Teething on Toes

 I caught Melanie letting Amelia munch on her toes while watching Matt play on the Wii the other night (the girls often ask to watch Matt play a game before going to bed).  Amelia will gnaw on anything she can get her gums on, and when she rolled over and Melanie's piggies were right there I guess she thought "Why not?" and went to town.  Thankfully the girls had just had their bath, so Melanie's feet were in a state or relative cleanliness (for feet, that is).  Building up the ol' immune system, right?

 This seems like something we've seen around here before.

Father's Day Cards

 For Father's Day the girls and I once again opted to go for the homemade route when it came to cards for the dads in our lives.

 The first original card was Melanie's "Tickle Monster" card for my dad.  

I thought it would be cute for Melanie to make the tickle monster (the girls' nickname for my dad) into a real image.  So I had Melanie tell me what shapes/colors she wanted the various parts of the monster to be, I would draw them and she would cut them out and assembled them (aside from the hands, those were a bit too detailed for her scissor skills)

The finished card

 The next cards revolved around the girls' first experience with watercolors.

I knew I wanted to go with a theme revolving around hands like we did for the Mother's Day cards this year.  I tried tracing their hands and telling the girls to paint them lots of colors, but Claire would become so focused on painting the hand that she would paint right through the paper.  So I scratched that approach and just had them paint the paper as they saw fit, and they had a blast!

 Amelia supervising the watercoloring

 

"You missed a spot."

 If it involves getting messy it will most likely make Claire happy!

 *Maybe if I try and look cute mom won't mind that I made a mess*

Thank goodness for washable paint!

 Once everything was dried I traced the girls' hands on their respective paintings several times and cut them out to use on the cards.

I also painted a page myself and had Matt help me trace Amelia's hand so she wouldn't be left out of the cards.

 Here are the cards I came up with

It was fun to hear what the girls came up with for their list of favorite things about their grandpas.  They tended to get repetitive with their lists, playing chase and tickling were big sticking points for the girls, so I had to remind them of things they have done with their grandpas and see what they said about those events.  Against my personal wishes/better judgement I was a good mommy and did write down what the girls said, even if it encourages something I'm not particularly fond of (i.e. my dad sneaking candy to the girls when he helps me load them in the van when we leave their house)

I'm planning to get a simple black frame for Matt's card so we'll have this record of the girls hand prints for years to come.

I still have a painting from each of the big girls and a few of Amelia's hand prints left over.  I think I'll also get frames for the girls paintings to hang in the playroom to add a bit of color (I've been thinking about giving them a wall and a couple frames for each of them to display their most recent masterpieces in to help keep my refrigerator from becoming so overrun with artwork).  I'm also planning on getting some of those laminating sheets to use on Amelia's hand prints and turn them into magnets for the refrigerator.  They're just too cute not to!

Father's Day

 Before church on Father's Day the girls gave Matt their card and gift

 After mass we had breakfast with Gramps and Uncle John.

Matt's mom and sister were out of town for a wedding that weekend, so we celebrated as a family the weekend before and we had the guys over for breakfast to celebrate on the actual day.  

Further proof that Matt has a better idea of what the men in his family like than I do, I was considering making an oven baked orange pecan french toast for breakfast, but Matt said if he was going to choose one thing to make his dad for breakfast it would be biscuits and gravy, so we went with that.  Matt made the gravy and cooked the bacon, I made the biscuits, waffles (for the girls and myself) and fruit salad.  There was no gravy left.  Lesson learned.  (I still plan to make that french toast for myself sometime though.)

 Claire requested I take her picture

 The spread

As my father-in-law said about breakfast (specifically the biscuits and gravy) "This is man food, no quiche allowed!"

 Matt picked up this genuine "figuring machine" at a garage sale for his dad to have in his office (he's a C.P.A.).  He thought it would make an interesting conversation piece.  His dad seemed to like it, it definitely was neat to see how different things are now compared to what was once seen as the latest and greatest thing.

 After breakfast we headed to my parents house for some surprise driveway graffiti.

My parents and grandma regularly go to 12:30pm mass, so we went over during that window to leave a message for my dad. 

