Schmitt Family Play Date

(First I want to say sorry about the sideways pictures....I can't figure out how to turn them in here)

We went over to Kylie's house for a play date on Friday. Kylie is Marc's "girlfriend" from preschool last year. Samantha always finds something fun to keep herself entertained while Marc plays with the older girls. Today she found their piano and was fascinated by it!!One of Kylie's younger sister, Kaitlyn, is 2 1/2 years old. A lot of the time when we go over there, Samantha and Kaitlyn play together. They did a good job of working together to build a tall tower.
After awhile, Marc discovered the piano too. He didn't play it nearly as quietly as Samantha did. ;) Play made some beautiful music together though.
Samantha eventually found the sit-n-spin again. Last time we were over there, she couldn't spin herself around,I had to do it for her. This time, she had a lot of fun making herself spin around...and she was very proud of herself! :)
The older kids decided that they wanted to color and make some pictures. Of course, Samantha wanted to join in. She was VERY excited because she got to use colored pens there (she doesn't get to use pens at home).
Marc went into another room to create his masterpiece. He was drawing a picture to give to the girls, and he didn't want them to see it until it was done.
We stayed for lunch and a couple of hours of playing. We had a good time!! :)

Are you a digital scrap booker??

My friend Sarah does a money savings blog. It is sarahsdeals.blogspot.com. She does weekly drawing giveaways. This week she is doing a drawing for a $10 coupon code to Pages to Treasure. Their website is http://www.printpages.blogspot.com/. I want to get into the digital scrap booking craze. I am entering to win the $10! Maybe that would be what would get me started! :) Are you going to sign up too?

Big Girl!!

The other day I went in to get her after her nap she was standing up and I was afraid that if she leaned just the right way, she was going to go toppling over the edge. So, I finally decided that it was time to convert Samantha's crib into a daybed. **sigh** This is the before picture.....It only took Marc and I about 20 minutes to do the conversion. She thought it was pretty cool. She couldn't climb into it on her own yet, it is still a little too high for her, but she was able to slide off it. She actually said, "Oh, down!". ;)
After she played it in for a minute and then got down, we put the bed rail on it. We specifically did the conversion so the first time she used it was during the day while we could make sure to listen for her. ;)
She did a great job!! She is just now starting to wake up and I haven't heard a thud yet. ;)

New Curtains

When we moved into our house almost 9 years ago, it came with most of the window treatments. In the living room there was a basic curtain rod with a bla tan drape. I finally decided I was sick of it! Marc found some "thermal" curtains on clearance at JCPenny's. They were a little long so I asked my fabulous, wonderful, generous Mommy to hem them up for me. She was kind enough to do it for. Thanks Mommy!!! :)
I am going to repaint my accent wall to match the rust color in the curtains. I decided that since I spend most of my day in the living room (or in the area of), that I was going to "spruce up" the living room. I have not gotten the paint for the wall yet, but when I get it painted, I will post pictures of that as well.

Valentine's Day

Marc got to exchange Valentine's with his classmates on Friday during school. We said he got to look at the for just a second during school, but he was excited to look through them all after lunch.
He got to decorate a paper envelope to bring them all home in. He loves drawing hearts now days, so he took advantage of it on his envelope. :)He got quite a loot!! Most of the Valentine's had some kind of candy attached to them.
He really had fun reading who they were all from and what each one of the said.
The school sold "Candy Grams" for $.25 each. Marc and I sent him as did Samantha. :) he also got one from his kindergarten girlfriend, Katerie. He also got one from "a friend". I think we have a little Casanova on our hands. ;)

Cute pictures

I have, once again, gotten some random, cute pictures of the kids. So, again, I am going to combine them into a blog post about my cute kiddos. :)

One night I caught Samantha stretched out with her feet up on the chair. She had a book and was reading, but by the time I got the camera turned on, she had put the book down.I got Samantha dressed on day while Marc was gone and put her in a cute Pooh sweater we had gotten from Marc's sister. She looked so stinkin' cute!!!!!!!! I took a picture of her with my camera phone and sent it to Marc to show his sister. I decided she looked so cute that i had to take a picture with my regular camera too.
When we went to Chicago over the summer we went to the Hershey chocolate store. We got a bucket filled with chocolate, yummy! Well, surprise surprise, the chocolate is gone. the kids have been having fun playing with the bucket. One afternoon, Samantha decided to see how many uses 1 bucket could have. She stood in it.....
used it for a hat.....and as a chair. (I didn't get a picture of her sitting on it. By the time I got to the right angle to get the picture, she stood up.) So, for those of you that are counting, in a span of about 7 minutes, she discovered 3 uses for the same bucket. ;)
I was in the kitchen making lunch one afternoon while Marc was gone. It got really quiet in the living room, so I peeked around the corner and this is what I saw. Marc had laid down on the pillow and Samantha must have decided he looked comfy, so she laid her head on him. They laid that way the whole time I was getting lunch. they watched Word World, one of Marc's favorite shows.
Marc called me one day while he was down visiting his family and told me that his sister Melisa had a bunch of Paige's old clothes for Samantha to wear now. We brought home a bunch of clothes when we drove down there this past summer, so I was excited to get more. :) As Marc was showing them to me, Samantha kept taking some of them and "trying them on". She was very proud of herself for getting her legs in the leg holes of this skort all by herself. :)
Well, hopefully you have enjoyed my random cute pictures and all my rambling that came with them. ;)

