Cousin fun

Scott, Carolyn, and the kids are all going out of town tomorrow for a week, so we decided to have family dinner at mom and dad's house before they left.

Dad gets the "Poppy of the Year" Award for blowing up the wading pool that has been sitting on the spider covered floor of the garage for a year.

The kids took turns on the swings while they waited for the pool.

And Carl played with Poppy's phone, while Sven looked on. Poppy is amazing. That pool was not an easy task!... and it was filthy.

When the pool was finally blown up, we created an impromptu waterslide. Oakley enjoyed it as much as the kids did and EVERYONE played on it.

It was a lovely evening.

After everyone had left, we went through some of my old stuff and found my old Girl Scout vest. Maddy has been asking about it since we signed her up to be a Girl Scout. So here's a picture of her in my vest. She looks exhausted after playing all afternoon.

You know, I remember that vest being bigger. :)

More Painting

I love it when Maddy gets all dressed. She just comes up with the fanciest, most sparkley outfits. Well, tomorrow is Sunday, so Maddy is getting ready today by painting her nails.

She is using three different colors and actually has a nice pattern going.

This is what happens though when you ask her to smile. At least you can see her nails. 

This picture is slightly better. She will look good tomorrow.

Maddy teaches school

The original puppet teacher was Ms. K-poodle. Here she is with her class.

She was based on Maddy's preschool teacher and did many of the same things the real Ms. K. did. She told the class when it was time to come in for recess, and handed out the folders, and taught the other puppets how to share and be friends.

Well today, the student has become the teacher.

Today, Maddy told the class the she is now the teacher and Ms. K-poodle is her assistant. Together they taught the puppets about volcanoes, and they ran an obstacle course, and went swimming, and then they all got a message to calm down. It was a pretty awesome class. Maddy is a great teacher!

Clever girl

Maddy was working on her workbook tonight. I just had to share this picture that Maddy drew for "things you can see". She drew a picture of herself looking at me. I am the one with no face because Maddy says that she does not draw faces anymore, but then she had a problem of how to tell that she was looking at me. She compromised by drawing herself with a stick for a head and then after we discussed the problem she attempted to draw a half circle for a head and two eyes with sight lines.

I just thought it was pretty brilliant.

I love how creative she is.

School Days

The kids have had so much going on in school this year. Maddy has learned how to read simple books and is starting simple addition. And today, the kids had Field Day!

I have no pictures of that and I wish I did. Apparently, Maddy and Soren and Carl lost every even that they were in. Maddy ran the 50 feet dash and the 100 feet dash and then ran all the way around the band. I am just so impressed that she finished and that she was a good sport about losing.

So since I didn't get any pictures of Field Day, I thought I would at least get a picture of her studying.

Maddy paints

Yesterday, we got out the paints and decided to update some flower pots that we have in the front yard. Maddy was thrilled because this is one of her favorite things to do.

Mixing paint is one of the best parts.

Maddy's current fascination with Pokemon showed in her work. 

This is Kabutops.

This is Raichu.

And these are two plant Pokemon. The top one is Bellsprout and the bottom is Victoreebell.

I was so impressed that she did these from memory! She just sat at the table and drew them out and totally knew which ones she was painting. Maddy is so cool.

Weekend with Maddy

Because my schedule is a little switched around this week, I actually had a three day weekend and I got to spend it with Maddy. It was delightful! We played Candyland...

Let me tell you that Candyland is a lot more fun when you use puppets instead of playing pieces. It's hilarious as they walk through Candyland commenting to each other and getting stuck in the licorice. The downside is that they eat WAY too much candy while they are playing, so after one of our games, Maddy got them some good food to eat and talked to the puppets about the five food groups. It's nice to know that she is picking something up.

Then she carefully placed the ones that can stand up in her shopping cart...

And took them on a tour of the house. They saw the entire house and thoroughly enjoyed the occasional flying they had to do to get up and down stairs.

We even got out on the new bit of the Jane Addams trail. It's really nice and Maddy can fly on her bike. She planned carefully for the ride too. She packed a yogurt drink and a cheese stick in the bag on her bike to give her extra power.

