Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Halloween 2017

Last night we had a blast trick-or-treating on Halloween.  Maggie dressed up as Princess Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" and Kate dressed up as Darth Vader from "Star Wars".  We trick-or-treated for nearly 2 hours and each girl filled up a 2.5 gallon ziplock bag worth of candy (about 200 pieces each)!

Kate has wanted to dress up as Darth Vader for an entire year.  She was super excited to wear the famous Darth Vader mask.

Maggie has wanted to dress up as Princess Belle ever since she received a Princess Belle dress for her American Girl Doll at Christmas. She was so excited to match Maryellen! 


Maggie let me spend a little extra time on her hair to look like Belle's hair from the movie.

She is such a beautiful princess!

Even Penelope dressed up as a little monster!


A few days before Halloween we carved our pumpkins.  The girls are finally at and age where they can carve all on their own and I don't have to help too much.


Kate carved an owl and Maggie carved a playful puppy.  So cute!

Monday, September 25, 2017

Neon Flower Fairies

This fall marks Maggie's very first season playing AYSO soccer.  This also marks Will's first time coaching soccer as her assistant coach.  We have had 3 games so far, with 5 more to go.  Maggie is having a blast and proving to be an amazing powerhouse and leading scorer!  Will is proving to be an amazing coach, with so much energy and excitement encouraging the girls and building their skills.

Penelope is the official team dog.

The Neon Flower Fairies are made up of 7 girls, ages 5 & 6.

Go team!

Maggie scored 5 goals (out of 6) for her first game!

Her second game she scored 1 goal (it should have been 2, but the ref called halftime right as she was about to shoot) and her last game she scored another 5.  She is very tenacious on the flied!

  

Penelope loves coming to the games since she gets TONS of attention from all the kids. 
 I love fall soccer!!!

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Birthdays and First Day of School

Maggie and I just celebrated our birthday's and for a special birthday treat we ordered a 4-layer chocolate fudge cake.  Maggie saw this cake displayed at the store about 4 months ago and has been talking about getting it for our birthday's ever since.  No problem!  It is just as huge and yummy as we hoped!

Birthday buddies!

 Maggie's birthday started off early, since it was the first day of school this year.  Despite the early start, she still got to experience presents and a special birthday breakfast.


Even Penelope loved the wrapping paper!

Hooray!  Maggie got Josefina, an American Girl Doll from 1824.

Maggie requested chocolate chip pancakes and sausage for breakfast.

She was excited!


Maggie and Josefina


After presents and breakfast, it was time to get ready for the first day of school.  Kate was excited to get dressed up in her new school outfit and head to 3rd grade.

Maggie picked out a special, new outfit as well.  She is all ready for 1st grade!

At school, the amazing Ms. Huser surprised Maggie with a special birthday crown and cape.

Maggie loved finding her very first desk! 

At the end of the school day, Will and I stopped by Maggie's class to bring birthday brownies.  The class sang Happy Birthday to Maggie before enjoying their treats. 

And now, a whole new school year begins!  How did my kids grow so fast?  Slow down , please!!!

End of the Summer Excursions

On August 12, Gramma, Cousin Chloe, Kate, Maggie and I took a trip to Berkeley to the Lawrence Hall of Science.  This was a special field trip for Camp Gramma.  We had a ton of fun exploring all the exhibits and experiencing a 3-D movie about the Deep Sea Challenge and 2 presentations in their planetarium about the eclipse and the stars.  

One of the biggest hits was this 2-sided peg board.



Ready for the 3-D movie!

This was a neat experiment....if you hit the drum hard enough it makes the purple flag blow in it's wind.

Making movies 

The scenery outside was a perfect backdrop to lunch.

This DNA sculpture created quite a fun climbing area in which all 3 girls spent a huge amount of time going from one end to another.

Can you spot Kate next to this blue whale? 

Human body puzzle

Feeding a tortoise dandelion leaves 

Experiencing the grip of geckos 

Shortly after we were playing around with the gecko activity we entered a room filled with exhibits all about movement....solar powered planes, air plane simulators, remote-controlled hot air balloons, etc.  One exhibit especially caught Kate's eye...the hover disk.  This particular exhibit had a long line for parents to push their child on this large hover disk around a small arena.  Once it was Kate's turn she begged me to go faster and faster and to spin her around.  Before I knew it, I lost control of the hover disk and it came swinging directly into my toe and this happened...
I dislocated my big toe and now I am required to keep my toes taped and in a special boot for 6 weeks to allow the tendons to heal and to prevent it from popping back out of place.  This certainly made our trip memorable!  Gramma drove all the way from Berkeley to the Woodland ER with me icing my toe and trying not to think about the pain.  Praise God she was there to help me!!!


A week later, we decided we needed to get out of Davis for our last weekend of summer so we headed up to Tahoe, puppy and all.  Penelope was a bit nervous about the car ride, but she made it through, cuddled up on my lap.

Penelope decided she LOVED Tahoe and all the exciting things to sniff and explore.  Since she is still a puppy, we kept her on a leash the entire time outside so we spent a lot of time walking around the cabin area with her tugging on the leash to keep going.

Kate and Maggie spent a lot of their time helping Papa work on the creek.  They moved dirt, threw rocks and placed large branches to help dam up certain spots to encourage a good flow of the creek.

Kate LOVED the purposeful work.  She had so much fun getting wet and dirty.

A girl and her puppy

Exploring

Swinging with Gramma

After Gramma and Papa headed back to Davis we headed to Heavenly for some fun.  Both girls got to do the big trampoline. 

Maggie did so many flips in the air while jumping.  She was so proud of herself. 

After Heavenly, we went miniature golfing.  We had so much fun doing the dinosaur course.




After miniature golf, we stopped at our favorite pizza place for dinner.

When we got back home from Tahoe, the very next day was the solar eclipse.  Camp Gramma was all about the solar system this year so the last day of camp was watching the solar eclipse.  Gramma bought the girls special glasses to watch the sun.  It was a very cool day!

Kate and Maggie even made solar eclipse picture frames to remember the day!