Happy Thanksgiving!

This year we made a thankful tree on the wall in our hallway, and every day the girls added a new leaf that said something they were thankful for.  The girls loved this because they got to tape things to the wall.  (Taping things to the wall may be Amelia’s favorite thing now; in addition to the drawings taped up in her room, she also has flowers, coins, barrettes, yarn, beads and bracelets taped on her wall.)  We talked about what being thankful means, and I started out every day by telling the girls what I was thankful for.  It only took a few days before Amelia was reminding me to fill out the thankful leaves and writing hers herself (with some spelling help, of course).  

Here is what the girls are thankful for; they came up with these all by themselves

Amelia said

   Two nice cats

   Grandma Jane

   Grandpa Jeff

   Good food

   Mommy

   Megan

   Santa Claus

   Ben Daddy

   Ms Bootumle and Ms. Harin  (Ms. Bottomley and Mrs. Herron)

   Grandma and Grandpa

   Mommy is a good baker

   Baby Abby

   Grace

Megan said

   Sophie

   Molly

   Amelia

   Nice house

   Mommy

   Snuggles

   Daddy

   Bubbles

   Aunt B

   Bread

Bagels as big as Megan's head

The girls and I had such a productive morning on Sunday; after church we ran some errands and then had lunch at Panera.  Of course the girls each had a cinnamon crunch bagel, it looks like Megan's bagel is as big as her head!

 I let them split a red velvet cookie as a treat.  Here they are showing off their red tongues:

 One of Amelia’s little friends came over to play (without her mom!) on Monday afternoon.  The girls chose to dress up and practice ballet, have a tea party for Dinah’s birthday, and color pictures.  I like to see how Amelia plays with her friends.  I encouraged her to ask her friend what she wanted to do, but she still got a little upset when her friend didn’t want to play the things Amelia suggested.  They spent about an hour coloring and cutting out some triangles to make birthday hats, and then coloring suncatchers with Sharpies.  Megan’s hands are still rainbow colored from the Sharpies!

November Miscellany

Earlier this week, Megan surprised me by drawing people!  The one on the right reminds me more of an angry bird than of a person, but the one on the left has two eyes, a frown, some hair and two legs.  Pretty impressive for a two year old!  I didn't even know she could draw a circle.

I asked Amelia to help me make dinner on Monday by crushing the crackers for our salmon cakes.  Here's how she decided to crush them:

It was pretty effective, and the freezer bag held up well to all the pounding.  I told Amelia and Megan that we were eating chicken fingers for dinner, but Amelia said "These don't taste right" and only ate a tiny little one. 

Yesterday the girls asked if they could sit outside to watch the sunset.  They wanted to go out without coats and shoes: "We won't be cold!" they said, reminiscent of Uncle David or Grandpa.  I made them put on coats because it was below freezing. 

Last night at dinner, Megan was making funny faces.

We kicked off our weekly family game night last night by playing Hey, That's my Fish.  Amelia won with 31 fish, while Ben and I each had 26 fish, and Megan had 17.  Amelia started to demonstrate some strategy, although I gave her a few hints along the way and Ben and I both played with a handicapped strategy.  I thought Megan did pretty well for not really understanding how to play!  She put all of her penguins on the same corner of the board.  :)  We simplified the rules so that penguins could move only one tile at a time, and we let everybody use all four of their penguins, because the girls really like the penguins.  After we finished our game, Megan and Amelia played with the penguins until bed time.  They made a road out of the ice floes, and Amelia got out a boat for the penguins to row across the ocean, in case they didn't feel like swimming, I guess.

Aunt B's Wedding

I hardly have any photos from Aunt B's wedding, because my camera got left at home.  With the two flower girls, flower girl backpacks, flower girl dresses, flower girl bows, shoes, tights, toys, snacks, coloring book bags, and diapers that I was carrying, I didn't even notice my camera was missing until we got to the church.  Hopefully we'll get copies of some cute photos from the photographer eventually. So these photos were all taken with Amelia's little camera.

Here's Amelia with Aunt B:

And here's Amelia with Grandma:

Here's the girls practicing walking down the aisle with Landon at the rehearsal.  I could tell Amelia was trying to follow instructions by walking slowly, but Landon kept trying to pull her along to walk faster.  Megan held her pretend flowers up in the air and whacked the sides of all the pews as she was walking down the aisle.  She did the same thing with her real flowers at the wedding.  :)

Amelia told me she wanted to stand at the front of the church with the big girls during the wedding, and she made it almost to the end before she got tired and came back to sit with me.  She took her responsibilities so seriously.  :)  Megan wanted to stand in the front, too, but I knew she wouldn't stand still, so I told her that if she sat with me, I would give her toys and jelly beans.  She chose to sit with me, and she ate jelly bellies pretty much the entire time. 

I thought the girls did very well; Megan was getting pretty tired by the family photos after the wedding, but they smiled nicely for photos before the wedding at least.  We stayed at the reception until 9pm, because the girls wanted to eat wedding cake (which they loved) and do some dancing.  Amelia was ready to leave when the dancing started because the music was so loud, but Megan kept saying "more dancing!" because she loved it so much.  Aunt B and Grandpa Jeff were very nice to let the girls join them for the last little bit of the father-daughter dance, and my girls were thrilled. 

Meeting new cousin Abby

Amelia and Megan got to see their new cousin Abby a few times over the weekend.  On Sunday, she came over for movie night (Fantasia) and the girls wanted to hold her.  Each girl got a turn holding her on the couch, which lasted about 20 seconds, and then as Megan said "All done!"

Megan in particular was interested in the baby, and was very gentle when she touched Abby's hands and gave her little pats on the head.  

Knock-knock Jokes

Grandpa Jeff taught Amelia a few knock-knock jokes over the weekend.  These are her favorites:

I think we heard each of these about 27 times on the drive back home.  I love to hear how her sense of humor is developing!

In case you can't understand her, they go like this:

Knock-knock

Who's there?

Who

Who who?

Are you an owl?

Knock knock

Who's there?

Cows go

Cows go who?

No!  Cows go moo!

Knock knock
Who's there?
Tank
Tank who?
You're welcome!

Knock knock

Who's there?

Owls go

Owls go who?

You're right!  Owls do go whoo!

Snow Flurries

When Megan and I left the library after story time today, it was snowing!  Megan was not a fan of the snow; even though she was wearing her winter coat with her hood up, I had to carry her to the car so she wouldn't complain about "rain on my face".  Amelia, on the other hand, was delighted to see snowflakes and wanted to collect snow in a bowl so that we could eat it.  When I told her there wasn't going to be enough snow for that, she had to go outside and try to catch the snowflakes on her tongue.  She was so excited when she would catch one!

Although the flurries continued for about two hours, it wasn't cold enough and there wasn't enough snow to stick.  Amelia asked when the first day of winter was going to be, and I told her that I guess it was today since it was snowing!  I find that a hard question to answer.....