Where I've Been the Past Couple of Months

I haven't been blogging much lately, and it's a bit surprising that *this* is the week I find time to do so -- as this is the week of everything: dance class picture day, extra-long church choir practice, first grade performance, two different Girl Scout events, First Communion, plus work, chiropractor's appointments -- and snowstorms.

Yes, snowstorms. Well, at least one - Monday night into Tuesday. To go with the one from last Thursday. To go with ... let's just say we've written off April for spring in Minnesota. These are not dustings; these are several inches of accumulation. And apparently, according to our local weatherman's blog, the entire Mississippi flyway's population of robins are trapped in the Twin Cities by the weather -- those migrating are afraid to go any farther north (and, with parts of northern Minnesota getting 20 inches of snow last week, who can blame them?).

On the plus side, as we've been trapped inside, I've been doing some "spring" cleaning. And threatening discussing with the family the need for home maintenance so things like the coat closet, living room, child's room, etc., do not again become disaster areas. Still haven't made it to some of the other areas of the house that really need organizing -- I think getting things in order, and keeping them that way, would really save me time that I could use for other things I want to do. Decluttering has been a part of this, too: so far, we've given three bags of adult clothes to the local thrift store that supports our local food shelf; Freecycled a bag full of my husband's holey jeans so that someone could use the denim fabric; and taken a load of stuff to the spring kids' consignment sale in our town.

The consignment sale is also this week. Of course. I had my daughter go through her spring/summer clothes to see what she needed -- but she hasn't been able to actually get them out and wear them yet, with the weather. I'm hoping to find her some pairs of shorts at the sale, which is mostly what she needs. Her outgrown clothes mostly go to my niece; it's more outgrown equipment and toys that we're consigning -- plus a few things from the neighbors with a girl about three years older, who are moving and giving some of their outgrow stuff to us. We're keeping some of it; some of it is waiting for my daughter to grow into it -- and this situation has both its good and its bad aspects.

One of the good aspects, of course, is the saving money portion of this. This past month or so has not been good to us in that arena. I got rear-ended in one of the March snowstorms on my way to work, which totalled the car (back windshield completely broken out; whole back end of the car was caddywampus). So, we ended up having to buy a new-to-us car. We used the insurance settlement plus a generous loan from my mom to pay off my husband's car, so we don't have two car payments, and the newer car's payments will be lower than we had been paying, but still, it was a chunk of change for a down payment (and now we need to build the emergency fund back up to where it had been).

Also, due to all the discombobulation, my being without a vehicle, etc., we haven't had very well-planned meals or grocery trips, which means my husband has been making frequent ad-hoc trips to buy things here and there, which is not good for the budget, as he has no concept of not buying things at full price (I never buy cereal without a coupon, for instance, but he will buy a giant box of it ...) I also have been a bit skittish about driving in snowstorms in either the miniscule rental car they stuck me with, or the new car, and literally, almost every time I actually have time to do groceries, there is a snowstorm.

Luckily, the insurance has covered the cost of doctor visits (I hit my head in the accident and had to be checked out a couple of times -- no concussion, no skull fracture, just a big lump); chiropractor visits (up to a point, and then we'll evaluate); and the rental car for a time.  

While I was stuck at home for a week with no vehicle, did I get to rest? Of course not. I was either working from home, or having to engage in ridiculously vigorous house cleaning because, in the midst of all this, lice came home from school.

Also, we made an unplanned trip to Iowa shortly thereafter, to attend the funeral of my husband's cousin. She had been living in the Twin Cities, and we had been having fun doing family things with her last year -- the State Fair, the zoo, our daughter's dance recital, etc. -- and looking forward to hanging out with her more this year. But when she went to her convent's annual meeting at the mother house right after Christmas (obviously, she was a nun), she went to the doctor and pretty much never came back to Minnesota. She had a hysterectomy in January and was put on hospice care in March. I don't know, but I can't help but wonder, since she was one of those people who took care of everyone else, if she ignored symptoms for a long time or something. We will miss her.