 The girls were excited about it on the way over, but it was a very hot day out and before I had even finished the word "happy" Melanie was telling me it was too hot out and she wanted to go inside.

 We powered through despite the middle of the day temperatures and finished our decorating.

I think my dad really enjoyed his surprise.  He talked to the girls on the phone about it and told them he really liked how his driveway looked, which of course made the girls feel really good about it and forget how hot they had been.

The heat really took it out of Amelia, she passed out on the drive home 

(which is all of about half a mile!)

To cool off after our midday art project the girls went downstairs and watched Matt play his Father's Day gift from them, Mario Kart on the Wii.  

(They almost prefer watching Matt play his video games to watching movies, so I felt Mario Kart would be an appropriate gift from them.  It's also really funny to watch them try to play on their own.)

We went to my aunt and uncle's house in the afternoon where we had a great BBQ dinner.  Here Claire is cleaning the meat off of a rib with reckless abandon.  She thought that was some pretty great stuff.

It was nice getting to spend the afternoon with family and the girls had a great time playing. 

Another full day is on the books, but definitely full in the best sense of the word!

Melanie's First Dance Class

 For Melanie's 4th birthday we decided to let her take dance classes.  She loves to dance around the house, plus they don't take up any space and it's one less thing for me to pick up off the floor, so it was a win/win as far as I was concerned.  We opted to have her take them through the park board until she decides if she really likes them since it's quite a bit less expensive that way.  If she really enjoys it then we'll enroll her in some more classes elsewhere, but this is a good place to start.  Melanie had her first class last week, so I snapped a few pictures of the occasion.

 Excited for her first class!

The class is a combination of the basics of ballet and tap.   She seemed to do a really good job of paying attention to the instructor and following direction, and she's been twirling around the house ever since.  Even Claire has been pretending to be a ballerina since Melanie's first class :)  We just bought her tap shoes for class yesterday, so I'm sure she'll have lots of new performances for us in the near future.

Summer Reading Fun

The girls all ready to go read the books they picked out at the library!

If you haven't already, I highly recommend signing your kiddos up for the summer library program.  Our girls are very excited about it, and at the end of the summer they can turn in their reading lists for some prizes.  You can read a bit more about it here.

Pretty Painted Nails

 In an attempt to send Mother Nature a memo that we were tired of the dreary, cold weather in May I decided to paint the older girls nails one rainy day.  This was Claire's first time getting her nails done.  She was excited to get to join Melanie in this fun girlhood rite of passage.  While the time we spent waiting for their nails to dry nearly gave me a heart attack several times due to Claire's lack of understanding when it comes to the "don't touch anything until I say it's OK" aspect of things, we still had fun.  They each picked their paint color, and were quite pleased with the results, even asking for touch-ups over the next week.

These two sure are a lot of fun!

 She's at it again!  While Amelia and I were taking a nap one day Melanie and Claire were looking at books to amuse themselves. When I woke up Melanie had yet again fallen asleep in an odd manner.

 I guess her feet were a bit chilly since she used Amelia's play mat to keep them warm.

Looks like all those books Melanie was reading really wore her out!

A Picture of the Girls with the Greats/Rallying for Christmas 2011

Monday evening we celebrated my grandpa's birthday with a family dinner at my parents house.  I hadn't been able to get a picture of my grandparents with all three girls yet, so I took advantage of the day and coerced them into sitting for one. 

Now, keep in mind, my grandma has a particular dislike of having her picture taken.  So much so that the family joke when you ask her to sit for a picture is "Do you want to get anything for Christmas or do you want to take a picture of grandma?".  I'm feeling pretty confident that the fact that they will now have a picture with my sweet girls and the fact that Christmas is half a year away will allow for me to still have an item or two below the tree.  Just in case, I think everyone should comment on here about how wonderful grandma (and grandpa) look in this picture with their sweet great granddaughters.  I normally ask for some sort of kitchen related item for Christmas, and many of you have been at gatherings where I have brought a food item of some sort, so in a roundabout way you also have a vested interest in this.  So go ahead and show grandma some love and help a girl out ;)