Crazy Sock Day

It's Crazy Sock Day at Preschool today!

Star of the Week!

Today was Esme's turn to be Star of the week at preschool.  She worked on a poster all about herself and got to share it with the whole class.

Here is what's on the poster.  This is what I look like.  I am 3 1/2 years old.  This is what I looked like as a baby.  My birthday is June 8, 2009.  My favorite color is Pink and Purple.  My favorite food is hot dogs.  My family.  My favorite thing to do is play in my toy kitchen.  At preschool I want to play on the computer.  On the front of the book Esme drew a computer.

Winter Hike

Today we went for a hike at Crow Hassan Park Reserve.  Anyone who knows us knows that this is kind of "our" place.  Today it was fabulous as usual.  There was a lot of fluffy snow around and it was pretty warm, about 30 degrees.

Esme was super excited to go hiking.  We told her that we expected her to hike quite a bit and that we weren't going to be carrying her the whole time.  She often rides in the backpack but we didn't bring it because she's getting a little big for it even without snow pants on.  She was sure she could do it.  Especially when we promised a movie when we got home if she did a good job.

As usual, the first thing Esme did was get a map, plan our hike, and direct us where to go.  It's the same map every time, obviously, but she always gets a new one and studies it very intently before we set off.  Funny thing is, no matter which way we go we always follow her plan exactly to the tee.

Before we got too far into our hike - think one city block - Esme was tired and wanted to be carried.  So much for enthusiasm!  I knew that Aaron's idea of a hike and Esme's were quite different and I fully expected a meltdown by someone (possibly me) before the hike was over.  I knew Aaron would never shorten his plan for the hike for the day and so my best bet was to try to make it as fun for Esme as I could and let Aaron know that if someone was going to carry the 42lb-even-without-snow-gear-on girl it was not going to be me.  It took quite a bit of cajoling to get Esme to carry on at times, but she was a trooper all the way and it went way better than I anticipated.  Aaron's idea turned out to be not a bad one afterall.

One trick we used was telling her that she could eat all the white snow (but never the yellow!) she wanted.  This slowed us down quite a bit for a time, but she loved it.  Eat snow, take 2 steps, stop, repeat.

Another thing that kept her going for awhile was letting her walk Cricket, one of her favorite things in the whole world to do.  Cricket managed to only tangle Esme in the leash to the point that she fell down once.  This was good!

And finally we had her race with us and the dogs, making Airplane Arms to help with speed of course, and also to see if she could get Kaiser to play.  She did.

As we got closer to the end of the walk Esme fell down in the snow and looked like she might cry.  She was pretty tired after her long (what in the end turned out to be 1hr and 45 minute) hike.  But we distracted her by asking her to make some snow angels and that cheered her right up.  We made a few more on the way back to the car.  Disaster averted!

Pretty good snow angel huh? :)

The one and only real glitch of the whole day was that I lost my gloves on the trail somewhere.  Aaron was going to back track with Kaiser to find them and Esme, Cricket and I would carry on towards the car, but Kaiser was having none of that.  He did not want to go back and Cricket was freaking out that her people were going in two different directions.  We decided to abort that plan and hope that I'll be able to get them tomorrow if we go for another hike.  Or maybe someone will find them and put them up on the board in the parking lot.

Anyway, when we got back to the car, Esme and the dogs were exhausted, Aaron was happy and I was thrilled that everyone was happy and/or exhausted.  There should be some good sleeping happening tonight!  Let's hope!

Here are a few more pictures that I took today.

Happy Saturday!

Channeling Lisa Loeb

Please tell me this doesn't remind you of Lisa Loeb?

Can't you just hear it???  "You say....I talk so all the time so..."

For those of you who don't know who that is, here you go.

credit

Now go download her song "Stay" right now.  Just do it.  Now.

.

Small world

Shortly before Christmas we took Esme to the mall to do some shopping.  You may remember the Sneeze incident.  That same day I found some really cute Snow Babies.  Aaron helped me to choose this one.

It's titled "Where are my glasses".  Cute right?  I put it at the front desk of my clinic and we get a lot of comments from patients that think it's funny.

Fast forward a few months.  I have a patient who I've been helping with monovision/multifocal contact lenses.  She listed her career as an artist and really wanted to get away from always having to wear readers.  We talked about what kind of work environment she has - computer v. paper, what distance she works at, lighting, etc.  We got her contacts just where she was happy with them after a few visits.  The last day she was checking out at the front desk and saw that we had this Snow Babies figurine.  It turns out that SHE DESIGNED IT!!!  How crazy is that???  She works for Dept56 and designs Snow Babies.  And designed this one because of all her readers - the readers I helped her get out of!  Small, small world...

She signed it for me and I think that is awesome!

Fun Day

Today we went to Trader Joe's (Esme's favorite grocery store) after preschool.  I don't know why I always feel the need to take pictures of Esme pushing the Trader Joe's cart, but I do.

Here's a fuzzy picture from March 5, 2012.

And here's a picture from today, almost a year later.

please ignore my finger

Yes, we bought a lot of bread... :)  One loaf for us, one for Mamoo and one for my friend Erica.  Which is where we went after TJ's.  Deliver bread, mommies get to visit, and kids get to play!

Esme was Princess Leah.  The good news is she got a light saber too!  Maybe the real Princess Leah got one in the movie, but I didn't pay that much attention to it to tell you the truth.  

Overall, we just had a great day!  Cue the Fresh Beat Band music.  :)

Sledding Party

For Aaron's birthday, we had a sledding party.  It was a really nice day for sledding and a bonfire. :)

Ready to go!

Not sure who's having the most fun, Aaron, Esme or April??? 

Icicle Snacks - Yummy

In an unusual turn of events, Cricket decided to spend some time sitting with Grandma Lois.  She normally won't sit with her.   As you can see, she's still a little shy about it. :)

We talked to my parents on the phone a bit.  They are still on Kauai.  I texted them photos of our sledding party and Dad texted me this...

Of course he did... :)

Back in the MN groove.

Aaron is up north on a guy's weekend, ice fishing.  The bad news is it's the coldest weekend of the year.  The good news is that he caught a huge fish!

 And took this awesome photo with his phone.

We did a lot today back at home.  First we played outside.  It was nice to see Esme enjoy the snow again after being in Hawaii.  I was almost convinced that she was going to refuse to go outside until summer!

Then we took Grandma Lois out for Thai food.  Esme loved her cream cheese wantons as usual and I had a wonderful warm Thai Tea.

After we got home from that, we went to our friend Kim and Ken's house.  Esme was having fun taking pictures, so here are a few of those.

Kim

Ken

We had a great time visiting with friends, including Chelsea the dog. :)  Just a fun day overall!