Visitors!

The last weekend of June, we had some fun out-of-town visitors, Mark and Tracy and family.  We only got to see them for a day, so of course we headed to the nearest beach, La Jolla Shores.  Ryan, Tracy's brother, also came down from L.A. to visit too.  He was such a good sport.  He actually encouraged the girls to cover him in wet sand when Tracy and I were trying to get them to stop!  These girls always obey their mothers though, so you can guess which voice they listened to ... not ours!
Brooklyn loved shadowing her big cousin Alyssa...
that is, when she wasn't following her dad.
After dinner, the moms needed some relief from the kids while we cleaned up dinner and made chocolate chip cookies.  The dads so willingly and graciously accepted the suggestion, the first time it was mentioned (wink, wink!), to take the kids for a wagon ride down the trail behind our house.    Thanks for the nice set of wheels, Papa Mac!  This wonder of a wagon can comfortably fit a whole band of Badgers!  Although, they really seem more like rug rats sometimes!  If you only knew what was hiding behind those innocent smiles!  Ha!

Can You Guess?

She may not write a "2" without the help of dots and lines, but when no rules apply, Brooklyn will create things like this.  Can you guess what it is???

Answer: a turtle

Waiting...

for a Sunday morning bath...

while reading the latest favorite book Where the Wild Things Are.

While You Were Out

Tonight Stephen watched the kids at home while I attended a session at the temple.  Basically while I was gone Brooklyn whooped up on him in a couple rounds of the princess memory game.  There were only 10 cards used in the two rounds that they played.  For the first game, Stephen got only one turn, and Brooklyn got all the matches.  She first flipped over two non-matching cards, he then flipped over 2 other non-matching cards.  For her next turn, she flipped over a Sleeping Beauty card, and matched it with the bent card, which she remembered was also Sleeping Beauty.  Then she just flipped over every other card that had not yet been turned and remembered the where its match was.  Crazy!  Because Stephen is so competitive, he of course had to call for a rematch.  This round there were 12 cards.  Stephen got two turns and the players both got 3 matches or 6 cards a piece.  Tie.  

Male Bonding

Evidence of a good father:

Sewing Time

We can do it, we can do it
We can help our Cinderelly
We can make her dress so pretty
There's nothing to it, really...

The other day I was cutting out some fabric for a skirt.  Brooklyn decided to do a design session of her own.  Apparently she was making a dress for Cinderelly.
Later she decided to branch out and use some scrap fabric as a headband for Ian.  

Learning Time

Thanks to some inspiration from Rachel Pierce and Ruth Grey, Brooklyn and I have begun to hold regular learning times during Ian's morning naps.  Brooklyn so looks forward to them and I am trying to stay consistent about doing them!  It really is fun to see how many creative approaches I can come up with to teach her the numbers.  We use preschool workbooks with stickers, an aqua doodle, a magna doodle, beans, and salt in a baking dish.  The only obstacle so far is getting her to write the numbers independently.  Once I thought I was being so clever and pulled a role-reversal on her.  I told her that she was the teacher and I was the student.  I asked her to show me how to write a two.  Long pause.  Then she finally decided to show me the number 2 from the counting chart in her workbook.  She traced the number two and said, "See, that's how we do it!"  I then asked her to draw one for me in the blank area.  Another pause.  Then she tried to convince me that we use "dots and lines." (She wanted me to make a two for her first out of dotted lines.)  She's a sneaky one!
I also taught her how to make her bed.  Not too shabby for the first time effort!
Other practical-life things she is learning include folding her jammies and putting them away, cleaning up her toys, feeding her fish, and helping put away her own dishes.  Today she even asked if she could change Ian's diaper...I told her maybe if there's a baby around when she's eight.  Her daddy thinks he'll let her try sooner than that.  Uh-oh!