Olive Loves Field Trip Friday

It may sound silly but sometimes I feel the time is just ticking away. These past three years have gone by in a flash. I have been signing Olive up for preschool next year so it has me thinking about how in 1 year from now I will be signing her up for Kindergarten! It's been on my mind a lot that my little girl is growing up so fast. The point of all of that is to say that I want to be sure to take advantage of these great days Olive and I have together before she is in school and we can't go to on our fun adventures as frequently. To make sure that I actually get out and have adventures with her I implemented Field Trip Fridays. I scheduled out a different place to go every Friday until the end of the school year (because then I'm sure our Fridays will be spent at the pool!).  I have taken Olive to some of these places in the past and she had fun, but now she is at the perfect age to explore and appreciate all the fun things these museums offer. It has also been great for me to see what amazing museums we have close to us that have really great exhibits and activities for the kids. If I had the money I would by passes to all of them and everyday would be a field trip day!

The Dinosaur Museum:

  

Nice pose right?

 

This was an extra special day because dad had work off so he got to come with us!

 

The sand/water table is definitely the best part. I will say that they have added lots of really cool features to this museum since I had been last.

 

Daddy and Olive made one pretty great dinosaur. Olive wanted it to have all spikes.

 

You can't tell (or maybe you can) how huge that shark mouth is, but Olive wasn't going to stand any closer  for a picture.

 

Digging in the sand for fossils.

Discovery Gateway:

  

Milo trying out the scooter

 

Olive loved all the costumes and tried on every one. Too bad they are in the todder/infant area so they are WAY too small. I guess she was just channeling Chris Farley.

 

Cowgirl Olive!

Natural History Museum:

 

My big helper.

 

There are lots of things to touch and feel in this museum and you can be assured that Olive touched every single thing.

 

Lunch time! They have a beautiful atrium with huge windows and that is where we ate our lunch. 

 

Milo LOVED seeing himself on the camera phone. He was making some really cute faces at himself. Oh I could just squish him!

It has become a really fun tradition for us and now when Olive asks what day it is (which she does everyday) if she hears that it is Friday she says "Where we go on this day?" I just love that she is enthusiastic about going new places and learning new things. I hope I can keep cultivating her love of learning! I will keep you posted on some of the other neat places we have plan to visit for Field Trip Friday!

Olive's Scarf

I love scarfs. Seriously! I love scarfs for multiple reasons. 1) I am the kind of person who is always cold, so if I leave the house in winter time I wear everything possible to keep me warm (I blame living in Logan).  That means I put on a coat, scarf, gloves, boots, and often a hat every time I leave the house. Part of that is because I like to walk places so we get extra bundled up. 2) I think scarfs are so stylish. I have recently made myself a whole load of scarfs, some winter and some accessory. They make a winter coat look less....blah. 3)Scarfs are so easy to knit! I mean, they are just straight down! A scarf is the first thing I learned how to knit. Well, since we often walk to preschool Olive asked me one day why she didn't have a scarf. She worn a hat, coat and gloves just like me, but what about a scarf? So, I knit her up some scarfs.

 Since I knit her a new hat I made one scarf to match it but I couldn't just make one! So I knit another scarf to match this hat.

 

 Then her Grandma gave Olive a strawberry hat. There is something you should know about Olive. It is that she is obsessed with Strawberry Shortcake. She loves pretending to be Strawberry and then she makes you be Blueberry Muffin or Apple Dumpling (or as Olive calls her "apple sumpin'").

 Now if we are playing Strawberry Shortcake, she must wear her Strawberry hat and now she has a scarf to go with it.

 

Here is Olive's pose. I think it is so hilarious. Is it just mine, or are all three year olds impossible to take a picture of? It's kind of ridiculous the photos that we get from her.

Milo Loves to Eat

This little man can pack it away! He loves the independence of feeding himself. The good things about him is that he is not picky at all. He will eat basically anything I put in front of him. Olive was like that too and it's kinda of awesome. Some of his favorites foods are mango, olives, avacado, bananas, and baby treats.

  He will literally yell at you if you put him in his chair before you have food there. He means business.

 He is so coordinated about getting his food in his mouth. I love watching his concentration. We have also started noticing that he often prefers his left hand to feed himself. Milo has a lot of dexterity.

 And he doesn't let the fact that he only has two little teeth hold him back. He will figure out how to gnaw on something until he can eat it. Like I said, he loves to eat.