The funeral was the Tuesday of Holy Week (she was even considerate enough to pass away in time for easier scheduling; one more day and they would have had to postpone the funeral due to all the other events/priests' obligations), held at the convent, and was our daughter's first funeral experience. So I've also been spending time the past month explaining death to a six-year-old.

Also, recently, our school had spring break. We went on a (previously planned and budgeted for) family vacation, to St. Louis, which was fun. We needed it.

So, that's where I've been the past couple of months.

Kid Sayings Catch-up

I haven't recorded cute kid sayings and doings in a while, so I'm feeling a need to catch up for my memory banks. Here's a few highlights from the past few months:

Thanksgiving: We hosted Thanksgiving at our house last November -- just us, my sister's family, and my mom. That resulted in my five-year-old, my sister's four-year-old and her then-seven-year-old, who had declared themselves "the superheroes" at a family lakeside vacation in August, attiring themselves in superhero costumes -- at one point, this was blankets used at capes; later, they raided the dress-up bin to become a super ballerina/fairy, a super mouse and a super flower-headdress-wearing/tutu-attired/wand carrying something. (I suspect that may have also been a fairy.) They also had "flying practice": jumping off the steps leading down to the lower level of our split-level home. They never jumped off any steps higher than the third one up and, while I was speculating on whether we adults should stop this for safety reasons, my mom happened to inform me that, "I'd tell them to stop, but I remember doing the same thing." The things you learn about your relatives.

Christmas: The eve of our departure for Iowa -- which had been the last day of school before break -- Nora had a somewhat predictable meltdown. Her response, however, when I tried to reassure her about the part of her worries that entailed that she wasn't going to see her "best friend" for a "whole week!" by telling her that, "Well, you'll do different things over break, and M will do different things, so when you do see each other again, you'll have lots of new stuff to talk about" -- was met with, "But Mo-o-m! We don't wanna *talk* about stuff at recess! We just wanna run around!" How dare I.

January: Nora is taking dance lessons, and is immensely excited about the upcoming recital -- the one at the end of the dance year. She found out the date at a lesson in January and *immediately* upon coming home, had to tear up pieces of construction paper so that she could write the date on them so that her teachers knew when her recital was. (Yes, it's six months away.)

We had one day in January (a far cry from last year, for sure!) when the good sledding hill at the nearby park had enough snow upon it be open and we had time to use it, so we seized the day by spending an afternooon sledding. Several other children/families had had the same idea, and it may have been inspiration from some of the boys that led Nora to begin a practice of perching her plastic sled on the very crest of the hill, and launching herself onto it with running jumps so that it began its descent with extra momentum. (There are some days I think I gave birth to
Evil Knievel.)

February: Ah, the vagaries of elementary-age relationships. Nora knows a boy from our neighborhood who rides the same school bus, and she sees him sometimes at school. She told me that, the other day, W was "having a hard day. So I gave him a hug in the lunchroom. I think I made his day worse." We had a little talk about how second grade boys don't always like to be hugged.

Suddenly, It's *Last* Summer

So, it seems that I took the summer off from blogging. That wasn't exactly intentional (at least at the beginning), but we had a good summer full of beach visits, berry picking, birthday parties, family reunion, festivals, parks, picnics, pony rides, science experiments, State Fair, swimming lessons  -- and a weeklong stay with family at a lakeside cottage. (There was debate as to whether it was properly a "cabin" or a "cottage." The dictionary was consulted.) With the travel and the activities -- and the soaking up the sunshine before a Minnesota winter (we're supposed to get a light frost tonight) -- wow. that went fast.

Spring Vacation: It Was a Zoo (Or Two)

Our vacation this spring was a family "zoo tour."Since we are lucky enough that my mother gets us memberships to the Minnesota Zoo for birthday presents, we also have the advantage of getting discount tickets to other zoos -- such as Kansas City and Omaha. And, since DH's work schedule gets crazy busy in the summer, and N starts kindergarten in the fall, if we were going to fulfill this family zoo tour dream of his, this spring it was. We drove from the Minneapolis area to Omaha the first day, filling time in the car with a few extras for this extra-long car trip like audiobooks of Olivia and Arthur stories from the library, some laminated letter tracing pages from the preschool packs at Homeschool Creations, and mazes, dot to dots and a U.S. map from the  Travel Activities in a Binder eBook download that was available in April to subscribers to the Molly Green newsletter at econobusters.com. (I had extra car time fun stuff stashed "up my sleeve," as it were, but didn't end up using it, as she did so well without it. I'm saving it for another long car ride later in the summer.)


