Warm Weather, A Choir Perfomance & Art

 A nice warm walk in the rain:

Art projects for school:

LittleL.G.'s gem creation. "Look what I made! An octopus!!"

MiniM.E.'s latest choir performance:

And a walk with a puppet and climbing a tree:d

Babysitting and A Sleepover

The end of our week was full of MiniM.E.'s friend A. and her baby brother, Baby G.

Wednesday the dad's had a work dinner and A.'s mom had a work dinner so we babysat. I have to admit I was a bit worried about watching four kids at once during the witching hour, but it went really well.

princess already

having some babies

witching hour cuddle

finally one baby asleep

A. didn't have school yesterday, and since I've been promising MiniM.E. a sleepover for ages, we decided to keep A.'s mom or dad from having to drive her over in the morning, she would just sleep over.

A. was nervous at first, but fell asleep in no time. MiniM.E. had a bit of trouble adjusting to someone different sleeping in her room, but finally conked out too.

Even though everyone was tired, we had a ton of fun playing all the next day. MiniM.E. had such a good time she cried that A. had to go home at the end of the day.

A School Field Trip

Homeschooling lends us a ton of flexibility and lots of time to do neat things. With a kindergartener and a preschooler, most of our field trips tend to be "play trips" to places like indoor playgrounds or play dates or meeting out for lunch.

But yesterday we went on a real field trip that actually tied into our school science unit MiniM.E. chose for this session: Rocks.

Near to our house is a fossilized area that used to be underwater. Lester Park is a 490 million year old fossilized sea bed where we were able to see lots of stromatolites formed by blue green algae. It was a little colder than we planned on, but MiniM.E. really enjoyed looking at all the neat formations, making fossil rubbings and checking out some of the nearby rocks and trying to classify them.

Ice Skating Lessons for BOTH Girls!

This week we started ice skating lessons during the week, instead of just MiniM.E. on Saturdays. LittleL.G. has been doing a great job getting on the ice once and a while and was so excited to start skating lessons too (in her words, "HURRAY!!").

MiniM.E. kept on with her more advanced lessons on her own while LittleL.G. and I did the beginners lesson together. She did surprisingly well, considering the class was for 3 year olds and older. Of course, she tired out pretty quickly and was done after the lesson half of class and didn't want to spend another half hour on the ice. But she had a good time watching MiniM.E. and the other kids skate around.

A Trip To NH

Since this week is February break in NY, but not in NH, we decided to take a quick mid-week trip to see Gram and Grumpy and do some fun, uncrowded things.

Unfortunately, the girls were still under the weather and didn't sleep much since they both have bad coughs, but we still managed a few fun outings and lots of playtime with Gram and Honey Bunches.

We went to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center which was open during the week this week because of the MA school break.

The girls had lots of fun exploring and playing.

We even went to a planetarium show! MiniM.E. was a little timid about it because it felt a lot like a movie. And LittleL.G. was either so bored or just not feeling well enough, because she fell asleep halfway through.

It all worked out though because it was geared more towards older kids anyway and LittleL.G.'s nap gave MiniM.E. more time to explore and play.

The weather was so nice we had to get outside, so on Wednesday we went sledding at White's Park. LittleL.G. loved it, but MiniM.E. was definitely under the weather and was "done" after a few runs.

At least we got to play outside in the yard Thursday!

And then back home to NY for the weekend.  

Coffee Shop Playdate

Yesterday before we left for a quick mid-week NH trip, we stopped in at Kru Coffee to meet up with friends since it's been too long with everyone being sick since January.

These photos were too cute not to post!

A Great Day of Skiing

Yesterday we took the girls to Willard Mountain for our second ski day of the season. We couldn't pass up the opportunity to ski in 50 degree weather!

MiniM.E. did a lesson again and got so much better that they wanted to take her to the carpet lift, but she was a little too timid to go this time.

LittleL.G. was much more excited to be skiing this time around and since the snow was so sticky, she was able to ski down the bunny hill by herself!

After lunch MiniM.E. did the learning center lifts with Daddy for a while and has really improved since last month.

With the warm weather we're expecting next week, we probably won't get in another ski day this season, but we will definitely be back next year!