Goofing Around -Tons of Pictures!!

We have been getting better at giving in.

Giving in to the joys of just living a less stressed out life. Often this involves random, impromptu, goofy and silly photo sessions.

I was just looking at one of my posts from April about our Photo Silliness and it was so much fun to look through the photos and remember the feelings of that time.

So, I decided to do it again. The following photos are from May (last month).

It all started out innocently enough with Emma playing on her swing.

Then she moved onto the 'wula hoop'. 

And then... I laid down to take a photo of our beautiful trees against the pretty blue sky.

While I was distracted by the hunk in the back yard...

I was attacked!

In order to defend myself I had to send Emma to the moon... 

Which she didn't seem to mind:)

Oops, distracted again!

Emma presented me with some flowers.

Back to the front for more silliness.

Had to stop to examine the minor owie.

All better!

I use to think these feet were so cute! Whom I kidding, I still do (I just don't smell them anymore).

Um, yeah. Maybe those grubby toes shouldn't be that close to her face.

EmmaZilla!

There he is again!

Playing with the hula hoop. Emma rolled it to me and I managed to snap the photo as the hoop hit the camera. I caught both the hoop and the photo and the camera was just fine :)

And finishing up with a bit more swinging.

What a great day to remember for always!

Feathers from Da

Jared has really gotten into mountain biking lately (well, as 'mountain' as you can get in flat Iowa).

Helmet Hair after a sweaty ride. 

 Every so often he comes home with a treasure for Emma. 

Feathers.

The feather on the bottom was brought home a month or so ago after Jared went riding at Seven Oaks in Boone, IA. Emma thought it was super cool (and so did I). She wanted to know what it was, so we found this site- The Feather Atlas. 

Here is what we decided the bottom feather is.

The search function has you choose a pattern then color and lists all the feathers it could be. It can be a little frustrating trying to figure out which one it might be, but it is a very useful and informative site. 

So when Jared came home yesterday from a mountain bike even in the Quad Cities with the top feather, we knew where to go- The Feather Atlas.

This is what we decided.

It is a little funny that he found the wild turkey feather in the Quad cities, because on one of his last rides at Seven Oaks he got spooked by a "Giant" wild turkey. 

We enjoy collecting feathers and look forward to whatever else Da brings home from his rides (he can leave the ticks there though).

Have a great Sunday!

Fun Food Friday

Emma really enjoys it when I play with her food. We have cookie cutters specifically for making her lunch (and I am always looking for cool new ones).

I started taking pictures of Emma's food a little while ago and I decided to start posting her lunches on Friday (though I make no promises!).

So, here is her lunch from yesterday.

Yes, the food is upside down, but I was too lazy to figure out a better lighting situation. 

Emma with her lunch. 

Emma really loves when I make her food interesting. Not all of it turns out great, but I figure the more I play with her food, the better I will get :)

Today we had math food. I used cookie cutters to cut out the 2 and 4 from her PB&J, and a 6 out of the cheese. Then I used scraps of cheese to make the plus and equals sign. 

If there is a lot of food left after cutting things out, I give her the left overs so that way she gets enough to eat (and I am not wasting it). I also gave her 6 veggies straws. When I presented her with the plate, the cheesy 6 was hiding under the leftover sandwich. I had her do the math (which she is really good at) then I presented her with the 6 of cheese. She loves cheese. 

I think it would be neat to do more math in the future using really small pieces of food for multiplication.

Any-who, here are a few of the other fun meals I have taken pictures of. (You may notice a theme with the PB&J and cheese.)

Strawberries, bologna, and cheesy Emma :)

Ok, so I only took one other photo... This was when she was going through a bologna phase. I know, not super healthy, but sometimes I am happy for her to eat something other then PB&J. 

If you know of any good ideas for playing with food, I would love to hear them!

Conversations with Emma

Before we started this blog, we had one for the family (which we still have and I am horrible at updating it).

There are a few post that I would like to share with you though. Here are the links.

Garbage

Mysteriously

Paleontologist

Fabuloso

They are all pretty funny conversations that we have had with Emma. I kinda wish I had written more down. I just might have to keep a 'Conversations With Emma' journal on me at all times (although now she is more sarcastic then funny- gotta love the 5 going on 15 stage!).

And a nice random photo.

Have a great day!

Saying Yes

Emma just returned from a week at Gramma's. I think it was a much needed break for the two of us. While she was gone I reflected (I feel a little weird using that word) on how crappy I have been treating Emma.

I feel as though I have been neglecting her and stuck in the "no" phase again. Or still. Not sure which.

While she was gone I decided that I REALLY want to be a better mom to her. She is the only kiddo I will have and I am the only mom she will have and I want to make sure I don't screw it up more then what would be considered "normal".

I hate the word "normal". There is no such thing.

Anyway.

