Children's Museum

Linnea and I once again took advantage of the library passport to plays and went to the Children's Museum for free. Since the pass allows 4 additional people who can get in for 2 bucks each we invited our friend Lisa and her twin daughters who are I think almost a year older than Linnea and the three always have a blast together and so do their moms! It was a great day! Very busy at the museum but we still got to everything we wanted to.

We were a little disappointed in the rainforest exhibit but LOVED the storyland room! We recognized three of the stories from reading them at home. The Snowy Day, If you Give a Mouse a Cookie and Chickachicka BoomBoom.

Linnea loved running on Peter's footprints from The Snowy Day!

peeking under Mouse's cookies

adding letters to the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree

and reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!

Linnea always goes in the doghouse...

but this was the first time she dressed as a doctor and checked out the babies.

The gorilla in the rainforest.

A Den of sorts that squirt preferred over the crazy ant tunnels. I know she will love the ant tunnels when there are less big crazy kids crawling through. we tried going together but the poor girl would get so stressed anytime a big kid wanted by her that she just stopped. so we got out of there ASAP so we didn't get trampled.

When we were done playing and starving we went to the McDonald's that is on the way to the parking garage and had lunch before heading home for naps. Our friends were so nice and brought Linnea a bday gift which just happened to be a flying Tinkerbell! She loves it and actually snuggled with it for nap! yep, a plastic toy snuggled up nice and close!

Bye Bye Binkie!!!!!

I don't know how to start this post. Chris and I are sort of in shock at what is going on at bedtime around here. It began at my parents house Monday December 26th (I'm a little behind on the blog) when Linnea slept over there while we were at the Wild game. Apparently she was being VERY silly and squirrely for them before bed. Not putting jammies on, not listening to stories, and basically probably just not listening. We may have missed the terrible twos in the twos and we are seeing some sort of terrible three's, but nothing too bad yet...Anyways...so after trying and trying to get her to settle down and relax for bedtime my mom just sort of picked Linnea up and said somewhat firmly, it is time for bed, do you just want to lay down like this in your clothes with no stories? Her lullabies were on and the bed was ready. Linnea said yes I do just want to go to bed like this. So they let her crawl in, gave her hugs and kisses and left the room. Left the room fully expecting her to cry or call out for stories and especially for that darn binkie that she has still been sleeping at night with. Well none of that happened. They did not hear a peep out of her until morning (well a little stirring around 11pm but that's it.)

Sooooo when Chris and I heard this we decided we are going with it. She is going to be done with the binkie. She is three and she needs to learn how to sleep all night without it. She has been napping without it for almost a year. So we are now on night 4 (actually we are going on 2 weeks now since I am so behind) without her beloved binkie. She still asked for it the first 4 nights after we gave it up and cried about it a little while we were reading to her but we just reminded her that she can do it, she has done it for many nights in a row. We remind her if she makes it all week she will get yet another new toy! We also told her that her cousin baby Jake (and we emphasized baby) doesn't use one and that seemed to really make sense to her. We told her he just uses his thumb. We may eventually give her one and only binkie left to baby Kaylan or send it up to the babies in heaven on a balloon or we may just never look at it again. We expected this to be so much harder. We were preparing to do a countdown and read books about it and everything but so far we haven't needed to. The binkie has been her only form of comfort and soothing her whole life besides us or other loved family members. She isn't attached to any of her toys or blankets. She likes them and they are in her bed with her but she doesn't snuggle with them. Her other form of soothing is rubbing her side with her finger. I have read a book to her each night this week that ends with a picture of a little girl sleeping and sucking her thumb and hugging her teddy bear. The girl looks about Linnea's age and every time L sees this picture, she says, hey she doesn't have a binkie, just like I don't have a binkie. She is just sucking her thumb. I can suck my thumb. I think she may start out with her thumb but she doesn't keep it in her mouth all night. Whatever she is doing though, it is working and it is much easier than we could have ever imagined. Thank you mom and dad for just laying her down! Clothes and all but no binkie! hooray!

