Huge Adventure Trip

My girl and I spent the last month on a huge multi-state adventure trip while Logan stayed home and did a huge amount of work in lots of different areas.  We made it home yesterday, and are super glad to be back together as a family!  We will try to be posting pictures and describing some of our adventures soon....well, after we unpack and figure out where everything goes!  Hooray for adventures and for being together with loved ones!

The Lesson Backfires....

We get to teach the Sunbeam class for our church, which is the group of kids turning 4 this calendar year. This means we teach the class with our girl in it. While some of the lessons are incredibly fun (like the one about animals where we made balloon animals for the kids), there are others that are a bit challenging, and don't necessarily have the effect we would like. The ones on family, and being nice to your brothers and sisters were a bit challenging for our girl, since she's the only kid in the class with no siblings, and felt sad about it. A couple weeks ago we had a lesson on obedience. We talked with the kids about how we live in families who love us and take care of us. We talked about how parents love their kids and how the kids need to obey their parents. We talked about small things like obeying when your mom asks you to clean up your toys, and big things like when your mom requests that you stay with her at the grocery store. Some things parents ask us to do are for our safety, and others are things they ask us to obey to help our families run smoothly. It was a great lesson, and we played Simon Says to practice obeying, and learned the song "When my mother calls me, quickly I'll obey". When we got home, I knew my girl had payed attention during the lesson, because she came and asked me to do something for her, like get her an ice cream cone. I told her no, that we weren't doing that right now. She gave me an interesting look, and said, "Mama, you have to apologize because you didn't obey me. When someone asks you to do something you are supposed to obey like we talked about in class. When I ask you that you are supposed to say, 'yes' and obey quickly. Now, let's try again" and proceeded to make her request a second time. I again told her no, and tried to explain that in the lesson we talked about obeying your parents. There is a difference between being an adult and being a child in the family. Unfortunately, my girl does not get this. I don't remember expecting my mom to obey me, but I think that was partly because there were a lot of us kids, and one mom, and we knew we had to obey her. As one of the older ones, we also got to 'boss' around the younger kids, so I guess we had a place in the hierarchy of the family, and it was easier because we weren't alone and outnumbered on the bottom.....So, we've been struggling with this. There are times where I try to be an example and say, "Yes, I will" when my girl asks me to do something, but there are also times when it just is a parenting thing, and she really needs to obey quickly. In thinking about it, I think this is another of those things that is a challenge for an only child, which I was not initially aware of. We spend so much time being on the same level, being friends doing things together. It is hard for my girl to understand that at times the Mom/daughter thing comes into play, and that I am the parent and she is the child. She loves to pretend that she is the mom and I am the child, but still is struggling with the 'quickly I'll obey' part of normal life. I think part of that is normal for kids to figure out, and it sure is funny when she tries to use the lesson I taught her in class to explain why she should get to stay up late, watch movies, and do all kinds of other things she asks to do because she asked nicely and said please. So, I guess that lesson didn't really work the way I thought it would, and we'll have to keep figuring out how to teach 'obey your parents' as we go!

Canoe Fun

Here are some pictures from when we went canoeing. The first time, we went on the lake by the college, and it was so calm and peaceful, and warm. Logan got pretty hot doing all the paddling, so my girl decided splashing him would be really funny. She crawled back in the canoe and kept splashing him and giggling hysterically. It was pretty fun, and felt much less wobbly than our previous canoe experience.

And our second time, we went up by the glacier. The icebergs were amazing, and seeing the visitors' center and the lake and trees from a different viewpoint was incredible. The water was too cold for my girl to splash in, but we found her a stick, and she splashed that in the water instead of her little fingers. It was a long trip, and incredibly fun!

We got a little bit close to that one...

Hooray for fun adventures!