I had had a heck of a time finding an open hotel room to reserve in Omaha; it turned out that weekend was the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders' conference, which might help to explain that. We ended up staying at the Hampton, which was a bit more upscale than I had originally planned, but was a very nice hotel and hotel experience (some gift money covered the hotels). Luckily, it was next door to a Target, too, since DH and N had neglected to pack her pajamas. She was due for some new summer ones anyway, and the Target gift card in my purse from a previous deal came in handy for the pink nightgown emblazoned with a rainbow unicorn on the front.

The Hampton did have an indoor pool (my hotel requirements had been that they serve breakfast -- to save money and time - and that they have an indoor pool, since we would be taking a four-year-old on long car trips in the Midwest in early spring), but it was quite cool, and the water in the shallow end came to maybe an inch below the four-year-old's mouth. We went in there for a while, but I pretty much had to hang onto her the whole time. The breakfast was great, though. At one point, we got into the elevator along with a group of Japanese businessmen, who N at first thought were the president. (I guess there are a lot of Japanese people in Hawaii...) One of them spontaneously gave her a mini kewpie doll thing on a business card that said -- something-- in Japanese. It's attached to a string, so N told me she wants to hang it on our Christmas tree. I put it with the ornaments when we got home.

I was very impressed with the Omaha Zoo. They have a year-round butterfly exhibit, a huge indoor jungle exhibit with meandering rivers with hippos and such in them, and animal statues and fountains scattered throughout the zoo. There's a bridge with fish food machines where kids can throw food to very fat koi fish and some swans, and a farm petting zoo area with goats and such, right behind a very nice merry-go-round. We watched an otter try to get herself into one of the otter home holes and had a zookeeper tell us she was a bit confused, because she'd just been moved out of that hole and into the other one the day before. They also had a desert exhibit, and a huge nocturnal animals exhibit that was both cool and creepy, as you walked along very, very dimly lit bridges and occasionally saw an alligator, or a muskrat, or a beaver, in the waters below (if you had a flashlight or other source of light; that part wasn't very well thought-out). We saw a swan building a nest along a stream bank, and some storks nesting on the roof of a building in the enclosed aviary. It *was* a bit disconcerting that there was a small leak in the polar bear's exhibit out of which water was coming, but overall, the Omaha zoo was very cool.

They were having a DNA days special event the day we were there, so there were tables set up various places where the four-year-old got to do things like build a marshmallow and dry pasta critter sculpture using a roll of the dice to determine what features it would inherit from each parent, and to collect (well, I collected them for her) famous scientist trading cards.

After spending a day at the Omaha Zoo, we spent the next day driving to Kansas City, where our hotel was much less nice, the hotel was in a much less nice area of town, the indoor pool was in an enclosed building -- that you had to walk through the outside courtyard, in very cool weather, to get to -- and the check-in staff's computers kept breaking down.


Ironically, this place's pool -- despite the needing to go outside, in our bathing suits (and sweatshirts) in 60-degree weather to get there, turned out to be much more fun: the water was warmer, and the shallow end was actually shallow enough for young children. (Not unsupervised, of course.) N and I had some good play time there; she surprised me with how much of the skills drills (cleverly disguised as fun games) she remembered from last year's swimming lessons, as she told me what to do while she acted as the teacher.

Our day at the Kansas City Zoo was a cold one, despite being the first of May -- it sleeted on us briefly! but was still fun. You could tell it's an older zoo than Omaha, with several of the exhibits showing their age, but it's also quite spacious and in the middle of a park full of trees. That part impressed DH, and I would guess that, on a hot summer day, it would likely be nicely cool and shady.

