Christmas traditions and other fun things

We had a wonderful Christmas this year!! We spread out family Christmas' into three days which was MUCH better than everything in one day. K has A LOT of new toys that I need to find a place for in her room, but for now everything is in our living room!

Throughout he month of December, we added some new Christmas traditions...
I wrapped 24 of K's books to open each night for the month of December. The first night she opened one and got excited and said, "I HAVE THIS BOOK!" I explained to her they are ALL her books that she already has, but its fun to pick one and not know what it is and then we can read it. It was a fun new tradition!

ELF ON THE SHELF! Great new tradition! We bought the elf on the shelf that includes a book that explains what to do with your elf. Each night, Buddy, (K named him) goes back to the North Pole to tell Santa that K was a good little girl and the next morning, he would appear in a new place in the house to keep an eye on her. I am going to miss having Buddy here...he helped K to eat her veggies and not throw fits...
I bought K her very own Christmas tree--back in July. I was so excited, I wanted to put it up then, but Bill made me wait. :) We took so many pictures with both of our families...I couldn't decide which to pick to put on here on my blog...so I just picked a couple. We had a great Christmas with everyone! I loooove breakfast. It's tradition for me to have a good breakfast for Christmas. We celebrated our family Christmas at home on Friday and I made these Rudolph pancakes. I switched the eye color after this pic so Kaitlyn can have the green eyes and I could have the brown...I had to get them right before we ate them. :)


Kaitlyn did just fine sitting on Santa's lap. We went to the new Outlet mall expecting it to be crowded with him being there, but there was NO line at all!!
Kaitlyn got "Jingle" the dog from me and Bill (along with other gifts--but this was probably her favorite!) Jingle comes with a book and movie. When you get to certain lines in the book, Jingle responds. Well, okay, he ONLY seems to respond to Bill when he reads the book. I read is over and over and Jingle doesn't seem to like my voice. But Jingle is still a pretty cool little pup.
Kaitlyn's a happy girl! Behind her is the Rapunzel vanity that Santa brought her. The mirror lights up when you lift up the comb and pretend makeup. She's our little princess!

my daughter...

Above is a picture of me and her today. I had a day off work and it was beautiful weather! We had a picnic in our backyard in her "house". We had so much fun together!! We did lots of other fun things too!

She is speaking sooooo well now! She asks full complete questions and we can just carry on conversations with her. When she asks a question, her voice goes up and then ends on a complete different note...hard to explain, but its hilarious!

She's been saying the sounds that different animals make for awhile, but now she likes for us to say them wrong, so she can correct us... I might say, "A cow says 'oink'." and she'll laugh and say, "No, Mama, a cow says Mooooo!"

For the longest time, anything she would say, you would hear "Mama" after it.. "Look mama, I see a K mama, its a green light mama, it's a bird mama, mama, mama look!" It never got old to me though....

When she watches tv, she likes to pick the character who she is....Like if she's watching Dora, she might say, "I be Boots, mama--you can be Dora..." It's funny. I wonder if the kids at her home day care do that too.

She loves carrying around a cup and spoon with her everywhere she goes. She pretends to stir and feed herself and her babies and us. She's gonna love cooking someday! She helps me cook dinner sometimes too.

She is saying some things that I catch myself saying...she says "that is just Perfect!" or "that's my favorite!" :) One day she caught me with my hands on my hips disagreeing with something with Bill and I look over at her and she was doing the exact same thing and pointing at him saying "You should have known Dadda!" It cracked us both up!

She loves eating lasagna and loves watermelon. She calls Lasagna--onya.

When in trouble from us, she suddenly will say, "ouchie" like she's suddenly hurt and she's trying to change the subject so we'll feel sorry for her.

We point out all the school buses in the morning before I drop her off and she says, "look another yellow school bus!" She also watches for stop lights and will say, "green means go! Red means stop! yellow means SLOOOooooow down!"

She's so complimentary....I could put her socks on for her or her hair bow and she'll smile and say, "great job momma!"

She gets so excited when seeing other kids in public. She would point to other girls and say, "oooh look it's a girl!!"

