A Promise Kept

Our promise to Evangeline for being fully potty trained was a trip to Holiday World.  We have had something going on every weekend with no end in sight for the next month, at least.  There are also limited amount of weekends left for Splashin' Safari this summer.....so even after an exhausting first week of having my school kids, and a grueling week long jury trial for Kyle, we took our big girl to Holiday World. 

 

Here she is waiting with me at the ticket gate as Daddy made his way back to the car for his forgotten wallet.  Not amused... 

 

And here's a happy face as we headed off to change into our bathing suites.  We played hard at the water park.  She had a blast at the kids area.  She went down slides by herself, ran all over the place, got her face wet.  She was tall enough to go on one of the bigger slides... it was the kind of ride where you sit in a big inner tube together.  We all three giggled the whole way down.

After the water park we got some Dippin' Dots  (which originated in Carbondale, I might add)  and headed over to ride some of the rides in Holiday World. 

 

Yum!  We loooove Dippin' Dots. 

 

Evangeline loves to look at maps.  She likes to say "cording to the map".  I took this picture right before she tripped on Daddy's shoe and took a nose dive.  Fortunately she was not hurt, but we limited the map checking to when we were sitting down.



She really enjoyed the rides.  She got to do a few bigger rides.  Including a log ride, which she just loved.  It ended with a pretty good sized drop where we splashed into water and got wet.  When we were exiting the ride she said "I'm soaked to the frills".  She was meaning to recite the phrase "soaked to the gills", but it just seemed so much more appropriate the way she said it.  Here is our picture on the log ride.  You can't see it very well, but Evangeline had her arms up the whole time, just screaming away.  It was so funny.

We had an exhausting, jam-packed day.  EB was a trooper.  She was in good spirits and up for anything and everything all day long.  She was patient in longer lines and walked all over the place.  She was one tuckered out little girl by the end of it, but her mood didn't let it show.  She's precious. 

She did look like she could have easily been lulled to sleep on some of the little rides that went around in circles.

She was thrilled by all the Santa sightings! 

 

One more ride with Daddy.  He looks like he is having the time of his life. 

We stayed at a hotel called Santa's Lodge on Saturday night.  The place was a little dodgy, but Evangeline had the best time.  There were lots of holiday decorations and she thought it was just a hoot to see Christmas stuff at this time of year. 

Before we left on Sunday we stopped at Santa's Candy Castle.  Very cute.  We bought 4 books, reindeer antlers and some frozen hot chocolate.  Evangeline also picked out a little Sally doll from the Nightmare Before Christmas for her souvenir. 

The frozen hot chocolate was delish!

 

I'm not sure I've ever seen a leaf bug before, and it just so happened that my first sighting was on Santa's nose!  Double cool!

Here I am wishing I had ordered a large frozen hot chocolate to share...that small sized one just didn't go far enough between the two of us.

The trip was a success.  I'm so glad we did it!

Lastly, here is my latest finished project.  It's a cowl.  It's knitted from Malabrigo, which is one of my favorite yarns.  It's kettle dyed colors have the most beautiful variegations and it's super soft.

We survived

Party of welcome
Welcome to the world.
Crayon.
I love you.
Notes in the world of day.
The Easter of the world.
Rainbow colors.
Blue in the cat.
Heart, I love you in the morning light.

That is a poem Evangeline wrote the other day.  My baby Beatnik.  I can just see it being read at a coffee shop someday. 

Here is one of her recent pictures.  It's Daddy at her birthday party wearing a party hat.  I love his glasses with one of the lenses encircling his nose along with an eye. 

Well, we survived our first week back at school.  It was interesting and I already caught a cold from one of my little germ infested darlings, but it was a pretty good week.  Of course I was very excited when Friday rolled around. 

Evangeline has been entertaining herself the past few days with a plastic plate and a balloon playing what we have been calling "plateball".  It's played like tennis.  To play you simply swat the balloon frantically around the living room with a plate.  There are really no other rules.  We took it outside on Friday afternoon.  Kyle decided to introduce Evangeline to the tennis racket.  She had that tennis stance down.

She was pretty good too.

 I love the look of determination and focus on her face.  She even had the grunt.

Not quiet ready for the backhand...didn't have much patience for learning it.

Wanted to get back to the stance and the forehand.

Finally!  I have a red tomato!  I am going to eat this tonight with ricotta and basil!  I've been waiting for this!  I've been eating everyone else's tomatoes, now it's time to eat one of my own! 

My eggplants have done nothing but look pretty this summer. 

After tennis it was time to practice on the old tricycle again...guess what...she can do it!  Her legs are finally just long enough to get a few petals along. 

This is her method for mounting the tricycle.  We aren't really sure why.

Can't get too far in our driveway.  Just a little circle until you hit the rocks.  

