The Nutcracker

A friend of mine posted a link on facebook to a blog with a cute fun craft idea using glue, table salt, and water colors. I tried it out with Kirsten this afternoon and had a blast with it.

All you do is squirt Elmer's glue on a piece of paper making whatever design you want.

Then cover all the glue with a good sprinkling of table salt.

Shake off the excess salt into a bowl. For salt painting just have your child gently touch the wet paint brush to the salt. And watch it spread! It's pretty awesome! You have to make sure not to smear the glue. Just tap the paint onto the salt and it spreads on it's own.

First we did squiggles.

Then a happy face :)

This was a super easy, and really cool craft. Kirsten loved watching the paint magically spread across the picture! Try it out with your kids!

On to the event of the night....

Jack was away at a basketball game tonight, so I was looking for something to do with the girls. I looked on our public library's website and was excited to see that they were hosting a Nutcracker Storytime tonight. I knew Kirsten would love it! She is all about dancing lately and LOVES watching Angelina Ballerina, so seing real life ballerina's would be unreal for her!

The children were supposed to dress in the fanciest attire :) So I dressed them up as ballerinas. (most every other mom there did too)  My ballerina's ready to go!

First we got our picture taken with the ballerinas. Yep, me too! Kirsten wouldn't go by herself. Then we colored a nutcracker magnet. After that we had some down time before the show started so we checked out a few books.

The show started with a reading of The Nutcracker. Followed by a ballet performance of 8 different songs from the Nutcracker. It was so fun! Kirsten was glued to the dancers and clapped like crazy for them. She is already asking to go to the ballet again :)

Love/Hate

There are so many random things that Kara just LOVES to play with. And there are also a few odd things she hates.

She loves to play with this plastic medicine dropper that we have. She will chew on it and mess with it forever. I've never actually used it for medicine so it's officialy become her toy.

She hates pompoms. Kirsten has some play cheerleader pom poms. If you shake them or lay them by Kara at all she freezes and starts wimpering.

Kara loves the toy light stick necklace that her great grandma gave Kirsten. She plays with the strings, sucks on it, and she could stare at it all day.

She hates leaves. We set her and Kirsten down in the leaves a couple weeks ago. Kara was okay with it for the first couple seconds until Kirsten threw up a big handful of leaves all over her head. Poor Kara was scared to death. Even just holding her while Kirsten plays in the leaves she starts crying.

Kara loves to walk. Anytime I am near her she is grabbing for my hands so I can help her stand up and walk. She goes crazy fast running around the kitchen in her walker, and if she had it her way I am sure she'd love for me to just hold her up all day so she could walk everywhere.

However, she hates crawling. She won't even stand to be on her belly for more than a couple minutes and makes no efforts to move around that way. She's gotten pretty good at scooting around on her bottom though :)

Kara Mae loves to play with playing cards. Kirsten has a deck of Dora Go Fish cards that Kara will sit on the floor playing with for a long time. She picks them up, tosses them to the side, then is super excited to find them again in a different spot. She's only chewed up one so far!

She hates our squishy pink puffer ball. We brought it out to play with tonight and she shuddered. Even when we put in back in the toy basket she kept looking back at it, making sure it wasn't going to get her.

And this is the mess that is our living room several times a day! We love playtime :)

Basketball

From October to March, it's all about basketball in this house. Last night was the first home game so I was excited to take the girls. It's a little difficult to watch a basketball game with 2 little ones so I always make sure to pack plenty of toys and snacks to help keep them entertained.

Kirsten enjoys watching the game and cheering. She will usually really watch and follow the game for the first 20 minutes or so before she gets antsy and starts playing. Last night she kept calling down to Jack on the bench trying to get his attention. She was waving frantically saying "Hi Daddy!" over and over again.

 And there is enough noise and activity to keep Kara entertained for quite awhile too. Right now she will just sit happy and play for the most part. I am not sure what I will do once she starts trying to crawl/walk around on the bleachers.

There was a JV game and Varsity game last night, so that means 4 hours of basketball :) In between games we picked up supper at McDonalds and brought it back to eat while we watched.

While Kirsten had a mouth full of chicken nuggets she was trying to walk down the bleachers and slipped. It wasn't a bad fall, but it scared her and she started crying. She was crying so hard that she started gagging because of the food in her mouth (Which has happened more times than I can counts b/c she always cries so hard). I knew she was going to start throwing up so I quickly grabbed my McDonalds bag and held it in front of her right before she spewed. uhhh...yuck!

Other than that little incident it was a great night!

I want to spoil my girls....

I want to spoil my girls...but I don't want my girls to BE spoiled.
I want so bad to give them everything they ever want or ask for, and never have to say no.
Saying no is HARD!



I mean, really...how can I say no to this cuteness?



But with Christmas coming up we have been talking about what to get the girls for their presents. There are so many things I know they would love, I want to buy them everything! But if I take an honest look, they really already have SO much! Of course there are things they do not have but that's a GOOD thing. It's good for them to not have everything. While I would really love to buy them tons of new toys, the cutest clothes, and just spoiled them like crazy....I know that's not the best for them.

I want to help them learn to appreciate what they do have, instead of always wanting more and more. It's hard to say no, it's hard to hold back and give to others instead of ourselves. But I want my girls to grow up knowing that there are more important things than our "things" and that giving really is SO much better than receiving.

The things she says...

I really need to do a better job about writing down  the cute and silly things that Kirsten says. When she was just starting to talk she would say words and phrases incorrectly but in such a cute way. It's already hard for me to remember the way she talked, I remember she would always say "Hold you" when she wanted me to pick her up, and instead of "another day" she used to say "another one day". There are so many more, but it's hard to think of them all.

As she gets older she doesn't say many things incorrectly anymore, but everyday she says something sweet, clever, or funny. Just today she said a couple different things that were so sweet it almost made me cry :)

While we were in the car she said
"You know why I like to ride in Grandpa and Grandma's, and Nana and Papa's car?' Because I love them" 'You know why I love them"
'Because they're special!"

Then later today she asked
 "Who had Kara before we got her?"
I said "God made her and then he gave her to us."
She said "Oh, yeah! God was holding her."