A couple of videos

I’ll keep this post fairly short, since I just want to share a couple of videos from yesterday.

I’ve been meaning to post some video of Andrea’s ballet class, since it’s pretty much the cutest thing ever, and I finally managed to take some video yesterday. I can only peek into the class through a little window, so it’s not the best video, and you can’t really hear anything, but it’s still pretty darn cute. When you watch, don’t worry, they were supposed to sort of dance/run away from their spot a couple of times and then run/gallop back. It’s a little confusing if you don’t hear the instructions they were getting. Also, you’ll notice the girls on either side of Andrea keep goofing off… the teacher said she intentionally put Andrea in the middle of the them because she’s one of the quiet ones. I was a little stunned to hear that. She’s certainly not quite or calm at home!

I also managed to get a little video of Andrea singing on the way to school. She often sings about whatever we’re doing or random things that she sees, which in the car is usually about traffic lights or other vehicles. Yesterday morning I was treated to about 10 solid minutes of a song she made up that I guess is called, “Green, Green, You can go.” I love at the end where she gets a little tongue-tied and says something about when the “right is led” instead of “light is red”. Enjoy! (Oh, and ignore the junk in the back of my van – it was stuff to drop off at Goodwill.)

“Pretty smart”

Andrea is always surprising us with the things she tells us. One day last week, she pointed to some microwave dishes on top of a building (like these). To keep things (relatively) simple, I told her they were like satellite dishes, which she had asked about before once or twice. She replied, “I think they get answers from the sky.” Not a bad explanation! I was impressed. I think I told her something similar once, a while back when she saw one and insisted I explain to her what it was. But I was pretty shocked when she said it out of the blue. When I asked her how she knew that, she said in a sly tone, “‘Cause I’m pretty smart.” LOL!

Then yesterday, I bought some stamps yesterday at the grocery store with Andrea, and she immediately wanted to know if she could help me stick them on the mail. As I was trying to respond, she caught a glimpse of them and interrupted me to inform me, “They are America ones. They’re supposed to have a door bell on them.” (These stamps had American flags instead of the Liberty Bell like the stamps I usually use.) I rarely mail anything, so I wasn’t sure how Andrea even knew what our stamps look like, but somehow she did. Again, when I asked how she knew that, she told me, “I’m pretty smart, you know!” Modest too it seems. LOL!

Then last night, she was sitting at her art table furiously sticking those little foam shape stickers on paper she tore out of a spiral notebook. She was grouping them by type (all the dinosaurs on one page, people on another, and animals on another). When we asked later what she had been doing, she told us she was studying, and showed us each page and explained, “Here’s where I was studying dinosaurs, then I studied people…” Such a studious little girl – no wonder she’s smart! 😉

And last night when I asked her if she was going to go to sleep quickly for me, she replied, “Absolutely!” Hehehe. That was a new one. She says “apparently” and “actually” all the time, but I don’t think I’d heard “absolutely” yet. She’ll often say things like, “I can’t actually see the TV,” or “There’s apparently no more glue.” It cracks me up that she talks like such a grown up some times. She also makes up smart-sounding words. The other day, she said her sunglasses were “impreffative” (impressive), and today we were talking about playing Playdoh and she told me we could make some “fashionating” (fascinating) things. Ha, ha!

And just so I don’t leave you without a picture, here’s one from yesterday, where she was modeling the hat she wants to wear to school on Monday for Hat Day (next week they’re doing letter H).
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Arts & Crafts Round-up, aka Why I Love Pinterest

Thanks to Pinterest we’ve been doing a ton of art projects lately, so I wanted to share some of Andrea’s latest artwork. If you’ve never really understood what Pinterest is all about, you will after reading this. (It took me a while after signing up before I ever started using it, so I understand it doesn’t always “click” at first.) And if you need an invite to Pinterest, let me know and I’ll send you one.

Since it’s October, we’ve been doing a ton of fall and Halloween themed art. Pinterest has had so many great ideas for me to use. I actually like to pin a bunch of stuff, then let Andrea pick what she wants to do by looking at the site.

She’s been really obsessed with fall leaves, so I knew she’d like this project. She colored in the the tree trunks and grass, then cut out all the paper for the glued-on leaves while I hole punched all the “falling” leaves. She glued her leaves on with a glue stick while I filled the ziploc baggie with my hole punched leaves, and then I taped the baggie between the trees page and a sheet of blue cardstock when she was done. I think it turned out pretty well and she loves it.

This is a fall tree with leaves painted on with Q-tips (inspired by this), and a pumpkin that Andrea drew free-hand and then filled in with watercolor paint. It has a huge smiley face, because, well, everything she draws/paints has a huge smiley face on it. 🙂
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Pumpkin Patch

Paul’s dad flew into town Saturday night, so on Sunday, we wanted to do something fun all together, and decided on a trip up to a North Georgia pumpkin patch. I heard great things about Carlton Farms in Rockmart, GA, but they didn’t open until Sunday afternoon, when I knew Andrea would already be getting tired. So I checked out a bunch of places online, and finally settled on Yahoo Farm in Jasper, GA. It is a small working pumpkin farm, where they sell pumpkins that they grow on site. They had a bunch of activities for younger kids, which was perfect for us. We all went on a hay ride for starters, then Andrea did a pony ride, jumped in a bounce house for a long time, did a cute little hay maze where she enjoyed chasing Paul around in circles, did some fossil grubbing, and rode on a pumpkin “train” with some other kids while we watched. It was very cute. They also had a corn maze, which we opted not to do, since none of us wanted to spend all afternoon lost in a corn maze. Andrea had a blast. Here are a few pictures from our day…

Posing with the pumpkins
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Disney Princesses on Ice

Last Friday, Andrea and I went to Disney on Ice with some of our friends. The show featured the stories of Princess & the Frog, Cinderella, and Tangled (Rapunzel). Andrea dressed up as Rapunzel to watch the show, complete with the dress, shoes, and hair that her Grandma got her when she came down this summer. It was very cute!

My little princess before leaving for the show…
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Baking banana bread

Andrea loves to help me in the kitchen, so I thought we’d have a fun mother-daughter activity of baking banana bread. We used my grandmother’s recipe, which is the only kind I’ve ever made before. There are healthier options out there, but I wanted to stick with our traditional version, Crisco and all. 😉

Andrea loved it. She loves cracking eggs (we used some fresh eggs from a friend’s backyard chickens!), and I taught her how to sift flour, which she liked doing. She helped me dump in most of the dry ingredients, and she thought it was fun to smoosh up the bananas with a fork, although she gave up after a minute. She also loved watching the mixer, although it was a little loud for her, so she wore her ear protection until she got used to the noise.

Here are some pictures from our baking adventure…

 

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