She's counting to ten in spanish...she started this a couple months ago. I think its from watching Dora. She also will say other things and then tell us its in spanish. She'll just jabber some things and say, "that was in spanish." it's hilarious. One day she said, "beep" and then said, now in spanish beep is "beeeeeeeeeeep"!

Instead of saying Abc's, she says "let me sing my ABCD's!" She's been able to say these for awhile now. She can also sing several other songs and recite lots of books. She loves anything to do with letters..she finds them everywhere! We drove by a circle K and she got so excited there was a K..."Look momma a K, K is for Kaitlyn...bye K!"

She's been going pee pee on the potty since February--BUT she's not potty trained yet. She will go every time I put her on there, but she still drinks so much and she still pees so much. I could put her on there every hour all day long, and she still will pee in her panties without knowing she did. And I haven't really tried really really hard to work on her with it. So we decided to wait a little longer before really pushing it. She used to sit down on it and get so frustrated when she couldn't pee and would look at me and say, "It's not working momma!" It was so cute and sad at the same time!

One time she woke up in the middle of the night and as I checked on her, she begged me to say a prayer with her and then it was okay for me to go back to bed.

Here are some cute quotes in her little quote book I have been keeping track of....

"That very better"
"That very hurt, momma"
"Pweeeeze hold you momma"
"Look momma Peoples!"
"Please want this"
"I can't want that..." Instead of don't, she says can't.
while praying..."Thank you for our tv, daddy's eyes, and our blankies, amen!"
watching a fire on the grill while dadda was cooking..."Happy Birthday to Dadda..."
"What's that name?" about EVERYTHING...people, characters on tv, stuffed animals...
"Look momma its a stop sign...it's sooooo pretty!"
"Look momma a stop sign, it has 8 sides!"
"Look momma its a circle, circles have 8 sides"
while someone was saying a prayer at church, she shouts out, "And thank you for my Nini!"
AFter I put her down for her nap, she jumped up and ran to me and as I was just about to get on to her and direct her back to bed, she hugged me and said, "I love you to the moon and back!"
"Jacey (our dog) is my favorite girl everywhere...and momma is my best friend!"

She LOVES books...here is her reading another book....

I'm an AUTHOR!!!!

Check it out: My new Children's Book!! It's finally here!!! Here is how it all came about.... About 4 years ago, my friend, Jen, worked at Tate Publishing. She was an illustrator/cover designer there. We sat down one evening and talked about how she is illustrates all of these books, but doesn't have one to call her own. She had great ideas of a couple of story lines for books, but never really thought it would actually be put together for a book. We talked how "someday" it would be neat to have a book together. I totally took it seriously and went home that night and thought about the story line that she mentioned to me about Ms. Bostrich. I woke up the next morning and just started writing. Being a Kindergarten teacher, I read children's books daily to my class, and of course being a mom, I come home and read books to my daughter. So when writing, I had in mind some of my favorite books. I wanted to make the lines flow together and rhyme so when you are reading it, it would be like the Dr. Seuss book--How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I kept thinking...."All the Whos down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not." So, I wanted a sweet little town like Whoville...so I came up with "Hickabee". I changed Ms. Bostrich to Ms. McBostrich to make it flow better too. Then I wanted the people to be super nice like Whoville...and then something that the town was known for...so I thought about the "roast beef" in the feast on How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but instead I made it "beef stew". Anyways, after sitting down for about 3 hours, I had the entire book written. I gave Jen a call and read it to her. She couldn't believe I put her idea all together into book form. She loved the things I added and how I made it rhyme. Later we met together and she sketched some characters and it was exactly how I pictured the characters and town to look like--very whimsical and fun!! She really made the characters come to life!!! Anyways, after she finished the illustrations, we had to go through editing and got to look at proofs and pick out someone to be the voice in the download-able audio and THEN here we are 4 years later and the book is now PUBLISHED!! We are thrilled!! We placed an order and got 100 hard backs and 20 soft backs and split everything last Thursday. And now it is Tuesday and we are almost completely out of books!! My librarian at my school got permission from my principal to do an author signing day for me and Jen and we have some other things booked--I am speaking and reading at a Rotary Club and Jen's superintendent has her speaking this Friday. Whew! and that is before we did any work and got out there and marketed!! So we are super pumped and hoping this could actually get big! I would eventually like to talk to some libraries and book stores about doing some book signings as well. So, if you are reading this and are interested, I am ordering more books and they should be here in less than a month--hard backs are $14 and soft backs are $11. Soft back books are being sold on Tatepublishing.com but it is listed just under Jen Fisher. I think they could only put one author name on there. We should have a debut at other websites in October.

