2010: The Year in Smiles

Another year to celebrate! And so many great reasons to!!! :) Here is our year in pictures - this is my favorite post to write - I LOVE looking back through the year's pictures and seeing how the kids have grown!!! :)

January:


February:


March:


April:


May:


June:


July:


August:


September:


October:


November:


December:



I love all three of my cuties, and I look forward to another year with them! :) If you're bored, and want to see more pictures of my cute kids, check out 2009 here and 2008 here.

Tot School - Letter J

Well, we started school up again this week, finally, after a 3-week break for moving and craziness! :) And now we have a SCHOOLROOM to have school IN!!! :) Yay! The only problem is that our new schoolroom/playroom is TOO much fun for Z to concentrate very long on his projects...so if I really want him to spend time on a game or project, I have to bring it upstairs. :) Here are some pictures of our schoolroom, though: This one looks from the house's entrance down the room. I hope to get a piano someday to put on the far wall. The little table and chairs were made for me by my father and grandfather when I was 18 months old, and I have many memories of coloring and playing at it as a child, so it's really special to watch Z and Natalie color and play play-doh at the little table! :)

This one stands at the bottom of our stairs, looking the other way! It is a really nice big room!

Here are my shelves with all of our books and toys on them.

All of my school supplies are in this video cabinet, so that I can close them and it won't matter if they're a little messy. :)
We also celebrated Z's 3rd birthday with a party last Monday! I can't believe he's *already* 3 years old!!! Here he is blowing out his #3 candle on his Thomas train cake! Anyone recognize Annie & Clarabelle, Thomas' passenger cars? Z did, the first time he looked at the cake - I was so pleased! :)


He was pretty happy about his Thomas jammies and his Thomas electric toothbrush! :)

So, we focused on the letter J this week. Z enjoyed our song and learned our verse well.

We made some Christmas trees to decorate our house - we made some small versions of these for cards for his Sunday school teachers - it was an easy, quick project - just green triangles & brown small rectangles, then I gave him dot markers to make the ornaments, and then used a marker to draw a few garlands on it.

He drew a smiley face on this one: not even on purpose! :)

We also used our playdough mats this week, and our bottle cap words, but I didn't get any pictures that day. We used jello powder for our J collage this week (although, dishonest Mommy only had Kool-aid powder, no jello, so we actually used Koolaid powder for our Jello J!) :) Here Z is covering the J in glue with a glue stick:

and here we are sprinkling on the 'jello' powder. :)

You have to push it down...

and shake off the extra, and voila! The finished J! :)

We finally got a chance to play with this awesome Christmas light upper/lowercase letter matching game that I made for Zachary over a month ago! You can find the game here, sort of. I got the game free somehow a few weeks ago, but now I don't see a link to the game by itself. The ChildCareLand site is an amazing resource for all kinds of free printables, though - definitely check it out if you haven't! Here's what the file folder game I made looks like:

And here's Z in action playing it: He matched all the letters, and really enjoyed it, and then asked to play it again the next day! :) Definitely makes ALL the hours I spent cutting out, laminating, and then re-cutting out little Christmas light bulbs worth it! :)

We also did a Christmas Big & Small Worksheet (which you can find here). This was one of those projects he didn't spend a lot of time on because he wanted to go play. See Natalie climbing on the chair in the background?

So funny with those little feet sticking out! :)

We used our rectangle shape viewer this week, to look for rectangles all over the schoolroom:

There are some rectangles on our heater:

The door...
the thermostat...

and of course it goes on the head... :)

the table is a rectangle!

We got out his Thomas set so he could play on the table this week and Natalie wouldn't get into it. :)
Zachary decided to use the camera to take some amateur photography this week. Along with 20 pictures of books, toys, and the floor and walls, there were two of me and Natalie:


My Tiny Tot

Natalie will turn ONE this next Wednesday - I can't believe how fast the year has gone! She is definitely transitioning from baby to toddler, and really starting to be interested in playing school along with us! I got out some pick-up-sticks and a Parmesan cheese container for her this week, and she spent a really long time trying to put the sticks in the canister they belong in, and into the Parmesan cheese container. I love her determination and how she will sit and work at something for a long time - it's a new concept for me because Z has NO attention span for anything that frustrates him, if he can't get it the first time, he gives up immediately and goes to do something else!

working hard...
watching Zachary...

I love this picture - Zachary can be so good at sharing!!! He's getting really good at the concept of taking turns! :)

She got one in!!!
Love the total concentration on her face, and the way her feet are sticking out in such funny directions. :)

Natalie also learned how to climb into her toybox this week! She really enjoys playing in it, and sometimes she fusses for help to get out, but sometimes she can get out on her own. :)

And, in case you missed it, Natalie won't be our TINIEST tot for long!!! :) Read all about our newest little surprise over here! :)

To see what other people did for Tot School this week, head on over to 1+1+1=1! :)