Daddy-Daughter Date Night

Early last month Addison and I embarked on our annual Daddy-Daughter Date Night.  A couple of years ago Crystal found a Chick-fil-A sponsored daddy-daughter date night event and signed us up.  It turned out to be so much fun we have made a tradition out of it.

She loves to get dressed up for this event.  I surprised her with some flowers and we went to the restaurant.  Chick-fil-A goes out of their way to make it special.  Waiters, menus, table-cloths, the whole nine yards.  Afterwards, they have a face-painter there to finish the evening.

  

Y Moms: Painting Pumpkins

Our local YMCA hosts a group called Y Moms the first Tuesday of every month.  Since Addie and I no longer have school on Tuesdays, we decided to try it out this month. (Last month, we happened to pass by the room they were gathered in and Addie was heartbroken when we couldn’t stay especially since most of her little girl friends from the gym attend.)  This month’s project was to paint a pumpkin.  Since we had forgotten about the playdate until the night before, we didn’t have a pumpkin to paint.  I explained this to Addie that morning before we left for the gym and asked her if she still wanted to go even if she wasn’t able to paint a pumpkin.  She looked up at me with the bravest face she could muster and quietly whispered yes.  Being the sucker I am, I told her if we could be in the car in less than two minutes we could swing by HEB before the gym and buy a pumpkin.  Needless to say, I’ve never seen her put on her shoes faster.

Proudly displaying her pumpkin..

Did you notice the HEB sticker on her hand?  She didn’t want to wait around to play the Buddy Buck game (as she was worried we would be late) and settled for an HEB sticker instead.  Silly girl!

Happy as a lark painting her pumpkin…

Making an spontaneous, early morning trip to HEB for this Type A momma is a big deal but well worth it to see the joy on the face of my little princess!  (And I even made it with time to spare to spin class.)

Weekend fun with Grandma

This past weekend, Blake and I attended the wedding of one of Blake’s childhood friends.  Blake was in the wedding and I wasn’t thrilled about entertaining the kids all weekend at the festivities while Blake was doing his duties as a Groomsman.  Luckily, my mom was able to take the weekend off, drive all the way to San Antonio and SPOIL our children rotten.

She arrived on Thursday night just in time to sample some of the yummy fall cookies.  Friday, mom and I took Dalton to school, drove around a bit to show her where to go in our absence and then Blake and I hit the road.  (We later discovered this was the first time we had both been away from both kids at the same time.  It was fun but a bit lonely too.)  Mom and Addie then took Dalton a special lunch of Sonic (his favorite) to school to eat with him.  After that, mom took Addie to get a mani/pedi while Dalton had a few hours of school to finish up.  (Apparently it is an unwritten law that Grandmothers are supposed to spoil your kids in your absence.  I hope Addie enjoyed her mani/pedi because she’ll have to wait until Grandma comes again to get another one.)  After school they all headed up to the Snake Farm (another one of Dalton’s favorites).  They had a blast but may not be allowed to go back, as the proceeded to free a few goats in the petting zoo.  Luckily, all were returned with minimal amounts of trauma. 

They finished the evening dinner at IHOP (they both could live on pancakes if you let them) and then a quick trip to Target to pick up some new movies (Rio and Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs).

Saturday they started out the morning at one of our family’s favorite breakfast spots, Grumpy’s.  Then it was a quick trip home so Addie could get dressed up for one of her best friend’s birthday parties.

While Addie was at the party, Dalton and Grandma headed home to finish watching the new movies from the night before.  After the party, they picked up Addie and headed to the children’s museum (Addie’s favorite place to play).

They were then off to dinner at Red Robin (another of Dalton’s favorites) to slurp up some yummy freckled lemonade.  After dinner, they caught the new Hotel Transylvania movie.  (Both kids liked it and didn’t think it was scary at all although Addie still wanted to cuddle up in Grandma’s lap throughout the movie.)

Sunday morning included a trip to Shipleys (I think you could argue this is Grandma’s favorite) and then home to wait for us to return.  I think it would be safe to say they had a very full weekend of fun.  They had a wonderful time allowing Grandma to do what she does best….shower her grandkids with love.  Thanks Grandma for taking such wonderful care of our sweet children while we were away.

