Monday's Discovery

Awhile ago, I was reading about Baby Discovery Boxes on The Imagination Tree and I bookmarked it for a later date. After our return, I decided to make a discovery basket for Kaleb. While we were in America, Kaleb and J fought over rubber duckies in the bathtub. So, I bought several packages of water toys when I came across them. I ended up with a set of ocean/pond animals and, instead of putting them in the tub, I placed them into a blue basket. This basket started out in the playpen but then J wanted to play with it, so it ended up here and there, all around the apartment. I found the water toys at Toys R Us and the Dollar Store. They are ducks, turtles, fish, whales and frogs. Here it is in action....

Sorry for the drool, I think he is cutting some molars....

This is my favorite pic. It really shows his eyes. He loves chewing on those as well as taking them out and putting them back in the basket. I can't tell you how many times I have picked up the toys and put them back together. I need to find a better system of rotating the toys. If I am tired of picking the same toys up, I can only imagine that he is tired of playing with the same ones!

After a long vacation.....

We are finally back here after a great visit in America. We were able to see family and friends that we have missed over the years which was great. With the help from my parents, the kids are set with winter clothes unless Kaleb has a major growth spurt from now til then. We were also able to spend time with Josh who was home from college. That was nice because I wasn't sure that we were going to be able to do that.

So we are back. I returned to a newly painted living room furnished klima (wow!) and a new rug. A nice surprise. The week we returned, I helped my DH paint the kids' room. Now that we have painted several rooms, it makes all of the rooms that aren't painted look dingy. But, since school started today, I don't think we will be painting anytime soon.

I would like to say thank you to all of my family and friends who made our visit to America memorable. I was dissapointed to go but I am praying that I will have the opportunity to visit again next year. I miss you all. Thanks for everything.

I am looking forward to a new school year with J and hope that you may enjoy our adventures as well.

Our Week

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I have been trying to get my spring cleaning done before the trip to 'Merica. I have lost my steam though and I have my bedroom left. J, Kaleb, and I have about five more days until the trip. I have been trying to find some new activities for J to do on the plane since it is soo long. (11 hours for the first flight)  I also have been planning what to take in the diaper/activity bag. I can only handle one bag since I will have the baby, the stroller, and J all to myself. This will be the first trip I will take with them by myself. I usually have Keke or DH helping me. It should be an adventure.

I was cleaning the other day and I came into the living room and found this....

I was surprised. J hardly ever slows down enough to sleep unless she is confined to a car seat on a long journey. I knew it was kinda quiet but I just thought she was reading her books. Well, a couple more days - we are waiting and we are excited to see our family. Tonight, Keke is in a performance which she was alittle nervous but I am sure she will do fine. I hope to have some pics from that loaded in the next few days. Have a great day.

Letter S and T

I finally had my "tea party" which took about two days to plan and cook. I am exhausted but I think that it turned out okay. I had five guests and it lasted about three hours. I had plenty of food left over which we ate for dinner today. We will probably be eating for at least another day (if not two). We did finally get to school this week and this is what we did.

We are working on our garden unit and we discussed the parts of a plant. J traced the names of the plant parts.

We are working on our Scissor skills cutting apart S words.

J worked on a homemade puzzle of seeds (both for our garden unit and the letter S). It has numbers on the top so J is also working on her ordinal numbers.

We played a garden game. If the card J turned over was helpful to plants, then J added a flower button to the stem. (See baby Kaleb in the background?)

Working on beginning sounds, J used magnetic letters to place the beginning sound on the garden cards.

S is for shapes. We reviewed our basic shapes and did some sewing cards that I bought in America.

J is playing Flower Seller (Florist to you and me). I bought these flowers at IKEA in the bargain bin for 1TL. She is arranging the flowers to sell.

This is the beginning of our garden mural. So far, we have added a Sun, Snail, Strawberries, Tomatoes, and carrots. Check the Sun out - it is very Eric Carle-ly. How cool is that?

