Emma's School Conference

I met with Miss Jennifer for Emma's quarterly parent-teacher conference today. Emma is doing well :) and is definitely ready to move up to the "big kids school" next week. In fact, Miss Jennifer kept telling me how much she would miss Emma, mainly because she is one of the only kids who actually responds when questions are asked. :) She also told me that Emma is advanced for her age and even advanced for many of the 3 year old kids she will be in class with soon.

These were the comments from her Developmental Progress Report:
Your child's strengths include...
"Emma has the ability to answer complex questions. She also can ask questions beyond her level and wait for an appropriate response. She is able to spell her own name and recognize the letters E, M, and 4 of the alphabet. She makes friends easily and is nurturing and kind to everyone in the class including the teachers. She has a great memory and is quick to pick up on different and new items in her surroundings."
Areas your child is currently working on include...
"Emma is currently working on her strengths. She is an observant little girl. She knows her colors and shapes so she is practicing every day to strengthen her abilities and move on into the 3 year old class."

I know I may be a little biased, but I am just so proud of my little Gracie-girl.

Mommy's Secret Stash???

A few day ago I found Emma playing with some old VHS cassette tapes early one morning I quickly told her to leave them alone because they were dusty and we had to leave for school in a few minutes so I didn't want her getting messy. She immediately put them back (yea for following directions!), looked up at me with a big smile, and apologized. Her exact words were, "Oops! Sorry Mommy! I forgot those were YOUR dirty movies!" Hahahaha. Wonderful. I can just imagine how that morning went at school... "How are you today Emma?"... "Fine but I can't play with my Mommy's dirty movies anymore."... Great! And the award for Mother of the Year goes to... yep, me again! :)

Apple Picking in Oak Glen!

Karen & I took Emma, TJ, and Mikayla up to Oak Glen to pick some apples today. It was pretty hot out still... not exactly stereotypical "Fall" weather, but fun none the less. Each of the kids seemed to be on a quest in search of the "perfect" apple. Funny enough, they were all able to find them! From tiny Spartans to giant Granny Smiths, there were so many apples to choose from. We picked a small bags worth and then stopped for lunch on the way down the hill. The little ones are excited because we are going to use our fresh apples to make home made crock pot apple sauce tonight. Yummy!

Friends & Firetrucks!

I took Emma to Lowes this morning to meet up with my friends Jen & Erin and their daughters Hayden & Sophia. The plan was for the girls to build miniature firetrucks but they had run out of kits by the time we got there. It figures... this was the first time ever that we weren't there right at 10am! But at least there was a REAL firetruck there for the kids to check out and the girls had some fun playing on a wheeled cart that someone had left in the craft area. In fact, these little cajolers somehow convinced some of the "big kids" who were there building to push them around and give them rides on the cart. Such little sweet talkers! So they played while we Mommies stood around and chatted. We hung around long enough that one of the Lowes employees actually found an extra box of craft kits! They were puppet theaters rather than the awesome fire trucks, but the girls at least got to build something. We had a nice morning visiting with good friends.

Surprise Afternoon at Disneyland!

Classes started yesterday at Cal State and this is (FINALLY!) my final quarter. Since I was out for the whole day to attend one morning class (long story) I had a free afternoon & decided to surprise Emma with an impromptu Disney trip. I finished up in my class around 11:30, stopped to buy a bottle of water for each of us, and picked Emma up at daycare at 12:10. There was zero traffic that time of day, so we were actually parked and getting on the monorail in Downtown Disney in just over an hour! We spent about 4 hours just playing in Fantasyland and Toontown. We saw Mickey and walked through Sleeping Beauty's castle (again). Then we hopped back on the monorail which took us almost all the way to the car. There was a bit more traffic on the way home, but I still made it back into town in time to drop Emma off with Karen an get to my 8pm class on time. It was a busy day, but lots of fun. Emma was so excited for her "sup-pies" and kept asking where we were going. She actually recognized her surroundings when we were still about 2 blocks away and then she got REALLY excited! I hadn't packed a bag or snacks or even a camera to take with us, so I snapped these few pics with my cell. They turned out pretty cute though. :) What a great afternoon.

