All About Mary

I thought a few days ago of doing "About us" posts.
Hopefully my far away family will appreciate it since they don't get to see us often.  Some of my family hasn't even met Louis or our girls.  I'll start with Mary and work my way up! 

Mary:

was born September 22

she is almost 17 months old

Mary's Personality:

Mary is quiet and likes to watch others before jumping into things.  Eyes wide open and taking things in.

Easy going, simple, easy to get a giggle out of.  She is shy when first meeting people.  She's been like that since she was a baby.  I had several people say, "she doesn't like me"  which made me sad.  She was a baby!  She didn't not like you!  It's just the way she is, She's just gotta warm up to you.

Mary loves:

Books!  She will sit for a half an hour easily just reading a book.  

Mary sat reading this book for at least an hour this day!  (I also love that it's upside down!)

Lately she has also started to like coloring.

She loves the song I am a Child of God.  Just this morning we watched this video about 20 times and she'll sit through it the entire time too.  She is always asking for us to sing it.  She'll say, "Sing a song?  Child of God? Again?  Please?"  Then when we start singing it she laughs because she's so happy we understood her jabbering!

She loves all fruit.  I have yet to give her some fruit that she hasn't liked.  Her favorites are apples, oranges, and bananas.  She also liked grapes and pineapple, but we don't have those often.

Chocolate and cookies.  What child does not love these things?

She loooves her binkie and the scarf she stole from me back in July.  I have tried to take it back from her multiple times, but it hasn't worked.  She loves that thing.  Whenever she's sad or tired she'll go find it and hold it up by her face walking around.

Mary loves her sister.  She loves following her around and doing what she does.  They love to laugh with each other and play ring around the rosies.  Avery will hold Mary's hand and Mary will follow wherever Avery leads her.  Hopefully Avery will continue to lead her to good places

Mary knows:  

Mary knows a few letters.  She knows A, B, N, O.  There could be others that I don't know she knows!

Mary knows most of her colors.  Purple, yellow, orange, red, blue, green, yellow, white, black, brown.  She has picked up on them quickly!

She is starting to learn her shapes, as of now she knows circle and triangle.  

Mary knows a lot of words!  She is a talker.  Hi, bye, baby, i love you, ball, some (she says, "a-hom") toy, play, eat, seat, car, outside, bed, orange, banana, apple, bread, waffle, bath, splash, book, again, more, done, down, on, off, open, poopy, change, bum, sit, trash, cookie, drink, milk, juice, etc etc!  So many words!  She amazes me.  If I ask her to say a word, she'll do her best to repeat it.

Things Mary can do:  

Mary throws away her own diapers.

She puts her dirty clothes in the hamper.

Mary knows to go to her seat when it's time to eat.  

She is learning to use a spoon and fork, she gets it every once in a while.

Mary has almost climbed right over the gate on the stairs.

She gets her own shoes when it's time to go.

She puts away her jacket when we get home.

Mary can climb up and go down a slide all by herself.  Her sister and Papa taught her just on Saturday.

She's starting to do puzzles.

Mary is a beautiful, sweet, happy, funny little girl.  

We love having her in our home.  She bring us so much happiness and joy.

Countdown to Valentine's Day

I found a cute countdown to Valentine's day to do with your children on Pinterest and decided to do it with my girls.  Mostly just Avery, but Mary joined in when she could.  You can find the countdown here.  I changed it up a bit, we also didn't end up doing everything, but we had fun!  

Here are the days we did.  

Day 1:  Bake a Valentine card and treat for Dad.

Avery did most of hers all by herself

Mary had a ball helping me put the glue on

After Mary went to bed Avery and I made cupcakes

Day 2:  We went on a candy heart scavenger hunt.  We got three little snack sized Ziploc bags and Avery went and searched for them.  She had fun finding them, but enjoyed eating them more!  

