Teeth, hearts and toes

Another quick blog from recent events.

First off, we celebrated Valentine's Day last week - over a course of 3 days really. Molly exchanged Valentines with her classmates on Thursday, Eliza and Hayden did Valentines on Friday and Saturday was officially Valentine's Day. The kids did SUCH a good job making valentines for all their friends this year. I was so, so proud of the effort and care they put into them. Molly made these cute star print ones (potato stamping!) I found on Pinterest.

M signed her name on all 17 valentines!

M decorated hearts for her teachers.

Eliza made her own fancy ones with precut hearts we found at a craft store. She wanted to make big fancy ones like in a story we had (pinkalicious I think) but she didn't embellish them quite as much as in the story. But she carefully went through and made one for everyone in their class, and for both of her teachers, putting on decorations and carefully gluing on the chocolate hearts.

Hayden decided she wanted jungle Valentines b/c her classroom is modeled after a jungle and somehow we ended up with monkey valentines. (FYI there are not all that many choices when you google moneky valentine or jungle valentine). We found a version she liked that orginially was made from official cut out pieces (some system we don't own), but she created her own template (with Jason's help) and carefully made 25 monkey face valentines. We put together a snack mix of banana chips (didn't want to find runt candy bananas), chocolate chips and runts to attach to the faces. She also made special Valentines for her current teacher and her past teachers.

can you read it?

We also made Valentine sugar cookies for Eliza's class party. There were sprinkles EVERYWHERE but the cookies looked great and tasted delicious. (Cream cheese cookies with homemade buttercream are the way to go!)

so many sprinkles...

vday party!

Second, Eliza finally lost her top front tooth! I say finally because that tooth has been hanging on for FOREVER. The thing was literally hanging out of her mouth. It was time for it to let go! Eliza remembered to put it under her pillow. The tooth fairy brought her a gold dollar, which Eliza proudly took in to share at show-n-tell at school.

pre-tooth loss - hanging on for dear life

 

smile post-tooth loss

Third, a little over a week ago, we had a crazy burst (especially crazy, since now is a snow day) of warm springtime weather. We went out for a family hike in Duke Forest with Grandma and Popop. The girls had a wonderful time being out in nature - there was hardly any complaining of all the walking! They were especially tickled that we let them take their shoes off and put their toes in the water. Imagine going wading in February! They didn't keep their toes in long but they liked scrambling all over the rocks and chucking stones into the creek. I hope we make hiking a weekend habit as the weather warms up.  

waiting at the trailhead for G&P

all suited up for an outdoor adventure

rock scrambling

testing the waters (literally)

chilly wet toes!

it's f-f-f-f-freezing!

me and my girls from across the river

Hayden found a great walking stick