 Look at that cute boy! He is growing up way to fast. I remember being so excited when Olive figured out to feed herself. I was happy that she was such a big girl. With Milo my heart breaks a little that he is already getting so big!

Olive also wanted me to document her amazing crazy straw that she was using that day.

Olive Loves Pretend Playing

I sometimes think that Olive lives in a perpetual state of imaginary play. Now, when I say imaginary play I mean that all day long she is constantly being some character. . She has a wide breadth of characters that she pretends to be. It is sometimes rather difficult to keep up with who she is pretending to be at that exact moment because it changes so fluidly. I am often getting corrected by Olive if I do not call her by the right character that she is at that moment. It takes concentration to keep up with her. Here she is being a puppy dog in her "cave"

 My favorite thing about her constant make believe is when she says "I know...let's play_____!" Like it's this fabulous idea she just thought up. For example, I was cleaning the kitchen and asked her if she wanted to help me. She said "I know....let's play Cinderella!" And then she went on to explain who everyone would be in that scenario. It isn't just Olive playing pretend, we all have a role also. Cinderella is one of my least favorites because that means I am usually assigned to evil stepmother and so I need to be mean and grumpy (although that is not a far stretch). I almost always try to suggest that I can be the fairy godmother. Whenever Olive is pretending we have to hit the highlights of that story. So if we are Cinderella she has to work and clean, and then be sad because her dress gets destroyed, and then needs the fairy godmother to make her a new "bride gown" to go to the ball.

Then the next second you will be assigned someone else in another story and it will all start over again. Since this has been going on for a awhile now I can usually tell who she is playing and how I should respond to her. Often the game begins with "Hi _____. How was your day?" Then you know it's go time. So she will say "Hi Blueberry. How was your day?" and then you know you have to say "Hi Strawberry is was great!"

I have been struggling with her lately because she is not very interested in playing independently with her toys. She always always wants to play with you. She wants to just follow you around and constantly be talking and interacting as these characters. No matter what you are doing or where you are. In the car, at the store, cleaning the tub she wants to sit and talk with you and pretend a story. I will be honest, it can be exhausting. I have seen it in some of her friends and cousins too. They get tired of always playing make believe. But, Olive loves it.


Here are some of Olive's character and our subsequent parts.
-Rapunzel, which means Scott is Flynn, I am mother Gothel, and Milo is Pascal.

-Strawberry Shortcake, Scott is Huckleberry (or as Olive calls hims Huck. It makes me nervous everytime) and I am a variety of the other characters depending on her mood. Usually Apple Dumpling or Blueberry Muffin.Milo is Pupcake.

-Olive is often the Mom and I vary between being her sweety (or daughter) and being the Grandma. Milo is usually her baby. Then she calls Scott babe, to distinguish that she in now his wife. Sometimes we are both mommy friends where Milo is my baby and she has her own baby, but Scott is still usually her husband.

-Olive is a baby and then I am still the mommy.

-Olive is Roo and I am Kanga. She often makes Milo Pooh or Piglet and Scott is less clear, sometimes Christopher Robin or Owl. If Olive is Pooh then I am still Kanga but Milo is now Roo.

-Olive likes to play Carebares but she isn't sure about all of their names so we are just assigned colors or their tummy pictures (what are those called again?)

-Olive is me and then I am Grandma Kathleen. The others are usually left out in this scenario except if we play other families then she assigns us all parts. It makes me laugh because if there is an extra "part" that doesn't fit our 4 people in our family Olive always says "Aunt Aubree will be ____." I'm not sure why Aubree is always the go to person to fill a role in Olive's head, but she is.

I could keep going but I wont...if it is any kids show or movie or anything that she thinks up in her head, we have all been assigned parts.


-Olive plays Nala, which makes me Sarabi, Scott Mufasa, and Milo is Simba.
 One of my favorite recent stories about her is that as she was assigning people to play Lion King, she stopped and said "If Mufasa is Simba's daddy, who is my daddy?" and I paused for a minute and said "Um...Mufasa." Olive says "No no no mom. I am Nala. So who is my daddy?" I couldn't figure out how to explain polygamy to a three year old so I just said "I'm not sure." When Scott got home later that evening Olive was sure to tell him "You are Simba's daddy, but we don't know who my daddy is." And Scott, not knowing about any of our conversation said "....ok...."

Valentines Party Part 2

Now it's party time!! In the past I have done a really fun Valentine's party for my 6 oldest nieces. This year, since they are all getting older and busier, it was tricky to get their schedules and mine to match up. Plus, I usually like to do it on Saturday so that I can make it big and fun with food and everything but Scott had a wedding on that Saturday and I didn't think I could pull it off by myself. 

