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Anthony was able to watch a butterfly land on his paper...after that he was pretty interested in watching the butterflies.
Love the picture of Yahaira pointing up...I'm afraid she was most likely thinking there everywhere, I am surrounded!

Butterfly house

On Saturday we visited the Seratoma Butterfly house in Sioux Falls.
It was amazing, a wonderful 85 degrees, beautiful plants and of course thousands of butterflies.
The kids I'm afraid....were not so impressed. They of course have seen butterflies before but not up close and personal. In a word they were terrified.
The girls were spinning circles trying to see just where the next butterfly attack would come from. I love the picture above, you can't see the terror on Rosie's face but trust me it's there, they circled each other and then ended up back to back almost as if to say I'll watch your back if you watch mine...so cute. Eventually they did calm enough to walk without flinching. :) is this where I pause and think we paid to terrorize them? Anthony did a bit of dodging and flinching also...I honestly never saw that coming. So enjoy our pics from the trip to the butterfly house...eventually the kids warmed up and had a bit of fun.

IMac

I am clueless for the most part when it comes to computers. I can operate mine with relative ease, but IMac's are completely foreign to me. Yesterday I became the proud owner of an IMac. Let the learning begin. At the auction yesterday they were selling these little beauties for 20$ each. For a moment I hesitated, wondering if it worked, (hello it was 20bucks) then just as quickly decided why not. After all it was 20$. I played around with it yesterday and it works just fine. ...I plan to use it for the kids, eliminating my constant fear that they will crash my mine computer when they play their games on it. Yahaira was very excited last night as she tried out some new games on "her" computer.

Kindergarten

Each year at the Cash for Kids Auction each grade makes a project which is then donated to the auction. This year each Kindergarten class made a blanket and the entire class decorated this chair. I had hoped to get one item from the auction for Anthony, and once I saw the chair I knew which one I would love to have. It goes without saying that Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar is perhaps my all time favorite children's story. I wasn't too optimistic that I would get it tho, since many, like me fell in love with the project. Well as you can see we did, well Kevin did, he bid during the live auction. Anthony was super excited when we carried it in yesterday. Love that he made a butterfly, the orange one in the bottom picture...since we visited a butterfly house on Saturday. (pics to come of that soon) Guessing I will have some pretty excited kindergarten kids today when they see that their project is at daycare. I think it makes a perfect little reading nook.

So long...

farewell...
it is with much sadness I announce the end of an era.
Tonight I retired these shoes. My favorite pair of shoes. They have been in my possession for 10 years.
yes 10 years, a decade. They fit my feet like a second skin, they are comfortable, they know me.
They have become a hazard. sigh the left shoe has more holes than Swiss cheese, the right has almost worn a hole thru the bottom
How does one do that? and since at any give moment they could just simply self destruct I decided the time was now
(well actually I finally found a pair I liked enough to replace them with)
and here they are.
I trust they will do me well...
and in 10 years I will post a farewell to these shoes.
Until then, we have places to go and things to see.
Hope they keep up with me.

Target

I love Target's dollar spot, pictured above is my amazing find during tonight's shopping expedition.
yes that would be scrappy supplies....paper, stickers, pens, stamps, embellishments, oh my the assortment was unbelievable!
30 items in all....for the grand total of $30. Love that kind of math.
Next up on our shopping venture, the Easter clearance aisle.
75% off. The red,orange, and green boxes are eggs..bug shaped, animal shaped, and sport shaped each was the whopping price of $1.24
the other items were around a $1 or less...man I love that!
and these....well apparently they fall under Easter and so they too were 75%off.
$1 for a shirt, $1.50 for a pair of pants. Sigh, I love Target.

spring garden

Last week I stopped at the local florist in a quest to add some color, spring color. I had planned to buy tulips since you can't get much more spring like than those, but this garden caught my eye. Of course when I purchased it only one daffodil was blooming the rest were just stems. The next day the explosion began, and each day more and more blooms appear. It is wonderful...I just smile each time I look at it...and even tho the view out my window is still cold and dreary, this little splash of color is doing wonders in keeping my spirits up. This just might be the best purchase I have made in a long while.

Happy Easter

all dressed up in their Easter finest. Rosie's dress proved entertaining to some in church, the rose petals move around inside the skirt.

baskets

after church grandma asked if they had found their Easter baskets yet. no they had not, getting them up, dressed and out the door before the sun rose was challenging enough for me....once we returned home the searching began. Yahaira found hers first followed by Rosie, and Anthony. Eventually with a lot of hints Cassandra and Josh were successful. Rather interesting one could say that the youngest found theirs long before the older more experienced ones did.

hunting for eggs....

this kid has the most unbelievable luck...
here is the crew ready to hunt eggs....yes those are big people who still hunt for eggs...not for the chocolate tho, they are far more interested in the cash that is hidden in some of those eggs. Notice the youngest...yeah so not impresses with the whole hunting theory. This is Rosie....in all her two year old glory.

happy easter

Busy day here, began before sunrise, still going strong.
a quick preview of the day's activities...more pics tomorrow.
Simply too tired to process them all tonight.

coloring eggs

after spending hours yesterday boiling eggs, (Each year I have to look up how to do this. We never eat hard boiled eggs at any other time of the year) I think I can now recite the directions in my sleep.
Discovered when I opened the box which contained the egg dye kit that there were only three colors in the box....sigh, do you suppose that is why it was only .99? Yes there are more than three colors, we mixed. Actually it turned out to be a great learning exercise, is this where I say I planned it that way? had to take a picture of the colored fingers...all a part of the process, I know. Notice my fingers are not in that picture that would be because I wore gloves...so my fingers are perfectly normal colored. Someone reminded me to wear gloves, and to them I say thank you. So my fridge is full of colorful, hard boiled eggs. We will be making some deliveries tonight in a quest to get rid of some...we will never be able to eat them all.

new glasses

at preschool screening a few weeks ago she didn't pass her eye exam. The right eye was ok but her left, not so good. (this was the one that took the longest to heal after her injuries) So we made an appointment with the eye doctor thinking it was perhaps (hopefully) just her age and not something more serious. As soon as Dr. Jeppson said it was a good thing we brought her in and didn't wait, my heart fell. I know it's just glasses, and yet all I could think of was she is so young and of course the mom in me kicked and wondered if she would be teased, and as he continued to test and I continued to hear "I don't know" from her I wondered just how do you know if a three year old needs glasses, she can't read after all, and how do you rule out that she just doesn't know because she is just so young? When the doctor placed the huge eye piece with the correct lenses in it in front of her tiny little face, I cringed at how little she looked, and then the testing continued and I was hearing "oh! that's a horse, or, that's a house" said with complete confidence. I guess that's how you know when a three year old needs glasses. She is nearsighted which explains why we weren't seeing obvious signs her vision was off. Everything she does right now is close up. She has been super excited about her new glasses, "I'm going to look just like Beckie" she said with a big grin. So today the call came that they were in...and judging by the grin on her face this was truly a big moment for her. When they placed them on her face and she looked up at me with that big grin, my response to her was "you look so beautiful" and she does, and I imagine if anyone tries to tease her she will most likely take them out. So perhaps this mom should be more worried about the number of trips she will be making to the principals office rather than a silly pair of glasses.

scenes from yesterday

Yesterday was St Patrick's Day, and of course we celebrated throughout the day.
The daycare kids spent much of their day searching for the leprechaun, and eating many versions of green
I did capture one photo of my crew, and no the youngest was not particularly happy about that photo op. Wondering if I will survive her 2's. One of the best moments was one of my daycare kids discovering Leprechaun gold in his boot just before he went home for the day. Several of the kids "found" their gold after nap...guessing that leprechaun knows that is the best time to leave it behind, this little one is not a napper so it proved a wee bit challenging for the leprechaun to leave him his gold. So worth it to see his face.

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