Picnic & Painting

I LOVE having my summers off to spend with my favorite girl.  We've been taking walks around our neighborhood as often as possible.  She really looks forward to them, and so do I!  One of her favorite things to do is look for letters engraved in the curb.  There are numerous "S" and "W" markings, and she loves to point out that if you walk around it, the W becomes an M.  One of these days, I plan to put together a scavenger hunt of things to look for so that the letter-finding doesn't become boring.

I didn't plan on doing an art activity with her today, but it's okay to be spontaneous, or so I've heard.  She loves to paint, so this allowed me to talk to Uncle Michael on the phone.

Uncle Michael likes to hear himself talk is a great communicator, so she went on to do a second art project while I was held hostage on the phone.

I had planned on doing a picnic lunch today, but after Katelyn and I watched a lizard and daddy-long-leg spider mingle in our back porch, I suddenly lost my appetite for the outdoors.  As a mommy, I don't have the luxury of showing my fear of spiders, but I can certainly change our venue!  So I made the executive decision to have an indoor picnic!  Success!

Mommy had a sink full of dishes to do, so Katelyn was happy to keep me company while painting another picture!

We also did laundry, had manicures & pedicures, and read several books!  I pulled out two books she has about bugs and we've been talking all about them.  Maybe that will help.  Knowledge is power, right?  We also read two books about feelings (sad & angry) that she chose from her bookcase and I had one of the sweetest conversations about feelings with her.  Can we please make this summer last forever and ever??  

The Art Barn - First Visit

There is a famous story around our house about the time there was a bird trapped in our screened-in back porch.  Clay was asking me questions about it so he could figure out what type of bird it was, and I was doing a pitiful job of describing it.  To the point of confusion that I didn't know if it had feathers or not.  Sometimes my country-boy husband just has to shake his head and laugh at his "city-girl" wife!

It's safe to say that Katelyn is doomed if I'm in charge of teaching her about farm animals.  But we had no choice today because Clay had to work.  And I made plans for Katelyn and I to go to The Art Barn! Being that this was our first time there, I had no idea that this place was so close to our house.  We met up with a few friends from my school and I knew right away that we were going to have fun.

We met Farmer Sue, who clearly has a natural gift for children and farm-life, and listened to the rules.  One of the first things we did was grab a brush to then use on several of the animals.  Although Katelyn was excited to be on the farm, she didn't like the bugs/flies that she saw near the animals.  So she kept trying to switch animals every time she saw a "bug."  (Note:  She's fine with ants now.  It's just bugs in general that..um..bug her).  She became upset at one point, but after a quick time-out, we were back in the farm-animal-brushing business.

Katelyn really enjoyed visiting with Farmer Sue's horse.  She stood on the chair to reach her.

We were able to see the mama horse and her 6-week old foal!  Aren't they beautiful?

Katelyn loved giving them hay.

Katelyn was very excited to see this chicken walking "one foot in front of the other" like she does on the balance beam in ballet and gymnastics.  It amazes me how her mind works!

During the art lesson, Katelyn painted a pig.  Obviously, right?

 We also rode on a hayride!

She absolutely loved our picnic.  I chose a picnic bench that was in the shade, but near some of the animals.  We both love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so that's what we had.  And she ate all of her lunch!  I plan on having more picnics with her over the summer.

After our picnic, she stopped to chat with the ducks.

There were pigs on the other side of this fence, which she loved to look at and talk to, but she deserved her own picture by herself this time!

Although she had fun the entire time, she really became quite comfortable at the farm towards the end of our visit.  In the beginning, she was distracted by the flies/bugs and backing away from them.  By the end, she was pursuing them to brush the bugs off of the animals.  Proud!

She even made time to chat with her friend, the goat.

She thought that this was also a goat, but I explained that this was a sheep that had been sheared.

So Katelyn battled her fear of bugs and I knew that was a sheep.  Do you think Clay will be proud of both of his girls?