Schoolish Time Today

In the spirit of letting go of some of the things I have saved FOREVER I let my girl have, what I would consider, a special treat today. She was doing some school time, and having a blast. She picked out one of her workbooks to do some practice writing letters. I usually take the individual pages and put them in a sheet protector, or even just lay the sheet protector over the top, and then have her use a dry erase marker to do the workbooks. That way I can wipe it off and she can do them again and again, especially since we are still in the beginner stage of writing. Today, she picked one of her workbooks where each page has you practice writing a different letter. She sometimes loses interest in letter writing and would rather just color, which is just fine, but I thought to make it a special activity, we would do like real school and use a REAL PENCIL to practice writing. My girl does not usually use pencils. She LOVES to color with a regular pencil, but the resulting picture with lead that wipes off....not my favorite, so usually it is just boring crayons or colored pencils. Today, I went into my secret pencil stash. I found pencils in my drawer that I have been saving for many, many years. I have been saving some of them from when I was in elementary school. I have panda pencils, a gymnast pencil, a hershey kiss pencil, a pencil from my elementary school, and pencils with my name on them. I even have a Care Bears pencil that is the original ones. For today's special grown up school time, I let my girl pick a special pencil, and I sharpened it and let her use it. She chose the purple one with the knock knock joke on it. She thought it was the coolest thing and did 5 pages of letters with her new pencil. I told her it was just like the grown up kids do when they get to start real school, and she was very excited to be so grown up. Then she had us play Dinosaur Train matching, where she shared the Buddy figure with me, and then grabbed her favorite items: laces and strings. She has some shoe laces, and some strings for doing lacing cards, and she uses them for all kinds of things. They make great gloves, or scarves, or food for her animals, or wipes for dusting, or anything else you could possibly imagine. This morning she invented a new game and taught me how to play it. All you need is a couple laces or strings. The object of the game is to toss the lace or string in the air. I tried to ball mine up and catch it on the way down. Apparently that wasn't the object of the game. Instead you are supposed to leave the string long, toss it in the air, and watch it fall to the ground before repeating the actions. It sure was a lot of fun.....And then she decided if I held one end of the little string, and she held the other, that the two of us could jump rope. I tried to explain why that would be so challenging, and she agreed that she needed to get her big jump rope for that. She held one end, while I held the other, and we tried to jump together. Unfortunately, she is still confused about the sequence of events that lead to successful jump rope. She tried to jump while swinging the rope backwards over her head, and I was trying to swing it under our feet......So I tried to explain how to jump rope, and my girl, holding on to both ends, tried it out in slow motion. She did it! It was slow, and it was only a few times, but she did it!....and then went right back to string tossing. Way fun! What a great girl and some fun school time!!!!!

In other news, Logan has been studying math and is set to take the placement test to see about getting into some college classes. He is such a smart cookie! And can remember numbers and problems really well, while I have to write down everything in order for it to make sense to me. It has been really neat to see him studying and working hard to figure out this stuff, even though it has been years since either of us took any kind of math class. He has also been working hard at his job, where they have sold a couple more houses and have a remodel job as well. We were hoping to take a break all together as a family, but he's going to get the chance to get lots of work done and some great studying as well....while my girl and I go for an adventure down south. We are hoping to visit Logan's family in Oregon, my family in California, and maybe, possibly, even drive over to Utah for a day or two. I would really like to take my girl to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point, but I'm a bit concerned about the drive....But we are planning on a trip up to Portland to go to the Children's Museum and/or the zoo. We're looking forward to seeing everyone and having lots of adventures.....The only drawbacks are that we leave in a couple weeks, and I'm finding there are LOTS of things I want to do before we go, and that we don't get to take Logan with us. But it should be a huge adventure. When we were walking around the airport last week, my girl was commenting on how she really wanted to go visit her grandparents and to fly on an airplane. I am looking forward to sharing those adventures with her which I know she will really enjoy....and to getting back here to hang out with Logan too! So fun times for all, and preparing for adventures ahead!!!