GOOOO WILD!!!!!

The Minnesota Wild Hockey team have been having a great season so we decided to buy ourselves some tix for part of our Christmas gifts to each other and head to the rink. I had a great day off with Linnea before the game. This December has been so ridiculously warm and snowless so we headed to the choo choo park in her new wagon after playing with some of her new toys. We spent quite a bit of time there and then came home for our usual picnic of mac and cheese on the floor with a show before nap. She laid down for just over an hour and then we had to wake her to get her over to grandma a papa's while we went to the game.

They ended up losing but we still had fun...it's a great atmosphere and it was something we had never done together before so that helped too.

Quite a few of our friends were also at the game so we met up with them afterwards for some pictures at the arena and then I went out with them to Patrick McGovern's while Chris went home, since he sadly had to work Tuesday at his usual early time of 6:30am and had worked a full day before the game too.

It was so fun to see Melissa and Joe visiting from Florida and also Aliya, Andy, Mike, Erin and Stan. I think I got them all! Linnea was able to sleep over at my parents house and that experience is for another post!

Christmas Day 2011

After opening our gifts Christmas morning we headed out to Bay City to celebrate Christmas with Chris's side of the family. We decided to get there before Linnea's nap and just lay her down there while waiting for Jenny and her family to arrive. Thankfully she slept great in Allison's bed once she finally fell asleep which took at least a half hour. We could hear her playing with her baby. Anyways....while she slept we helped get the food ready for the evening and also had time to watch National Lampoon's Christmas! When Jenny and family arrived the girls played with Ella's new train set, Peyton's princess barbies and Linnea's baby. We had a nice dinner shortly after that, took some family pictures by the tree and then opened more gifts! After gift opening we played some more, ate some more cookies and left around 8pm or so! A little later than we wanted since Chris had to work Monday but he survived.

Winnie the Pooh 3rd Birthday Party!

Someone turned 3 a week ago and it wasn't me! It was Linnea April! Where does the time go??We sure had fun celebrating her special day! Our sweet lil Linnea had a super fun Winnie the Pooh Birthday party the Saturday before her birthday. On her actual birthday she went to preschool with some banana chocolate chip muffins to share.

As you can see from this picture below Linnea LOVED her Pooh Birthday cake. Daddy did most of this one, I just helped with the frosting.

Way to go daddy!

We put out lots of Pooh themed snacks, such as Tigger Taels (pretzel sticks with melted chocolate and then stripes with red frosting), Roo's Reindeer Mix (my fav holiday chex mix and Linnea's too, however she calls it Rudolph mix), gummy bears, Kanga's Kookies, candy sticks because I never found honey sticks, veggies from Rabbit's garden, Pooh Berry Splash punch, honeycomb cereal, teddy grahams and the main course was piglets in a blanket and Pooh-nut butter sandwiches!

Welcome to...

Red Balloons of course and one special Winnie and friends one for the bday girl.

Her friends got to bring home their very own "Hunny Pot".

Speaking of her friends/cousins guests, I think they all enjoyed our family friend Nate who came to perform and sing with his guitar. When I was home with Linnea, Nate "taught" a music class every Tuesday that we LOVED going to. When I heard that he did bdays I knew Linnea would love to have him over for her special day. All the kids had fun with his songs and enjoyed all the lil Pooh snacks we had out! A video is at the end of this post.

Linnea loving being sung Happy Birthday to by her "boy Nate" and all of her guests!

Ready for cake!

Linnea loves all her presents and is slowly getting around to playing with all of them. We gave her Winnie the Pooh and she got many more Strawberry Shortcake, Tinkerbell, baby doll nursery and Winnie the Pooh themed presents! So fun! She also got a HUGE super soft stuffed dog!

Thank you everyone for making her day so wonderful!

Santa came! Santa came!

