Thursday, December 10, 2015

Preschool - Jonah Part 2

Here is the 2nd part of our Jonah week - back Oct 12-16 -- WOW! I'm behind in blogging. :(


she loves these little clothes pin cards. And mostly playing with the clothes pins. :)

Oh the joy from making "whale-blue" pom pom soup. 
organizing our pom poms to count them easier. 
Another teacher fail -- I had her matching up the animal on the card with something in the house -- and I didn't plan to well ahead. Some items we majorly had to fudge on. oops! 
matching up her little people animals. 
Talking about whales. 
The best smiles I ever get out of her -- she always has a marker in her hand. Clearly we don't use markers enough. 
coloring Jonah. 
None Jonah related, but she has really started to do well with these word puzzles I found at a yardsale this summer. Each letter in the word is an individual puzzle piece - so they work to build a word. 
Look at that concentration. Love. 
A little whiz at matching upper and lower case letters. 
Rolling to cover the fish with our whale snacks. the 2nd time around doing a food activity is always harder. She basically just wanted to each this time! 
Storytime! 
She is telling me the story. "Jonah, no listen to God. Jonah you have icky heart."
letter matching game. 
foam letters. This "toy" is practice in our patience - for both Mommy and Ella. She just gets so frustrated when they don't fit in. Deep breathes for everyone! 
DONE!!!!!!
Joy! 

Ella's 3rd Birthday

At times I can't believe she is three -- how did she grow up so fast? How is time moving so quickly? But on the other hand, I also can't remember my life without her. How did I possibly live 26 years without knowing her?

My sweet Ellanore amazes and challenges me every single day. She is so loving and and sweet. Always wanting to include everyone and check in on all of us. If Josh goes upstairs she wants to make sure he isn't going to lay down because he is sick. If she is playing a game she runs around sharing a piece with everyone, and although this makes clean up a disaster, I love her sharing heart.

When I asked Ella early in November what kinda of cake she wanted for her birthday she quickly answered "blue dinosaur cupcakes!" Now, being in a girl-house this was surprising to me, and to be honest, I really don't know where she comes into contact with dinosaurs. maybe at church? But I think she hones in on the baby and dollhouse too much to notice even a REAL dinosaur in nursery! ;)

None the less, if my kid asks for a blue dinosaur birthday, that's what she is going to get.

Huge shout out to my awesome sister-in-law Bethany for her help with the cupcakes. She is the bomb!




We had a hard time getting a picture of Ella wearing a mask. She would take it off as soon as you tried to get a picture. 





We got Ella a dinosaur stuffed animal, because the last thing she needs is another stuffed animal. And I know it isn't blue, but it was the cutest one -- Sarah from Land Before Time, anyone?




And....my parents bought her a puppy!!!! She loves the crazy thing and it actually walks to up and barks if you give it commands, it is pretty cute, but luckily fake. :)



Everyone else getting in on the masks.







Huge thanks to my parents (and my two brothers for that matter) for coming down from New Hampshire for the weekend. I'm so "heart-full" when my kids get to love on their grandparents. 

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Macaron Making - Take 3

Macaron Recipe -

  • 200 grams powdered sugar
  • 110 grams almond flour
  • ¾ teaspoon instant espresso powder
  • 90 grams egg whites (about 3 eggs)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 25 grams granulated sugar


Frosting Recipe -

1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 tablespoon strong brewed coffee, cooled.

** This frosting was absolutely amazing -- but definitely made way to much for the number of macarons yielded from the recipe. We had left over frosting that we squished between mini nilla wafers and make "mock-arons" for Thanksgiving with Josh's family. They were amazing!

the cookies were definitely better on height and look, but they ran together too much. Overall a GREAT product.


Our batter was definitely thinner than last time, when my assumption was I made Josh whip the meringue too "stiff". Overall, I do think this consistency was better, it just took us a bit to figure out how full to pipe them. 



FFET!!!!



Our giant "caterpillar" cookie: 


Finished Product: 




Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Preschool - pumpkins

As kids Josh and I both went trick-or-treating -- and we take our girls too. But we aren't Halloween enthusiasts. No decorating. No ghosts. No blood. So we explored leaves and pumpkins for school.

Adding the first leaf to our Thanksgiving tree. She said she was thankful for shoes. :)

The finished product!
It's washable pain on the deck, don't worry, I haven't totally lost my mind. 
She was in Heaven! As you can see, she primarily used pink paint. Every so often she would say she wanted to switch, pick up a different color brush and then say "I joking you" and go back to pink. 

Using our "Alphabet Soup" yardsale find to work on our "p"s
Finding everything orange in our playroom. [must purge toys!]
Doing a color puzzle we have, she did pretty well, but it's double sided - and both sides are orange...so it is actually pretty tricky.
I told her she would put all the pumpkin stickers on her paper (as opposed to the ghost ones) and she actually left all the ghosts on the sheet!
Coloring the pumpkins by color. (Each pumpkin says a color inside it)
Adding leaves to a tree. I would ask her to add a certain number, etc. 
Finding all her orange pouch lids....still need to get pink ones, BA...here I come Aldi! :)
Adding "seeds" to our pumpkin. We just used black beans. She did a really good job with this. I would either ask her to add a certain number or add to her existing number to get to a new total. 
Gotta love the dot-to-dot. This girl and those markers....
Counting from 11-24...Hey, I only had 14 laminated pumpkins and 1-10 are so boring ;)
Running around jumping on/ticking/sitting on various numbers. 
Showing off her new Halloween plate - thanks Target dollar spot! 
And not pumpkin related at all - but our first time play Candy Land Bingo -- she is the yellow board and I'm the pink - she legitimately won 3 times before I did. 
filling in the missing numbers on the pumpkins. 
turkey patterns. 
She did great with the patterns! 
She made this pattern all by herself. proud mom moment. 
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