Making Progress

The reason I love 3-day weekends is because I can be lazy on Saturday, keep the Sabbath Day holy on Sunday, and then still get stuff done on Monday before Kevin goes back to work.

Today I tackled our office. I had about 10 boxes of teaching stuff to go through. I sorted and organized and got a lot of my stuff to fit in the office closet. Being able to see all the teaching books that I have is beautiful to me... now I can actually find them when I need them. I have tons of books about early childhood education and teaching preschool that I've been looking for. Now I can easily access them.


We made some progress on the room too... it is no longer completely covered with boxes...


although I don't think Kevin likes this hallway scene much either (they are all empty though) :)


We also made some progress towards getting our living room furnished. We spent all day Saturday looking at couches and rugs (the ones that were my favorites- here and here- were of course too expensive for our budget, even with the great sale going on... so we kept looking).

We finally decided on this rug after a lot of looking... once it arrives and we confirm that we love it, we'll start looking for furniture that works with the colors. It is very similar to the rug in our family room... just somewhat different colors, so I'm pretty sure it'll look amazing in the living room, especially with the dark wood (cross my fingers).


I am struggling with finding a couch in a store that I like. I know what I want... but I can't really find it anywhere (think White House decor in the tv show West Wing- classic/traditional style, although antiques don't work in our house). I get frustrated driving to stores, spending 30 minutes (or less) looking around and not liking anything. If you have good couch store suggestions in the Bay area, pass them along. So far we've checked out Bassett, Macys, Sofa Outlet, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware. I want to go check out Flegels too... please send more suggestions!

I am so excited that we are finally making progress though!

Visitors!

Scat (Scott & Cat) arrived today! We got to pick them up at the airport and head over to the Peers house with them for an evening of fun and good food. I think Andrew downed an entire container of strawberries while we were there... and we enjoyed strawberry shortcake and tons of food.

It was also cool to see the little guys interact. The last time they hung out, Andrew was so tiny.

Andrew loved walking up to Jocelyn and saying "hi!" enthusiastically and then following her all around the house. Jocelyn showed him all the cool things to do in the playroom.

They built really tall towers.


Crawled through the tunnel tent.


and played some foosball.


"Grandma" Tony even gave them both big lollipops. (Since Jocelyn calls Tony, "Grandma," Andrew kept pointing at her and calling her Grandma too. It was darling.)

One of the best parts of my siblings getting married is inheriting such wonderful new family members. We love the Peers family and are so grateful that we now live a lot closer to them.

Knowledge is Power

Here's another plug for the TED 5000 and Google's PowerMeter that I posted about here...


We got our utilities bill today... we saved $60 this month... which means more $$ to spend on furnishing our still empty living room and dining room. :) Definitely recommend you check it out.

A Day at the Museum

Today was one of those days where almost everything went perfectly (Other than the little man only taking a 30 minutes nap = mom not getting any free time! ).

We started off the day with our Stop and Go game as we drove over to Walnut Creek to meet up with some friends at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum.


This has been our favorite trip of this week. Andrew loved meeting Miles, the rabbit. He sat on the little stool outside of the cage for quite awhile telling me all about how Miles eats grass and hay.


He also pretended to be a big scary bear...


and a baby bird in the bald eagle nest.


We learned about bird migration by moving these things up and down.


Mostly Andrew liked lifting the flaps and pressing the buttons to hear the bird sounds.


It was so fun to wander around with his little buddies and check things out. The big microscopes were cool... and the stools you got to stand on were even cooler.


There were huge puzzles everywhere...


and a Discovery Room with a mailbox. Couldn't ask for anything better than that in Andrew's world.


This was the best picture from the day though. His little buddy wanted to hold his hand. They walked down the stairs together. When they let go to walk to the park, Andrew kept saying "hand," "hand"...

Two Highlights from today

Here are two video clips from today that were fun.

If I would let him, Andrew would play Rock Band all day. He is obsessed with the Beatles. He loves the "fishies" (Octopus's Garden) and "birdies" (And Your Bird Can Sing) songs.

He also likes to scream like the girls in the crowd when the Beatles come on and start singing "It's Been a Hard Days Night." Here is his girly scream.




Andrew also seems to be able to say his name now when I point to him. He loves to point to me and say "mommy," kevin, and say "daddy" and himself, and say "Andrew." Here's my attempt to get him saying his name on camera... although he's a little distracted.

BYU BBall

When we were out in Utah at Christmas we got to take Andrew to his first BYU basketball game. We'd never taken him to a sporting event in a venue that large... so he was pretty amazed. He spent the first 30 minutes just staring at the court, mesmerized.

Kev explaining the game

Little man entranced... wouldn't even look at the camera

He loved that he got his own seat and bag of gummy bears. He focused really well (for the first 30 minutes) and actively clapped every time a basket was made or anyone else clapped... still staring like he was in a trance.

After 30 minutes it was like someone flipped a switch and he was aware of the other kids climbing the bleachers. We climbed up to the top of the Marriott Center until I got dizzy and hung out with all the other kids. Then the little man went back to G&G's house and Kevin and I got to stay til the end of the game. It was fun to have a little date night. We attempted to hit up the BYU Creamery for ice cream afterwards, but it was closed (so lame!)... so we went to Baskin & Robbins instead.

BYU won by 80+ points, so everyone at the game also got to go get a free piece of Magelby's chocolate cake. Totally my sort of sporting event.

Toddler Activities

I don't want to clutter up our family blog too much with the specifics on toddler crafts/activities I do with Andrew, so I just started a new website where I blog about what we do (in more detail). I also rate the activities based on how Andrew and I liked them and include some suggestions for how I work in vocabulary development while I'm doing them. I am weird, but after teaching a class for kids with communication disabilities for so many years, it is something I enjoy trying to do. I am learning new things a long the way too.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, check out my new site.

If you have some great ideas of toddler activities, please share them... we'd love to try them out.