Leader of the Day

Reese was the leader of the day at preschool last Tuesday. I have written about Brady's experience as leader of the day, but this was Reese's first time to experience it.

She choose apples and bananas to bring for group snack. Here she is prepping the snack.

Moms, I want to share a trick that the teacher did, that I personally never thought about but it makes a big difference. To make the apples managable for Reese to cut, she sliced them in half horizontally. Therefore, there wasn't as much apple for Reese to push through. Also, the apple is then already cut into little pieces. And if you are like me and end up no where near the core at the bottom, it helps with that too. 

Reese choose to bring the Bonsai tree that Kaddie (my father) sent her in the mail last week. The students were very intrigued by the plant and had a in depth conversation as to whether the tree would get a lot bigger.

Reese also got to walk the line and change the date on the calendar. 

  

Reese was very proud to be the leader of the day. And for the first time, she has said she loves preschool. Feels good to hear that, she just had to adjust.

Orthnerisms

September 25:

Brady sat down to watch TV with Karl. He was tuned into a NFL game. Brady seemed pretty interested which always gets Karl happy, then about 5 minutes of watching Brady proclaims:

"Why do all those people keep falling down, they are so silly!"


October 2:

Reese: carried a pair of khaki shorts up to me "These are dark clear!"

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a side note for this story: I have a friend, Stephanie, who works in real estate. My other friend, Erica, takes care of Stephanie's children while she is at showings.

Brady: To Reese, "You know that Stephanie bring her kids to Erica's house and then goes to work. Ok, so, Reese you will drop your kids at my house and then go to work. okay?"

Me: "Brady are you going to have your own kids?"

Brady:"No"  ME: "why?"

Brady: "There is a sharp knife when the baby can't slip out, and I don't want them to cut me with a sharp knife"

HAHAHA... I went own to explain to her about adoption and having your own babies without ever having them in your belly. We know a couple families who adopted and she thought this was the best idea ever and told me she wanted to do that. I even had to explain the whole process of how you end up with a new adopted baby.

A picture is Worth a Thousand Words

I noticed this week that the girls have both grown leaps and bounds in their drawings. Not that they are super talented in this area, but I like seeing the growth.

I was doing paperwork at the table and Reese asked to color too. I handed her a stack of white paper and pen and she whipped out all sorts of artwork. Here are a couple of my favorites.

This first one is "a sunshine"

 The second one is a self portrait. She added lots of details into her self portrait. She has her curly hair, is sitting on a booster seat, wearing the clothes she had on that day....

As for Brady she brought a drawing home from preschool, but then decided to add to it. The picture has a VERY in depth story that she repeats the same every time. This is a first for her.

Here is the story...

This is a house. The two striped rectangles are beds, belonging to Brady and her friend from preschool, Piper. Piper has two sisters, Emoree and Rilyann. The two sisters share a room with Reese, which is the dark rectangle on the far left. Then next to that is Piper's parents bedroom, and then Karl and my bedroom. There is two pools, you may be able to pick the one out in the lower right corner. The pink triangle is a tent. Also, notice the letters on the bottom of the page... Reese, Rilynn, Brady, Piper, Emoree...all their initals.

I have gotten so used to the random scribbles that these pieces made my heart happy and wanted to share them with you. I know it means more to me as the mom, but they are still glimpses of their presonalities!

Wordless Wednesday: Pet Shop Birthday Party Reaction

Paper-Free Kitchen

Yep, you read that right, for about a week now the Orthner kitchen has no paper products.

I read about a friend doing this on Facebook and at first I thought it was crazy and not worth it. But the more I thought about it the more I like the notion. I took all my saved up coupons to Bed Bath and Beyond and  created an easy system for all my family to follow.

Black=napkins
White=floor messes or super messy table messes...aka spilled yogurt like we had this morning
Colorful=hand towel/dish towel

I currently have the basket on the counter top so that we get used to grabbing for these clothes like we did paper towels  Hopefully I can move it one day into a cabinet!

Why did I choose the categories above?

Napkins are obvious, we need a small hand size cloth to clean our hands while we eat. But I needed to differentiate between hand/dish towel and floor messes. I want to know when I pick up a colorful cloth to dry my dishes that it has not cleaned up the floor.

So my family knows, the black napkins go straight to the washing machine after a meal, the white floor clothes go directly to the washing machine after use and the colorful dish towel gets changed every other day.

I just throw the clothes on the bottom of my washing machine and they sit there until a load of wash is done. A few clothes doesn't effect the size of your load, so I will just have a few to fold with each load, so there isn't much extra work with the laundry.

It feels good to do my part to save money in the long run while helping the environment. You may think there is no way your family can do this, but really if we can, so can you!

