Time in the Play Area

I took the kids to the mall to see Santa on Monday, and my Mom met us there to spend more time with her "favorite grandkids". ;) The mall opened at 9:00 and Santa started at 10:00. The mall has a tree house play area that Marc always wants to play in and is always too crowded with unsupervised children, so we don't stop and play. We decided to get there at 9:00 and let the kids play in the play area for awhile to get some wiggles out before waiting in line to see Santa.

This was Samantha's first time in the play area so I was very pleased to see that there were only another 6-8 kids and 90% of them were her age(ish). She had a BLAST!! She LOVED the slide. I was a little hesitant to let her go down without me holding her arm at first (the slides are really fast!). Here are some of the picture we took of the kids playing.

Samantha climbing the stairs to the tree house

Samantha at the top of the tree house

Samantha ready to go down the slide. (I didn't get any of her going down on her own since the slides were so fast)

Marc posing on a mushroom

We caged Samantha in a net ;) (It was actually a net wall along the stairs)

Marc and Samantha going down the slide together. Samantha thought it was so cool

Samantha crawling through a log

Marc was inventing different ways to go down the slide. This time was criss cross applesauce

Samantha and I "had" to race Marc down the slide

Samantha thought the feel of the "rubber" tree was really cool

They played for about 45 minutes and then we went upstairs to wait for Santa. (See next post)

Christmas fm Service

Our church has an fm service 6-8 times a year. fm stands for Family Matters. The older youth and a few adults do a skit/play based on the virtue of the month. The virtue this month is Compassion. After the skit, the sermon, and singing of some Christmas carols, all of the " 'J' Seekers" got to go on stage to sing. ( 'J' Seekers is the name for the Sunday school classes. J=Jesus Seekers). Marc wasn't real thrilled about going up on stage, which totally stumps us! Oh, well, he went up, sang, and was cute.

Gingerbread Boy Part II

Today was Marc's last day of school before his 2 weeks off for Christmas break. As stated in the last post, the teachers gave up trying to get any "work" done with them this week. ;) As a fun send-off, the kids made gingerbread houses. Each family was assigned a certain "ingredient" to bring. During the last 1 1/2 hours of school, Mrs Grimm invited parent to come and make the houses with their child. So Samantha and I went to the school to help out.
The kids listened to "The Gingerbread Baby".After the story, the kids got to go get creative! Marc had fun decorating his house.
This is Marc's finished creation! Looks yummy!
The kids also got to decorate and eat a sugar cookie.
Samantha was getting jealous of all the kids eating their cookies, so I gave some of the pretzel "decorations" to keep her happy and content.
At dismissal time Mrs Grimm gave all the kids a new book called "Moosiltoe". It was a very cute book.....and one we didn't have yet. ;)
It was a very fun day to end the week before Christmas break! :)

Fun School Day

I am in Marc's class every Thursday. This week was an extra fun day to be there! We took Mrs. Grimm her Christmas gift. We gave her a plateful of goodies that we made. She told Marc that "we rock!", I think he liked that. We also gave her a penguin that's holding a sign that says "I Love Snow Days", a penguin coffee mug filled with chocolates, and a Meijer gift card. Well, it turns out that she LOVES penguins!!
The first thing the kids did were meet in the hall with all the other kindergartners, 1st graders, and 2nd graders to sing Christmas carols all together. It was really cool to see ALL those kids together, having fun signing Christmas songs! :) (Marc is in the bottom left corner in a grey shirt)
After singing Christmas carols, both kindergarten classes got together and watched Polar Express and ate popcorn. :) While the kids watched the movie, I pulled them out one at a time and painted the hand prints to look like Santa Clause. :) I had SO much fun...they turned out SO cute!
After the movie the kids ate snack, had gym, and the outside recess, then it was time to go home! I think the teachers figured out that with all the excitement of Christmas and break, they weren't going to get a whole lot of work done, so they decided to just have fun instead!

Self-Control

Marc's class lead assembly on Monday this week. The virtue of the month is self-control. The kids sang a song about it. They practiced a couple of times and then we had a ton of snow days. It was kind of humorous to watch them. Nobody really knew the words or the motions. Every now and then, a couple of kids did a couple of motions. Very cute!

