Park with Friends

We got to meet some friends at the park today. You might remember Lydia from the post I did with the video of her and Rylie hugging one another at the gym. Lydia's family moved away a couple of months ago. They're about 30-45 minutes away from us now. They used to just live down the road. Lydia was really Rylie's only friend, so it was great to see them again at the park today. We had a picnic lunch and just hung out for a bit.

Here's Lydia

And Baby Bryce. Rylie has even named one of her teddy bears Baby Bryce. She loves this little fella!

Rylie in a big kid swing

Rylie looking on intently as Jo carefully plants some seeds

Best buds!

Secrets!

Boone Family Weekender, Second Edition

Earlier this week while Rylie was supposed to be napping in her crib, I heard her monitor switch channels. I thought that was odd, so I went in to check on her. She was out of her crib just wandering around her room. I asked her, "What happened?" She said, "I'm just went splat." So there you have it. She's no longer in a crib....too much of a safety hazard now. Poppy and Plunkie are bringing up a toddler bed that Poppy's been making for Rylie, but that's a week away, and we're making do on a twin sized blow up mattress for now. And yes, I realize she doesn't need a safety rail on a bed that's 5 inches off the floor, but she loved to butt up against the bars in her crib, so we mostly put it there for comfort. She sleeps in the spot just next to the safety rails each night. Here she is before her first night in her big girl bed!

And the next morning. We made cinnamon rolls to celebrate that Rylie stayed in her bed ALL NIGHT LONG!!! She's continued to do this, too. We are so proud of her!

I walked in one morning to find this: She had lined up all of her animals and had gotten the books out of her book box next to her bed. She was reading them a story about snowmen.

Here we are in Boone at the cabin. Rylie got to see all sorts of fun animals up close-cows, sheep, butterflies, crickets, spiders, and several little wooly caterpillars. Here she is inspecting a white caterpillar. You can see it on the board. It's in the shadow of her head.

We love the mountains!

We rode up earlier in the day with Granny and Grandpa. Here's Rylie watching the road, waiting for Daddy to arrive after work.

Rylie got to help the caretaker of the property next door feed these sheep some apples. See the little baby? They were so cute!

This series cracks me up. I do not go around talking on the phone all day, but she was just a chattering in these photos. She would even pause a few seconds and then say, "yeah" and blab about something for a bit. Then she wait again for a "response" from the other end. There was, of course, no one on the phone. But you couldn't tell that from her expressions in these photos!

I know this is several of the same shot, but I LOVE these photos. Granny and Rylie take some GREAT photos together!

Going on a nature hike over to see the cows.

We found another wooly little guy on the way.

Getting a closer look. She ended up deciding to feed him a leaf. She loves to feed the critters we find...even the dead ones.

At a little pumpkin patch down the road from the cabin

Found one! Grandpa helped her pick it out.

To look back at last year's photos of our Boone Trip, click here. To see our family photo from last year in this same spot, click here. I can't believe how much Rylie's changed!

Baby Sophia joined us this year, too. I'm 20 weeks now. I wasn't ready for the first photo, but I like it because my belly looks so little!

Snuggle time with Grandpa and friends

New Monkey!

Another sweet one with Granny!

Baby

It's a baby GIRL!!!

Tot School and NEW SCHOOL!!!

Here are the last of the "Tot School" photos. We officially started new school today. It's more of a preschool type setup. I've been gathering lesson plans and ideas from several great books and planning themed weeks. We do lots of fun activities, and seldom pull out worksheets. It's mostly hands-on experience. We're still doing tot school in a way. We're incorporating it into a whole math curriculum using manipulatives and dice. Rylie's been very excited about new school, and she did some activities with her daddy yesterday while I organized our "supply closet." They made a few Christmas ornaments, stamped on paper, and painted using paper bag gloves. See the rocking chair in the background of this photo? It's gone now. :-( We've moved it to our room to get ready for the new baby, and we've replaced the rocking chair corner in Rylie's room with a calendar/school area. It's a little sad, but I'm looking forward to rocking the new baby, and Rylie and I still occasionally go into our room to read books and rock in the rocking chair before nap or bed. Also, Rylie was getting a bit bored with Tot School. That's another reason we moved into a "preschool curriculum". Anyway...here are the last of the tot school photos.

Homemade puzzle...we still use these things in New School....Rylie calls it "new new school."

A skill we still need to work on. Pouring and transferring water.

Matching the baby eggs to their mommies

In preparation for new school, we needed to buy a small piece of furniture. Thank you, Poppy and Plunkie!!! We're using it as our "Theme Table." It houses some things that go along with our themes each week. Rylie was very excited about building it with me. She loves Bob the Builder, so she was very into the whole process. Why wasn't Tripp putting the furniture together? Well, I was doing some serious nesting that night and needed to get it put together ASAP. There really was no deadline, but it my mind, I couldn't rest till it was done, and he happened to be in class that night. Also, I REALLY love doing things like this. Whenever my dad had/has projects to build, I love to get in on the action. Anyway, here's my little helper!

The obligatory First day of School photo. The best thing about preschool? We get to attend in our pj's!

She was a little bit excited. We don't use all of this calendar stuff quite yet. We just do the big calendar right now. We might start doing weather later this week. Today we did calendar time, a morning message, read some books, and I introduced our first theme: the color red.

Here she is going on a scavenger hunt for all things red.

And displaying her goodies. Then we sang a song about red things. We sang it probably 12 times. She likes music. :-)

Finding more red things during our song.

Our second theme of the day: crickets/insects and using a magnifying glass. Here she is observing her pet crickets. We also looked at the other things on the table with the magnifying glass. Then she decided that she wanted to give the acorn to her crickets, so we did that, and luckily no crickets escaped during the process.

This is the top half of our finished building project. This is where we display our weekly themes so that Rylie can look at/play with them at her will. The bottom half is a door. We store our themed books in that part.

Previously mentioned themed books. We collected lots of books about insects from the library!

Reading one of her books to Buster the Dog.

Snack time! We will eat a snack at our school table each day. She's learning to throw her trash away at the end, and it's giving her a chance to drink out of a regular cup.

Our last formal activity of the day was making a red book.

Then we practiced our homemaking skills...laundry. Rylie LOVED laundry time because she gets to "boop" mommy. This just means that she throws unfolded clothes on my head while I fold, and she yells out, "boop!". Then I throw her in the clothes and "boop" clothes on top of her. It's loads and loads of fun. :-) Here she is playing dress up while we fold clothes.

And here she is "booping" with Abbey. Rylie has such a can-do attitude about laundry. She always gets so excited when she sees a pile of clothes and says, "Let's fold these clothes!" She really is a great motivator!

And that's all for today. I'll try to keep posting about how "new school" goes. I think we're going to have a blast. We've got some other fun activities planned this week like scented red paint and spider snacks. Plus, we'll hopefully be going to the pumpkin patch and also the NC State Fair later this month. I'll try to do a better job of updating. AND we are supposed to find out the sex of the baby on Wednesday! Stay tuned...