We had an unexpected surprise today as well. In our Garden Sensory tub (a bucket full of dirt and fun items), we found this growing. It had not been watered or taken care of, it just grew in this dirt with no help from us. Wow! I had placed some beans in the dirt for J to dig up but I had not expected them to grow. J came running to me, saying "Mommy, Mommy, something is growing in our dirt!!!" Here I am thinking it is just the leaves stuck in the dirt but it is an actual plant.



We have a couple more activities planned for the letter T this week. I have a shopping date with my T neighbor on Saturday. Next week, DH and DD school is having a picnic. We will be working on letter U. Have a great day!

MIA - Spring Cleaning

This week, we held off school and I began some spring cleaning of my apartment. It is amazing how dirty your rooms get here when you open your windows. I washed everything, cleaned everything and I am still not done. I have only completed my living room, sewing room/office, and the kid's bedroom. It takes all day. The only thing I refuse to do is step out on my windowsills and clean the outside of my windows. I am too far up to do that, so I will live will partly clean windows. J has been great this week, entertaining Kaleb when needed and helping clean when needed as well. I still am planning on finishing the cleaning before I leave (all rooms except my daughter's bedroom and her bathroom which I am hoping she will clean herself). We have two more weeks and we are counting down the days til 'Merica. I have made my lists and plans for next school year and I will be trying to get the items we need.

Kaleb has been flipping from his back to his stomach and he has two new teeth. He loves to try new food and I have some pictures of his first pickle. (sorry about the finger)

Do you think his hair? We think he looks like a Who down in Whooville (Dr. Seuss). DH moussed up his hair. We are still playing in the sandbox, J has enjoyed that. DH was approved for his resident permit and now, we get to do the application process. Keke has her play coming up and we are hosting some T friends for an Italian dinner. It seems the closer I get to my send off date, the busier we get. Why is that?

Spring Fever

We are truly struggling with Spring Fever, it is in full blast right now. The weather has been hit or miss - one day it reminds you that summer is coming, the next day it tells you that winter is not letting go. I am hoping for better weather soon. On top of the weather changes, both J and Kaleb have been sick with colds. Kaleb got it first and then J (and it looks like me and DH will be getting it as well). We are counting down the days til 'Merica and we are trying to finish strong on learning the alphabet. It is a struggle because we are ready for summer to come. This is some of what we did this week - my batteries died in the camera and it seems all of my spare batteries have ended up in various toys around the house.

We decided our garden needed some more color. It currently has tomatoes and strawberries and carrots. We wanted to add another color so we made purple eggplants and purple turnips. We learned that red and blue made purple, J was pretty excited with that.

J is working on number recognition. Here she is counting the leaves on the tree and using a clothespin to mark the correct number.

Cheesy smile alert....

J is working on her letter U. We worked on the letters U and V. We are trying to get the alphabet done so we will have to double up to finish in time for our trip to 'Merica. I have noticed in the past few weeks that J has been coloring in the lines. She has also asked me how to spell certain words and has written down the letters that I say (from memory).

We placed beans on a wet paper towel in a plastic baggie. We hung this baggie in the window and our beans grew. We have since planted them.

Here are the bean plants that J is watering.

My mom will appreciate this one - I haven't killed it yet, Ma! I received this orchid plant from my DH for Christmas and it looked like I wasn't going to keep it alive. We have four new blooms on it with four more buds growing.

We are making a Rainbow Fish.....with tissue paper.

Our finished fish - this turned out cute.

Our garden with new veggies.

Cute baby alert...

We were having a school picnic at a park this week and I decided that Kaleb needed a new hat. I found this pattern online. I had raided my mother's sewing cabinet last summer and found a small piece of the jungle fabric. It was just enough to make this hat. I really wanted a hat with a bigger rim but I did not have enough fabric (and I really wanted to use this jungle fabric). I didn't have any other cute boy fabric (it is very hard to find cute print fabric here). I think it turned out okay. I added the straps so he couldn't take it off thus my hat isn't reversible. It was very easy to make, I think it may have taken a half hour.

You can all most see his two dimples!

Here's J at the picnic. Cute face painting but this time Keke didn't paint it. She had to be at school to take an exam so she missed the picnic. This is the only picture I took of the picnic. It was cold and rainy (at least until we left, then the sun came out).

