So I really wanted to do some Valentine’s Day crafts with the girls. They LOVE crafts and all the “special” supplies I pull out which they never otherwise see. However, while Natasha is ready to deal with scissors, glue, paint, etc… Veronika isn’t. So it was quite the challenge to keep her focused and not eat anything that wasn’t edible.

Anyway – we managed to do this craft: 2 Valentine’s “bears”. Veronika wanted hers pink, and Natasha wanted purple, of course (her favourite color).

The girls love them and I think they turned out cute. Although, we ended up hanging them on the wall in their room because due to some rough-play, they have lost an eye or an ear about five times too many and I had to fix them up. =)

I had ideas for another 3-5 crafts, but I am not sure if we’ll be doing that many. Maybe just one more.

Natasha has finished yet another session of gymnastics (her 3rd). She has learned so much in the past 1.5 years and is learning something new each and every class. I think her self-confidence has improved and she isn’t scared of trying new things. Her 4th session begins next week.

Doing a head-stand

Trampoline

Receiving her “graduation” ribbon, report sheet, and sticker sheet.

I saw this idea on a craft website months ago, and last weakened finally had a chance to create it. Apparently it’s really good for kids’ creativity, imagination, and general development so I figured they might enjoy it.

All you need is a few different bags of dry beans – red kidney, white, black, etc. or just an assorted bag of all. Place the beans in a large plastic container that has a lid. Then add a plastic scoop and whatever else you want. I stopped by the dollar store and picked up a few packs of little rubber animals, red rocks, and 2 plastic trucks.

They had a blast and asked to play with their “bean boxes” every single day last week. They’ve buried and unburied their choo-choo trains a hundred different times and they loved digging and un-digging the little animals. Cost of craft, about 10 dollars per box.

My friend Erin crocheted these beautiful beanies for my girls. I am keeping them for the spring, but the girls have been bribed to pose for a few pictures. I love them!

Yes, that’s right. We have registered our little girl for Junior Kindergarten for the Fall of 2010. School will start the week of September 7th, only days before her 4th birthday. She will be going mornings and taking the school bus – sigh – where did my little baby go? I am sure these next eight months will fly by…

She is very excited, though. I don’t know how much she understands, but I am sure all the open-houses and prep. teacher/student meetings the school offers will prepare her over the next few months. At this point, all she cares about is the concept of taking the school bus. =) It’s exciting but bittersweet at the same time.

… when you can put choo-choo’s in a highchair and feed them hamburger??

For the record – my girls do like baby dolls; rather Veronika does. But they definitely love their Thomas trains best. Anything Thomas-related makes them very very happy.

The girls wanted to play in the snow today so we went out for a bit. But the snow definitely wasn’t as “fun” as they had hoped. Natasha kept asking where the grass was, and Veronika was pretty frustrated she couldn’t run. Needless to say, they were done 25 minutes later and all ready to head back home.

But they did have some fun!

The girls had a wonderful Christmas this year; it was fun watching it through their eyes, and while Veronika took everything as it came, Natasha really understood what Christmas was all about; I think next year Veronika will get into it as well. The family was very generous and the girls got a lot of wonderful toys and clothes. And of course, Santa visited our house while they slept and in the end, they really made out like bandits!

While they visited their family Christmas Eve, Santa dropped by and left them each a gift under the tree – new pj’s and stuffed reindeer!

Natasha then left cookies & milk for Santa, and carrots for his reindeer so he has a snack to grab when he dropped off the presents. Unfortunately, “Santa” ate it all before I could take a pic…….. Santa was good to them!
 

Yesterday while I was getting some things done, I gave Natasha markers and some printing paper and told her to draw me a snowman.

I think it’s pretty cute! I don’t think she intended for it to look sad, that is just how she draws the mouth. And the little black sticks coming from its head are hands, not ears! =) She later drew another snowman on her magnetic board, but she erased it before I could snap a pic. I love it!

Her drawing skills are generally getting a lot better. She is practicing drawing different shapes, but her favourite is definitely a circle. She still prefers drawing trains with a number 1 on them (like Thomas) over anything else, though.

My princess…. 3 years. 3 months.

Today Natasha & I had a little outing to a mall. I promised her that each year she and her sister would each get to pick out a new ornament for our tree. Well, being as Veronika is recovering from a cold and it being the last weekend before Christmas, I did not want to drag her to a germy mall with us. Plus, I needed some one-on-one time with Miss. Big Girl.

I was really impressed when Natasha headed straight for the store’s “blue” ornament section; our tree is blue/silver themed so I guess she knew she needed a blue-ish ornament. She found her perfect ornament about five minutes later. She did not like any of the fancy ones, but she LOVED this very shiny and sparkly blue ball one.

Natasha’s ornament- 

She then picked out an ornament for her little sister. This is Veronika’s ornament-

She had a lot of fun looking at all the decorations in the stores. We then picked out some blue and silver “filler ornaments” for our tree to make it a little more interesting. Matthew’s planning on doing a completely different color theme next year, but we’ll see about that.