Fun with Christmas presents

Santa, family, and friends were all very good to Mati this year. I think you could photograph our living room for a toy catalog. Two of her favorite presents were from her grandparents. Grandma and Grandpa A. gave her a kitchen, which she loves. It is the first toy she goes to when she gets up each morning. Special thanks to Grandpa for putting the kitchen together. Here is a video of her "cooking."
And her other favorite toy is a cradle made by Grandpa Bernie. She does not quite understand that you are not supposed to sit in the cradle on top of the baby doll to care for it but its cute nonetheless. Here is a video of Mati "feeding" the baby.

Sledding... well sort of.

Doug came in from work Monday wanting to take Mati sledding around the yard. The problem... we don't have a sled. Here is Doug's invention... laundry basket! With the exception of snow coming in the sides, it worked really well. Fortunately for Mati some friends are letting us borrow their toddler sled for the winter so her days of laundry basket sledding are over.

Wonderland of Lights

Mati and I went to the zoo tonight for the Wonderland of Lights. The zoo decorates every tree and structure with lights of all colors and installs speakers in the trees so you can hear Christmas music wherever you go. They only do this for a few weeks near Christmas so we took advantage of the less than frigid night to check it out. Not too many animals were outdoors (we saw the Oryx, monkeys, penguins, and snow leopard), but the lights were the real show. Mati smiled the whole way and must have said "Zhat" meaning "What's that?" a hundred times.

Elf Yourself

We created an Elf Yourself dance for our family. Here's the link if you want a laugh at the disco version... http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/n8j7TRUUOGZLQyMVGykn
And here's the link to the singing version (my favorite!)... http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/IHMdAvK1kyrhHYSb

Check, Check, One, Two...

Mati was hanging out with Daddy in our music/work-out room in the barn. Doug turned on the keyboard, microphone, and speakers and Mati knew just what to do. Here is a 20 second video of Mati on the mic.

Surprise!

After several years of working at the GRHV my dad is finally retiring. His colleagues arranged a surprise party for him and boy was he surprised! It was a great time!  Here is the crowd gathered to celebrate...

Here he is just after the surprise...

And here he is after another big surprise, Scott flew in from Denver for the party!

And finally... the cake I made for the party.

Ho Ho Ho!

We went to visit Santa today.  I was worried Mati would be scared of him but it was just the opposite; she lit up and smiled, loving every minute of sitting on his lap!

Here we are riding the train out to Santa's cottage.

(Did you know Santa had a cottage in Michigan?)

Here's Santa on his front porch greeting us.

Here's Mati visiting with Santa.

And finally, Mati checking out Santa's sleigh.

My Favorite Turkey Craft

I love the kids' crafts that encorporate tracing hands and feet to mark their size over time; this one is by far my favorite.  You need 4 pieces of paper (brown, red, yellow, orange), glue, a pencil, scissors, and googly eyes or white paper circles with a black dot drawn in the center to look like eyes.

Next you need to trace each of your child's hand on one of the red, yellow, or orange pieces of paper.  I then lay the other colors on top and cut out all three colors at once.  These will be the turkey's feathers.

Repeat the same tracing process with the feet.  Trace each foot on brown paper; these will be the turkey's body.

You will then have all of your cut out hands and feet which should look like this:

You will also need to cut out legs (I use orange paper), beak (more orange paper) and a snood (the red thing that hangs off the beak.)  I just freehand those shapes.  You could probably be more anatomically correct and make the wattle which hangs off the neck but I like this turkey without a wattle.  You need to overlap the feet at the heel to look like the body then place the hands (feathers) in alternating colors around the turkey.  I like to put the left hands on the left and the right hands on the right.  When everything is assembled it should look like this, TA DA!

I labeled it with Mati's name and age, and "Thanksgiving 2009."  I let Mati hold it for a split second before I taped it to the fridge.

Mac-n-Cheese Please

Mati does a great job eating a variety of foods.  She's just as happy with peas as pizza.  Today however she was really enthusiastic about her mac-n-cheese.  Here she is enjoying her dinner...

And here she is REALLY enjoying her dinner...

And the result, a pocket of mac-n-cheese...

Happy Halloween!

We had a spooktacular time with family on the west side of the state.  We started in Hudsonville with dinner and dessert at Aunt Denise's house, along with Cousins Roger, Rebecca, Zach, Matt.  Here are the trick-or-treaters ready for a fun night.  Matt (Batman), Mati (Cowgirl), and Zach (Gangster.)

We then moved on to Dan & Heather's house to meet up with more cousins.

Morgan (cat), Aly (lamb), Dean (fireman), Andrew (ninja) and Mati (cowgirl.)

Here's Mati and Daddy ready to head to the first house...

Here's the first door we went to, Mati's first official trick-or-treating experience!

And here is how the night ended; Mati hanging out on the stairs (her new favorite activity is stair climbing) and watching a few trick-or-treaters come to the door.

Our Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

The weather turned nice Sunday afternoon so we headed to one of the pumpkin patches in Mason. Mati wore her Halloween dress to celebrate the special trip. We pet the goats in the petting zoo, sat on straw bales, walked around the pumpkin patch, picked out a couple of pumpkins, and ended our trip with pumpkin doughnuts... yum!

The New Toy Box!

A while back I found a beautiful toy box in a catalog and showed it to Doug. He said "I could make that!" So we found some plans online and he did it. Doug built this gorgeous oak toy box for Mati. She loves playing with the toys inside and sitting in the toy box itself. What a blessing to have a talented woodworker in the house!

The big 4-0!

I had a wonderful birthday yesterday. It started off with a surprise visit from Doug at school. He walked in the door between 1st and 2nd hours with a card, balloons, Hydrangea, milk duds for me (my favorite!) and Herhsey kisses for all of my students. He is now quite popular with my students. Friends and family had flowers and cookies delivered to school and more cards, gifts, and still more flowers were waiting for me at home. I asked Doug for a quiet night with just the three of us, Chinese food, and a rented movie. It was perfect! I am so happy to be living another year in this blessed life!

We have a walker!

Mati has been walking behind push toys for awhile now, a few weeks ago she started taking a few steps on her own between close pieces of furniture, Tuesday night 9/22... she took off! It was as if she forgot she needed a prop to hold and just started walking. She walked all over the living room last night, walked around day care today and is walking more tonight. She is so proud of herself; she walks around laughing. You'll see in this quick 10 second video...

Silly Daddy

Doug loves to invent new ways to entertain Mati. From putting puzzle pieces in an old blueberry container for a shaker toy to flying her around like a plane to falling over pretending to get run over by her toy car, he'll do anything for a smile from his little girl. Here's the latest... he put a bed pillow on our long bar counter in the kitchen and then slid Mati back and forth on it. As you can see, she loves it!

Miss Independent

Now that we have a full-fledged one-year-old she is embracing the "I can do it myself" independence that comes with the age. Mati loves "using" a spoon. I would put her on the spoon to in the mouth food ratio at about 1:20; but she's tenacious! She will eat anything you give her in a bowl with her own spoon. The look of pride she has is amazing... it probably helps that mom and dad applaud and cheer "Yea Mati" when she succeeds at feeding herself. Its still a little hard to believe that we can skip the baby food section at the grocery store. Time really does fly.

Lions and Tigers and Lemurs, Oh My!

Back to the zoo! The whole family celebrated the end of summer with a trip to the zoo. The animals were really active so Mati enjoyed the sights much more this time. We made it in time for feeding time in the feline house. The male lion had just been fed a cow leg... wow!

Happy Birthday Mati!

Mati is 1!

While I was sad to have to go back to work on Mati's birthday and take her back to day care she ended up having an awesome day. She got to play with all of her day care friends and the dogs she loves! The elementary age girls made her a birthday hat (bottom picture) and she got to have a special treat, baby gold fish and sugar cookies! When she got home we took her monthly picture and daddy took her for a tractor ride (middle picture.) She loves riding on the tractor to the point that if she hears our tractor (or the neighbor's lawn mower) she crawls to the window and peeks out looking for Dad to take her for a ride.

Mati's 1st Birthday Party

We had a wonderful time with family and friends celebrating Mati's 1st birthday a few days before the actual big day. Mati loved the pony rides on "Cherokee." She held onto the saddle horn and laughed as she toured around the yard. The pony was a big hit with the kids and thankfully the weather was beautiful for the rides.

Mati also had her first taste of cake. She really preferred just pulling the confetti sprinkles off the cake to eating it.

One Fish, Two Fish...

The bathroom is done! In June, some great friends bought us the "One Fish, Two Fish" shower curtain and a matching bath towel embroidered with Mati's name as housewarming gifts. The bathroom is now painted like the shower curtain (white on top, blue wave going around the room) and I added a few of the fish from the book painted on the walls. The "this one has a little star" fish is my favorite! I also hung a copy of the cover of the book in a frame on the wall. I just finished and am really happy with how it all turned out.