After a year of waiting....we have a new toy on our balcony - a sand box!!! I guess you could say that I got it as a birthday present since we bought it on my birthday. It was an adventure finding sand for it though which is why we waited. I had asked DH last year if he would make us a sandbox for the balcony, I had even found some plans. But one of my concerns was rain getting into the box. We found this turtle at a local toy store and it had a lid. It reminded me of the one that my parents have in their yard at home (although that one is alittle stronger plastic). It wasn't expensive - it would have cost more to buy the wood to make it. So we bought it for the balcony.

We had to clean and scrape the balcony before we could put it out there. The painters did a job on all of our balconies, we have to scrape each one of them and they still haven't come completely clean. Keke took Kaleb's socks off and placed him in the sandbox. I think he liked it except when Keke wasn't looking, he put his hand in his mouth - yuck! Notice the jacket - it was chilly out there. We had been searching on and off for some sand in the home improvement stores around here with no luck. We finally found some in bags at a paint shop - who knew? The owner of the shop was wondering why we didn't want concrete to go with our purchase. They don't play with sand much here. It was cheap about 3TL a bag and my DH wanted to make sure we had enough, so he bought five bags! Well, we really only needed three so we have two more left. The way J was playing with it though, it might be nice to have extra. We also bought a strap to secure the lid of the sand box after we are done playing in it. We wouldn't want the lid to go flying off onto the street. Now, all we need is some dump trucks to make the sand box complete!

Overall, it was a good week. We have more adventures to come...we have to renew our resident visas these next two weeks. First DH goes this week and then we go after him. Keke has more exams coming up as well as a play for her drama class. Our 20th anniversary is this week, wow. And then......to 'Merica! Yay!!!

This Week

What did we do this week? Well, if you look at "school" stuff, probably not much but if you look at other things, maybe quite a bit. For starters, I met my balcony neighbors and had a five hour tea with them. I will invite them this week to my house for another tea. I have been putting it off since my house is way different than a T house and I have to super clean it before the tea. But I am going to do it this week.

J is putting together garden puzzles that I found here.

We are working on beginning sounds. So we would name the item and J would place a clothespin on the beginning sound of the picture.

These are flower number cards that J added math links to. The links are difficult for her to put together but after some practice, she finally got the hang of it. We then took all of the links and linked them together to see how long it was.

We planted some flower seeds in the pot and J is watering them. We are waiting for them to appear. We also put a few beans on a wet paper towel and they finally started growing.

J is painting paper for our strawberries/tomatoes for the garden mural we are working on.

Here J is painting a snail for the garden mural. She is using some cool new brushes that already have the paint in them. She really liked these.

I was taking a shower one morning and I came out to find this....J was reading to Kaleb. Isn't that sweet?

We received a package via a friend who was visiting. It was loaded with all kinds of good things! J received several tutu outfits and this was one of them. She begged to wear it the next day. It is soo cute - here she is being a ballerina. Thanks Mom and Dad - we loved all the goodies.

Here J is being a ballerina playing her new Wii game. Kaleb is watching.

My Mom asked if Kaleb ever sat in his special chair that they brought at Christmas. Here is a picture - Mom, notice the little legs squished in the holes! ha ha- I couldn't get him to smile.

I made this on Friday. J has been collected beautiful hair bows thanks to my Mom and Marti (our hairdresser in 'Merica) and I was looking for a way to keep them in one place. So I made this Rapunzel hair bow keeper with ric rac that my Mom sent. I think it turned out cute. I made it just in time for the movie Rapunzel that was in our box of goodies! J wanted the brown hair girl instead of a blond - hence the brown haired Rapunzel. The idea came from here. I changed it alittle. It was easy and it took only a few hours in between baby and J. I started it on Friday and finished it on Friday. I may still add some flowers to the hill, maybe...

Lastly, I have no picture for this but I finished my online classes. It was alittle stressful this week because I had two major papers but I finally finished them. Yay! It has been only six weeks but it felt like longer. They were alot of work. I am glad it is over. Now, we are just counting down the days til 'Merica.