Goodbye April, Hello May

Hi everyone,

What you are about to see is not super exciting. It is basically just a wrap up post and a few cute pictures of me. The first pic is when Grandpa came up and stayed the night and read my bedtime story to me. Love Lightning McQueen and my Grandpa! The other is when we visited some friends of ours who moved to Seattle and I wanted to look at the pretty skyline with the binoculars. Those things were heavy!
 

I have been so excited to do preschool each day. Mom is super impressed with how well I am holding my writing tool and even more impressed with my memory. She says it is like a steel trap. Now I haven't actually seen a steel trap so I'm assuming that's a good thing. Anyway, just to catch you up to speed we have now covered the letters A, B, C, and D; the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4; a square and diamond; the colors green and blue; and the theme of cows, jungle, kittens, and eyes. That should about do it.

Until next time . . .

Sloshing through the Tulips

 Hi everyone,

This year we decided to take advantage of the free locals night to head out to the tulips so that meant we were limited on the date and time we could tiptoe through them. Unfortunately, that also meant that dad couldn't come because he had a training meeting that night.

The day started out rainy, gray, and cold but by evening most of the clouds burned off and we had beautiful sunshine. That being said, mom didn't realize that there would be huge puddles between the rows of tulips so she decided to forego my rainboots because it is a bit of a walk out to the fields and she wanted to avoid blisters on my heels. 

You can see I still had fun though. I managed to jump over every row of water and not fall in once! I did get a little jealous when I saw the other little kids splashing around in the puddles (lakes) but I think a trolley ride helped curb my splashing envy pretty quickly.

Until next time . . .

Garden Gnome

Hi everyone,

Farmer's almanac reader Isaac says, "If you haven't started preparing your garden, now just might be the time." A few weeks ago, we tilled up our soil and then worked the chicken manure into the ground, then we were able to get our cool season veggies and fruits planted. We started some of our plants from seed and others from transplants, and we plan to do some successive planting where we put in seeds every two to three weeks so we have a staggered crop. We are looking forward to enjoying our garden's bounty later this spring, summer, and fall! I'll probably be bringing you pictures of the garden as it transpires.

I enjoyed watching dad use our new rototiller. I made sure to have my stylin' ear protection on while the engine was going. I also pretended to drive my dump truck down into Skagit Valley and I had to have mom document the journey. Getting tips on knot tying from an expert.

I worked so hard helping shovel soil from one garden to another so we could make the stepping stones even. How do you like my technique for planting carrot seeds? Here is my planting method: pour seeds into your hand, pinch seeds with fingers on opposite hand (preferably not right after you've been sucking on them because they will be wet and the seeds will stick to your fingers), and don't forget to stick out your tongue while sprinkling.

Until next time . . .

Cold Weather Camping

 Hi everyone,

I thought I'd share a bit more about our camping trip. We ended up having great weather in what was supposed to be a stormy three day trip. We had a few sprinkles after we got there but we were already set up by that time. The second day was beautiful for out excursions away from camp and my Easter egg hunt. We had some rain in the night and the morning on our pack up day, but wouldn't you know it cleared up just in time for us to dry off the trailer and get it packed away.

Mom ended up doing her long run while we were out there and she said she felt like a VIP athlete with a support vehicle trailing her the whole way. We read her times at each mile, handed her energy thing-a-ma-jigs partway through, and gave her lots of encouragement. Najia got out and ran with her for a mile and I decided that I wanted to run with her too. She was only going to run 9 miles but she decided she'd meet me at mile 9 and I could run half a mile with her. I had so much fun and am such a super athlete that I decided to just keep on going. I ended up running a mile (making mom run 10 miles) before it was time for us to head back to camp. We saw some beautiful waterfalls running along the lake and dad drove through every puddle hole he could find. It was great! We ended our morning eating waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. Yes, I know it doesn't look like we are roughing it (and we aren't when we camp with our trailer) but we get enough of that with our backpacking and biking trips. Did you notice that we had to use the generator to run the waffle maker? I think that's the best use that thing has gotten so far!

We did learn from this trip that we probably need to just pay for an electrical hookup when the months are cold because running the furnace so often drains the little 12 volt battery. We found that we probably spent as much in diesel charging the battery every few hours as we would have just paying for a hookup site. Oh, the lessons you learn as you go through life.

Until next time . . . 

Egg Hunt in the Woods

Hi everyone,

I know it's been a few days, maybe even weeks, since Easter. What can I say, I'm a bit behind on my posts. We ended up going camping that weekend, and while I know the true reason we celebrate Easter is Jesus' resurrection I have to say I was excited that the bunny still managed to find me out in the middle of nowhere.

I ended up hopping through the woods, over tree limbs, and through drainage ditches to find all the hiding places my loot was stashed. And let me tell you, I was glad to find it all. You see, I happened to spy mom packing my Easter basket the night before we headed out so I was a little concerned when we arrived at our camping spot and unpacked and this basket with the fun toys was nowhere to be found. It did come along though, so it all worked out in the end.

 

Until next time . . .

Welcome to the Jungle

Hi everyone,

Creepy crawly vines, hairy gorillas, lions stalking their prey; they were all a part of our preschool theme this week. Okay, we may not have gone scary but we did get to learn about a few plants in the jungle and some animals too. This week we focused on the letter B, the number 2, the color green, and our square shape from last week. We also got to go on another field trip!

Way back this past summer when I finished my summer reading challenge I earned a free ticket to Jungle Playland. Mom has been waiting for a chance to use it since I turned three many months ago and this was the day. I had a lot of fun and actually went into the ball pit and down the slides by myself. I think mom is enjoying this independent play from me because in the past I have wanted her to climb all over the toys and slide down with me. It sure is fun growing up!

Until next time . . .

My First Official Field Trip

Hi everyone,

I went on my first official field trip to a cattle farm in honor of our weekly learning theme. Wahoo! Mud, muck, and manure. It's too bad our weekly letter was A instead of M, otherwise I could have had some great alliteration.


I happened to learn through the grapevine that my babysitter's family owns cattle and their cows have had 11, yes a whopping 11, calves since the first of the year! We were able to go out to their farm to see the cows and bottle feed one of the calves. We also got to go out into the field to see them tag the ear of the newest calf. That momma cow definitely wanted us away from her baby, but we managed to get the job done and get in a little calf petting while staying safe the whole time. And a visit to a farm would not be complete without a tractor ride.

Until next time . . .

Cows Go Moo and then they Poo!

Hi everyone,

Even though my home preschool officially started a few months ago, this was the first week that we started doing a learning theme. Can you guess what our theme was from the title of this post? Moooooooooo. That's right, cows.

We read books about cows, learned about calves, made playdough and cookies that were shaped like cows, and we even had grilled cheese sandwiches and string cheese to celebrate dairy cows. We also learned our shape of the week which I'm sure you can figure out was a square. Our letter of the week was A and our number was 1.


The big news is that I finally was able to get a few short videos that I can post to my blog. Yahoo! Mom was trying to capture me saying, "Hooray for dairy farming" every time I would put a cookie on the cookie sheet but wouldn't you know that I stopped saying it as soon as she picked up the camera. Go figure.







Until next time . . .