A Day for Distracting

Marc (jr)'s family down in Arknsas has been going through some tough times the last few weeks. Marc decided to fly down there for a long weekend to lend some moral support and in any other way he could. He thought it was meant to be since he was looking at airline prices for our vacation this summer. The website said "click here for the cheapest flights out of Grand Rapids". When he clicked on it, it said to AR. ;) He left Saturday morning and he will be coming home Tuesday afternoon. To try to distract the kids (really just Marc) I decided that we would have a picnic in the living room for lunch.

Marc was so excited for the picnic that he spread his blanket out about an hour before lunch. Both Marc and Samantha grabbed books, sat down on the blanket and started reading.Marc was such a sweet big brother that when Samantha handed him one of her books, he took it from her and read it to her.
I told Marc that we were going to be having blueberry pancakes and bacon for lunch. I told him he could pick out what else he had to go with it. Here was our complete menu:
blueberry pancakes
bacon
banana nut bread
apples
strawberries
cinnamon graham crackers
nacho cheese Doritos
and for dessert graham cracker cookies with fudge inside.
For the most part what he chose was pretty healthy. :)
We had a good time and made a mess.
After dinner we started watching Jumanji while we are popcorn I popped in our Whirlipop. Yum!
Hopefully the rest of the weekend goes as well as today did. :)

A Tunnel of Fun

Three years ago Marc got a tunnel for his birthday. He played with it and then kind of out-grew it so it got packed away. I found it the other day and thought that Samantha might like it, so I pulled it out. And, boy was I right!! She LOVES it!!!!! :) Here are some of the cutest of the bunch. :)



Marc then decided he had to try it out again....only to find out that he is too big for it! He tried to crawl through it and got stuck. If he wants to go through the tunnel, he has to slide through on his belly!
And then they both decided to climb in at the same time.
Every now and then I pull it out for some fun times! :)

Cute Kiddos

We have taken some misc. cute pictures of the kids over the last few weeks. So here is my random pictures entry. ;)

At the party we went to on New Year's Eve, Samantha found a baby and a bottle and had fun feeding the baby so we bought her a baby bottle so she could feed Baby Grace. The first few days she would hold the bottle to the baby's mouth but she didn't hold the baby.
After some practice, so started holding Baby Grace and feeding her at the same time. :)

She has become quite the little Mommy. She loves carrying, feeding, kissing, and hugging Baby Grace.

One night after dinner we had some cookies for dessert. The two kids sat on the floor and ate them together and I thought it was really cute.

One of Samantha's new favorite thing to do is to wear my slippers around the house. She doesn't care that they are about 20 sizes too big for her. ;)

Marc LOVES doing his homework. The teacher sends home a homework packet each week for him to complete. For those of you that don't already know, Marc has been put into the Advanced Reading program!! Needless to say, we are just A LITTLE proud of him. ;) Since he is so far ahead of the rest of his class, his teacher sends home 2 homework packets for him to do. He gets the same one the other kids get, to just review the information, and a more advanced one. The more advanced one is more to promote reading comprehension. He truly enjoys doing his homework, and he does great at it!! I hope his attitude continues. :)

Marc's kindergarten class sponsored a movie night at the school. We all sat in the gym and watched Bolt and ate popcorn. It was fun! :)

About 2 weekends ago I had a 1 day teacher conference to go to so Marc took the kids out to our favorite pottery place to make a "surprise" for me. I out it in quotes because I was home no more than 30 minutes when Marc told me about going to the pottery place. ;) Marc has been there and painted items several times before, but Samantha had never been able to participate before this time. Marc (according to Daddy) and a lot of fun "showing her the ropes".

What Marc chose to do was a set of 3 flower pots and a tray for them to sit on. Marc painted the pots and Samantha painted the tray, with a little help from Daddy.

After they got done with the pottery, Daddy asked Marc where they should go for lunch. He chose Long John Silvers!! Totally shocked Daddy, but they went. Marc got this nifty little hat while they were there.

We decided that it had been awhile since we had been over to see my Dad's side of the family. So, the last weekend in January we headed over there for the weekend. Samantha enjoyed showing Grandpa here new laptop that she got for Christmas.

On Sunday morning, we got up and just kind of hung around the house. My Dad & Peg were reading the Sunday paper. Marc decided that he had to write an "article" for the paper. :)

I hope you have enjoyed seeing some of my randomness. :)

Ring Around the Rosie

One night about 3 weeks ago, Marc was playing Ring-Around-the-Rosies with Samantha. After a few "rings" it was time for him to go put his pj's on and get ready for bed. As Marc was downstairs, Samantha kept doing it by herself. She was singing the words and then fell down. Of course, as soon as she realized we were videoing her, she stopped the game. This video is of her just spinning in circles.

After a little coaxing between video attempts, we finally got her "all fall down" on video. Not the best one she has ever done, but still cute.