St. Patrick's Day

Top of the morning to ya....this post is a lil out of order...we started celebrating St. Patty's Day the Saturday morning before the actual holiday on Monday. These top pictures are from a party at my aunt and uncles house. My cousin was home from college so she wanted to have a lil party and Im always up for holiday gatherings so off we went with our green m&m pretzel treats and our green on.

The hosts of the party!

Julie made a great Irish Beef Stew, Corned Beef and Cabbage, Irish Soda Bread and some yummy green drinks. My mom also brought Irish Soda Bread so we had two kinds and some green rice krispy treats :)

Girls in green!

Our St. Patrick's New Parent Connection Party to start the day off...

Anne had some fun crafts out (coloring pages, finger puppets and make a face on a leprechaun) and great food...fruit in a rainbow form with marshmallows for the clouds which the kids LOVED, muffins with shamrock muffin cups, juice boxes dressed like a leprechaun and lil sandwiches in shamrock shapes. 

On actual St. Patty's Day Linnea came home from school to find lil leprechaun footprints, green toilet water and some gold coins hidden...sneaky lil leprechaun!

We ate our own Irish Beef Stew, Irish Soda Bread and Green Beer for mama and daddy and green milk for the gals...

We also made some mint ice cream for dessert. Gotta love green food coloring, mint extract, andes mint and vanilla ice cream and milk in the blender :)

Almost a Kindergartner...sort of...

Well I realize there are a good 6 months before our sweet lil lady Linnea starts kindergarten but we had her pre kindergarten screening a few weeks ago and she did awesome! She is ready for kindergarten but will definitely enjoy her final months of preschool. We are so proud of her and everything she knows and the things she can do amaze us everyday. Some things such as buttoning her sweaters, starting her zipper, opening yogurt and cheesesticks she just did on her own. I dont think many people if anyone worked on that with her. One day she came out of her room and her sweater was buttoned! Just goes to show how observant lil ones are. I was shocked. It doesn't seem like a big deal to us but to her this is huge and a big confidence booster :) We should hear soon about what school she got into...we are going to switch to the public school system and hoping for St. Anthony Park with our neighbors :) We visited it and it felt right and Linnea seemed to fit right in. We went to the library after her screening and then I treated her to a happy meal and shamrock shake from McDonald's:

this was also a treat for me since I love them as well. I dont care how bad they are for me since its a rare occassion ;)

And below are some random fun pictures from our past weeks:

Harper LOVES bathtime. She hears the words lets go upstairs for a bath and she puts it into full speed crawl directly towards the steps. She also does this full speed crawl toward her high chair when she hears anything about eating. Smart girl :)

We took advantage of one of the warmer days and took a walk and jumped in puddles (above). Below we have warmer coats on so it must have been colder.

loves to help push lil sis.

she hates getting her toe nails clipped.

Linnea putting a Queen Elsa of Frozen cape on Harper

fashionista :)

facepainted rainbow from the summer camp fair we went to

 she LOVES to feed herself with fingers or a spoon...

watching 101 Dalmations...Linnea was not a fan of Cruella Da Vil but survived the whole movie anyways and really liked the puppies :)

Harper enjoys sitting in the little rocking chair...she works so hard to crawl into it and then either sings, yells, looks at books or just rocks in it which are all fine. But she does occassionally stand in it and then proceeds to try to crawl into Linnea's bed from it...she is so much more adventurous than Linnea ever was or is. She also likes to wake up big sis by hitting the bed. Not so sure Linnea likes this. Thank goodness its not a daily thing as I usually have to wake both of them up. Speaking of waking up...morning will be here soon. I better hit the hay. Dont mind the mess in the rocking chair picture ;) Ive been messy for 34 years...nothing has really changed...

The Heartwood!

We took our annual trip to the Heartwood Conference/Retreat Center this winter. Only this year it wasn't during or for the Birkie weekend. We went for fun with my my parents and some of our family friends and my aunt and uncle. I have more pictures somewhere but for now here is what I have:

Even though it was FREEZING there was a lot of snow so Linnea, myself, my parents and our friends bundled up and went tubing :)

off to the hill :)

 We also bundled up and skied a few times.

Linnea made a snow angel and above to the right you can kind of see the "ravine" or bobsled course we got to tube down :) fun and scary!

We also ate, played games, played cards, read, did some craft and puzzles and watched some movies. Pictures of those activities to come! 

It was another fantastic winter getaway :)

Happy Bday Dr. Seuss!

We did a few quick lil things for Dr. Seuss's Birthday this year just using what we had at home and Linnea loved it which is the most important thing. We had a green eggs and ham snack and ate while listening to the story on Barnes and Noble online storytime, made a Lorax craft and read a Dr. Seuss book before bed...Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You?

sugar cookies with green frosting (the egg), a yellow valentine heart hard candy and pretzel sticks (the yolk and bacon)

We even sang Happy Birthday to the Dr. Seuss per Linnea's request.

I am sad I dont have a picture of Harper eating the treat...she loved it!

we love online storytimes to switch it up from mama and daddy reading all the time.

Our lil Lorax :)

Where would we be without Dr. Seuss?

Mardi Gras!

My parents had their annual Mardi Gras party....so fun with delicious food, drinks, decor, masks, music and people...all things New Orleans is made of :)

there are a few more pictures I will get from Facebook soon!

Disney on Ice!

My mom, Linnea and I had a girls night out! 

We went to see Disney on Ice and I think we all LOVED it! Linnea did wish Rapunzel and Merida (Brave) would have been there but overrall she had a great time.

I surprised her with her Brave dress :)

We sat a ways away but it was okay still. My mom has some nice pictures of each of us with Linnea that I will try to get up soon :)

                                                                         

Farewell to Friends Part 2

We decided to have Susana and family over one more time before they left, especially since Harper could not make it to the first farewell party. So here is farewell party number 2...I made some rigatoni and bread and Susana brought salad. We decided to have dinner with a movie, and that movie was of course Frozen :) Chris was able to buy it through our XBOX One before you can get it on dvd. Susana's family had not seen it yet but Linnea played the music for Susana and talked about it just about every morning before we left for the day so we thought it would be fitting to watch it with them. Everyone loved it, we exchanged a few more gifts and then we had a teary goodbye but promised to keep in touch with FB, letters and we will try skyping :)

Mugs made by me...we each get one...love from MN to Spain :) 

balloons are so much fun to play with :)

all set for the movie...

 love.

more love.

a movie we will love forever.

I think Chris has a group picture I will try to remember to get on here.