Jan/Feb Playdates

Adley and I continue to enjoy our themed playdates with friends. We met in January and did some penguin activities. I didn't capture very many photos since I was hosting the playdate, but I grabbed a few at the end. In addition to these below activities, the kids went on a hunt for hidden fish throughout our house and waddled to various "icebergs" while singing a song about penguins. We ate these silly chocolate-banana penguins for snack. They didn't look quite as cute as the Pinterest version but thankfully still bore some resemblance to penguins!

We ended by reading a book together about Tacky the Penguin (by Helen Lester) and then created our own crazy outfits for Tacky with playdough. The kids definitely enjoyed this playdough activity and stayed at the table creating for a looong time!

Another day in January, we met at a local church to try out their large, 2-story indoor playscape that's free and open to the community. It was pretty impressive! As we arrived, we were quite surprised to find a couple piles of SNOW on the ground! It was definitely not chilly enough for snow that day in Texas, so we figured the church must've had some kind of event with large snow piles the night before. We never figured out what the snow was from, but the kiddos sure enjoyed the unexpected opportunity to play on snow!! 

In February, my friend Amy planned and hosted a Valentine's Day playdate. The kiddos started off by decorating white bags that they could use to collect valentines. One of the kids asked her mom to trace her hand on her bag, and a trend was born! Nearly all of the kids asked to do the same thing. :)

After the bags were all decorated, the kids delivered valentines to each other's bags.

One of our new little friends wasn't very excited about taking the Valentine's Day photo with the group-- ha!! All the little ones looked so cute in their valentine colors.

The kids were thrilled to open up their bags and find candy and toys, in addition to the valentine cards, inside! 

This noisemaker was an instant hit! My friend said she found them at the store and was "sorry, not sorry" for buying them!

We ended the playdate with a fun numbers game. Each of the kids got a Cupid's arrow and tossed it towards the numbered paper plates. When retrieving their arrow, the kids had to tell us which number plate it landed on.

We always love these special times with friends!

Jan Misc

Here are a few of our miscellaneous family happenings from January:

Cousin Playtime

What a gift it is to live so close to nearly ALL of our family! We love gathering for regular family dinners, birthday celebrations, and occasional game nights. Our kids consider their cousins some of their closest friends, and it's (almost always!) such a joy to watch them all interact. Here are some cousin hangout photos with a few of the youngest ones.

Adley loves being the resident "mom" with her boy cousins and helping/guiding/suggesting whenever she thinks it's needed. Yes, if you read between the lines that she's sometimes a taaaad bossy, you'd be reading correctly. Ha! Thankfully her cousins are pretty patient with her!

Noah and Adley

Adley and Nathan

Celebrating Birthdays

Honoring each other's birthdays, for kids and adults alike, is a pretty big deal in our family! Whenever an adult or two has a birthday in a given month, we gather for a family dinner and do activities planned by the birthday honoree(s). It's not always easy selecting something that all ages can do together, but it's been enjoyable seeing what our creative family has come up with. Last year we did wide variety of activities, such as kickball, puzzle working, a photo scavenger hunt, Indian poker, water balloon launching, and even a Pokemon spelling bee. 

Because of everyone's busy Christmas schedules, we didn't get around to celebrating our December birthdays until after the holidays. Jon and Kim didn't mind the belated birthday celebration!

In addition to these all-family gatherings, when one of the ladies of the family has a birthday, we ladies like to gather for a morning brunch when the big kids are at school. Unfortunately, Chelsea can't always join us since she's teaching, but the rest of us can look forward to some mommy-connecting time. This month, Sarah hosted a delicious meal for us to celebrate Kim's birthday. 

Enjoying the Outdoors

One Saturday, our family decided to enjoy the nice weather and spend some time at the park. We picked up a few geocache smileys (which is what the kids are celebrating in this photo), and then just enjoyed some playtime. Adley and I played on all the playground equipment while Daddy and the boys got in a game of flag football.

Home Depot Kids' Build

Our family ventured out to Home Depot together for the store's monthly building workshop. All three kids liked assembling their mini air hockey game. Even Adley was able to swing the hammer by herself and put together a project to keep. The kids especially enjoy adding paint to their projects and are always very proud of their finished product.

God's Beautiful Handiwork

Over Christmas, my parents gifted each of the families with an amaryllis bulb. Our  plant grew so quickly and produced four gorgeous flowers! The kids loved seeing the amaryllis grow. Our Creator God truly is amazing! We look forward to planting our bulb in the spring and hopefully seeing even more flowers in the future. Thanks for the thoughtful gift, Mom and Dad!

Shape Activities

When Cody and Jaden returned to school after Christmas break, I wanted to do some intentional learning activities with Adley. She already knows her colors really well but wasn't very confident with identifying all of her shapes. So, I scoured Pinterest and found some great shape activities.

First, we made a shape book. Adley painted all of the shapes that I drew and, even though I never gave her this direction, was careful to try to stay in the lines.

Adley made five pages of shapes, decorated a cover, and then stapled the pages into a book. 

She was so proud to "read" this book to Daddy and her brothers! It was great practice for her in remembering which shape was which too.

Next, we did a fun Magnatiles activity that was sort of like tangrams. Adley loved turning her Magnatiles into pictures.

Another day, we played a memory game with shapes. Adley does surprisingly well at this game and can genuinely beat me at times! I tried to get her to say the name of each shape as she turned the cards over.

After a few days of doing shape activities, Adley would excitedly ask me right after breakfast what our activity would be for the day. On this particular day, she wanted to jump right in before she even got dressed or combed her hair. :) Adley loved using Cheerios to create shapes.

After that, we played a shape game where Adley would roll a die and then run to the given shape.

Adley's favorite activity was probably this next one-- shape sorting. She absolutely LOVES doing anything on her easel and really enjoyed making this large collage. Adley asked to repeat this activity on two other days. Good thing we had cut extra shapes!

Our last activity was doing a shape outline match with blocks. At times, this activity got a bit tricky as Adley had to determine which direction each block should face. She usually figured it out without my help though!

By the end of all these activities, Adley was become much more adept at remembering the names of all her shapes. It was especially fun for me to see her excitement about all that we did. She's at a pretty enjoyable age!

Adley was always so proud to share her projects with Daddy and her brothers when they got home. Daddy, of course, was appropriately thrilled to see all of Adley's work. Cody and Jaden, on the other hand, seemed only mildly interested when Adley told them about what she learned. The boys took it to heart more than I realized though, as one weekend they dove into a special project for their sister. They worked together to write and illustrate a shape book for Adley. The boys said they wanted to help her practice her shapes too! It warmed my heart so much to see all the time they put in to this project and to see how proud they were to read it to her. So sweet!

After seeing Adley's high interest for these shape activities, I realized that she's probably ready to start some letter activities soon, just like I did with Jaden and Cody. We will jump into that next!