Katelyn and I had a great time and we both highly recommend The Art Barn.  We'll definitely be going back!

Cannonball!

I can't believe I almost forgot the best part of yesterday's pool fun.  Katelyn learned how to do her first cannonball, courtesy of Swim Instructor Daddy.  Watch the video and try not to smile!


Going with the cute/funny theme, I thought I'd share some of the cute/funny things that Katelyn says.  These are the little things that I want to record so I won't forget them.

• "These shoes are too fall-y"
• Meaning:  She has trouble walking in some of Mommy's shoes.
• "Last day..."
• Meaning:  Almost anything that happened in the past.
• Example:  Last day, we went to the circus.
• "Kitty cats have pawses"
• Meaning:  Cats don't have hands, of course!
• "Who watches the grey shows...with the guns?"
• Meaning:  black & white tv shows
• Answer:  Paw Paw (and Grandpa, too!)
• "It's morning outside!"
• Meaning:  Any time there is daylight.
• "It fits my size."
• Meaning:  It's small enough for Katelyn.
• Example:  small chair, little bike/scooter, etc.

Katelyn has also been saying plenty of knock knock jokes.  They are hysterical, mostly because they don't make sense at all!  Here is one of her recent examples:

• Knock Knock.
• Who's there?
• Orange.
• Orange who?
• Orange you eat!!  (Cue the long fits of giggles!)

Our silly girl just might have a future in comedy.  She makes us laugh everyday!

Pool Time, Summer 2012

The weather has been incredibly hot lately, so I persuaded Clay to break out Katelyn's swimming pool for her.  He was convinced that she has outgrown this pool, but I still think she enjoys it.  It gets the job done until we get something bigger, right?  She had fun and that's all that matters anyway.

She loved going down her slide and "swimming" on her belly.  It wasn't long before a water splashing fight broke out between Katelyn and her Daddy.  I won't say who started it, but I did threaten his life if he got me wet!  There are occasional perks to being the family photographer!

Katelyn loved her water fight!  She wasn't even mad at Clay for splashing her.  Once she was all cleaned up, she wanted to make cookies for him!  She had picked them out for him when we went grocery shopping last week.  And she was very excited to make him a "super secret surprise!"  She even banned him from the kitchen.  Isn't she the cutest?!

And when she wasn't making cookies, she helped Mommy go through her stuffed animals and dolls.  There were tons more than the ones in this picture.  I was trying to narrow some down and donate them to some needy boys/girls, which Katelyn seemed to understand until she started to play with all of them again!  I guess that her many blessings, along with her innocence and age, don't allow her to imagine any other child not having these same things.  But I hope to teach her!

We Have Ants!

Let me just say that there are things that I have said and/or done that I never thought I'd say/do until I became a mother.  And ordering an ant farm is one of them.  I might as well go buy a minivan.  On second thought, let's not over-react.  I'll keep my SUV, thankyouverymuch.

The ants I ordered (to help Katelyn overcome her ant phobia) arrived in the mail.  To answer the most popular question, they came from Utah.  I don't know much about Utah, other than they must be pretty smart for charging $4 for 25 ants.  Getting rid of ants and making money while doing so sounds pretty clever to me, but I digress. 

Katelyn saw the tube of ants and I could only imagine what she was thinking.  Thoughts of "my parents are crazy" and "what are these people doing to me" come to mind.  But she didn't scream and there were no meltdowns in sight, so that's called progress.

Clay poured the ants into the kit as we all watched.  (Thank you, thank you, thank you to the mailman angels for watching over me and making sure the ants arrived on a day that Clay was home to help me with this!)  Is that a smile I see on Katelyn's face?

The ant farm is a success!  Katelyn has enjoyed watching her new little pets and she is not afraid of them.  She named one of them "Army" and she acts like she can find her whenever we ask.  (I have no idea how she came up with that name!  And she claims she is a girl.)  I have to admit that they are interesting to watch.  Now the real test is going to be how she reacts when she sees ants outside!