friesenfam.net

Friesen family blog

February 28, 2011
by janette
1 Comment

FIELD TRIP!

Ellie’s preschool went on a field trip last week to the Pizza Ranch. It’s extremely convenient that the Pizza Ranch is right across the street from her school, so we could all just walk.

First, I joined them for circle time.

Her teachers had asked me to come read a book to their class about making pizza before the field trip. Of course, I obliged. There are few things I love more than reading to preschoolers. They’re just always so excited!!

This is the book we read. Very cute, and with a surprise ending!

Onto the Pizza Ranch:

How convenient that their letters for the month were P, Q and R.

Pizza Ranch fit right into that plan.

Learning all about making cactus bread. Yum Yum.

She told the kids to have their parents make it at home. Mine certainly doesn’t taste like theirs, even though she said it’s just crust, butter and cheese. Maybe there is a secret ingredient i don’t know about.

Trail dust on your pizza? Perhaps this is the secret ingredient??

Here’s my little one “ordering” her drink…

and enjoying her tasty morning snack.

What a great field trip! One I’m going to have to remember to chaperone in another year or two when Evan gets into preschool for two reasons…1)kids get really stinkin’ excited about pizza, and 2)caffeine and dessert pizza at 9 am really start your day off right.

February 24, 2011
by janette
2 Comments

out of their little mouths.

One of my favorite things about having children is their unpredictability.

We’ve all seen kids just pitching one in the store for their parents. Perhaps you cringe for that parent, having been there yourself, or perhaps you smile to yourself and think “glad I left mine at home”, and we’ve all had children say embarrassing things in public. It’s their ability to make their parent’s squirm which is the amazing feature of these little creatures. How can something half your size, or smaller, make you so uncomfortable. But what I find refreshing is the brutal honesty of them…the willingness to put it all out there, perhaps because they don’t know to be as reserved as we’ve learned to be.

I find myself laughing at the things they say. Sometimes thinking ‘where do they come up with this stuff?’ The other times I know exactly where they got it. Directly from my mouth.

Hope you enjoy some recent quips from my kids:

Often when frustrated, I’ll say a phrase i know I’m going to regret later. I try very hard to watch what I say in front of the kids. I never swear – but have occasionally used the OMG phrase, which i also try not to do. I’ve been known to use the phrase “Good Lord” quite a bit, and apparently Evan has picked up on this. Whenever he sees me getting to the point where I’d use one of these choice phrases, he’ll grab my face and say “good lord mommy??” That’s right Buddy!

Recently at his daycare, Evan was going potty, on the potty remarkably… and the teacher asked him if mommy would be happy that he had gone on the potty. He just looked at her and said “no, mommy’s angry”. I asked him about it later saying “Evan, is mommy angry.” I got “No, my mom is great.”  Now that one i’ll take…even if the kid was backpedaling.

But my favorite as of late with this kid is when he’ll ask for something and then say “you’re busy mommy?” The best is the “my mom’s busy” song. Pretty much that phrase repeated to any random tune he can sing. It’s beautiful…and amazingly i had time to sit and listen to it. Apparently at that moment, I wasn’t too busy.

Of course this isn’t reserved for just the two year old in the house. The 5 year old also has some pearls of wisdom to pass on…

Yesterday afternoon, we were driving through cedarloo and saw a guy outside little caesar’s pizza holding a sign for them and dancing. I mean really dancing. We were sitting at a red light, so i called the kids attention to it. Ellie asked “why is he dancing”. I said maybe he was cold and was trying to keep warm”. Her response “maybe he has to go potty.”

Or perhaps you’ll remember this one i posted on facebook.

On discussing age:
Ellie: “Mom, sometimes Evan crashes my kite into the sand when we fly it in the summer.”
Me: “I know honey, but this summer, he’ll be three, and maybe he’ll understand a little better”
Ellie: “He’ll be three on his birthday”
Me: “Yes. He’ll be three and you’ll be five, and I’ll be old”
Ellie: “Oh, mom…you’re already old”

I picked up Ellie from preschool one day where she was being the patient at the doctor’s office. She says to me…”mom, it was great…the doctor cut open my stomach and took out some blood”. I said “oh, thats wonderful”. She replied “yeah, he did it with his telescope.”

Hope you had a giggle at one of them. I know I did…

And remember…what isn’t embarrassing enough to kill you should at least make you laugh.


February 21, 2011
by janette
1 Comment

pretty, pretty princess

A rainy, snowy day here in Iowa.

It started out by sucking water out of our basement. Sump pump pumped water just fine, the hose just came out and pumped water back onto our floor. It could have been much much worse, but it was still inconvenient.

So, what is there to do while the basement dries out besides laundry?? Play some games, of course.

We started out with a math game. It was fun watching Ellie practice her numbers and adding them up on my fingers.

And then…we broke out the pretty pretty princess game.

What a hit!

Evan – making sure his crown is on straight…

Getting dressed up…almost to the end.

And the winner and ultimate princess of the day…

Was there ever any doubt?

 

 

February 19, 2011
by janette
0 comments

high tea at the library

Our library decided to have a little winter fun and host a “Royal Tea Party” a couple of weeks ago.

Really, the idea was born after Halloween…

Okay…I’ll start at the beginning. On Halloween, we at the library went as beauty contestants, vying for the title of Ms. Waverly Public Library.In order to  make it authentic, we all busted out the formal dresses. We scoured local thrift shops for those that didn’t just have one sitting in their closet.

Inserting Halloween Pic here…in case you missed it the first time around.

After going through all this work, we decided we needed to have another event at which we could wear our formal attire, thus the idea for the royal tea party was born.

It was complete with finger foods (homemade cake balls and iced sugar cookies, crackers and cheese) and “tea” (apple juice or lemonade)…

Royalty…(on golden thrones nonetheless)

Books (we are a library)

and crafts.

We had many, many thrilled little girls…and some little boys too!

We’re fairly sure it will become an annual event. After all…not only do we have the dresses now, but the chairs are ours too. :)