A Penguin Party

Lydia has been big fan of penguins for quite some time now.  Last year around her birthday we started talking about how she would be 5 on her next birthday and therefore could have an actual party with non family members. I mentioned something about how a winter theme would be fun since her birthday is in January and she took that and ran with it.  I was really happy with how the party turned out and Lydia loved it.

It was fun to look up party ideas online and at the same time I had to tell myself a few times to not go overboard with all the fun ideas.  There were so many!  We made cute penguin invitations together and Lydia decided she wanted a penguin ice cream cake so Mark would take care of that.  I looked up some fun winter themed games and then had Lydia pick the ones that sounded the most fun to her. I wanted to give out a non candy party favor since there would be zero healthy snacks consumed at the party! Instead we made some sparkle play dough and put together a snowman play dough kit and gave out snowflake rings.  We did throw in a small handful of marshmallows but that was it.  They were super cute.  We blew up lots of black and white balloons and didn't worry about many more decorations than that.  Again, so many fun ideas out there. I was proud of myself for not going crazy with all the ideas.

 While we waited for all the guests to arrive the kids played with the balloons which was great because there were no instructions needed, easy!  They just played until everyone arrived.  We then went down to the basement to make a penguin craft.  After our craft we played our winter games and then headed back upstairs for our snack and opening presents.  Then we went on a scavenger hunt to find their party bags.  I think scavenger hunts are an awesome party activity, the kids loved figuring out the clues and running all over the house.  We went all throughout the house and then headed back upstairs for cake.  The timing went smoothly and it seemed like everyone had a great time.  Lydia now has an awesome penguin collection!

Onto the pictures.

Lydia specifically chose this outfit so she could look like a penguin.  Silly girl.

Games:
Fill the snowman up.  The idea was to toss cotton balls into the cups to fill the snowman up with snow.

Marshmallow "snowball" transfer

Each child had a plate with marshmallows, a straw, and a cup. The goal was to move marshmallows from the plate into the cup only sucking on the straw.

 

Next we did snowball transfer.  I'm not sure why we didn't get any pictures of it. Oh well. You sat down with an empty bowl on your head and a bowl full of cotton balls in your lap.  You had one minute to transfer as many snowballs into the bowl on your head using a spoon.

Lastly we did penguin races.  The kids took a balloon and stuck it between their legs then had to waddle across the room and back like a penguin.  I was upstairs putting the food out but my Mom and Mark said it was really cute and fun.  It was fun to hear them giggling while they played.

 

So blurry! 

Our snacks were:  snowflakes made out of pretzels and marshmallows, baby gold fish, and snowman heads.  They kids put together their snowflakes and made the snowman heads. Both were cute and fun. Mark made candy cane hot chocolate because what is a winter themed party without hot chocolate?

Gifts:

Scavenger Hunt and Cake:

A penguin huddle to hear the first clue.

First clue

Found them! 

The kit had play dough, 2 little felt scarves, orange and black beads for the face and buttons and twigs.

The cake.  The first ice cream layer was brownies and the second was peppermint bark.  I wanted to have some penguins on the cake and found a cute idea to make some out of marshmallows.  Their idea was way more complex using dipping chocolate. I took the easy way and bought edible markers and drew my penguins.  There were a few that didn't look very penguin like but in the end I got 6 adorable penguins and was really more proud than I should have been with how they turned out.  I loved them!

 

I was really so happy with how everything turned out.  It was fun to plan the party, Lydia had an awesome time but we are still standing by our designated year parties.  Jared is turning 8 this year so he will have an official party too.  As of now he wants a killer whale theme party.  I may be crossing my fingers that he changes his mind or just repeating a lot of this party! 

First snow of 2017 and happy news

Friday afternoon we started seeing some snow flurries.  We didn't expect them to amount to much and were pleasantly surprised when we actually got 2-3 inches of snow.  Jared and Lydia were dressed and out playing in it by 8:00 Saturday morning. I got a few toys for them and filled some spray bottles with colored water and then stayed inside nice and warm.  Mark kindly made crepes and hot chocolate, it was a great way to start our snow day.  It snowed for most of that morning and Jared and Lydia spent a good amount of time out playing.  We all worked together to shovel most of our driveway and then I spent a good part of the morning practicing the piano while Jared and Lydia enjoyed our basement.  My teacher is having me learn Teach Me to Walk the the Light from the simplified LDS hymns and it is so hard.  I look at the official version and see that this version is indeed simplified but it is taking me a long time to remember where the notes are. I feel pretty good about reading and recognizing the notes but play painfully slow.  Why is it so much harder to play with the left hand? I have been happy to learn how much I enjoy practicing the piano.  Even when it is hard I like to sit down and play and can end up spending a lot of time going over the songs.   It's been a good experience for me and I am glad I heard that Breanne was teaching. I think leaning hymns is nice but I want to learn some more popular songs too, maybe I should look for a really easy Disney book?  I am just glad I can learn after all this time.

