new favorite place

Just a short hike from our house is our new favorite spot. The river. Some call it a creek. It was such a fun little adventure. I think as is gets hotter this is going to be a good way to spend our mornings!

Art Projects

I have decided that I am going to start doing some more directed art projects with Sydney each week during Stella's nap. I say directed because there is always art going on in our house. Sydney is always cutting, glueing, coloring, etc. And stella is always drawing on herself with markers. Here is one of Sydney's latest projects with staples, cutting and construction paper. It is her with pig tails, boogers in her nose and she can sing in her microphone.

That project was not directed. But I found this great web site that has some art projects for the different age groups. We have tried a couple and Sydney has really loved it. You should check it out. http://www.deepspacesparkle.blogspot.com/

Here is some of Sydney's projects:

Sydney loves to create. She will create new ways to play games, new songs, books, art projects and recipes. She was in her create something to bake mode and wanted to cut a bunch of basil out of the garden and mix it with all sorts of weird stuff. I really didn't want to use our basil for something that was not going to be edible, so I told her that if she wanted to make something we needed to follow a recipe so we wouldn't waste any ingredients. So of course in Sydney fashion, she gets paper and a pen and says, "How do you spell recipe?". She made her own recipe which didn't even have basil in it.

talkin'

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, Stella loves to talk. She has been stringing so many more words together. She copies almost anything Sydney gets her to say.
She has been using some phrases lately that have been really cute and ones I want to remember. Nate calls it her caveman talk.
If she wants to do something she says, "Me do dat"
If she wonders where you are she says, " Daddy goin?"
If she wonders what you are doing, she says, " What doin'?" or "what dyney doin'?"
She has commentary on everything and it makes every day so much more fun to hear it through her eyes.

milestones

Sydney worked so hard and final learned to skip!

Busy Couple of Days

Here are a couple of snap shots of the last two days. We have been busy, but so loving every minute of it. Not included in the pictures is VBS, Bounce Houses, playing in the creek, playing in the field, reading books, playing with play dough, going to the beach, napping and eating plouts. :)

Went to Wilder Ranch today for a bike ride. Butterflies criss crossed the trail, salt water filled the air. The sun warmed our backs. My heart glowed with thankfulness. ' This is where we live!' I said to Sydney. 'I know mom, they dion't have this in Portland'.

Time as a family. Time in God's creation. Time to reflect on his goodness. Time to be thankful. Time for Fun. Not to shabby this place we call home.

San Francisco!

We also went to San Francisco. We rode the trollys, Went to Alcatraz and ate alot of yummy sourdough bread!

Birthday part 2

So part 2 took a little long to post but here it is. We went to the Monterey Aquarium. The girls had a great time. There was so much to see. Sydney's favorite part was the flamingos, my favorite part was the seahorses, and Stellas favorite part was the jellys (Jelly fish).