That's OK though.  It's still fun and we were all pretty excited.

Let's do this!

I've spent a lot of time in my room getting it all ready.  It looks a lot different than last year and is also a lot more organized.  I'm hopeful that things can only be better having a year under my belt.  I have ultimately decided that knowing what's going on is definitely a good thing.

My night-terrors have been rearing their ugly heads again this past week.  I flew out of bed in an intense state of panic with an image of Evangeline falling across the computers in my classroom.  After I successfully woke up Kyle (a.k.a. the sleeping beast) and then spent what felt like hours of lying there with my heart pumping and my mind racing before finally falling back to sleep, I was awoken again with that terrible nightmare of being late to school.  Let the good times role...

Here are some pictures I took just before open house.  It will not look this organized and clean again until this time next year.

The blank green board is reserved for student work and the red one will be for a few charts.

This is my new writing center.  I'm pretty pumped to see how this new arrangement works out.

My friend Carrie Miller came over for coffee on Tuesday morning.  She student taught in the classroom next to me last year.  She is beginning her first year of teaching (1st grade) and is considering taking a 3 and 5-year-old in for foster care. She already has a 9 and a 14-year-old of her own.  She has to give the social worker their answer by today.  She has taken foster kids before, but decided that she had so much going on that she needed a break from it.  However, she feels that she is being called to take these two kids.  Wow, as I talked with her I felt that I had no right to complain about feeling stress about the upcoming school year compared to all she had going on.  She said that "if God leads you to it, He will see you through it".  I like Carrie, she has all kinds of little sayings like that.  Last year she told me "just do your best and let God take care of the rest".  That saying saw me though the second semester and has become one of my mantras.

Here is a picture of my little big girl before heading off to her second year of preschool. 

 

She was really looking forward to taking her new Hello Kitty backpack that she got for her birthday. 

She was very excited to start a new year at Ms. Linda's, however when I dropped her off she stood frozen holding her little blanket.  I kept looking back at her as I made my way out the door and she had never moved.  She didn't cry though, which gave me peace of mind as I left.  I know she warmed up though.  She came home with all kinds of stories.  She also peed outside in the rocks on the playground because she was having too much fun playing to stop and go potty.

Summer's Grand Finale

Well, there goes summer vacation.  It was wonderful, restful, all together lovely.  I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent with Evangeline.  I am really going to miss being home with her each day.  She has finally been saying in the past week that she is excited for school though, which will help with my transition back to work.  I got a lot of thing accomplished this summer.  Not everything on my to-do list was checked off, but that's OK.  I got a lot of extra things done which weren't on my list, so I call that a success.

This last week of summer break was pretty uneventful, just the way I wanted it to be.  We finally made it back to church after having something for the past several weekends which prevented us from attending.  We spent lots of time around the house, cleaning, playing, reading, baking, mess making, more cleaning.  Evangeline learned how to make a sock ball this week while we were doing laundry.  We were both so proud.  

After Evangeline spent lots of time with her new sewing cards she was determined that she was now ready for the spinning wheel.  I let her treadle it and try to keep the wheel going.  It was frustrating for her, but she didn't give up.  I see a future spinning buddy in my future.  

I pushed the wheel around for her and she pumped her little Hello Kitty stocking feet up and down on the peddle, very pleased.

Man, I need to dust that puppy!  I also need to remember to get a new piece of leather for it next time I'm in Terre Haute so I can replace the pink yarn that doesn't really do the job. 

After feeling content with her progress on the spinning wheel my little flower fairy decided it was time to do some rock climbing.

These little things are what I'm going to miss when school starts.  I just feel blessed that I get some time off with her each year. 

I also got to spend lots of time with Rapunzel this past week.  I took Rapunzel to Baskin Robbins when we visited Terre Haute.  She was very popular with our fellow patrons. 

I'm really going to miss morning time with my little one.  She always comes in to wake me with kisses and hugs.  Then we have our breakfast.  She is always in the best mood and full of cuddles and priceless conversation in the morning. 

Evangeline and her kitty cat, Moonberry.....

 And of course nap-time.  I've said it before...I always love watching this little cherub sleep.

Here are some pieces of our recent conversations in the past week:

"There is a horrible smell in  my bathroom!  Mommy, I'm going to bumpy while you 'ingestigate' what that smell is."

"I had a most horrible dream...if I step on a lemon I will squash it."

"Mommy, I don't wanna pick up right now.  I don't really feel up to it."

"I'm gonna get a birthday hug from a girl that loooooves to sew!  And it's Mama!"

"That's a big feast on my plate."

Evangeline:  "I had the most bad dream."
Mommy:  "About what?"
Evangeline:  "You getting hit by a shipwreck."
(That might be the last time we read the Little Mermaid before bed.)