. It's pretty cute when it's school, because then Addie's the teacher and she'll read them a book.

I just love the smiles on these gals!

And we'll end with Emily, showing me her injured finger. Ouch!