One of the big draws for our family of the Kansas City Zoo was the African animals exhibit (for some reason, N is very interested in Africa and African animals). We saw the hippos, the lions and more. They also had elephants -- four or five of them, I was pleased to see, having recently read about how elephants get very lonely when there is just one of them. An unusual feature of the Kansas City Zoo was an Australia area where the kangaroos appeared to roam free on a veldt...or, in Kansas City, I would guess it might just be a field of grass...near a cafe where people could sit at outdoor tables and watch them. No fence, or at least none that was apparent. Also in the Australian area was a sheep farm exhibit, where shearing was taking place the day we were there. (Unfortunately, this did not appear to be an expert shearer; I happened to have just read a book partly about sheep farming, and there were way too many nicks on those newly naked sheep.)



There were some great climbing areas for kids at this zoo, including a rope net where you were supposed to pretend to be a spider monkey, and a huge baobab tree the kids could climb to the top of and peer out, with slides about halfway down it. We rode the zoo's train as a family; N rode on the carousel; and she fed the deer -- I've never been to a zoo with deer feeding before.

As her souvenirs from these zoos, N picked out a stuffed zebra in Omaha and a stuffed llama in Kansas City at the gift shops. Her favorite stuffed Sheep, who did of course accompany us on the trip, actually stayed behind in the hotel rather than riding in the car to the Kansas City Zoo -- but, as we walked out the gate toward our car after the day there, she called her Sheep on her pretend cell phone to say what was going on, "Oh, we went to the zoo..."

While we did not go to the Worlds of Fun amusement park, we did drive past it on on our way into and out of Kansas City, an it was quite visible from the freeway, particularly the large roller coaster. That prompted the comment from N, "Wow! Look at that! I would *pay* to go on that!" (I asked her how much she would pay. "One hundred ninety dollars," was the answer.)

Rather than driving all the way back from Kansas City to Minneapolis in one day, we stopped off at my parents' house in Iowa for a night. This also had the advantage of giving DH and I an opportunity to go out on our own for a belated anniversary dinner, whilst N stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. On our drive home, as were speculating whether she had convinced Grandma to go to the ice cream shop, we passed the two of them walking uptown headed toward exactly that destination.

(Almost a Month) in Review-Part Two: The Wedding

We made a trip down to Iowa this past weekend for a family wedding -- the husband's side of the family, but we stayed with my parents, due to the location. I don't know if her genetic farm background is coming through or what, but four-year-old N spent much of the drive down looking out the car windows at the fields and asking "What are they gonna plant in that field?"

Said car ride is not short -- at least three and a half hours, generally closer to four -- so it was nice that we had time after our arrival on Saturday to go visit the Y, which my mother has joined in her retirement, and use her guest passes for swimming in the rec pool. Unlike water-aerobicizing Grandma, we haven't been in the water since last summer, so my beach-lovin' little girl was having a ball. She went down the slide into the pool numerous times -- and there was a soft pad in the landing area, which did not have water above her head, so I didn't have to catch her! (It took me a while to recover from the force of catching an enthusiastic slider at an outdoor pool last summer. And she's grown since then.)

The Y's pool also had some communal toys, like soft pool noodles, floating around. After gathering several of them to support her torso, N was actually able to swim -- after a fashion -- with leg kicks and such. This was her idea, by the way.

Back at Grandma's house, there was time spent observing the animals, like the very fat squirrel who sat out on the branch and ate the corn from her squirrel feeder, the gray rabbit who sat outside the window for a few moments, and the raucous birds building their nest inside the holes of a stump -- the one with the birdhouse on top of it.

Inside, the plastic animals were also popular. As the four-year-old sorted them into "families" (daddy, mommy and baby lions, hippos, etc.),, and talked about the names for various baby animals (kangaroo = joey, etc.) she casually asked, "Grandma, did you know I'm an everything expert?"

Nothing like self-confidence. She has it in spades.