Thankful Wall Update and Birthday Wishes

I wanted to write down the things we were thankful for in June, and got sidetracked, and now it is August.....So, here are some of the things we were thankful for in our June Garden of Blessings:

My favorite word is "washable" and my favorite word is "love" (this was a day where my girl told me her favorite word was "washable" (from her crayons), and then asked what my favorite word was. I told her it was her name, and she then thought for a minute before revising her original statement with "my favorite word is "love". It was very cute.)
wings, waiting patiently for a friend to be done, bees, having a race with a friend, friends, helping a friend, "I love flowers", "when I say 'sure mama'", picking flowers with Daddy, eating good things, using nice words like "sorry" and "please", "I love blue", dance class (this is the pretend kind we do at home), watering flowers, playing with a friend, and when flowers grow. Then there are several flowers and bees where my girl wrote things all by herself. Some say, "I heart u", and some say "Elise heart Daddy", or "Daddy heart Elise", or "Elise heart Mama" or "Mama heart Elise". I love that she is good at expressing her love and is very confident in our love for her. We try hard as a family to say "I love you" a lot, and I think she is very good at making sure she gets her hugs and kisses and snuggles everyday!
And I found an activity that used laminated fishes, where you used a dry erase marker to write upper and lowercase letters on the back, then fished for them and sorted them into buckets. I already had the fish from Primary stuff, and hadn't figured out this use for them before. My girl saw me writing the letters, and immediately had to get in on that action and write some herself. This led to the idea that we could use our laminated shapes for writing practice, which I hadn't thought of before, but she loved, especially when they are hanging on the wall. Any variety in our learning activities is a cool thing. So, she practiced writing on our flowers and bees, and wrote her own thankful things, which I thought was really neat.

And then, for Logan's birthday in June, we put our laminated cupcakes on the wall by the door and wrote things we love about him and some birthday wishes. Here are the ones from my girl:
I like to make things with you Daddy
We get together Daddy
I love you Daddy
Make a wish Daddy
I like to sing the ABCs with Daddy
Thank you Daddy!
Happy Birthday Daddy!
I like to go to the farm with you Daddy (I thought this was funny, since she's never been to a farm....)
My girl sure loves her Daddy. We made a snapfish book for them, with a poem called Me and My Dad which my mom found in the Friend magazine. My girl was so excited to get it in the mail, with pictures of all her adventures with her Daddy, and they could read their special book together. She worked really hard to make his birthday something special, and was so excited to take him by the hand and lead him around the house to show him the decorations we'd put up and the table she had set with blue plates and napkins (blue is his favorite color, and consequently, she says it is her favorite color too....she really loves her Daddy).
When we sat down to special dinner she had made with the special penguin dessert, she exclaimed, "I love this, this is the best party ever!"
I am thankful for Logan as well, for his patience, and his willingness to work hard to support our family, and to take us on adventures when we can....and for his muscles! (that canoe is HEAVY!), and just the fun time we have with him. So, here are some pictures of his birthday party:

And welcome, dear, to the ranks of the old.....or those no longer in their 20s! He seems to be handling it ok!

Here is this year's hug poster (we have made one every year since my girl was born):

And here is a closer view of those interesting penguin treats with their icebergs....the smaller blue ones ended up going over the best, since the penguins turned out to be WAY sugary ---don't worry we didn't eat them all, we sent them to Logan's work for the guys to enjoy! But my girl and I had fun making them....

