Easter Party

Jayna's preschool had their Easter Party a week early since this week is Spring Break.
They got to dye Easter eggs and Jayna took the hands on approach. Haha, her whole hand was purple for the day, but it actually washed off pretty easily.
One of her favourite centres is always the playdoh table. And this day it did not disappoint her, it was white playdoh with sprinkles in it and bunny cookie cutters.
This big easel with Mr. Sketch markers was another favourite that day. Jayna is in a drawing phase, and will sometimes draw and colour pictures for over an hour! It's amazing how many times she can draw flowers, rainbows, the sun and sky, our family and all her "best friends" and not get bored of it! :)

They also got to decorate bunny cupcakes at snack time.

I can't believe Jayna's going to be taking the bus to kindergarten next year! I'm actually really excited about it because she is so ready and excited for it. She's going to French Immersion and can't wait to start learning french (thank you Fancy Nancy!). She loves telling people that her favourite colours are rose and fuschia (not plain old pink and purple) and likes to make up words and then tell me that's how you say something in French.
I'm glad I got to spend a morning alone with my big girl, she was so happy that I came in to preschool with her, and said that was her favourite part of the day! :)

Field Trip

Jayna's preschool had a field trip to Dunvegan Gardens, which is a big indoor greenhouse and gardening store. The theme for this month is Spring and gardens. It was fun to bring Kepler along, since their is a no siblings allowed policy in the classroom, he liked feeling like he was a big kid and part of preschool.

They took us on a mini tour to show us the birds, bunnies and fish in a pond. I think my kids' favourite was the bunnies, since they told them one of them was the Easter Bunny!

They also got to see all the flowers and plants and smell the herbs.
Then they each for to plant a seed to take home.

Mommy Daughter Time

 It's starting to warm up a bit so Jayna and I went outside to enjoy the sunshine while Kepler was napping. It was nice to spend some time just the two of us.

This was hilarious! We were playing hide and seek and this was Jayna's hiding spot. She's pretending to be the tree, holding a twig and closing her eyes. I don't know how I ever found her! ;) So funny. 

Playful Pups

For the past 5 weeks Kepler's been in this program called Playful Pups. It's twice a week while Jayna is at preschool, so the timing works out perfectly. And it's been so nice to have some one on one time with Kepler doing something he loves. When we first started doing it back in September he would call it Puppet Show, and he was so proud to have something that he went to without Jayna. Every time Jayna talked about her teachers at school he would pipe up with something about his teacher from "puppet show". Unfortunately all the sessions throughout the rest of the year until now were cancelled. So it has been such a treat for Kepler to finish off the year with Playful Pups.

It's run by students from Keyano College and they basically have the gym set up with every kind of sports equipment, a little boys dream! Well any 2 year old's dream really. For the first 30 minutes the teacher does a semi structured activity involving all the equipment. Each day they make up some theme like a Jungle Adventure, going to all the planets in Space, the Olympics, the Zoo, or a road trip across Canada. And then the last part is free play where they have mats set up in a big obstacle course and a bouncy castle.

This day was the Olympics and Kepler is carrying his torch.

The parachute is always one of Kepler's favourite activities, and whenever we go under the parachute he always asks me to hold onto his handle so he can run to the middle. I think he's afraid the whole thing will collapse if he lets go.

His pants are all too big now that he has a tiny little underwear bum :)

Today was the last day of Playful Pups for the year. Hopefully soon we can start spending that time outside at the park!

Teddy Bear Picnic

Lindsay and I have been doing preschool for our kids once a week this year. We were just talking about how this is something we do all the time, but never take pictures of or blog about. So I pulled out the camera today, to document something that is part of our every day life (or every week).
All the kids love preschool, and I love it too because it gives me something to do and forces me to plan some fun activities for my kids. Today Kepler surprised me by knowing and writing some letters! I realized how much he's been learning (and how much I underestimate him).

Today we had a Teddy Bear Picnic as the theme. I remember doing this same thing when I was a kid and I loved it. They were all so proud of their Teddy Bears and couldn't stop talking about them, and giving them hugs and kisses.
It looks like they're wearing some sort of weird crowns, but they're supposed to be teddy bear ears.