Since we were missing the egg hunt we normally attend in Minnesota on Palm Sunday weekend, Grandma created an indoor egg hunt for N, whilst I was keeping her occupied with bathing (and playing some sort of version of hide and seek that involved hiding small bath toys in "caves" -- also known as leftover plastic drink cups from, I believe, fast food promotions of the 1980s. The hunted eggs were rubber and plastic, but there was some dying of actual hard-boiled eggs (pre-bath). The dye kit my mom purchased included sports-themed stickers, which the four-year-old used to create an egg "for Grandpa," full of football, soccer and basketball stickers, as well as egg wraps that shrunk to fit around the egg if heated with a hair dryer.

Our noontime meal on Saturday was the Methodist church's chicken noodle dinner, at which I was served my chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes by my fourth grade teacher. Kids were free for this fundraiser, an unwise choice when it came to my hearty eater of chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes, green beans, pasta salad and a slab of blueberry cheesecake (she traded in her apple pie and passed up the chocolate brownies when she spotted the blueberries).

After afternoon napping, our late afternoon snack time at Grandma's of strawberry shortcake included conversation about the wedding coming up that evening. Our previous wedding attendance was at a reception only, so I had to explain, in the face of the four-year-old's anticipation that there would be eating and dancing and -- her highlight -- "then somebody brings you cake," that, prior to the eating and dancing part, there would be a "sitting and listening" part.

She had a bit of difficulty with behavior early in the evening (in part because the wedding was scheduled to occur during our family's regular dinner time, and then didn't get started on time), but once things got started, and there was in fact, eating and dancing, and also young cousins to play with, she was going strong until we left at nearly 10 p.m. The wedding ceremony occurred in the same park lodge where the reception was held, so we were all seated at our tables as the wedding party walked down the aisle -- and, in the solemn quietness that came about as the ceremony was beginning, I'm hoping not too many people heard the four-year-old's amazed question, "Are they gonna have a baby?"

The park lodge where the wedding took place had, as part of its decor, a mounted deer head -- right over the minister's head as the ceremony was taking place -- as well as a mounted buffalo head framed by two mounted geese on the opposite wall. One of my coworkers commented when I showed him the photos that "every good wedding needs some taxidermy" - and then shared the photo of the mounted porcupine he and his wife had received as a wedding gift.

Back at the park lodge, the little girls found additional nature entertainment in looking for the plants, animals and tracks whose images were engraved into the flags of the lobby's stone floor, and one of the highlights of the bathroom -- in addition to being decked out with floral displays, including tulips (my favorite) was the posters of animals and/or wildflowers on the back of the stall doors.

They spent much time out in the lobby post-dinner, pre-dancing, although there was some excited rushing in to the main room shouting "cupcakes!" after the bride had told them they would be serving them "soon." ("Soon" did not translate to "immediately.") The cupcakes were in lieu of a wedding cake; unfortunately, I just missed the photo opportunity of one of the little girls -- not mine, this time -- showing off her blue tongue after consumption of the frosting.

When the dancing did begin, it was this contingent of little girls who were some of the most enthusiastic participants -- although, again, they kept rushing in to the room upon hearing the music, only to leave again in slight disappointment as the bride and groom, bride and her father, and brides' parents danced.

Post wedding and family time, we went to church with Grandma on Sunday -- where, upon our arrival, the four-year-old announced "Nobody's Palm-ing Sunday-ing!" (Our home church has a Palm parade that begins outside the church, with signs, donkey, Jesus representative, etc.) There was a donkey and palm branches later in the service, however.

Then, it was brunch and time to head for home.

(Almost a Month) in Review - Part One

Aaagh! It's snowed again today. I am so ready for this to be done with: I completely agree with the comments posted on a local news channel's weather section, in which someone identified Minnesota's seasons as including Winter, Still Winter and Enough Already!

I do, however, feel vindicated that I had not yet got around to packing away winter coats and boots or doing the seasonal wardrobe switch. Truly, my distrust that snow season is over until some time after Easter -- no matter how late Easter occurs -- has proven wise this year.