Well most of Christmas cards got sent out, most of the cookies and snacks we wanted to make got made, Santa was seen, a few parties were attended, some of the crafts I wanted to do were done, the tree and house got decorated, most of the Christmas movies/specials were watched and the gifts were bought and wrapped. We were ready for the big day!

Linnea was so excited to come downstairs and see her presents from Santa! He delivered a wagon for grandma Sarah and Papa Dave and he also brought her an art easel and of course a baby doll.

Linnea LOVES her baby Allison! (Well, the brand is baby Stella, but Linnea named her Allison).

We had a great morning as our family of three opening our gifts and stockings, the not so great thing was my attempt to make monkey bread. I tried making it years ago with actual flour and yeast and waited for it to rise. It didn't work. SO I tried the easier/quicker way with grands refrigerator biscuits. Well turns out I should have used a glass pan instead of an angel food cake pan. The recipe called for a bundt cake pan which we didn't have so I used an angel food cake pan but did not put a pan under it to catch the drippings so everything dripped to the bottom of the oven and we now have a big burned spot and there was LOTS of smoke! and no monkey bread caramel rolls. But I did buy some cinnamon raisin toast so we had that as a special treat instead.

Anyways...back to the fun of the gifts, Linnea got some more books, I got some cds, gift cards a Little House series and a few other thing and Chris got books (he actually got three of the same book this year!), Star Wars trilogy, a Wild hat, slippers, a travel mug with Linnea's pics on it and a few other things. Santa brought us Kinect Sports 2 and we are hoping to play that on New Year's Eve with some friends if not before. Chris and I also bought ourselves tickets to the Wild game on the day after Christmas.

It was a funfilled morning with many, "Oh my goodness"squeals of delight from Linnea. When were done opening we packed up and headed to Bay City to celebrate with Chris's side at his moms.

Here is a video of Linnea seeing what she got from Santa!

Church and Dinner on Christmas Eve

We went to my parents church for their 5:00 service which was nice but lasted a little longer than we expected but we made it! We had Dylan, Jake, Linnea and Kaylan from our crew of kids and they all did just fine coloring, snacking and singing. They went up to the kids service as well. I think they all enjoyed the candlelit version of Silent Night. On the way back to my parents house we drove by some houses with a ton of lights to give Santa some time to drop off stockings for everyone. When we arrived at my parents house we had a wonderful time eating our ham dinner, playing, watching Papa's train, opening presents, eating cookies and like my brothers, cousins and I always did the kids got in their jammies from GG so they could go right to bed when they got home.

But not without leaving out some cookies and milk for Santa!

Children's sermon. They walked up holding hands (Linnea and Dylan.) so sweet!

Thumbs up to wearing a bib!

Kaylan loves opening gifts!

Linnea got this Tutu from Erik and Lisa and family and put it on immediately!

Jake opening his yearly ornament from me (his Godmom) with Grandma.

Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas Eve and Happy Birthday to me!

I started the 24th (my birthday) out with a birthday run followed by some last minute gift shopping. No matter how many times we say we aren't going to be so last minute we always are. It was very hard working up until one day before Christmas Eve but we pulled it all together and were ready to head to GG's for our first part of the Christmas Eve celebration. I even got to open my bday gifts from Chris and Linnea before left! Chris is taking me to Cinderella and Linnea was sweet enough to give me some smartwool socks with snowflakes on them! Love it!

We had some yummy appetizers at GG's, the kids played and we did our adult gift exchange and before we knew it, it was time to head to my parents house to get Linnea down for a short nap before church.

I brought some gingerbread men for decorating and Ian and Dylan really seemed to like this! I also brought some small holiday sticker books that the kids also liked!

Kaylans first Christmas!

Jake and his cookie!

present time!

ride time!

writing on white boards together! thanks elves!

The tradition continues....all the great grandkids opened their jammies which were put on later in the evening before going home. Thanks GG! Pink and snowmen are two of my favorite things, Love, Linnea.