"In the Leafy Treetops"

Anna style! We sing this fun primary song frequently at home. It's just such a happy, cheery song, and I love hearing Anna's cute little voice singing the words that I learned when I was her age. After a while, I started listening to her words a little more closely...

(Verse 2)
Anna: In my pretty garden the flowers are naughty...
"How do you do?" they say, "How do you do today?"
In my pretty garden the flowers are naughty!

Me: Oh no! The flowers are "naughty"?

Anna: (thinking for a minute) Yeah, they were naughty

Me: Why are they naughty? What did they do?

Anna: Umm, maybe they didn't listen to their mommy. And they were mean to their brother. And they're not sharing.

Man, I hope those flowers turn it around soon. They might have to go to time out or something... I love cute little kids and the way they think and process!


In the Leafy Treetops

"In the leafy treetops the birds sing, 'Good Morning!'
They're first to see the sun, they must tell everyone
In the leafy treetops the birds sing, 'Good Morning!'

In my pretty garden the flowers are nodding
'How do you do?' they say, 'How do you do today?'
In my pretty garden the flowers are nodding."

A Little Spring Pruning

Just a start, though. I spent a week ago Saturday outside for hours pruning our crepe myrtle trees in the backyard. We didn't cut them back last year, so this was 2 years of growth. We're still learning how to take care of our beautiful backyard--I sure hope I didn't kill them! Luckily, this Texas climate can be forgiving and most things spring right back without too much cultivating necessary.

Don't you just wish you could have helped clean up this mess? Kinda looks like a hurricane hit...Dan was the lucky one who got to spend most of this past Saturday breaking down branches and cutting everything down to a more manageable size while I ran the lawnmower around the yard.
And we're starting to look much better!

Amazing how much the grass--well, weeds mostly still--have started greening up even in the last week. But it looks tidier, at least. Maybe the kiddos will enjoy running in the backyard a bit more without branches scattered everywhere. And here's what we're left with--anyone up for a bonfire?
Our next yard tidying project:Really sad looking after those beautiful big green banana trees last summer. But they should come back on their own too, as we learned last year.

Colors!

While Anna is at preschool 3 mornings a week, David and I have been getting some fun play time together. Last week I decided to try and help him learn his colors better. And if he didn't learn what the different colors were too well, at least we had a good time. Water and food coloring can be lots of fun! Even when red is blue, and green is purple to a cute little 2-year-old...

A little last minute, but...

If you're in the area, come to a wonderful concert tomorrow night! Dress rehearsal tonight was pretty awesome, I kind of wish I could sit and listen to the whole thing. The soloists are amazing (even though they didn't choose me, phew!) and it will be a fun night!

Uh oh...

The 2-year-old discovered officially how to climb out of his crib at 4 am this morning. And again at 4:15 am, 4:40 am, 5:30 am, 6:30 am, 2:15 pm during naptime, and consistently now for the last 2 hours since I put him down for the night.

Oh, and since the kids share a room (remember last year's experiment?), of course Anna hasn't gone to sleep yet. Escape-artist David is far too entertaining... Except for a brief 15-ish minutes when David was able to find her small cup of water left on her dresser and dump it on her. 'Fraid she didn't like that too much, although it was hard to get the actual words from her amid the hysterical crying. It did, however, elicit quite the guffaw from Dan when he realized what had happened (which then set me off giggling as well--ahem, fake coughing--disciplining while stifling laughter is hard!). She's now calmed down and we're back to putting him in bed, and 2 minutes later hearing a bump, little footsteps, and a door opening at the top of the stairs. Rinse. Repeat.

Someone save me!

Seriously, how do you get your toddler to stay in bed--crib, toddler bed, or otherwise--once they discover freedom?

Felt Heart Wreath revisited

Remember this wreath I made last year?

I was asked to show how to make it for a craft night a few weeks ago, and so I just had to make another one. I went for pink this time. What do you think? I still love it! Thank you blog-land for all the amazing ideas that I can copy.

On the copying note, I decided to try and duplicate this fun paper heart chain I saw here, only with felt. I quickly found that my pathetic home office stapler would not suffice, and I stitched each heart "link" together on the sewing machine instead. A lot of liquid starch later, and the hearts held their shapes nicely. I think it turned out pretty cute! It's much cuter in person than in these night pictures. I actually sent this to my mom for Valentine's Day, so I might just have to make another one for me, too.

Valentine's Day

We had a fun Valentine's Day this year. Anna had her very first school party and was so excited! We spent an hour over the weekend working on writing her name so she could write "From Anna" on all of her valentines. Good thing she only has 2 different letters in her name--it made it a little easier for her to write her name 50 times! (20-ish preschoolers in the class, and 30-ish teachers for the high-school-taught preschool she attends). I enjoyed sitting with Anna and helping her with her valentines--cutting, folding, and stickering, while she was writing. Looks like she lost track of how many "n's" are in her name only a couple times. Not bad for 4 years old in preschool! Because we never got around to making a gingerbread house for Christmas, I picked up a kit on clearance back in January and decided to hold onto it and make a fun Valentine's gingerbread house! We actually had a lot of fun doing it, and we were still able to use all the red candies plus some cake heart decorations I already had. The kids enjoyed eating the green candies while we worked. I think this might just become a tradition for us--love the 90% off clearance price, and December always gets so busy we don't always have time to do everything we want to anyway.

The kids definitely love having it around to snitch candy and pieces now...

And of course we had a nice family dinner--Anna begged for candles, so we had a nice candle-lit meal. Homemade lasagna, bread, salad, and pink jello. I love my cute valentines!

Hope you all had a fun holiday!