We have, however, had some quasi-warm days in the past couple of weeks: warm enough, at least, for the four-year-old to engage in bike riding. Before (most of) the deluge of snow from the winter melted, she was fancying herself a tracker on some of those rides: she'd stop the bike to examine animal tracks in the remnants of snow left near the sidewalk, count the toes, and speculate on the animal that had caused the tracks. (Note: my vote is for a dog going for a walk.) She also directly transferred the sand buckets and shovels from use in the front yard -- where they had been building snow castles, pretend ice cream, etc., this winter -- to the sandbox in the backyard, where she has been spending much time. She gathered pinecones from a neighbor's tree that overhangs our fence and drops them into our yard for use in the sandbox as well; for what purpose, I'm not exactly clear -- although I do know that she's been playing "pirate treasure," which involves burying things and then digging to look for them.

Birds have been spotted in our yard, too -- we've seen robins, cardinals and mourning doves -- and we paid a visit to the Minnesota Zoo for their "spring babies" exhibit, which involved petting a baby rabbit and admiring baby chicks, calves, a camel and more animals. We had several conversations that the zoo would likely not be having any baby horses, since - I'm pretty sure -- all of their grownup horses are "daddies," and you need both a mommy and a daddy to have a baby animal.

I've made some minimal progress on spring cleaning. One thing I did accomplish was cleaning out the Tupperware/plastic dishes cupboard, doing such things as identifying which repurposed containers actually had lids, which lids fit what, and containing said lids of the repurposed containers in a Ziploc bag so they don't spill all over the cupboard. I also found the popsicle molds in the back of the cupboard and had to fend off a request from the four-year-old to make popsicles -- for one thing, it is not warm enough yet for popsicles (see note about snow!); for another, I refused to start on this year's batches of popsicles until I had cleaned up the sticky mess in the freezer from where last year's popsicle juice spilled. (She does not know that I also successfully cleaned out the grime from the fridge and its on-top freezer while she and her grandma were watching the movie "Secretariat" -- again. Complete with pretend horse races starring the four-year-old. It's a shocker that the knees get blown out of so many of her pants, I tell you ...)

Grandma's visit to us was in part to do fittings on the new spring dress and skirt she was making for the four-year-old and me, from matching fabric. (Four-year-old N has been wanting to have matching outfits for a while now, and I figured we'd better do this while she still thinks it's cool. I let her pick the fabric -- within reason -- which ended up being a purple background with a spring floral print.) I was also able to delegate her to four-year-old haircut duty, and to send home my yard waste from bushes trimmings with her (the lazy woman's way of getting rid of it before our yard waste season). Grandma also accompanied us to the movie "Hop" that weekend (meh. It was OK.) and to a spring craft show where I purchased some cleaning cloths and some Easter-themed cloth napkins, my mom purchased a couple of metallic garden flowers for outdoor decor and the four-year-old, after energetic play in the indoor playground of the community center, plus rearranging nearly every single one of the (possibly former kindergarten teacher, or at least blessed with patience) vendor's plastic eggs in her display, convinced her grandma to buy her one of these items: a washcloth folded into a bunny shape whose tummy holds a plastic egg which, in turn, contains a tiny ice pack, to be used as a "boo-boo bunny."

We've also remembered this month to get out our Easter books for our seasonal reading basket, and we made a plastic egg garland -- as suggested in Amy's Notebook of March 16 -- for a household decoration. (Plastic eggs saved from previous years' egg hunts, plus the four-year-old's crafts stash of yard sale yarn, provided easy supplies for this.)

Week in Review: Retirement Party, Toys, More Snow

So, not starting off too well on the whole keeping up with the "weekly" part of the week in review thing. But, here it is, nonetheless.

Last weekend was my mom's retirement party, after 28 years of being a librarian. This was in my hometown, in a different state, and unfortunately my husband ended up having to work that weekend, so it was just me and the four-year-old who drove down for it. We had a nice weekend with my sister's family -- there was what seemed like a never-ending parade of little girls through my parents' house, to the extent that they had to be counted every time they went through a path way that someone else was about to step into, lest that someone else collide with one of them -- and the party was nice as well. It will be weird, though, to no longer have my mom working at the library.