Mail Call

We have gotten TONS of packages lately! Whether it was gifts from family or things I bought, the mail-lady has been busy visiting us.

Here is a taste of some of the awesome things that have shown up at our house:

Bonsai Tree

 Special Mementos of Nana

 Disney toys

 First set of fall clothing

Pictures from Disney

 Bows 

 Legwarmers

 Cowboy Boots

Man, I love my mail lady! Also, my friend who is a Thirty One consultant brought over my bags I ordered....FUN! Got a free attachment to my kitchen-maid mixer, a free book that I am using as a Christmas gift...

Ballet Buns

Reese's hair is still very short and she still has those short short bangs. SO every week on ballet day she tells me she wants a bun. But her hair is too short for a bun so I always shove a couple bobby pins somewhere in her hair and she is happy. Well this past week, I tried the pigtail buns and YAH there was enough hair to do real buns and she was quite pleased with the outcome. 

I will have to admit, I think these two girls are pretty darn cute....I can't get enough of them!

What Disney Princess are you?

My father recently sent me this link to do with my girls:

http://disney.go.com/games/#/games/play3/&content=204062

It is a fun quiz that tells you which Disney Princess you are most like. Both my girls got Cinderella even though they answered the questions very differently.  I am apparently most like Ariel. There is a fun little blurb at the end like a horoscope that describes you.

So take the quiz and tell me which princess you are most like?

Reminders of a Great Beginning

The girls were playing bride and groom /Prince Charming and Cinderella. I offered to let the girls watch my wedding video that Jenn's dad did for us. This is the first time I have thought to let them see it. They loved it, commented on all the family they saw, and asked lots of questions. I really enjoyed revisiting my wedding day and I cried again, so much love in the air!

 Another great reminder I have of the beginning of my life as a married woman is my Angel Trumpet Tree that is in full bloom right now. I first saw one of these trees in full bloom in San Francisco on my honeymoon. I fell in love with its beauty and try to have one in each warm weather house I live at. This is the first time I had more then 5 blooms. Today I counted 23 blooms!!!!!

This love for Karl is awesome more than seven years into marriage, and it is awesome to be reminded of the great beginnings. 

Craft Time Again

On Sunday, when Karl was watching sports and I was messing around on the iPad (relaxing) Brady walks up to me and says "Mommy, I want to do a craft!"

I love doing crafts, but I usually have them planned ahead of time and know what I am doing ahead of time. So I was scrambling around in my craft drawer and on the internet for ideas. I came up with two ideas...the girls wanted to paint, but since I was 'relaxing' I wasn't in the mood to get messy.

This first one is easy 30 second craft but can lead to hours of fun....

Tape 6-8 straws together and it is the perfect bubble blower...so many tiny bubbles fill the air.

Well, taping straws together didn't satisfy Brady's need to craft. So we did tissue paper stained glass. A nice thing about this craft is there were a couple steps that we had to wait for the glue to dry so there was delayed gratification.

Lots of fun with "Butterfly Garden" results!

Dinner Time Chatter

Apparently when my kids are on their way to turning three, it makes them get into their own world at the dinner table. Brady used to have full conversations with herself about her baby doll. Now Reese ( 32 months old) sings the same three songs over and over again....Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and you guessed it ABC song.

Usually while she is singing the other three of us continue our conversation, but choose to keep it quiet for the video.

So I can't figure out any other way to let you see this video of Brady at 35 months but to give you the link.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/1T03bs9zQUMr4kG-lFnfyw?feat=directlink

Do any of your kids do/did  this at the dinner table?

Fun with Friends

The girls have had lots of fun playgroups lately so I want to share them in pictures.

Here the girls are making bracelets during a football party we had with Karl's work friends. The middle school aged girl brought all the materials for the craft, thanks Avery!

Sydney came over for a playdate and like always these three played princess and like always they wanted me to take a picture of them together.

Maddie plays YMCA soccer, so we went to watch one of her games to try and encourage my girls to play sports.

Playgroup at Maddie’s house…they all found the piano, even Loreena who is 14 months old.

Last week at ballet is was “wear your old dance costume day”. Also we carpooled Sydney to ballet so it was a super fun and exciting afternoon.

Reese wore Brady's costume from last year and then in between classes I put it on Brady.

After preschool on Friday, we were invited to have pizza with a group of five moms(only my girls are pictured due to a mom’s privacy request). The pizza place has make your own kids pizza…so fun! They request the ingredients and then they build a pizza of their liking, in whatever order they want (ie sauce can go on top). Brady added sauce, then pepperoni, then banana peppers, then cheese. She LOVED it!!!!

Reese opted out of building her own cheese only pizza (to her cheesy breadsticks) and then didn’t agree with the way I cut it, as you can tell, she was having a hard afternoon.


I love all the time we get to spend with our friends!