For a snack we had honey on toast, blueberries and strawberries, goldfish and teddy grahams.

We ended off the morning by going on a Bear Hunt for the teddy bears. This was a favourite, especially with the 2 boys. But we had to end it the third time around when Ivy turned into the bear they were hunting for and Kepler found/caught her by tackling her to the ground.
Preschool is always a fun way to pass the morning, and I know that the kids had fun doing something when they remember and are still excited to tell Gibb about it when he gets home.

Distracted

I find that along with having a horrible short term memory while I'm pregnant, I also get very distracted. I can never remember what I'm saying or doing. Maybe this is all part of the whole pregnancy brain thing. Anyways I'm blaming this post on the fact that right now I'm very distracted by food. I really need to do a few catch up posts from March before it gets too far into April, but all I can think about is what we ate for dinner tonight, and I'm so happy that we have enough leftovers to eat it again tomorrow.

We had Grilled Chicken with Lemon Basil Pasta from Pioneer Woman. This is the second time I've made this recipe, and I'm seriously thinking of making it a weekly staple at our house. Yes it's that delicious! My current lemon craving might make me a little biased, but Gibb and my mom both loved it too. If you've ever made any recipes from Pioneer Woman you will know that they're pretty much all amazing. And this is one of her more simple recipes to make. I would usually never alter anything in her recipes, but tonight I did. I used 4 huge lemons and the grated zest from 2 lemons in the sauce. It was so lemony and delicious, I was in heaven!

This might seem a bit extreme, but I am the type of girl who gets major cravings when I'm pregnant. And when I finally eat something I've been thinking about for a few days, I feel like nothing has ever tasted better. Sometimes I will go for 2 or 3 days where nothing I eat tastes that great or is really satisfying because all I can think about is a certain food. And I will go out of my way to make or get that certain food.

Anyways, now that my current craving has been satisfied I'm going to try and focus on being productive for the rest of the night. Wish me luck!

March

 Making lunch time fun! The kids love it when we have "special bagels" for lunch. They get to pick the colour of cream cheese and their sprinkles.

A Jayna masterpiece, I think she was a soccer player?

 Kepler's new thing, how cute is he??

Our family's current favourite cereal right now

Soccer players! Look how much Kepler adores his big sister.

Another outdoor creation of fun by Gibb

 Nope sorry, you're not coming in yet!

Always something cool going on when you live in a construction zone

Jayna did these puzzles all by herself when Kepler was napping, she was so proud

Stuffie dance party!

Cool kid, always has a smile on his face

Potty Party

Now that Kepler's potty trained it's just a regular old potty party around here! 

 I think Kepler's enjoying it a little more than Jayna

Oh the joys of carrying around this potty everywhere we go...

At least I have 2 really good helpers!

Potty Time!

We spent the last 4 days at home potty training Kepler. And it went surprisingly well! (I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying that) I've heard so much that boys are so hard to potty train, but I think Kepler was actually easier than Jayna, which probably has a lot to do with their personalities. And also the fact that we waited a little longer to potty train Kepler, hoping he would be more "ready", whatever that means.

Some of the highlights of the week-end:

• Kepler singing the potty song from his Elmo movie "Accidents happen when you're awake, accidents happen and that's okay!"
• Jayna reading books to Kepler to help him sit on the potty longer and encouraging him to "push!" hehe
  
• Kepler getting so excited when Jayna and I did the potty dance with him the first time
• Kepler sharing one of his potty treats with his (slightly jealous) big sister
  

Today was the first day we went out with underwear and he had no accidents! I feel like it was almost too good to be true, and I keep expecting something horrible to happen to make it more like the nightmares I envision when I think of potty training.

The only hard part has been that Kepler is terrified and absolutely refuses to go anywhere near a toilet. We tried to push it a little bit the second day, but he started getting nervous, had an accident and then asked for a diaper because he said he's "scared of the big potty." So we just didn't mention it again, and luckily it didn't ruin his progress. But now I'm going to be carrying around his potty seat with me everywhere we go, until he decides he's ready to try out the "big potty". Yup, it's a MAJOR pain! But I'll take it if that's the only struggle we have. We are so proud of our little "big" boy! And he's pretty proud of himself too!