We originally weren't going to go sledding because it just wasn't that much snow but in the end I couldn't resist and Jared and Lydia were just as excited to go.  Mark attended a baptism and while he was there we ran some errands and on the way home I just decided to drive down Chris Greene Lake Road to see how clear it was and decided we could drive down pretty far.  Since we wouldn't have to walk from the top we felt we had enough time to do a few runs.  Just as we were putting on boots Mark got home and came with us which was great. I am so glad we went. I love sledding so much.  Strangely I felt less control and like we went much faster even though there was not very much snow. Jared seemed to have just as much fun crashing into the reeds at the bottom at he did actually going down the hill.  While we were there a friend of his from school who happens to like on Chris Greene Lake Rd came with his Dad.  Jared was so happy to sled with him.  His name is Markus (his dad's is Eric we actually met at a field trip in the Fall) and he is one of the kids that Jared talks about the most. It was a great way to end our snow day.

Lydia was pretty nervous at the beginning but soon remembered that she did really like it. 

So much (on purpose) crashing!  He loved it. 

We head from Albemarle County that there will be no school tomorrow which makes sense.  The roads seem pretty icy, it just didn't warm up very much today.  So much that we only had Sacrament meeting today.  A friend had texted me about being disappointed to not hear my lesson right before we walked out the door for church.  So I went to check my email and there it was, only Sacrament meeting. It was funny to not know until about 1:10.  We would have been in for a pleasant surprise when they announced it at church. It was nice to have another break from teaching and I already have my lesson ready for next week. They did not announce the new teacher which was a bummer but talked to me about it before church started.  Hopefully next week. It will be nice to have Mark around tomorrow.  Jared could very well end up not having school on any of the Monday's in this month.  They had last Monday off, snow day tomorrow, the 16th is MLK, and the 23rd is a teacher work day.  We will see about the 30th.  My Mom is coming out on the 18th and we are very excited to see her!  She will be here for Lydia's birthday which will be fun for her and Lydia especially. Since Lydia is turning 5 she gets to have a party, her first official friends party.  We are not having too many people over but I had fun taking her ideas and planning it out last night. She really wanted a Penguin party so we are doing a winter theme with a good dose of penguin activities.  I think it will be really fun.  

In other fun news I met with a new family from the 1st ward on Friday and they are going to send their son to preschool!! I am beyond thrilled and excited.  They have to find a doctor here but as soon as she can get the forms filled in he will be here.  I had sent an email to the 1st ward account before Christmas and had gotten an email from her but then never heard from her again so I figured she changed her mind but earlier this week she wrote back.  It was such a  happy moment. After I didn't hear from her I felt like I finally truly accepted that my class was just meant to be these 4 kids and that was fine and things were working out fine.  We could make things work.  I feel like I thought I had accepted this before (back in the Fall) but I guess maybe I didn't and once I did, I truly turned it over to the Lord and made peace wth it (this has been a really long process) and then I get this blessing.  Then I get this answer to so many prayers said. It has been an unpleasant reminder that my timeline is not the same as the Lord's but it is having a happy ending and I am grateful.  I really like this family.  They are actually hoping to buy a house in our ward.  They want to send their kids to Baker Butler and be in our ward which I would love.  It turns out her Mom ran a preschool from their home while she was growing up (like for 20 years!) and her dad was a middle school teacher (sound familiar?) and she has her degree in early childhood education.  When they came into our preschool room she said (this is me paraphrasing)  " I love this, it feels like home." Her son had asked about preschool when they moved here and she had told him they just hadn't found it yet and when she told him they were coming here on Friday she said, "we found your preschool!" and he jumped up and ran to the door.  It really means a lot to me that with her background, she felt that my program was fantastic (I sent her my objectives and our daily schedule) and what she wanted her son to be involved in. She joked that she wished she could come to class too.  We had a great time visiting and I hope to get to know her and her family soon.  Side note, her husband's name is Mark! I am so grateful. 