Rose Gardens

I'm not generally a flower type of person, but we made sure to check out the rose gardens after Jenny told me how cool they were. She was right. They were beautiful and made for some really cute pictures. These are my favorites...

More Science Center Photos...

Big surprise here, but the water areas were big hits yesterday! :) They always are. In fact, Emma had spent the morning telling me how we were going to see fish and sharks at the museum. I kept telling her no, that this was a museum, not an aquarium or SeaWorld. Turns out they have a HUGE aquarium here. Figures that the kid would be right... again. We went outside upstairs first and looked down into the tanks to see all the fish. Out timing was perfect too because, a few minutes after we walked out, they opened the touch table too. So we got to touch and learn about sea stars, sea cucumbers, anemones, and a sea slug. Yucky, but very cool.

Then we went downstairs and got to look back up from underneath the same tanks. Way cool. This is always fascinating to Emma. The girls spent quite a bit of time crawling around on the floor, looking up at the fish, and exclaiming every time a shark swam by. Maybe she will grow up to be an oceanographer...

After lunch we checked out the courtyard fountain and the rose gardens. I put those in a separate post though. We finished up the day with a pressed penny and a lollipop from the gift shop and some twirling through pink and purple prisms of light. It was a great day with great friends...

California Science Center!

Erin & I took Emma & Sophia out to the California Science Center yesterday. We had such a good time! This museum is awesome and had so many things for the little ladies to do. The best part is that it was all free! They have some paid entry areas, but we figured the girls didn't really need to see genuine mummies from around the world, so we skipped that section. :)

We headed out there mainly because of a temporary exhibit that was closing soon and I wanted to take Emma before it was gone. This was the "Exploring Trees, Inside and Out" section and that was pretty cool. But we were pleasantly surprised by how much more we found there to explore... Before we even entered the museum, the girls got a mini-lesson in leverage (and sound waves). Emma was able to help me lift a real truck off the ground by using a pulley system. She thought that was way cool. Sophia did NOT want to help. She stood still and held her hands over her ears till the loud groaning noises stopped instead! Then we stopped for a little bit of dancing and hugging in the courtyard before venturing in...

We headed straight to the Ecosystems area in search of the trees. To get there we had to make our way through a large hall where the walls were entirely covered in screens that were being projected with nature clips. There were butterflies emerging from cocoons, lava flowing down mountains, polar bears crossing the tundra, giant whales swimming across the room, etc etc etc. The girls (and their mommies :)) were entranced.

When we got to the Exploring Trees section the kids were able to sit in a giant bird's nest, climb up and through a hollow tree, listen to bird calls, draw pictures of trees, build birdhouses. There was even a station where they could lift a door to smell a type of tree, try & see if they could guess what it was based on scent (apples, cherry, cedar, cinnamon etc) alone and then lift a flap to see if they had guessed correctly. Emma even got to watch herself "fly" through the trees with the help of a blue screen and camera.

From there we visited the desert, saw tortoises and lizards, got splashed by a flash flood as it raced down the rocks, and learned about heat as Emma & Sophia watched themselves on a thermal image monitor. Next door to the desert was the arctic. Of course. Lol. That makes sense. They climbed on snowmobile and saw a real polar bear pelt.

We finished up the morning with a trip to the aquarium sections (more pictures to come) and some playtime in the Discovery House. There the girls got to cook in the kitchen, play in the loving room, and harvest fake veggies in the mulch box outside. They also got to water plants with real watering cans and take a peek inside various boxes to examine the root systems of different kinds of plants.

Farewell to Summer Party!

