The Library

I love to read. I always have. I hope that I always will.

I remember learning to read to with Mercer Mayer's "Little Critter" books. And being so angry when my young cousin scribbled through my precious book.

I remember my first chapter book was a Greatly Illustrated Classic "Moby Dick". I remember picking that from the toy store in the mall and reading it as we walked around the mall.

I even remember being in second grade, laying in my bed all day reading, not one but TWO "Baby Sitter's Little Sister" books. My mom wasn't as impressed as I was with my accomplishment, I think she wished I'd go outside and play.

So naturally, I would love to garner the love of reading in the lives of my girls. What better way than to make a weekly trip to the library.

But boy, the library sure has improved since I was a kid. We've made it a weekly trip throughout the summer. The girls pick out a few books and then get to play.

There are puzzles.

A lego table.

And Interactive computers.

The girls love it.

Last week, due to some scheduling conflicts we had to change our library day from Thursday to Friday. And incurred a $1.10 overdue charge, but I digress.

We stumbled upon the story hour. The kids section of the library is really neat. There is a large ship like structure that serves as the space for the story hour. We had come after the event had gotten started so we stuck with our routine of picking books and playing, but I watched as the kids enjoyed singing songs and being read books about shapes an colors.



When the group time was done the kids separated to different small tables to do some educational games.

They sorted different stickers by shape.

They arranged number magnets in order.

Then counted animals printed on cards and used a clothespin to identify the number they counted. And played with super strong magnets.

Of course they had to make pretend carrots and have a snack with them. 

I was really impressed with the activities and decided we needed to participate in the entire event the following week. So we did.

The girls loved the rhythm sticks, books, and parachute they played with. This week's theme was all about sound.

They had set up a really interesting, yet not completely thought out game. An egg carton with plastic eggs was set on the table. Inside the carton, two of the eggs contained the same type of material. Be that rice, jingle bells, pom poms, beads etc. The purpose was to shake the eggs and match the two that sounded the same, ie the ones with the same materials inside.

Very neat, in theory.

But leave it to my Ellie to, well, be my Ellie. I meant to take a picture of her showing me the "orange" egg. (We've been working on colors so she was very excited about naming the color correctly). I didn't realize until I uploaded the pictures that I had this great action shot, of destruction.

It was a neat game, but I'd encourage the eggs to be taped closed in the future.

Following the cleaning up, we moved on to make our own sound shakers from water bottles. Another terrible mess, but the kids enjoyed it immensely.

There are all kinds of other activities and demonstrations set up at the library through the summer. Ours even offers free lunch to children every day. We haven't participated, but its a great resource for those who may need it. With all the free things they offer, we can't pass up our weekly outing to the library. And just maybe this will help foster a love of reading to my girls. One can only hope.

ABC's and a little more

Playing with our magnetic alphabet this morning brought a song to my little one's heart...and a bit of confusion too.

They do have the same tune, so maybe she is a musical genius. If nothing else, she is adorable.

Disc Golf Adventures

Seven years ago, give or take a week, Scott and I were in the beginning stages of dating. Being a poor grad student and an even poorer new teacher we looked to spend time together spending as little money as possible.

Check out those sideburns!

 While coffee shops and Scrabble was our typical date of choice, we also spent several of our weekends in the woods of Mobile, AL exploring the various disc golf courses. I've heard it called "folf" or frisbee golf as well.

Since I usually dominated in Scrabble, (I'm going to get grief about that statement ;) disc golf was a sport that we were relatively evenly matched. Ok, that is kinda pushing it too. He throws far! But we would usually play for two winners 1. whoever had the least amount of throws for the course, and 2. whoever had the longest putt. I didn't usually win with the least amount of throws, but I could get the putt...occassionally.

Since we are on this new kick to have some kind of family activity every Saturday, we found ourselves at a nearby bird sanctuary called Camp Catalpa for a little hike last weekend. The hike was less than a mile and easy, but we did make the exciting discovery of a disc golf course. So, we ventured this weekend on our first family disc golf adventure.

We practice at home in the back yard throughout the week to be a little more comfortable with throwing a disc. For Maggie's first throw, the disc landed on it's side and rolled like a penny all the way down the hill. Scott was hoping that wasn't an indicator of how the rest of the trip was going to go.



We let the girls throw their disc around as they wanted without following any rule or pattern. While Scott and I attempted to relive our glory days. We both need a lot of practice!

 



The girls enjoyed throwing the discs into the basket the most. Maggie even had a great putt from about ten feet from the basket. It surprised us all, but it made her day.








Ellie was good for the first few holes, but then decided she was over being outside.


She continued to say, "Don't touch me. I want to go home! When can I leave?" Some of this may have had something to do with the potty accident she had in the middle of the forest. Thankfully, I was prepared for such an event.


We were able to perk her up from one hole to the other after a quick wardrobe change.





The course was pretty nice, and we didn't have much trouble finding the direction from hole to hole, so that was nice. Only twice did I need Scott to lead the way after spotting a huge spider web along our path.

And only once did we lose a disc and have to tromp through the woods to find it.





Overall, it was a successful adventure and I'm hoping that the more we have the girls tromping through the woods the more they will be excited about fulfilling my newest dream, travelling the US in our own RV. We'll see...

Family Movie Night

I had a really great childhood. My parents excelled in making memories and giving us opportunities to experience life. We traveled, we played, we saw, we did.

I want my girls to have the same kind of childhood. One they can look back on and think fondly.

One of my memories was our Friday tradition. Along with all other families in the nineties, we enjoyed TGIF as a family. We would often times make homemade pizza or some other kid friendly dinner, followed by having dinner in the living room. That was a rarity.

After watching the shows on TGIF, we would watch a family movie and have a camp out in the living room. It was simple. It was memorable.

The last couple weeks we have tried to implement our version of this memory with family movie night.

The first week we saw the new version of Annie. The girls loved it. Though the lead's straight hair kept Maggie wondering when she would get curly hair like her.They watched the movie in its entirety (though we did skip a slow song or two). Then the rest of the week Maggie sang her version of "It's a Hard Knock Life." And when I asked her to do one thing or another she often times responded with, "I love you Ms. Hannigan." They could be heard playing Annie, arguing over who would be ANnie and who would be Molly. Usually reenacting the same scene over and over.

Now our movie nights are not very fancy. I searched Pinterest for ideas to make our night special. Many were special menus that coincided with the movie, or crafts or decor. There were great ideas, and time consuming costly ideas. We opted for ease and simplicity.

The girls each got a part of our dinner to make themselves (with a bit of help from mommy.) Fruit salad, pepperoni subs and green beans were our menu. The girls did great helping, when they weren't eating all of the ingredients.

Then we started the movie. This week I chose Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from the library. It was interesting for the first hour or so, but I don't remember it being so LONG...or so strange. I'm not sure the girls have enough experience with British accents, so they didn't really seem as into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as they were in Annie.

Ellie sat still long enough to enjoy our Cinnamon Sugar Popcorn treat, until she realzied she didn't like popcorn. Then she was off and playing in the play room.

Maggie lasted through her entire bowl of popcorn and each were drawn back for each song. We have dance parties whenever music is on.

About an hour and twenty minutes into the movie we realized we still had over an hour to go and decided to call it a night. The girls didn't seem to mind, since they weren't really paying much attention anyway.

I suppose there are certain movies from my childhood that my 4 and 2 year old just aren't ready for. I'm in no rush for them to grow up though, so I'll stick to the animated movies for a bit longer. Then I'll introduce them to the wonderful world of musicals!