Day 3:  We made some Valentine's for Avery's Cache Valley cousins.  Avery thought this was very serious and important work and worked hard on them.  She had so much fun delivering them all by herself.

So serious!

Day 4:  We read Valentine books.  My favorite was Amelia Bedelia's First Valentine, so cute!  

I love Amelia Bedelia!  

Day 5:  We ate heart shaped candy.  Sadly Mary was asleep for this so she didn't get any.

Day 6:  We made Valentine's for grandparents.  Avery and Mary both enjoyed this.  Mary just kept saying, "hearts, hearts, hearts!" 

Day 7:  We watched some Valentine movies from the library.  Have you heard of Word World?  It is a pretty good show.  

We skipped day 8.  

Day 9:  Heart shaped pancakes and toast.

We skipped day 10.

Day 11:  We painted some heart-shaped salt dough necklaces.  Avery's little friend LynnDee came to do this with us.  We also colored some Valentine coloring pages.

We skipped day 12 and 13.

Day 14:  We made a heart shaped pizza for dinner.

It was fun and I hope to do it again next year, hopefully we'll do all 14 days next year.

A Night Out

For Christmas Louis' two youngest siblings gifted us with overnight babysitting.  We used that overnight babysitting last weekend for a Valentine's date.  Tifannee came up Friday afternoon and Louis and I headed out very excited to have a night away!
We had a coupon for the Fun Zone up here in Logan.  It was for a game of lazer tag, a game of bowling (including the shoes), tokens for the arcade, a small pizza, mozzarella sticks, and a drink for each of us all for $20!  We had so much fun playing together!  I had only done lazer one once or maybe twice before. It was just the two of us in there too.  It was so much fun, although I'm pretty sure something was wrong with either my gun or Louis' vest.  He got me a bunch of times and I only got him a handful of times.  When our time was almost up I asked him to just let me get him once!  So he was standing about 3 feet away from me and it would not get him!  Needless to say I walked out of lazer tag with 0 points.
I'm not good at bowling, but I always have fun anyway.  I ended up with 74 points and Louis got 105.  His goal was to break 100 and he succeeded.

The one picture I took the whole night

We had fun playing some arcade games and ended up with 122 tickets.  We kept 16 to get Mary and Avery a bracelet and some tootsie rolls then gave the rest away to some kids.  That's what we always end up doing at an arcade.

Louis and I had a great time together and are grateful for Tifannee and Annette for watching our kids.  

And for a blast from the past, here's a few pictures of Louis' and mine first Valentine's day together!

I don't know why the first two are itty bitty!  Hopefully you can kind of see them.

This one if actually the day after Valentine's day, but cute.

P.S.  Louis bought the ring he proposed to me with on our first Valentine's.  We didn't get engaged until May.

A Year of Dates

I put on Facebook last week that I was giving Louis a year of dates for Valentine's Day.  I'm putting together a binder with a date all planned and paid for for each month of the year.  I was asking for suggestions for a couple months I couldn't think of something for.  I had a lot of comments!  I also had several people ask me what dates I had planned for each month.  I was going to put it on Facebook, but that would make for a long status!  So I'm going to put it on here.  Louis never sees the blog, I'm actually pretty sure he doesn't even know the web address.

February-

Dancing and dessert.  It is an at home date, which is one of our favorite kinds! We'll get dressed up, and dance by candlelight.  Then we'll sit down and share a dessert of his choice.

March-

Cuddle Night.  I saw this idea on Pinterest for a cuddle kit.  I thought it was so cute and Louis loves to cuddle so I knew he would love it!  For the cuddle kit I put together a movie, some chocolates, and a homemade over-sized fluffy blanket.

April-

We will go on a walk to a bakery close by and each pick a treat.  Then we'll walk to the park to eat them and talk.  This is one we'll probably bring the kids along to because we also like family dates!

May-

Paper airplanes.  For this one we'll go to the library and check out a book on how to make paper airplanes.  Then head somewhere and have a little paper airplane competition.

