A visit from Hooty

When Grandma and Grandpa were visiting last week, they got to go to Amelia's preschool to be snack helper.  Everyone said they had a very nice time, and Grandma came home with several art projects that other kids had made for her.

Amelia wanted to bring carrots ("because they're my favorite!") and clementines for snack.  Amelia set up for snack all by herself, and made sure her best friends and Grandma and Grandpa were all sitting next to her.  She likes to be helpful, and she knew just what signs to put in the food bowls - "Take 1" for the clementines and "Take 2" for the baby carrots (although those did not seem to be very popular because she brought a lot back home.)

And then Amelia got to bring Hoot the Owl home to spend the night at our house.  Hoot went on all kinds of adventures with Amelia including going on an Easter egg hunt outside (both Amelia and Megan loved to hide the eggs, and were very good at helping the other find them afterwards).

He also ate some mice for lunch; Amelia said he enjoyed them.  When she shared the journal with her class the next day, all the boys wanted to know if he ate real mice, so Amelia explained that they were just kitty toys.

Then Hooty went on a walk in Amelia's new camel backpack from Israel.  We did the sneaky back way walk, although backwards, and wore our rainboots because it was a little muddy.  Grandpa and Amelia walked purposefully back to the house, but Grandma, Megan and I explored all kinds of animal holes and picked up lots of natural materials like pinecones, corn cobs, pine needles.

When we got back to the house, Grandpa had found our kite and was successfully flying it, although it didn't get too high because it wasn't quite windy enough.  Hooty enjoyed chasing the tails of the kite with Amelia.

Then all the girls painted using our nature finds.  Grandma really enjoyed getting to do an art project with us!  Unfortunately, Hooty tried to help, and ended up falling in the paint, so I had to give him a bath.  The kids (and the teachers, thankfully) thought that was pretty funny.

Amelia wrote the following journal entry about her time with Hooty:

If you can't read 4-year-old, her writing says "Hooty went on an Easter egg hunt with me.  He went on a walk with us.  He ate mice."  Then she dictated the rest to me because she was tired of sounding out words (it's a lot of work!)