Balloon Volleyball!

Enough rainy days and Mom gets really really really creative on ways to exert energy! Last week - balloon volleyball. And oh my, this was sooooooo exciting and kept us jumping and running for hours and hours! 

Happy Fourth of July!

Fireworks Cake! 

Star Craft

Posing for Dad! 

I will NOT paint while you take my picture... Infact, I love to paint but I will act like I hate painting just to prove my point. 

But once you move the camera to the side angle that is really not that great of an angle, I will happily paint! 

Lydia somehow convinced her Pappaw to wear her Fireworks hat all evening! 

Pre-Fourth of July

We decided that we might as well celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks - on the 3rd. Then we could sleep in on the 4th. HAHAHA on the sleeping in! But we did have fun watching the fireworks...

Waiting for the Sun to Set at Grandma's house and making our own sparklers (some would call these sparklers chocolate dipped pretzels with sprinkles!). 

Waiting for Fireworks. 

Fireworks Dance (did you know there is a Fireworks dance???). 

Watching the fireworks is best from the safety of Dad's arms! 

Lydia's Letters

Lydia only asked to do "her work" one day last week. Which we don't push her on "her work" - whenever the mood strikes her! The mood didn't strike much this week ;) 

We did use stickers and find all the word "the" in a word find. Anything with stickers is fun in our world! 

The same day, Lydia decided she needed to trace too. 

And the real reason I don't think she asked about "her work" this week. We got a box from Amazon with some new reading games and books early in the week. She LOVES to read her Bob books and these books have been carried around our house and loved dearly this week. And a new reading game that we have played only about 1000 times (do not fear - Candy Land is not forgotten and was played 990 times easily!). 

Lydia also enjoyed her busy bags this week. ALLOT! 

All About Engineering at the Children's Museum

Last week we went to Marbles. After exploring all the big exhibits (and the crowd was intense!) we meandered over to a quiet room that had these huge foam blocks that we could build with. Lydia and I quickly got to building a ball ramp. 

Lydia and I try at building a ball ramp...

As Lydia and I are hard at work, I realized James had gotten very quiet and was hard at work too.

James Ball Ramp

Can you tell who is the geek out of the three of us??? 

Eventually Lydia karate chopped her father's ball ramp that had turned into a cannon (have I mentioned how much James is looking forward to a little boy???). And then James decided to build a car with Lydia that turned out super cool!

They were both quite tickled with their car! James would build it and Lydia would drive the car into a wall and watch it smash. Then they repeated. We spent allot of time in this quiet room playing ;) 

The Letter F

 My camera and I have not gotten along this week (geeky husband + messing with my computer = lost pictures :) ). So a week's worth of fun captured in two pictures...

Finger painting (Lydia is telling me how she can read the words at the bottom of her picture. Which was funny because the words say something about a turtle and Lydia is telling me the words are talking about a map. HAHA!). 

Sorting animals and flowers. I.E. "GLUE Mom. I Love GLUE!"

Messy Art Day

We had a couple messy art days last week (in the early morning hours - the neighbors probably think we are insane when they see us outside at 8AM playing!). One of the days, my camera somehow deleted the pictures. Whatever! But I did manage to save some pictures from another messy art day. 

Freezer Chalk. Lydia most enjoyed the cold texture and smearing that all over her hands! 

But after the chalk was warm Lydia enjoyed painting with it. 

 My camera deleted our finger painting experience AND the colored ice cubes. We made tons and tons of colored ice cubes and Lydia had a wonderful time throwing ice cubes at herself. It was a mess that equaled a very happy child!