Since I have collected tons of fun Valentine's themed things over the years we just had to have a party to use it all. At first I told Scott it was just going to be a play date with a friend. Then it kept growing and I kept inviting people and planning more activities. I figure, more people means more love. I had an absolute blast but I think some of the kids might have gotten overwhelmed and the chaos. Besides the occasional meltdown, it was a major success. 

Like I said, I just kept planning more and more activities to do at the party. I think it is the school teacher in me or something. I had so many that I had to break our party up into stations. The first one was decorating Valentine's cards.

 Milo was a trooper and liked hanging out and playing with his toys. He had on his red socks so he could feel festive too.

 Then there were some matching games and toddler writing activities. I think these are so cool and Olive and I love to do them together.

 

My favorite craft was from when I taught school. They are called "magic message hearts" You color over the heart with your dot pen and it shows you a message like a conversation heart.  

We also made a little foam turtle craft, decorated Valentine's bags, played "pin the lips", Valetine's twister and heart bean bag toss. I am telling you, it was quite the party.

                                        Oh, and we can't forget lunch, heart PB&Js!

 

 

Plus there were lots of sprinkles for decorating our cookies and plenty of yummy heart shaped treats. Then we passed out our Valentine's treats! All of that is on top of the huge bag of treats Olive brought home from her preschool party. We are a bit overloaded on sugar this week.

 Olive and her cute friend Bo.

 We had to check out all of our cool toys. Our house looked like a tornado hit it but it was worth it for all the fun!

Here is Olive and her friend Brynn playing dolls. They liked playing Valentine's twister, but not as much as playing Barbies. What can I say, they are all girl!

It definitely was so much fun to have something special to do on Valentine's day. We don't need a big reason to get together with our friends! We have so many great friends and it feels good to show them our love.

Valentines Party

 I'm going to update our Valentine's Day in 2 posts. This post is going to be about the decorations. I have a tendency to (because of pinterest) get over inspired and then plan way too many projects. I just go all in! So here are some of the new things that I made this year to get in the Valentine's spirit.

 I have become obsessed with pom poms. I saw a pin that had a felt heart garland with pom poms and it looked so easy. I changed it up a bit and made the garland but decided that hanging pom pom strings would looks so cute framing my door.

 Here it is all together. I love how it turned out. It couldn't look more festive. (Please ignore the baby gate in the photo, that looks horrible.)

 I have been seeing lots of ideas about fabric in these cross stitch circles as an easy way to add color and make things festive. I decided to not do obvious heart fabric but just tried to bring in a holiday theme by sticking with bold patterns in festive colors. I think it looks great!

 I made these branches at Christmas and thought why limit them to only that holiday?  I made up some felt heart and sewed them with embroidery thread. They were easy and but very festive. I am thinking it will be easy to make something to hang on these branches for every holiday.

 It was fun to try and figure out different creative things and designs to sew on the hearts.

 And then of course we needed something festive to wear on the big love day. I had tons(!) of felt so I just hand sewed on a heart to a shirt Olive already had.

She had on everything heart that day. A heart shirt, ribbons, skirt, and even made me put on her heart undies. This is a girl who takes after her mama and commits to something all the way!

Do you want to know my favorite thing about all of these Valentine's decorations? They literally cost me $7. Have I mentioned how awesome felt is? It can be used for almost anything, looks great, and is so darn cheap! Once we were all decorated we were  ready to invite some friends over to share some love!!

Heart Attack

Here is what Veronika's room looked like after we heart attacked it. Apparently she did know it was us. A couple of days earlier she figured it out. But it was a big surprise to come home to a room like this. I hear that she excitedly told all of her siblings "You are going to have an attack when you see my room!" Yep, I'd call that a success!

 I secretly hid hearts everywhere. They are in her books, drawers, craft boxes, clothes, everywhere! It makes me smile thinking that in days, maybe months, she will find some of those hearts randomly. I hope it reminds her of her heart attack and makes her feel good.

 Valentine's was such a busy day for us. We got up early and ate heart shaped cinnamon rolls, opened Olive's Valentine's gifts, rushed to preschool, heart attacked Veronika, ran home to get ready for our party, partied, cleaned up after our party, made heart shaped pizza for dinner, and then went to a friends house for dessert (which was amazing!).  I would say a great day!

Here is Olive showing off the flowers that daddy brought her for Valentine's.  She felt so special to get flowers too!