Dinosaur Eggs

I ran across an interesting idea on this blog the other day and decided to give it a try. Amelia is really into dinosaurs and dragons lately, so we called them dinosaur eggs and she was so ready to try it. A lot of crafts I find, I just don't have the supplies on hand, but this was easy: cotton balls. Haha. She really enjoyed mixing the food coloring into the flour and water (which I didn't anticipate) and thought that was a very important job. Someone else was very interested in watching.Next we soaked the cotton balls in the different colors. Amelia wanted to make sure that it was okay to get her hands totally dirty while dipping. She asked me around a million times. I wasn't sure what Elise would do and she wasn't really into dipping the cotton ball, but loved dabbing the mixture on paper.




At one point while painting, Elise swiped some paint across the lens of my camera and then went right back to her paper..


After they were baked, they were hard as a rock on the outside, but still fluffy on the inside. Amelia and Elise fed them to their babies and made a sidewalk out of them and then we hid them from each other and found them. They transformed into Easter eggs and we sorted them by color. From start to finish (making them and then playing with them) we had an activity that lasted most of the entire morning!

Youngest and the Oldest

It's funny these two are just barely under three years apart, yet there are two cousins in between them. Amelia has taken such a fondness for Liv. She calls her babies Liv and always wants to sing to her and make her stop crying. She always wants to hold her and definitely always wants to touch her face, but with a gentle correcting, redirects her affection to a pat on the tummy or a rub of the foot. Such a sweet big cousin!

Just Because

Where's Elise?
Color time
Aerial view
Amelia reading to sister
FINALLY, a date night- @ Nakato



With Daddy after church

Playing cars and Just Dance with Asher

Green Acres is the Place to Be

We went to the farm to see Pa's new baby calves on Sunday. Amelia quickly changed out of her church dress and into her "cowgirl boots" in case she "saw any cow poop." She named a black calf Sarah and a brown calf Thomas, and she was very proud of those names. Elise loved mooing at the cows, and stayed glued to the fence the first thirty minutes.


Then Elise saw Amelia climb the fence and immediately tried to scramble up herself. Thankfully, Pa was there to help.

Next, the girls picked some turnips for the horses. Frank (their little dog) tried to wrestle away one of Elise's turnips, but she screamed, "NO," and scared him off. Haha. This tickled me to pieces (after I stopped having a heart attack thinking Frank was eating her arm off).



Then it was off to the creek down the road to throw a few rocks in. If you will remember the last time we were near water, Elise didn't get to participate; however, she was delighted to have a hand to hold and a rock to throw this time.

Amelia was asking to ride the wheelbarrow and after a little investigating, we found out she meant the four-wheeler. And off they went!
Add to this wonderful day a meal of french toast and bacon and strawberries made by G and that's what I call an awesome day on the farm! Thanks G and Pa

Super Bowl Sunday

So, it is actually Oscar Sunday, but I totally forgot to post this. And, it was a very important moment in the Halsted family's life events: Amelia's first go-kart ride.

We went to Incredible Pizza on Super Bowl Sunday after naps for the girls and a long nap for a post-call Daddy. I have to say, I LOVE their pizza. It is delish. I cared nothing about the Super Bowl and even though Ross would have liked to watch the game, he went with his girls to have some fun. The game was playing in the background and Amelia was into it. "I love football," she says. Haha. She was very scared of the commercials and had to turn the other way. We watch all our cartoons on demand and so she had never seen a real commercial. Precious.

The games were fun, but Amelia was really curious about the Go-Karts. I assumed she wasn't tall enough, but lo and behold she was. Even though I instructed her Daddy to drive on the OUTSIDE and to go very SLOW, he drove on the INSIDE and went quite FAST. Amelia had a huge smile the whole time and loved it.



They won a first place ribbon and she fist pumped as they came across the line. Hilarious.



She wanted to wear her ribbon to school for Purple Day the next morning. Proud of herself, that one.

Conversations...

We saw a man sitting outside the library the other day and Amelia said, "I wonder why he is sitting there, Mom? Lets think of a few reasons."

I chuckled. This is what I do to her all the time to get her thinking and she was turning the tables on me in such a grown-up voice. Hilarious.

A: I will go first. I bet his legs got tired.
M: Good one. Or maybe he is waiting on a ride.
A: Or maybe he was too loud in the library.
M: Or maybe he is just getting some fresh air.

We went on like this for quite a while. These are the days :)
--------------------------------------------

Me: You ready to go get sissy poo from school?
Elise: Poo Poo. Shewwwww.
-----------------------------------------------
Scene takes place right beside sign that says to keep your dog on a leash.
Amelia: Mom, there is a dog and he's not on a leash!
Me: I know, just stay right by Mom.
Random Lady at Park: Is she scared of dogs or something?
M: No, but I have taught her to be leery of strange dogs she doesn't know.
RLAP: Um, this is a puppy, not a dog.
M: Well, he could still bite her.
RLAP: Nope, he is just a baby, so he won't bite, but whatever.
M: Well, I'm biting my tongue off so that I don't say something very rude.

Perfect

This picture is idyllic and beautiful and Amelia was having so much fun. What you don't see is me trying to balance the camera and keep a feisty Elise from trying to catapult herself into the river. You can't hear her screaming BATH or me laughing and looking a mess as she tries to wriggle free from my grasp to kiss a honking goose. This picture above is only part of the scene. Isn't that true about life in general? We always only see part of the scene when it comes to most situations that don't involve us directly, yet we judge like we've seen the whole thing. Or, I know I do. This picture made me want to work on that.