Here is a little about the book:

In the friendly town of Hickabee, the quirky and selfish Ms. McBostrich decides to take away the beauty of an animal only to please herself. Although Ms. McBostrich originally thinks she is satisfied with her decisions, the events of the story force her to learn a most unforgettable lesson.

If you wanna find out what happens....you gotta buy the book! :)

Another Quiet Book...

I recently made two more quiet books for my little girl. This one below is before I sewed it all together. The two books were originally going to be one big one, but it got too thick....

This page is for playing with/braiding/or putting bows or pony tail holders in the girl's hair. There are bows and pony tail holders in the pocket. This one above is matching shapes on the gumball machine. This one above is fun with the finger puppets that go inside the ark. I wish there was room in the ark for more animals! :) And this one is for matching the different shapes.

I got ideas for this quiet book and the other one I will post soon from this site http://quietbook.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-11-10T17%3A48%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=12

Recent photo shoot

We recently had a photo shoot with the wonderful Valerie Vaughn from withunmindphotography.com I had her daughter in my class this last year and as a gift during Teacher Appreciation Week, we were able to do a photo shoot. There were SO many pictures we loved from this shoot...but I had to eliminate it down.... :) We had so much fun taking pictures.

Birthday Girl!!

I am a little behind on my blog posts...I am finally getting to Kaitlyn's birthday pictures from last month. This first picture is Kaitlyn on her actual birthday.
Kaitlyn's birthday part was a couple days after we got back from vacation, so I wanted to do something somewhere else beside my house. We had gone to the Orr Family Farm a few months ago, and Kaitlyn LOVED it there. I was worried with an outdoor party either that it would rain or that it was be TOO Hot. Well, it WAS a very very hot day...but I think it still worked out. First the kids got to do pony rides....some cried when they had to get off, because it was so fun!! They didn't realize there was much more to come!

Next up was the animal barn. Pigs, goats, rabbits, lots of fun animals that the kids got to pet and feed. Then the guide took us to a little room with bleachers where a little farmer pig sang happy birthday and Kaitlyn got a cute shirt from the farm.
Next up, CHOO CHOO!! We all rode the train around the farm. It was nice because after getting all sweaty, that was a bit more cooling. Below is a pic of Kaitlyn with her cousin Haylee and their Nina/Nini! :)
Afterward, Kaitlyn got to toot the horn! Here are the cupcakes I made for the party. They are supposed to be Minnie Mouse cupcakes. They turned out pretty good after I made them, but by party time, the oreos got a little soggy. Oh well...they seemed to enjoy them. It was too windy to blow out a candle so we pretended. :) ha. Kaitlyn got lots of great presents!! Last of all was the carousel! fun, fun! Here is a picture of Kaitlyn with most of the kids that came to the party..
It was so much fun and I am so glad we decided to go to Orr Family Farm for Kaitlyn's 2nd birthday party!! She did not nap when we got home even though she was exhausted....she HAD to play with all of her new toys! :)

Vacation!

Bill and I hadn't taken a vacation since before I had gotten pregnant with Kaitlyn. We decided to take Kaitlyn on her first vacation this year to Beaver's Bend. It was a perfect family getaway.
We got to do the paddleboats...

go to the swimming beach area...

Ride a horsey! Kaitlyn LOVED this horse. She jumped up and down and was so excited when they brought the horse over to us!

We made smores and hot dogs over the fire pit...
We rode the train and saw deer...

Kaitlyn was the lucky child who had the winning ticket on the train to get a free cotton candy! She must've inherited me and Bill's good luck! :) We celebrated our 8 year anniversary!



We had a good time and we were sad for it to all end!