Some extended family members attended the party as well, and we went out for dinner at a restaurant locally well known for its potato soup. It's a secret recipe, and it's darned good. Despite the oddity that, when we arrived at my parents' house, they actually had no snow on the ground (a bizarre concept to those of us coming from Minnesota), the weather was predicted quite a bit of snowfall for last Monday in that area, so I ended up coming home earlier than planned -- drove home in the evening after the party, with no stops, as the four-year-old and I had our "highly nutritious" puff corn and M&Ms car snacks for supper. She slept a little bit, but not all the way -- and, after all of the recent driving to and from a different state, I have to say that I am so. done. with the VeggieTales "Incredible Singing Christmas Tree" CD ... at least until next Christmas. Yes, it is cute, and Mr. Lundt's acting like one of the American Idol judges is entertaining. The first 40 or so times, that is ....

While we were at my parents' house, my mom did some mending for my sister and me. (She's a talented seamstress -- and yes, we're spoiled in still bringing our mending home to mom.) One of the tasks from my pile was fixing a rent in my daughter's winter coat, which got covered up with a patch with a horse head on it that my mom found somewhere. Since she had also attached insignias to the older cousins' Girl Scout uniforms, my little one has decided that this horse head is her "badge."

Since I had already taken last Monday off work -- and since I was pretty tired after all that weekend driving -- I took it as a free day, and took the four-year-old to her first movie theater movie, "Tangled," with the mall gift card I'd received from their email list for my birthday. The movie was a good movie, and she was also impressed with the small things about the theater -- like the line of lights along the exit walls, about which she pronounced, "That is so cool!" We also had a nice conversation following the movie about her question "what does 'selfish' mean?"

We ended the week with "Toy Story 3" for our Friday night family movie, which had me paying attention (even more than usual -- I kind of enjoy toys and this topic) to which toys she plays with the most -- which have the most/longest-lasting play value. Right now, that is ponies and Barbies, plus her Dora the Explorer truck (with horse trailer) and Fisher Price Dance n Twirl Palace. She also had a birthday party for one of her baby dolls this week, when I mentioned that it was the birthday of one of her cousins in Iowa -- but that, no, we couldn't go to her house that day.

"Toy Story 3" also prompted the question, "Am I going to college?" I pointed out that there's a need to get through kindergarten through 12th grade first.

Games played last week included LeapFrog Letter Factory (a no-longer-manufactured game we're borrowing from a relative), a couple of rounds of Gator Golf, checkers, and Richard Scarry's Busytown Eye Found It.

There was also some creativity with a finger loom that was a late Christmas present from my aunt, and, as I was immersed in paperwork -- trying to find receipts and documentation for the remaining monies in 2010 FSA's, for one thing -- she entertained herself nicely with Play-Doh® (out of which she built a "volcano" erupting down the sides of a Play-Doh can), stamping sets and paints. She also dug out all of the books from her book bin and "read" them (she has large portions memorized) to her stuffed animals.

Our library books this week were about familiar characters, in newfangled books (in general, I'm not really a fan of newer authors writing in a kid's series after the author has passed away -- even if they are related): Olivia Acts Out by Jodie Shepherd and Madeline and the Cats of Rome by John Bemelmans Marciano. Plus, Someone Walks By: The Wonders of Winter Wildlife by Polly Carlson-Voiles. That's my favorite of the bunch, and it gets requested for "story!" fairly often - she likes to find the animals amongst all the snow in the pictures, and check out what they're doing.

We finally got around to doing an "animal helping" project by putting together the pinecone and birdseed kit received for Christmas from the teacher relative (she passed it on, since she wasn't going to do it). It's hanging on the tree in our front yard -- but I don't think there have actually been many nibbles on the peanut butter or birdseed yet.

That project occurred during one of the times we were outside shoveling, which also led to a request to dig out the sand buckets and shovels -- and to playing "ice cream shop" in the snow. We have certainly been having enough of the white stuff -- it seems like almost every other day. The four-year-old has a 2011 Dora the Explorer calendar, which came with stickers, including some for tracking the weather. She gets so excited every time she spots it snowing, and runs to put a sticker on the date -- and she's almost out of them already. I think we have some snowflakes as part of other sticker sets around here, and I'm thinking I need to find them.