Celebrate Good Times...

No accidents today!!! Yee haw!!! We got to hit DQ after dinner tonight for a celebratory ice cream too. She even went at the gym this morning, and TOLD the lady there that she had to go. Woo hoo!!!! Am I excited?...hmmm, let me think...YES!! Oh, and to top off the day, I went into the Children's Place to exchange a pair of jeans for Mags, and found that they have LITTLE girl panties! It was a great day. Pray that she does this good tomorrow when she's home with daddy for most of the day. : )

Potty Training

Well, it is potty training time once again in the Kelly house. And, it's going a heck of a lot better this time around. Maya has been going poopy on the potty pretty regularly for the last couple weeks, and hasn't had a poppy accident in a week at least. Pee pee was less predictable but I decided that if she could poop on the potty, she could darn well pee on the potty too. We've been at it for 3 days now, and she's only had like 2 pee pee accidents each day. Pretty good I think. And, she's been telling us she has to go some of the time. I'm so proud of her! One problem, finding little panties that actually fit. I got the smallest ones I could find when Maggie needed her first pairs, and they almost just fell off her. I actually put a safety pin on a pair the other day. Don't other "little" girls wear panties and potty train? You should see the size of some of these. They're HUGE! Maggie wouldn't even fit into them! Oh well. She'll have to make due.

She's on the phone with Grandma and Grandpa and Grammy and Poppy in case you were wondering!

Alphabet Bugs Invade!!!

The other day, Daniel was over for the day. Daniel and Maggie go to preschool together, but Daniel has no interest in anything academic and so doesn't know his letters, etc. Maggie of course is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, so since I am a fully qualified educator with an expired license, I am making it my mission to teach Daniel his letters. I know in order to do this, it's going to have to be in the form of games. He's a smart cookie and knows right away when you try to "quiz" him. So, I found this game called Alphabet Bugs. It looked like something they might have fun with so I gave it a try!

These are the Alphabet Bugs. Letters with wings. Ingenious I know.

Anyway, I color coded the wings on 2 sets of Alphabet Bugs and cut them apart. Mags and Daniel had to glue one set, in alpha order, to a long piece of paper.

The other set, I taped all over the living room...invasion of the Alphabet Bugs!!!

Their mission was to find all their colored Alphabet Bugs, and match them up with the ones already glued to the paper. Daniel's were blue, Mags had red.

When they found them all and got them all matched up appropriately, they got a couple of gummy bears. Maggie did this really easily, Daniel had some trouble, but I think they both had fun and Maggie has already asked to do it again. I think I need to modify it for her and do words or something. The letters were too easy.

I thought I'd share this since the kids had so much fun! Here's where I found it: http://www.toddlertoddler.com/todays_alphabet_bugs_learning_activity.htm

Freezing fog

A few days ago, I woke up and looked out the window and could BARELY make out the house across the street! I think it was this freezing fog stuff. Anyway, it made everything really beautiful. We don't get the fluffy white trees like you Seattle-ites because our snow is so light and it just gets blown off. We don't get the heavy stuff very often. Anyway, I took these pictures late morning, and there had been no snow (there was on the ground though). It covered all the trees and each little branch and flower. I guess this is what it's kind of like in the Central US where they get all those ice storms and everything gets covered in ice.

1, 2, Buckle My Shoe

Well, we just got back from a fun night of pizza and catching up with our friends Josh and Becky, Chris and Tamara and all the kids, including little Emma, whom Maya is obsessed with. She talked about her all the way to and from their house, and wanted to be right beside her as much as possible while we were there. She wanted to hold her and touch her and bring her toys. Becky took a picture of them, I'll have to get it from her. It was pretty cute.

On a totally different note, we were driving home tonight and Maggie was in the backseat counting...and she got all the way to 100! Hooray! She's been working on this task for weeks now, trying to understand that after 29 comes 30 and so forth. But I think she finally has it figured out. Of course Aaron asks, as he always asks when I tell him one of the girls has done something new, "Is she advanced?" Heck if I know. Of course we'd like to believe they are, but that's just our own biased opinion. : )

Snowy day

Monday was a beautiful, balmy 20 degree day and with daddy off work and no plans, we bundled up and headed outside to do a little sledding. The big pile of snow in the middle of the cul de sac has become quite a work of art. We and our fellow "Covesters" have created a perfect little sledding hill, great for the 5 and under crowd. The girls had great fun sledding and tromping around in the neighborhood snow.