So today was Emma's first day home. She missed her computer, so she went immediately to it as soon as she walked in the door.

No biggie. She is after all her parents child.

When she decided she was done on the computer, she wanted to play outside. It was super wet (seems to be raining all year!), so my first response was to say no. And I think I may have.

Then I said, "What is your plan for outside?" She just wanted to swing.

"Then yes, we can do that, let me finish what I was doing." A few minutes later, Jared mentioned that it was raining out. Emma pouted.

I decided, "Why not."

So we played outside for about 10 minutes, then it started to pour. So we came in :)

We were wet in the end, but it was a fun 10 minutes. 

Photo Assignments - A Recap

For a detailed explanation of photo assignments, check out this post and this post. We just got back into doing photo assignments so I thought I would post the photos from the first two (done back in Jan) before I posted the third one which was done yesterday.

We missed two on this one, but I think it was dinner time and Emma was D-O-N-E! She did after all, do both list one and two at the same time. 

 

We have a few more printed up and ready to go. Assignment 4 is a list of colors. I had originally had each word the color that it is, but I decided that black would make her actually read the words, not guess. Assignments 5 and 6 are lists of outside words, so we will make a field trip out of it. 

In the future I will just post the picture as well as a link to the past photo assignment post for explanation.

Have a great day! 

Emma's Earth

The weather has been really nice here (when it isn't raining) so Emma, Jared, and I have been spending a lot of time outside. It feels good after the craziness of this last year and the cold winter.

Emma prefers to play outside with her toes naked. I do too, but digging with a spade tends to require shoes.

Front Garden expansion

We have some of the most interesting critters in our front yard. 

Black bellied squirrel (our name for him) eating some PB&J crust

We love this squirrel. He cracks us up! One day he was fighting in the front yard with a corn cob. Hilarious. And he is pretty brave. Emma and I were pretty close to him to get this photo, I would say about 10-15 feet. He just sat there, eating his PB&J. 

We also get a cool assortment of birds; cardinals, sparrows, grackles, robins, blue jays, and crows. My favorites are the cardinals and the crows. The blue jays never really stay around long enough for us to get a good look at them, though they are the only bird I have managed to get a picture of so far...

I was going to add the picture of the blue jay, but it is a really pathetic picture and you can't even really see the bird.

Today Emma and I managed to play outside for a bit before the rains came down. I did some art stuff, she filled the bird feeders then played. While we were out there we had a lot of visitors. Mostly sparrows, but we did get a mama cardinal at our vinyl record bird bath

This would be our vinyl record bird bath. And a before picture of the front garden.

We also got to watch a bunny hop around the front yard. He got pretty close to me at one point (I was sitting on the ground). Then he hopped over to our tire planter that has a bird feeder and enjoyed the buffet of seeds set out for him. As bunny was munching on seeds, a crow hopped over from the vacant lot (that we are in the process of purchasing) next door. He was really fun to watch. For a while I was worried he would chase off the bunny, but they grazed in harmony. 

After all the critter excitement, we headed in. Emma was upset. "All we did was watch the animals!" She really wanted to play with the girl that lives across the street but she was at school. 

When we haven't been busy outside, we have been busy inside. I could lie and say we have been putting our house back together after this last year of packing-one-suitcase-after-another-with-nothing-every-getting-put-back-where-it-belongs, but we have been busy being creative. Emma's creativity usually manifests in her horses. She loves to create adventures for them, and other such imaginary stuff that I have long forgotten how to do. She can play in her room for hours with not a peep. Those are the days that I make all kinds of crafty things. 

Other days Emma likes to get crafty as well. She came out of her room the other day and showed us this:

Both Jared and I were like, "Wow, who drew those for you?" thinking that maybe when she was at Gramma's last maybe Auntie Sara had drawn them.

"I drew them!" was Emma's reply. "Wow again, those are awesome!"

When we asked her how she drew them, she showed us the little paint cup she had used to trace the circle, then explained how she was planning to do a zentangle...

...like she had done a few weeks ago. 

As she was drawing it, she realized it looked like, "my earth", (the globe in her room). So she decided to make an earth. Emma's earth.  

As she is explaining all of this too us, her eyes got really big!

Emma- "Mama, do you see how if you connect this land here, with this over here (she is tracing over the lines on the earth picture above), it looks like a duck!"

It sure does!

She went on to explain that the Caterpillars are in stages. The green is the youngest, the blue the next and the red the oldest. 

Our happy family :)

She even signed her name!

I was so super impressed with Emma's Earths!

We have also started up with the photo assignments again, but I will save that post for another day :)

One more random photo.

Emma taking a rare in preparation for a fun night of Rock Band and a bonfire at Auntie Sara's house. 

Gramma offered to rest with her. Such a great Gramma!

Linking to Saturday's Artist