In the Kitchen: Homemade Fall Cookies

My mom has a habit of buying me cute cookie cutters (thanks mom!) that I’ve neglected far too long.  A few weeks ago, we were out rummaging through the garage looking for the fall decorations.  Addie happened to spot some of said “cute cookie cutters” among the fall decorations.  I’ve always used the excuse of not owning a rolling pin to dismiss her desire to bake cookies so we could use them.  Since we’ve been trying to create a mommy-daughter tradition of baking together each week, I felt it was time to dust of the cookie cutters, buy a rolling pin and get to work.  Now I don’t use the term “work” lightly because making homemade cookies is HARD WORK (at least for this novice baker).  But we got them made and were very happy with the end product.

Rolling out the dough….

Cutting out the shapes….

Mixing the perfect icing colors…

Icing the cookies…

Time to add the sprinkles…

Soliciting some help from the “pro”…

The cookies….

and the baker!

It was a lot of work but very fun!  We look forward to making some Christmas treats soon (unless mom finds us some turkey cookie cutters for Thanksgiving…hint, hint!).

An End to an Era!

Well, we finally did it!  We cut the cord and sold the nursery furniture.  Granted, we have not used in in over two years but it was still a sad day in the Lacy Household.  Blake and I searched high and low almost 8 years ago to find the perfect set for our baby boy.  I knew I didn’t want a drop side crib and since they were still considered safe at that time, almost every model included one.  Here is my sweet baby boy asleep in his crib. 

(It might be noted that Dalton apparently didn’t sleep in his crib much.  His room doubled as Blake’s office when he was in grad school, so this was the more common scene in our house at the time.)

Fast forward three years later and the nursery furniture looked great in Addison’s “girly yet not overly pink” room.

And then there are also the “Who’s Who?” pictures we took of the kids almost three years apart (sitting in the crib wearing the same pj’s surrounded by the same animals with my great-grandmothers handmade afghan).

Ah, the memories.  Goodbye Nursery Room Furniture.  I hope you bring the next family as many happy memories as you brought us.

Preschool Progress: Day 18

Addie and I are still trucking along when it comes to preschool.  Some days she is more excited about doing it than other, but to be honest some days I share her feelings.  She continues to improve in all areas.  Some areas deserving of special comment lately are:

1.  Reading fluency:  We continue to read a new “easy reader” each day.  She has really learned how to recognize sentence structure (capitalization and punctuation) and uses that to increase her fluency.  She recognizes a few dozen sight words now and is able to sound out almost any other words she comes across in her books.

2.  Tracing and Cutting:  I’ve had her start tracing her own shapes to cut out.  The first few days were a little rough, but by day three she had mastered the art of tracing.  She also does very well cutting the more detailed shapes (that is when she is not in a hurry).

3.  Counting/Sorting/Patterns:  Addie is doing very well with her counting.  She can now count to 100 by 1’s and 10’s.  We have also started counting by 5’s.  I think she’ll have that down by next week.  We also worked on more sorting rules and identifying patterns.  She didn’t miss a single one and even picked up on some sorting rules in her workbooks that I had overlooked. 

I may be a little biased, but I think she is one smart cookie!

In the Kitchen: Muffin Mania

It’s Thursday night again, which means Addie and I are having some fun in the kitchen!  Tonight’s menu:  muffins, muffins and more muffins.  I love to make a few dozen muffins at once.  They freeze very nicely for quick breakfast options and that means I only have to get the kitchen dirty once every few weeks (at least for baking muffins).

Tonight’s kitchen lesson focused on reading and using the liquid measuring cup.  Addie doesn’t completely understand the whole fraction part of 2/3 cup, but I figure it can’t hurt to familiar her with those types of numbers now.

Let the baking begin…

Cracking the eggs!  She’s a pro now!

 

Mixing, Measuring, Scooping and Tasting….

The fruit of our labor…

I’m so happy that Addie seems to share in my enjoyment of baking.

*Last week, we made Cinnamon Roll Bread.  Apparently, I didn’t take any pictures though.

School Time: Sorting Fun

This week in math, Addie and I have been working on sorting and comparing items.  Today, we played a game called “Guess the Sorting Rule”.  Basically, we would take turns sorting items by color, shape, tail vs. no tail, shiny vs. dull, etc.  The other person would then have to guess by which “rule” the objects were sorted.

Addie had lots of fun and caught on quick.

Sorting by shape

Sorting by color

Sorting by type of tail

We are 11 days in to “school” and still having fun!