Backwards Day

The kids woke up super excited to find out the "theme" for the day. When I saw them, I told them "Good Night, go brush your teeth and I'll be up to read you a bedtime story." They thought it might be pajama day, but it was:

Backwards Day!

First up: Dinner for breakfast. Luckily I had some leftover pizza, so this was easy. All 3 kids thought it was good. Reagan and Alex tried walking around backwards. I was a bit backwards today too--I only took 4 pictures and no crafts!

Next: We took a brief break in the day to take Reagan down to the doctor's because I thought she has swimmer's ear. I was right. With all the swimming she's doing now, I wanted to get her feeling better.

Back to the Backwards Day: The kids put their clothes backwards and so did I, which was not so comfortable because the back of my pants are a little roomier than the front.

Reagan and Alex played Candyland backwards. They started at the end of the game, drew the cards from the bottom of the pile and the winner was the person who came in last. Carter wanted to play too, but his game was stealing all of the pieces and running away as fast as he could run.

Lunch was a backwards lunch--all junk and nothing healthy. We had the pretzels and cookies the kids made yesterday and boy were they good!

A friend of mine came over to play with her two young boys, so we took a time-out from backwards day to show them around town and play at the park.

Dinner was breakfast of course! Cinnabon Muffins, eggs, cantaloupe, and blueberry maple sausage. Reagan and Alex had fun asking for things backwards like, "sausage the pass please."

Tonight they're spending the night with Reagan's grandparents, so Grandpa is going to read them a story backwards, from the end to the beginning.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Day

This week is "Camp Rick" at our house. We have Reagan's 3rd cousin and oldest friend Alex with us for the week. With 2 6-year olds, a 13-month old, an energetic lab, and the continuation of the Biblical no-end-in-sight rain, I wanted to be prepared for a week indoors.

Today was "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" Day based on the children's storybook by Eric Carle. I scoured the Internet for ideas and ended up with too many to fit in one day.

First the kids made their caterpillar hats.

Then they made clothespin caterpillars and colored the butterfly wings. The kids used washable markers to color on a paper towel, which they then got a tad bit wet and scrunched up to blend the colors. When it was dry, we clipped it to the caterpillar body to turn it into a beautiful butterfly.

Reagan and Alex worked on a crossword puzzle while I made lunch. I found a site on the web where you can make your own crossword puzzles for free!

Lunch was everything the very hungry caterpillar ate, all served in a muffin tin.

Next up was the word scramble. Last night, I very carefully wrote out the words to about 1/2 of the story on school-ruled post-it notes, cut them up, and put them on the wall for the kids to put in the right order.

Carter found the post-its first thing this morning and tried to tear them all off the wall.

Fortunately he was foiled and the kids spend an hour putting the words in the correct order. They did a great job working together and sounding out the words.

Later on, the sun came out for a few minutes, so we went outside with big nets to see if we could find any caterpillars or butterfly. All they managed to find were some rocks in the wheelbarrow.

So, we came back inside and the kids shaped pretzel dough into caterpillars, cocoons and butterflies.

The last project was frosting butterfly sugar cookies.

They wrapped the day up watching "A Bug's Life" on the air mattress in the playroom, snug in their cocoons.

On the 20th Day of Rain...

We went for a walk. No really, June has been the rainiest month in decades, maybe centuries. We've had 5 days without rain.

The sun left and we thought it would never return. So on Monday, the kids and I put on our rain gear and found a few puddles to splash in.

Ironically, as I write this, thunder is rumbling.

Class of 2021

Reagan "graduated" from kindergarten on Monday. Her school put together a very nice program and each class sang a song and a few kids had speaking parts.

Reagan was one of those kids. Her line was "I am excited about going to first grade." She practiced her line for a month ahead of the ceremony and her hard work paid off. Her delivery was perfect.

Here she is getting her certificate from the Principal, Mr. Williams (who is THE BEST principal) and the vice-principal.

Reagan and her teacher, Mrs. Natale. I can't believe she'll graduate from high school in 2021. It sounds like a long way off, but I know the next 12 years are going to fly by.

Big sister with a proud little brother. Man do those two love each other.

Dancing Queen

Reagan's dance recital was yesterday afternoon. She danced in 3 dances, ballet, tap and jazz. The music for her ballet routine was "The Best of Friends."

Tap was "Good ship Lollipop."

Jazz was "Dancing Queen."

She did a great job, Carter managed to sit through her 3 routines, with breaks out in the hall in between and Jeff and I really enjoyed watching her dance. She's getting pretty good.

Here's a picture of her at her 1st dance recital, 4 years ago!

Boy at Work

Carter's favorite past time is to take everything he can reach out of the cupboards. Yesterday, he hit the jackpot, a drawer in the kitchen desk with pixie sticks!

He also took all of the trash bags out of the box and all the Tupperware out of the drawer.

Shh....Sleeping Beauty

On Saturday night we had Reagan's Daisy troop over for a sleepover; 7 6-year old giggly girls. Yes, I am crazy, but the girls sure had a blast. They decorated pillow cases, wrapped each other in toilet paper, had a toilet paper fight, played more games, ate lots of junk food and stayed up until 2 am! And they were up at 6 the next morning.

Reagan was so worn out that fell asleep on Sunday afternoon at 4pm and I had to wake her up for school on Monday at 7am.

Balloon Hats and Monkey Pudding

The kids have both been sick this week; Reagan has strep throat and a double-ear infection and Carter has an ear infection, a viral infection and is getting at least 4 molars. Oh yeah, the weather's also been gloomy, dark and rainy.

So I decided we should try out some fun stuff today. I have a limited knowledge of balloon animals and hats, but enough to keep the kids entertained and busy. Reagan had fun trying to make a dog and even made Carter's hat.

This afternoon, we forged outside and Reagan helped me plant and re-pot of bunch of stuff. Carter helped by tasting the dirt and taking it out of the pots. Reagan planted snapdragons out front. I showed her how to "snap" them open. Carter just tried to sit on them.

After we got Carter cleaned up and down for a nap, Reagan made Monkey Pudding. I just supervised.

She did a great job and is becoming a real pro in the kitchen. She used her lettuce "knife" to slice the bananas.

We had it for dessert tonight and it was delicious.

Strawberry Festival

On Saturday we went to the Strawberry Festival because Reagan was tap dancing there with her dance studio.

It was a really nice festival with all sorts of bounce houses and bouncy slides, games, a few firetrucks, police vehicles and lots of food.

Carter loved checking out the firetrucks and police vehicles. He walked around and around them, checking out all of their parts and tires.

Reagan tapped to "Good Ship Lollipop." She had a lot of fun dancing, but was too busy concentrating on her steps to smile. But she still was cute.

Carter and the Purple Ink

Yesterday evening, it was a bit too quite and I found Carter in the Maproom covered in purple ink. Apparently, he found a jar of pennies and pens that I thought was out of his reach and a purple marker or pen had leaked ink all over the bottom of the jar.

Fortunately, he didn't fingerpaint on the wall, just the carpet and himself. I gave him a quick bath in the sink and the purple almost all came out.

The pictures are a bit blurry because I took them with my phone. I wanted to get a few quick pictures, but didn't want purple ink everywhere.