June-

Pizza at the park.  This is one that Louis recently told me was a go to date for him and his cousin Jon to take girls on.  So I thought it would be fun to go on with him!  We will go buy a pizza and then go to the park and eat it and play!  This is also one we could easily bring the kids to!

July-

A night under the stars.  We did this one randomly last year and it was fun and romantic.  We will go outside just before sunset and lay on a blanket talking and waiting until the stars come out.

August-

Ducks and horseshoes.  We will go to Willow Park and play some horseshoes then feed the ducks.  This is another one that we could take the kids to.  

September-

Arcade night.  We've only been to an arcade together once.  It was lots of fun so I thought we'd do it again.  We'll have $10 to buy tokens and see how many tickets we can get. 

October-

Copycat date.  There are lots of copycat recipes out there for just about any restaurant on Pinterest.  For this date we'll pick a recipe and make it together.

November-

20 questions.  We've done something like this before and I've enjoyed it.  I came up with a questionnaire of 20 questions about ourselves.  We'll make cookies and while they're cooking we'll fill them out then share our answers.  

December-

This was one of the months I asked suggestions for.  Just about everyone said go to temple square.  If we're still in Utah we'll do that (we've only gone once during Christmas since we've been married!) and if we are not we're going to play in the snow and have hot chocolate.

January-

D.I. date.  We will each get $10 and we have to go around the D.I. to get things for us to do on our date.  A puzzle, a cookie sheet, a movie, something for each other to wear, etc.

I also included a page at the end with bonus dates.  I came up with some after I had finished and wanted to include them!

Bonus Dates

• Game night.  We each pick a game and play it.
• Frisbee golf.  There is a frisbee golf course in Providence that we could go try.
• Picnic.  Pack a picnic lunch and either eat it in our lawn or at the park.
• Window Shopping.  We each get $1000 pretend money and we go to some stores and "spend it" on each other.
• Restaurant night.  We have a couple restaurant.com vouchers we haven't used so we'll just enjoy a night where I don't have to cook dinner!
• Avery date.  For Avery's 3rd birthday we started a tradition where Louis takes her out on a date of her choice for her birthday.  (Mary will get one too when she turns 3) So for this date we'll copy their date!  Bowling, arcade basketball, and ice cream!

Those are the dates I came up with!  I think Louis is really going to enjoy it!  I can't wait to see which date he likes best and how our year of dates go!

Lately

It hasn't been a very eventful year so far.  Louis started school about two weeks ago and we've started up our little preschool again too.  Avery and Mary have both liked it.  Mary doesn't get to join us for much of it, but she does like coloring, play dough, reading books, etc.  I got a laminator for Christmas so I've had fun making work sheets and downloading a few, mostly from education.com.  I laminate the worksheets then Avery does them with dry-erase markers and then we wipe them clean and do it again!
We are doing a different letter each week and doing different activities for each letter.  I am proud to say that Mary knows the letters A and B and the sounds they make.  We just started C today so she doesn't know that one yet.  We'll see how many she can continue to remember.  Avery is doing really really well with writing her letters and learning how to spell more words.
Last week Avery and I tried to make play dough.  I found a recipe on Pinterest that was just conditioner and corn flour.  It also said you could use cornstarch so I used that.  It did not work out.  At all.  It was fun to play with though!  It made me want to make goop again, we had fun with that over the Summer.  I'm wondering if it would have been better if I had used corn flour instead of the cornstarch.  We ended up going out to buy play dough and had fun with that.  It was Mary's first time playing with it.  Besides trying to eat it and crying when I wouldn't let her, she had fun!
I like having a little more structure in our day, and I love teaching my kids new things.  They both pick up on things rather quickly.  I'm hoping to continue with preschool and not slack off like I did in the Fall.  I have a plan for the year, so hopefully I'll keep up with it!
I plan on sharing the worksheets that I have created, but for today enjoy some pictures of my kiddos!