Emma's new teacher is pretty cool. I had my reservations when the old teacher left because we had only known Miss Martha & we loved her, but Miss Jennifer seems to be great too! She plans a lot of whole "themes" for the class and more activities. Today was a "Farewell to Summer" water day at school and all the kids were asked to come dressed in their swimsuits and to bring towels. They spent the morning splashing in a couple wading pools and running through the sprinklers. Emma brought popsicles for her classmates too. All the kids loved it!

Classy Little Ladies...

We went to Zach's 4th Birthday Playdate yesterday afternoon and had a lot of fun! Emma's favorite part of the afternoon was the cake, of course! The party was Spiderman themed, which involved a ton of VERY red, blue, and black frosting. I asked Emma & Sophia to give me "pretty smiles" as they were enjoying their treats... this is what I got! Nice...

Emma loves Brooke!

Emma is in love with this little girl! Little Miss Brooke was born in April and, ever since she started coming to playdates with her mom and big brother, Emma has just been enamored with her. Even when she was only a few weeks old, like in the top picture, Emma just wanted to sit next to her carrier and tickle her feet. As Brooke has gotten a little bigger, Emma always wants to sit down and take a turn holding her. The bottom picture is one my friend, Sarah, took at our playgroup family dinner last week. You can see just how in her element my "big" girl is when she is holding that baby. :)

Weekend of Birthdays!

Birthdays are in the air around here! We had three of them to go to this past weekend. On Friday afternoon we met up with out playgroup friends to celebrate Carson's 2nd birthday. On Saturday afternoon we headed out to Tumble Tots to celebrate the 2nd birthday of Trinity, my friend Adriene's daughter. We only stayed for about an hour though because we had to get over to Tim & Jen's house to help celebrate Bubby's 11th birthday. Whew! Emma & I had fun, as usual and she REALLY liked the balance beam at Tumble Tots. She was way more coordinated that she was 11 months ago when I had her birthday party there. She could actually climb up on the bar herself and walk the entire length. When she got shaky at one point, she just hopped off the side onto the mat. I was so proud of her! I would love to enroll Emma in some of these gymnastic classes but they are so expensive. Anyway, it was another fun weekend. Happy birthday everyone!

Under the Sea...

Another sampling of Emma's current work...

I love all the art projects Emma brings home from school! Her new teacher, Miss Jennifer, has been covering a unit on oceans and sea life this past month. Last week Emma brought home her jellyfish, octopus, and rainbow fish. They are so cute! And our vacation ended up coinciding perfectly with her lessons. Emma was able to go back to school and tell all her friends about going to the beach and SeaWorld and all the marine life she saw. Hmmm... I wonder if that makes this trip tax deductible under some kind of home-schooling, educational expenses type credit... :)

Braids!

Emma finally has enough hair for braids! These are the before-school and after-school shots from the same day. You can see that she was still tired (and sweet) in the morning, but back to being her usually goofy self by evening time!

San Diego Zoo!

On Monday we went to the world-famous San Diego Zoo! This was a first zoo trip for the little ones and the first trip in many years for the rest of us. We had a good time. That place sure is hilly, but some genius had the foresight to install huge, multi level escalators to help navigate the uphills. In fact, they were called "escalators," but there were no actual steps to them. Just a ramp, which lent itself to repeated "surfing" attempts! Too cute. The hippos (pygmy and full sized) were a hit, as were the polar bears. The polar exhibit was extra fun since they had a lot more interactive parts... tunnels to crawl through, "icebergs" to poke your head out of, full-scale polar bears to climb, etc. Emma also got a stuffed polar bear here since she had been in love with the one TJ chose at Sea World earlier in the weekend. In fact, she wanted to take a nap with her new pristine white bear as soon as she got it but I didn't want it falling out of the stroller & getting filthy. You can see our compromise... I wrapped the bear in a shopping bag and she knocked out clutching the whole thing. :) No surprise here, but the elephants, giraffes, and rhinoceros were also highlights. I think they are perennial favorites when kids visit the zoo...