In between all that, there was still time to finish the pajamas I have been working on for her. They are huge, but they are also soft and comfortable... and she will be able to wear them until she is 13.

The girls

Aunt Kim came home for the weekend, so Maddy and I went over to mom's house to see her.

Ok, so no one was really thrilled about having their picture taken, but we were all happy to see Aunt Kim!!

This is her tough face

We were at the park tonight and I told Maddy to stand for a minute so I could take a picture. She stood and then she posed, so of course I took the picture because it is not very often that she stands still and sort of smiles. She told me afterwards that this is her tough face.

Fear the tough girl!

Happy Mother's Day!

Maddy and Carl and I went over to mom and dad's house this evening for an impromptu Mother's Day dinner. I was really nice! Mom and I cooked, while dad hung out at the table and the kids played outside and inside.

Here are some inside pictures. We put air in a second bouncey ball so they each had one to fly around the house.

Between going outside to play, and bouncing about, there was some much needed downtime right before dinner. I love how they both stayed on their balls to watch some Pokemon though.

And I so love this picture of Carl and Poppy relaxing after dinner.

Happy Mother's Day everyone from some crazy, bouncing kids.

Cooking with Maddy

Rhubarb season is in full swing. That means it's time for cooking.

Tonight Maddy picked a bunch from mom's house so that she could make some rhubarb cake.

I am pretty sure she had ulterior motives for wanting to make cake...

It turned out beautifully though and now we have a delicious looking breakfast for the morning.

And Scott brought over another bag full of rhubarb tonight. Wonder what she will cook up next?!

Beautiful weather and another post

It was absolutely lovely out tonight. So Maddy and I walked over to Blackhawk school to play for a while after dinner.

We had a great time... and then Maddy got a bath because that black shirt and those black pants were no longer black when we left the park. They were an odd shade of dusty grey. The messier you get just signifies how much fun it was though!

Practice, practice, practice

Maddy is working on her pitching arm.

She was actually getting pretty good by the end. She could stack the cans in a pyramid and knock them over in a couple throws.

We are going to have to get Soren and Carl involved too. Only six more players for a team, right?

Outside time

The rain has finally stopped for a bit this week and it wasn't terribly cold, so we were actually able to spend some time outside tonight!

Of course, the hose had to get turned on.

The car is beautifully clean now though! Thanks, Maddy!

Brought to you by Maddy

So yesterday we actually attempted to make a camera from the "Paper Camera" book that Maddy got in Rockford. She was so excited and telling me about all the things that she was going to take pictures of and that Ash and I would need to put our arms around each other and say, "Mario Kart 8" so she could take a picture.

Well, let's just say the paper camera ended up being a bit too complex and in the long run, was really not what Maddy was after. So what do you do?

Maddy got a cellphone... sort of.

She actually got one of our old cellphones that doesn't have any actual data so she can't make calls. It just makes a nice camera. So tonight's pictures are courtesy of Maddy who has learned to take her first selfies.

Maddy earns a day out

Maddy is getting better at reading, although she won't admit to it. She is at the point now where reading is still work, so if she has a choice, she prefers not to do it.

To counter that, we have come up with a reading challenge. If Maddy reads 10 books to Ash and I during the week, she gets to pick a place to go on Saturday. The location has to be agreed upon at the beginning of the week, so we don't get any crazy surprises. And she can only re-read the same book twice.

We came up with this plan kind of late in the week. Thursday to be exact, but the location was Monkey Joe's in Rockford, so she had her incentive. Maddy spent all of Friday plowing through books and she got her 10 books in by the end of the day. So Saturday morning we were off to Monkey Joe's, where Maddy bounced a lot!

Then we made a stop at the Half Price Bookstore, because who doesn't need books.

Maddy picked out some good ones. Her two favorites were a book on how to make paper pinhole cameras.

And a dinosaur book that had a pop-out stegosaurus to build.

We just found out that there is a bounce house place in Freeport now, so that is what we are challenging Maddy with this week! Here's to a week of reading!