Brrrrrr....

This one's for everyone in Seattle. You think it's bad there, and school gets cancelled because of the threat of snow but we didn't have school the last 2 days because of COLD WEATHER!!! Yes, that's right. It was -20 or colder the last two mornings and school was cancelled. SO...no complaining about "freezing" in Seattle. The good news is...we've finally gotten above freezing for the first time in 80+ hours. Yippee!

Sleepy Sunday

Today was a sleepy, lazy Sunday for us. We went to church and then just hung around the house all day. The girls were exhausted from our late night last night, but of course didn't nap and went to bed early. Lucky for me.

Last night we had a family outing to the U of M gymnastics meet. I took Maggie to one last year, but she didn't remember. She and Maya were both rivetted (how do you spell that??) and were maybe a little scared by the loud voice of the announcer and all the fanfare that accompanied the start of the meet. Lets just say it's a little different from an SPU gym meet. They had a great time though. Maya especially just sat and watched everything. She kept saying, "next one, next one" and "my turn!". It was really cute. They of course got really antsy at the end and we actually left a little bit early, but I think all in all they really enjoyed it and I'm sure we'll go to another one this season.

Here are a few pictures from today.

The girls all dressed up with no where to go! Sporting their new dress up dresses they got for Christmas.

Little Tinkerbell!

Maggie learned about Joseph in Sunday school this morning and they all made the coat of many colors. Isn't it just beautiful??? : ) *I don't know what that silly smirk is on her face. : )*

This picture actually needs to be rotated, don't know why it downloaded this way. But I took this literally a minute after I posted her strange sleeping pictures the other day. I opened her door to check on her after coming out of the office and found her like this. Actually, look at the one below. I didn't even see her when I looked in the room. The one above was taken when I walked right up to the chair and literally took the picture from standing directly above her. Silly girl!

Where's Maya? It really did take me a second or two to figure out where she was!!!

At least she's napping...

She may be napping most days, but I'm not sure how in the world she gets any sleep being in these crazy positions!!! Here's 2 I caught just in the last week!!!!

Santa sighting???

We went out to breakfast yesterday at Keys Cafe in Woodbury. We sat down at our table and Maya looked across the restaurant and said, "there's Santa!". We looked over and sure enough, there was a guy that was on the rolly polly side, with a white beard that really did look like Santa. She couldn't stop staring and saying Santa! Santa! It was pretty funny. We contemplated going over to him and having her thank him for her presents! : )

Christmas

Here are a bunch of pictures from the last couple weeks. You never know in which order they are going to come up in, so they might be a little mixed up, but oh well.

Maya in her Christmas Eve outfit. She was SO cute! The silver sparkly skirt she got from Auntie Sidney for her birthday couldn't have been cuter!!!!

Mags LOVES to lick the beaters or spoons after I'm done mixing something. I think we were making my now famous All Chocolate Boston Cream Pie for Xmas dessert. Yummy!

Christmas Eve again. We let them open 1 gift. These were from daddy.

Here's what daddy gave us! Snowman and Santa cups specifically for hot chocolate on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.

Christmas morning. After Maggie was finally convinced that Santa really did come and found that her stocking was full, she proceeded to spread the contents all over the living room floor. *Notice Maya in the background eating a candycane...yes, it was only like 7:30am or something.*

Opening gifts from Santa! I wonder what it could be?

Maggie opening her Santa gift. Santa got them each one of those little lap desks which "Santa" painted with their names, some new coloring/painting books, and new crayons and markers. Good job Santa!

Oops, Maya in a time out in the corner.

Christmas day after Grammy and Poppy got here. We saved all the "Kelly" gifts so they could watch some get opened.

Poppy and Maya reading a book before bed. Her favorite...Barnyard Dance.

Grammy and Maya coloring with some special crayons Mags got from Auntie Lori and Uncle Gordy. They always find the neatest stuff!!! : )

I think this picture is hilarious. Who knows what she was throwing a fit about. : )

Watching the tape of Maggie's preschool Christmas program.

Mommy and Maya snuggling.

Grammy reading Maggie one of her new Disney Faries series chapter books before bed. She LOVES them! We're already on the second book!