Christmas break and New Years Eve

I think I mentioned this last year but New Years is steadily moving up on the list of most enjoyed holidays.  We started celebrating with a countdown at 9:00. I picked some new minute to win it type games and had them in envelopes.  Jared and Lydia took turns opening one each half hour.  At 12:00 we went outside for our silly string fight and toasted the New Year with our first bottle of sparkling cider.  This years games were:

 Marshmallow Toss, Cotton ball Transfer, Straws and M & M's, Categories (with the spray bottle), Candy in the flour and Penny stack.  I also had some New Years Mad Libs, BINGO cards, and 2017 fill in pages ready for Jared and Lydia. It was a fun morning and went by super fast! I remember my family celebrating New Years with the Rose Parade, football and lots of snacks.  One snack I always looked forward to was queso.  It was one of my favorite things up until about 5 years ago.  Now I eat it and still like it but don't love it like I once did.  I did make some for tradition sake and ma glad I did.

This did not end well for Lydia.  She made the candy fall so had to fish it out and sadly took a deep breath when her face was right by the flour.  Flour is quite light and she inhaled a good mouthful.  Poor girl was not amused.

Lydia was quite adamant that she did not want to have any silly string sprayed on her so she was more of an observer.  She enjoyed spraying her silly string on a tree by us.  Awhile later we had friends come over for our winter picnic.  We were lucky in that it wasn't exactly warm out but it was around 50 degrees so it was pretty pleasant by the fire.  After our picnic complete with "summer" type games we went in to get our fondue ready. We had a really great selection of items to dip in the Fondue this year.  We got everything ready and then the adults sort of looked at each other and one person suggested we eat without the kids which I thought was brilliant so the adults enjoyed some delicious uncontaminated fondue.  After a little while Lydia came up from the basement to see if the fondue was ready and came to join us.  At first she started turning around to go and tell the other kids it was ready but we persuaded her to come eat some with us.  Eventually we had the other kids join us and they enjoyed dipping and eating.

After fondue we headed down to the basement for our New Years Glow dance party which was a hit.  We love getting the light up balloons and rocking out.  We played a few rounds of not letting the ballon hit the ground and then headed up for a New Years Toast with more sparkling cider.  We are looking forward to lots of great memories in 2017.

While we were out of school we drove up to Harrisonburg one day. We stopped by Hobby Lobby and then headed to Funky's for some Roller Skating. Man I love roller skating!  I am so grateful I married such a good sport.  Mark was such a trooper and Jared and Lydia seemed to have a great time.  I'm glad we could head up.  Roller skating and Hobby Lobby is definitely a good time for me.

We also went over to Monticello one day. Mark had been given 3 free passes + himself while attending a tour for Social Study teachers and they expired on December 31.  I think he got them back in March?  Both Mark and I had been in the house (Mark has gone at least 3 times and I don't think he has paid once!) but Jared and Lydia had not. We had a great tour guide and really nice weather.  It was fun to go and see it with Jared and Lydia.  They did a great job in the house.  We stopped and played in the discovery museum for a bit before our tour and checked out the displays under the house.  Jared was fascinated to look at a nickel and then look up at Monticello.  I am not sure Lydia loved it but she also didn't complain at all.

We have some fun things coming up in 2017.  Lydia will start Kindergarten.  Jared will be baptized and for my 35th birthday we will be heading up to NYC to check out the Macy's Thanksgiving parade or at least the balloon illumination the night before.  I have wanted to go ever since I was a little girl and 35 seems like a great year to make it happen. I am slightly torn because I for sure went to see the parade but all the lights/decoration won't be up and NYC at Christmas time seems pretty festive but there is always next year.  My Mom is coming out to visit and will be here for Lydia's birthday which will be fun. Its' a party year for her, her first official party with friends (and Jared too since he is turning 8) and she has been talking about a penguin party for months so we need to start planning that.

Mark and I have talked about different goals for our family besides personal ones and 2 of them were to have him and Jared study the scriptures together before school to help him get in the habit and prepare for baptism and to make our FHE's more meaningful.  Jared's birthday is in October so I am looking forward to seeing how it plays out all year.  So far they have done great and its nice to have them both up and ready by by 6:50 so our mornings aren't as rushed. I hate cutting out any sleep for Jared but know this will be good for him and Mark.  Talking about these goals was kind of funny.  They were both things I really wanted to happen but don't really have the time to do. My evenings are pretty filled up. I am most likely going to keep working at Kohls, I have gospel doctrine to prepare (although I have it on good authority a 2nd teacher is getting sustained Sunday, Happy day!!) and preschool to plan so that leaves very little spare time.  As I mentioned, I am very blessed to have married such a good sport and someone who is willing to fulfill goals for me!!

Cheers to 2017!