Parent Night

Last night was parent night at Paige's school. Not to be confused with parent/teacher night which is on Monday. Parent night is for the kids to bring a parent to school and show us what all they work on. They asked that only one parent come with each child to keep it from getting too crowded in the classroom. Since Justin grew up in a Montessori school, I got to go so I could learn more about her work.

In the past few weeks Paige has really come out of her shell. I'm hoping her teachers will tell us the same on Monday night when we meet with them. She used to be shy and fairly reserved. Now she's a total chatterbox. She loved taking me around the classroom and showing me everything she works on and she wasn't intimidated at all by all the other people in the room. I snapped a few pictures with my phone as we worked on things together.

Bead Tree, Spindle Box, Sandpaper letters, broad stairs & pink tower:

Little Artist

Paige loves to draw. Every day when she comes home from school she usually brings home about 5 drawings that she has done. They usually look pretty similar, just lots of scribbles on white paper. The other day she told us she was going to draw a princess and the output actually looked a little like a person. Then today, while I was making my lunch I was flipping through the stack of papers she brought home yesterday and found this one:

See the yellow hair, eyes, mouth, legs and feet? I'm assuming that's green grass at the bottom and blue marks in the sky could be birds? Ok, the birds might be a stretch.

I added some colored pencils to her wishlist!

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the Valewood Farms pumpkin patch a few weeks ago.

Paige got to milk a cow:

Play in the corn:

Play in the hay maze:

 

Pose with pumpkins:

They have a really nice hayride too where they give a tour of the farms and their cows and the beautiful countryside. It's a great time of year to do this when all the leaves are turning.

Brooke had fun too :)

 

Happy Halloween!

Here are some pictures of the girls in their Halloween costumes. Paige was Sleeping Beauty and Brooke was a piggy.

Brooke is now sitting up all by herself unsupported!

Brooke School Pictures

These are the pictures Brooke had done at school on October 1st. Here's the class picture. Brooke is the second one in on the right.

This one is my favorite:

Proud big sister

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this on here before or not, but Paige is the best big sister that anyone could ever ask for. She LOVES her little sister so much, she really has exceeded our expectations. I kept waiting for the jealousy to start, but she has shown no signs of that. She just adores Brooke. We call her "our" baby and Paige likes to help out as much as she can. In the car the other day Brooke was fussing and Paige tells her "it's ok Brooke, I'm right here". It truly makes my heart melt the things she says. If Brooke is asleep in my arms she'll come over and give her "quiet kisses". I've been trying to capture these moments on video, but I'm usually holding Brooke or by the time I get to the camera I've missed it. Here's a good one of Paige going over to Brooke on her own and holding her hand:

View Video

Bathroom wallpaper

We started pulling down the badly peeling, ugly wallpaper in  the master bathroom a few months ago. It ended up being a bigger challenge than we initially thought and was put on the back burner while other projects like the family room remodel were completed.

I finally started devoting an hour here and there taking down small sections at a time which made it more manageable. We eventually still want to do a big remodel and update the fixtures, but I think this makes it a lot more liveable until then.

Here are some before and after pictures:


See the peeling paper above the shower? That's how it looked when we bought the house!



Work in progress...


AFTER - All wallpaper is GONE and we painted it light brown.: