Project: Another Tree One

Last fall we made this project. It's another tree, and this time I folded a brown piece of paper in half the long way and cut out a tree with branches, free-hand. Then we glued it to construction paper. We glued fall leaves that had been pressed on to the tree. These I already had...if you open any of the huge books, including the dictionary and all the theology books, that we have on our shelf fall leaves will fall out. (I love fall and love collecting perfect leaves, but don't usually do anything with them except for hiding them and forgetting about them!) And lastly, we had a whole bunch of bird stickers...from Grandma, I think...that completed the project!

Project: Apple Trees

I've tried to do a few activities a week with the girls during the time that we have between lunch and naps. Sometimes I assist them with a project and sometimes they do one on their own such as play doh or coloring one of those huge coloring pages.
This one we did the other day. It was easy, with not much prep to do before hand. I found booklets of 600 stickers for $1 at JoAnn's, so I drew a tree with a brown marker and the girls colored it with crayons, then I had pre-cut green "leaves" out of green construction paper and scrap paper that they glued on (using their fingers in the glue), then we added some green glitter (also $1 at JoAnn's). After that they put apple, birds, and squirrel stickers on to make their apple trees!

Nauna and Zeyda's Visit

For the better part of 2 weeks, at the end of July and into August, Matt's parents came to the northwest for a conference and then to stay with us. We had a great time and we got to do some relaxing as well as sightseeing.

On the top of the Space Needle.

At the zoo.

At the mall...something I would never pay for :)

Museum of Flight. We also saw the Blue Angels here, and the pilots driving in cars!

Budding Gymnast

This summer Emma took swimming lessons again, and we tried something new: gymnastics class. She loved it! And she was really good at it! Emma also loves going to swimming lessons, but she's not a big fan of going underwater, and so she'll be repeating the Minnows 1 class. I think she just likes to be social :) Anyway, she really excelled at gymnastics and her coach, Coach Franny, suggested that she move to the older class for the last couple of classes since she did so well in her first experience. Its so cute to see her in her leotard hopping and swinging around. Next: preschool! Eeek!

Little Artist

A few times recently Emma has been taking pictures on my iPhone. She's actually not bad, and really enjoys it. She can occupy herself with the camera for a LONG time :) It's like she's really capturing all the little things that a 4 year old notices during the day. Here are a few of her pictures: