"Colors"

Here is Courtney's new thing.... Cleaning the "colors" out of her toes. I can only imagine where she came up with this, but I think she equates the different color fuzz from her socks as "colors" in her toes.

Daycare moving into the age of technology.

We love our daycare.... Sometimes Courtney gets her shoes on and says "Bye Bye". When we ask her where she is going, she declares "Sara". The other kids there are great and i love all of the projects that get sent home. Up until this week, Sara would write in a notebook the mealtimes, nap times, wet diaper # and dirty diaper #, and anything else they did that day. It is nice to have that to refer back to even as Courtney is getting older. Well, now there is something new! She has a website. It is very private so that only the daycare families can have access, but now that she doesn't write in 6 little notebooks, we get even more details! She also sends individual messages via the site, if there is something that needs to be addressed for that one family. Since we are still in the process of getting rid of Courtney's morning nap, Sara said that she would e-mail me her nap times daily. I LOVE it!

Here is an example journal post:

Book: Icky Bugs

Songs: "Here today", "Days of the Week", "Mr. Sun", and "ABC's"

New word: nocturnal (owls like to sleep during the day and stay awake at night)

8am Breakfast: Waffle, banana, milk

11:45am Lunch: grilled cheese, grapes, carrots, milk

Snack: cheez-its, cucumbers

It turned out to be a beautiful morning! Everyone enjoyed playing in the backyard. *****explored the grass, leaves, and sand - without eating it! Courtney and ****enjoyed the swings and slides with help from *** pushing. Courtney is now able to get on/off the rocket swing quite easily! The little ones are working on walking around the swings to avoid getting hit. The big boys are working on watching for the girls! The big boys did lots of digging, especially ****. **** took turns hiding/finding the green token in the sand. The children also enjoyed music/dance, puzzles, and playing with animals. *** and *** helped me prepare lunch and set the table. ** and *** took turns "reading" books to each other and playing build-a-word (letter recognition). It was a great morning with, beleive it or not, NO TIME-OUTS! Everyone listened and played well together.

I wanted to take a couple pictures, but realized this morning my camera battery was dead. I'll be sure to put some up tomorrow! I plan to slowly post our songs we sing, too, so you can sing them at home. These journal entries will be taking the place of your individual notebooks. I plan to post here each day during quiet time. I may also send very short, personal info to each family, as needed, about your child's day.

Be sure to check out the "news" section with updated info. The calendar is nearly complete through Dec. 2012 with dates I plan to be closed. I will inform you when all 2012 dates are finalized.

I hope you find this website helpful and easy to use! Have a great afternoon,

If you didn't figure it out, I took out the other kids' names and replaced them with ***.

I am hoping that for the first year, Sara will still keep a notebook for the new baby as there are more details that I feel I should know, or if not the notebook, an e-mail or message via the website. We will see when the time comes :)

Mealtime Fun

Here is some mealtime fun!

Move over scrapbook room.....

I finally got my scrapbook room moved to the basement and Courtney now has her playroom! I know it will only look like this once, so I took a picture to document the cleanliness! Now I get to find fun things to put on the walls. I have some great ideas from my new obsession Pinterest. (Yes, I said obsession Ms. Science Teacher!).

Need to visit the cousins from down south more....

I think we might be heading south sometime this spring. We just bought a year long pass to a Children's museum very close to Courtney's cousin's house. I know what you are thinking.... why would we buy a year long pass for somewhere that is so far away. As I'm sure Courtney's aunt will tell you... it only makes sense! Not only do we get into that Children's museum, but we also get into the Science museum of Minnesota, and the Children's musuem in St. Paul as well. Now this will all be changing in 2013, but if we can get a year out of it it is worth it! If you buy a pass to either of the twin cities locations, you do not get into the other twin cities museum for free, so go south!

New manager at work

There have been some big changes at work lately. We were all called to the main part of the lab for an announcement the other day. It turns out our personnel manager had been fired. The rumor is that there were some inappropriate e-mails and texts to one of the employees. I guess the search begins for another one!

Saturday

Our family had a great day on Saturday. It is a rare occasion that we are all 3 home for an entire day. We spent lots of time together and here is some video of things we did!

Chair climbing

Sledding

I didn't take any video of the laundry we did. Courtney is great at sorting laundry and putting it into the wash machine.