Love Week 2012

We had fun celebrating Valentine's Day this year amidst all the chaos of getting unpacked and settled. Sunday, before Valentine's Day, Caroline helped me make heart cookies. She had been asking to make Valentine's cookies FOREVER and was so excited when I told her Sunday afternoon was the time!
All smiles and lots of mess!

Mixing the icing:

 

Caroline loved using one whole can of sprinkles for one cookie. She just dumped it right on!

Then licked all the icing off:

Looks yummy, uh :-)

Some finished products:

Daddy, the taste-tester

And what did little bro end up doing while we made cookies? Why play with plastic forks/knives and Tupperware of course!

No babies were harmed while this picture was being taken :-)
 

Monday, the day before Valentine's Day, we had nothing to do and nowhere to be. It was so nice! Especially because it was so cold and rainy outside. So we had a Valentine's Theme Day indoors. I printed off this packet from Pinterest:

And Caroline got right down to work. First up, reading the color hearts and finding/coloring the matching color:

We're really working on coloring inside the lines. She's kinda starting to get the hang of it.

Next activity: writing uppercase and lowercase v's

Moving on to sorting uppercase and lowercase v's:

I was unpacking in the laundry room while Caroline was doing some of her activities, and I found our little Valentine butterfly from last year. Perfect Timing! (and can I just say that it is CRAZY to me how much bigger/older Caroline seems than last year...can only ONE year really make all that difference?!? Not to mention the change in Matthew...don't even get me started...)

Right before lunch, Caroline completed a dot art/letter id activity...this was, by far, her favorite!

I made a "key" for her to make this a little more time consuming challenging:

Time for a pre-Valentine's Day lunch (Caroline wanted to be like her buddy, Parker, and have a cheese quesadilla...Parker had recently told her it was his favorite food :-)
 

After quiet time, it was back to the fun with more V-day activities. Up next...sequencing.

Biggest to smallest was easy...

 Smallest to biggest? Not so much.

"Help mommy!!"

 There we go.

Then on to counting and tracing numbers: 

 We capped off our day with finishing our valentines to pass out at school on Tuesday. Caroline signed all of her cards. It took her awhile and was definitely a tiring activity. She wanted to give up many times, but with a little Hershey kiss bribe encouragement, she was good to go. Having an 8-letter name is hard :-)

 The final product, front:

 ...and back. Thank you, Pinterest, yet again.

 Tuesday was Valentine's Day. Yay! I love V-day :-) We woke up and got ready for school and Mother's Day Out. Off the kids went to celebrate with their friends. Caroline had a great day and LOVED giving and getting Valentines. She was so excited to tell me all about her party and the big Valentines exchange.
After school we ran some errands for our family Valentine's party then came home to decorate. Caroline was very into it and I loved having a little helper.

Some of our little decorations:

 

 

 Daddy's seat (we don't have a kitchen table yet or a light in the dining room...so all eating is done at the island for now :-)...oh and notice all of those medications in the background. Lots of sickness going on in the Krauss house. Anyone else SO ready for Spring?!?

 Caroline's seat:

The little one's place :-)

 

Ready to partay! 

  Caroline got some of her favorite candy and a princess umbrella she has been begging asking for:

 

 

Matthew got a Melissa & Doug hammer and ball toy. Right up his alley.

 

Unfortunately, Matt got stuck at work (bummer!) but Yaya came over to keep us company and bring some fun gifts!

 

Yaya gave Caroline a new Minnie movie and two "Paint by Water" workbooks...love those BTW!!! Matthew got a fun Vtech laptop that he couldn't WAIT to get out of its box. Yaya also gave Matt and me a gift card to one of our favorite restaurants so we could have a (much needed!) date night soon. Thanks Yaya!!!

 

It was a busy and fun love week. I hope you had a wonderful V-day full of lots of LOVE :-)

Lately...

Well, we moved...and, boy, was it crazy!!! It took us two weeks, but we finally have internet. Woohoo! Back to the blogging world for me :-)
So I've been terrible about taking pictures of anything because I've basically been consumed with unpacking and getting settled for two week. However, I did manage to snap some pics of a couple things we've been up to lately:
Watching the Superbowl with Mimi and PopPop...two of New York Giants' biggest fans!!

A little New York Giants fan in the making maybe?? Not if I have anything to say about it ;-)

Team Madrid a.k.a. Team Soccerellas had their first soccer game last Saturday!

Our little soccer player...#7 just like her daddy was when he played soccer as a young lad:

Of course the game was on the coldest day we've had all year. Y'all. It was FREEZING!!!!! I think it was something like 34 degrees at the time of the game but the windchill in the 20s. The poor girls were miserable. But they played. Unfortunately, they got creamed by the other team...who had already played together 2 seasons prior btw. Caroline went out on the field and pranced around, but I don't think she quite understands the concept of the game quite yet. That's okay...Team Soccerellas will get there :-)

Trying to keep Bubs warm...he was pretty miserable :-(

 

Caroline liked to stop the ball whenever she would get it...she's got that move down. Now, we just have to teach her dribbling, stealing and scoring. Matt worked with her a little on it yesterday and she did really well with him. We'll see if it translates over to game #2. Way to go, Team Madrid...y'all did great despite the frigid weather!!!