Presentation Project

I was shocked when Marc came home with this week's homework assignment. He had to chose an animal that hibernates in the winter. He chose a frog. He had to create a frog out of materials we had around the house. He chose to make his frog out of play-dough. i think he had fun being creative.This is his finished frog. Do you see a frog? ;) Not a bad job for him, being 6 years old, doing it ALL by himself. I am sure there will be "better" creations from some of the kids, but I like to see what he can do all by himself! :)
He also had to make a poster or book answering 4 questions about the frog's hibernation habits. He will have to present the information he learned to the rest of his class tomorrow.
Man they start 'em young! But, I guess it is good practice for when he gets older. :)
All in all, I think he did a GREAT job on his first class project presentation. :) I am very proud of my little boy...who isn't so little any more!! :)

Gingerbread Boy

Every year our local library here in Cedar Springs sponsors a gingerbread house decorating day. The kids can come in and the librarians have the house pre-made out of graham crackers and icing. They have bags of icing and various "decorations" for the kids to use. They had sprinkles, candy, cereal, pretzels, and a few other things. Daddy had to show Marc how to squeeze the icing out of the bag and onto the house.
Marc had trouble figuring out what to do first......
But then quickly go into it. :)
We finally had to tell him that it was time to be done because there wasn't much room for anything else.
His beautifully "sweet" house is now decorating our kitchen counter. It looks good enough to eat. ;)

Grab Bag!!

The Dollar Tree that we go to has grab bags for $1. Pretty much each time we go we let Marc pick out a "boy" grab bag. Both Marc and I enjoyed grab bags when we were younger so we figured why not create another grab bag junkie. ;)
One of the last times we went Marc asked if Samantha could have a "girl" grab bag. That was a couple of months ago and we weren't ready for her to have one yet. I went to the dollar store the other day while Marc was in school. I got a grab bag for both Marc and Samantha.
Marc said to me, "You mean she gets her first grab bag at 20 months old?!". Cutie pie!
Samantha liked the bag even before she opened it. She liked shaking and and hearing the stuff inside make noise.She really enjoyed looking inside to see what she got.
There are different grab bags available, so you just need to feel it and try to pick out the one you think would be good. The one I picked out for Samantha had a ring.....
a party blower.....
and some fat crayons that I didn't get a picture of. The crayons were good because she is always using her brothers, now she has her own to use and destroy. ;) Marc got a pencil, a ball, bubbles, and about 6 CARS stickers. I guess I picked pretty good!
I think we are going to have 2 more grab bag junkies in the house. ;)

Problem Child ;)

On Monday morning, Samantha woke up with a little froggy in her throat and just a teeny tiny bit of wheezing. I just thought that she had that gunk in her throat from just waking up. i took her to childcare while I went to work. When I picked her up at 12:00, she still had the wheeziness. I called the doctor and the earliest thing they had available was 8:30 on Tuesday morning. I took it. We came home had lunch and I put her down for nap. When she woke up she sounded horrible! Her breathing sounded like she was snoring, a temp of about 100, and she had a real "barky" cough. :( We got through the night and I took her to the doctor on Tuesday.
The doctor reminded me that I had Samantha in there in January for some wheeziness. the doctor asked if we had ever had any asthma issues with her. I said no. She told me that she was leaning toward Samantha having a very mild case of asthma. She thinks the only time she is going to have an issue is when she has a "little bug" in the cold weather. The combination of the 2 cause asthma to flare up. The doctor listened to her lungs and her heart rate. Then the doctor had me do a nebulizer treatment on Samantha. After the treatment the doc listened to her lungs and heart again and could hear a big difference. So, we now have a nebulizer machine and a prescription. For those of you that don't know what a nebulizer is, it is a machine that does the same thing as an inhaler does. I pour liquid meds into a machine. It has a motor that turns the liquid into a gas/vapor for Samantha to breath in while wearing a mask.We did her first treatment at home Tuesday afternoon. Usually when we d her treatment I put on Sesame Street for her to watch to distract her. Ah, the power of Elmo! We did the treatment 3 times on Wednesday, and just 2 times yesterday. We are already seeing her cold get better, so her asthma symptoms are decreasing. I am just glad that it is a very mild case and will not hinder her in any way.

Cuteness

We have taken some various cute pictures over the last couple of weeks, so here they are.

I bought Samantha a pair of Santa pj's and Marc found a pair of Buzz Lightyear pj's on sale for $3 so we bought them.The other day I decided to try to put Samantha's hair in pigtails. It turned out so cute!! I think she looks older with the pigtails. Daddy calls them her handle bars.
One day while Marc was playing, he decided to wear all 4 Santa hats all at the same time. Silly boy!
When the snow finally started to fall, we tried Marc's boots and snow pants from last year on him, and they still fit. So the only thing we had to buy were boots and snow pants for Samantha. So, on Monday, Meijer had a sale so I had Marc stop on his way home from work to pick them up.
There was only ONE pair of 24 months snow pants in the whole store! Luckily, they were purple! :)
There was only ONE style of size 5 boots. Luckily they were pink! :) I guess she was meant to have them. ;)
Well, I hope you have enjoyed some of the cute pictures from December. :)