The Fantastic Toy Shop

D's dance recital was this weekend. She is a mouse in the ballet the Fantastic Toy Shop. She had two rehearsals this week before the recital on Saturday.

Pictures from the dress rehearsal.



She is in the front row on the far left side. It is hard to tell who is who because all the mice look alike!





Her method of dance is to watch her friends and do what they do. When I asked her if we should practice, she refused saying, "No, Mom, I just watch what my friends do." Something we can work on for next year.





Here are pictures from the actual performance on Saturday. Again, front row far left.

















After the performance with Grammy. Someone took her tennis shoes, so we had to carry her out to the car. She did a great job and I can tell there is definite improvement from the performance last year.



D put on her outfit again for Grandma and Papa Stiehl, who weren't able to make it to see the performance.



Here she is showing us her scared face, which was part of their routine.

Caterpillars and Chrysalids

We got some live caterpillars and have been watching them grow. It's been amazing to see them literally double in size in a day. The kids have really been into the whole process. The caterpillars come in a small jar with holes for air and food gel in the bottom.



All five caterpillars had made their chrysalids by Friday, so we put them in the butterfly cage. In about 7-10 days, they will emerge as butterflies.



We went to Como Zoo again on Monday with M's ECFE class as an end of the year get together. D wanted her picture taken with every animal.

Polar Bears





Lions
D: "Hello...hello, lions! Mom, why don't the lions hear me?"
Me: "They probably don't understand you because they don't speak English."
D: "Uno, dos!"



Tiger



Cougar



Sitting on the giraffe.





The kids just loved watching the tortoise.



They loved that they got to ride one, too!



It was free carousel ride day at the zoo and the kids had a blast riding their horses.





No, we're not trying out Halloween costumes early. We are doing a unit on caterpillars and butterflies for D's preschool and for one of the lessons she is a chrysalis. She then got to burst forth as a butterfly and flit around.







What a beautiful butterfly!



Another preschool activity involved counting, comparing and guesstimating the number of caterpillars (aka gummy worms) in a jar. They got creative when eating them and made "caterpillar" bread. Yummy!

Sweet Chocolat

It's so fun to catch them playing so nicely together.



Is it just me, or does his hair look like Donald Trump's? Scary!



On Wednesday, my friend Liz and I took our kids to tour a local chocolate shop called Sweet Chocolat. They treated the kids to just about anything they wanted to try in the store, taught them some information about chocolate and how it's made, and gave them nice goody bags filled with a variety of treats from the store. Liz and I got to try their truffles and we got a "mommy" goody bag, too.











Our plan was to have a picnic lunch after visiting the chocolate shop, but it was raining out so we went to Como Zoo to look around and eat.



One thing both D and M are so into this spring is picking dandelions, which they think are real flowers. I could seriously have an hour to myself if I brought a book and a chair and plopped down in a field of dandelions. They would completely amuse themselves picking bouquet after bouquet of "flowers".

Fun at Grandma's

The kids and I spent the weekend at my mom's while Steve and my dad were hunting in NE. It was nice outside and the kids spent their time riding scooters and bikes, walking to the bakery for a treat, and swimming (yes, swimming!) in the lake. It started with a toe dip and ended with full-fledged submersion in the water. Bringing their suits didn't even cross my mind as the ice hasn't even been off the lake for a month yet, but the cold water didn't bother them one bit.

Royal Wedding

On Monday, a friend of ours came over to cut down the apple tree in our back yard.





Going...



going...



gone!



D sometimes "naps" here, in the crib she made for her babies. Looks pretty squishy!



D was absolutely enthralled with the Royal Wedding on Friday when she found out a real princess and prince were getting married. She couldn't get enough of watching the replay on the computer. She even got M to join her and was pointing out who everyone was. Perfect timing for a little girl so into princesses.