Latest Funnies and Adventure

I know it's been a long while since I posted some funny things my girl says, so before I forget the latest two, I thought I'd share them real quick.
My girl gets two gummy dinosaur vitamins in the morning time. The other day, after I gave them to her, the first one jogged up her arm saying, "WEEEEEEEEEE", jumped in her mouth and was chewed up. It made me smile. Then I watched as she picked up the second dino. This one jogged up her arm proclaiming, "Wait for MEEEEEEE!!!" before jumping into her mouth to be chewed up. I got a good laugh over that whole thing!
And then, this morning, as part of our school time activities, we were playing a Disney princess puzzles game, where you have to make the different princesses with the different pieces. My girl has only seen a couple Disney princess movies (edited, of course), and so is not as familiar with all the girls in the puzzles. We got to the one with the fishy tail and the red hair, and I asked my girl who it was. She didn't know, so I told her that it was the Little Mermaid, whose name is Ariel. She started giggling. She said, "Ariel? That is a funny name. How about Hair-iel? That is a much cooler name!" OK, Hair-iel it is.
What a funny girl!
So, we have just been rocking right along. We're doing lots of fun school time activities, and Logan is working and looking into college options, and we're just doing our thing. We did get a canoe from Craigslist a few weeks ago, and have taken it out on a couple of the lakes here, and it was amazing and fun. My girl and I went a month ago with a friend from the ward in their canoe on the ocean, and it was WAY tippy, especially when the two 40lb girls both wanted to put their hands in the water from the same side of the canoe....But Logan has solved the tippy problem with ours by putting a wood beam and floaty things on either side. He can now stand up in it and rock the boat without tipping over. We went on Auke Lake a couple weeks ago for about an hour, and it was beautiful and sunny. This last Saturday, we went on Mendenhall Lake, and tried to paddle out so we could see the glacier.....we misjudged the size of the lake. We got to the point of seeing the waterfall, the icebergs, the visitors' center, and a portion of the glacier. We decided to turn back while we still had some juice in our arms, and get to a spot away from the icebergs so we could take a break without floating into one. It was amazing seeing all the icebergs, and seeing things from a different angle than we normally do, and of course, after we had turned around and were paddling back, there was a loud crash- we missed seeing the glacier calf, but on the upside, we weren't subjected to the waves, which was a good thing since there were a lot of big icebergs around at the time. So, we ended up being on the lake for about 2 1/2 hours, and of course afterwards MY ARMS WERE DEAD! They were sore for the next couple days, and made me realize how wimpy I am. But we had fun, and are looking forward to going again. So, hooray for adventures and trying new things! ...Pictures will be uploaded soon of this new adventure....

Happy "Country" Day!

I know it has been forever since I've posted anything, but the time just keeps passing, and events keep happening, and I start to feel so behind that it is slightly overwhelming, and so I keep not posting...and thinking all the time that I should so we can have SOME record of all the fun stuff we're doing. So instead of taking the time to do all the updates and posts that I should, we're hanging out today, me and my girl, while Logan is working away some seriously long hours. And I thought, while my girl is eating her lunch, I'd share a funny quick story from this last month. Logan and I decided it would be fun to make a skirt for our girl with some patriotic fabric at the beginning of the month. We picked out some cute ones together, and Logan decided he really liked the patchwork skirt I put together around Valentine's day, and that using the same idea would work with some patriotic fabric. I was a bit skeptical, but we did it, and it came out pretty cute. I even got to try out the ruffler for the sewing machine, and it is fantastic on the right project! So, we got to the first weekend in July, and I was telling my girl about how it was going to be the birthday for our country, the United States of America, and that we would celebrate by going to the parade and making a special treat, and having glow sticks. She and her Daddy picked a flag out for her to wave while I got the fabric cut. She was so excited! So, Sunday, July 3 arrived, and when she woke up, she excitedly said, "Can I wear my country skirt today?" It took me a minute to figure out what that meant. I said, "Yes you can wear your patriotic skirt today!" So we got her all dressed, and she LOVES it! She only wore it for the couple hours at church, then took it off to save it for the parade the next day. When the 4th finally rolled around, she was very excited to wear her 'country' outfit again. I kept trying to tell her it was patriotic, for Independence Day, and she kept insisting that it was a country skirt for the country's birthday, and that she was going to wave a country flag. I had Sousa marches playing that week, and she also kept referring to those as 'country' music, that made her feel like marching. At the parade, she kept referring to every flag she saw as a country flag, and the bands were, of course, playing country music. It was so funny to me, because even though I know what she meant, those descriptive words just have a different connotation to me. So, here she is, my country girl, who just LOVES her country! (even though she is still confused about what the differences are between a country, a state, a town, and a continent ...we're working on that).

The country dress on my country girl: