Spring vacation

Spring vacation...a weird name for a school vacation in winter. The weather was great...sunny & cold.  It was a fun week.   We went out several times but also spend a lot of time at home. We even found time to start to organize our pantry.

Sunday brought us some spring weather..sunny and a temp of 10c. We met up with Wendy, Amy and Finn at Onder de Plantanen.  They have a great playground...loads of sand ...K and O were in heaven.  O had not been there before and spend a few minutes looking around. Standing still..just his head moving..then all of a sudden he went off and started to explore the playground further. They brought their truck, digger and wheelbarrow...and were busy for a long time :-)

 Barbera and Lotte invited us to go to Artis Zoo  on Monday.  We walked around ..and it was so much fun to see what K saw.  He was more interested into sand than the birds  :-) ...he noticed an egg instead of the big Leopard in the corner...he was fascinated by the small fish in the pond..instead of the huge butterflies next to it :-)

Wednesday we went to Wijk aan Zee for a real American breakfast.  The cook needs to book himself a trip to the US and have a real American breakfast. ...but we were in good company...Lisette, Nienke, Raven, Grandma Radsma, 2 nieces and Lotte..so we had a good time. Afterwards we took a short stroll on the beach. K didn't want to be in the picture :-)

Of course there was time for crafts :-) we had a good time with puffy paint. The idea came from Happy Hooligans post earlier this month. We tried out the blow paint  (blaas stiften) we had bought from toys42hands.nl  a while ago.

 K spend a lot of time playing with kitchen towels and scarfs. He folded them...draped them etc. Amazing to see the things he comes up with for play.

 Cooking with packing peanuts :-) , water bottle and empty vitamin bottle. I love watching him play, listen to the stories he tells while playing.

The tripods came out of our pantry. K didn't know what they were and spend a good half hour exploring them. Trying out everything. ..later on he started to add things...scarfs etc. 

K has a fascination with eggs...O is fascinated by bottle caps. He just loves to play with bottle caps. Luckily for him..we have loads of bottle caps!

 
In and out...open and close..great exploration :-)  (we do also have regular kids toys...really!)

 This morning we woke up and discovered it had snowed again. K went out in his pyjama's ..but was smart enough to put on boots and a jacked. O ...sneaked outside while I didn't look..but of course had not thought of boots and a jacket. It didn't take him long to discover that snow is wet and cold. :-)

In loveeeeee.... :-)

K is in love with his teacher! And with the girl from acro gym and with the girl from the baby Einstein video and the girl from....   What a fun phase!

This week his teacher celebrated her birthday. K made her a K Original...and had big plans for more presents. He wanted me to gift wrap most of his books :-). In the end he went to school with the painting and 3 painted egg containers. He had a great time at the party.

Today (Sunday) it felt like spring had started. It was 10 degrees C ..sunny...blue skies. We met up with our friends Wendy, Amy and Finn. We met at the play park of Spaarnwoude. Great playground. The kids had a wonderful time playing in the sand.

It was O's first time at the playground. In the beginning ..he stood..looked around and when he had taken it all in ..he went off and had a good time. Keeping an eye on me and his brother. Great to see how he adjusts and enjoys.

This upcoming week we have spring break (Really weird name as it is still winter!).

O loves to play with bowls, cups, boxes, lids...pens...well actually anything that fits in his bowls, cups and boxes collection :-) 

K loves to help me around the house. His latest thing is folding!  ..he does it really well.

Raven is showing K how to play a game on her tablet. 

Love Love Love

It's been a fun but busy week. K went to school every day for half days and O went to his new day care. K loves school. O seems to be fine at day care but at night he has been restless which means he does really have to get used to the new situation (very understandable of course).

After school K and I walk home...have lunch together...chill a bit...and then we play together. Lego and memory game have been his favorite 'play with mom' activities this week. I treasure these moments together.

As of next week O and I will have Friday mornings together while K is at school. I am looking forward to these mornings. I have loads of ideas of things we can do together. I want to start a few bigger discovery boxes. We haven't done those in a while...as O is a bit messy compared to K.  :-) no unsupervised playing with colored rice or cloud sand for O!  :-)

Love is in the air! Valentines day is coming up...so it was time to start our Valentine gifts. We invited a few friends over to join us.

Our inspiration came from The chocolate muffin tree , teaching 2 and 3 year olds and Happy Hooligans.

Nikita , Yvana and Branwen came over and we all had fun making bubble paintings, marbleized hearts and stars...and the kids made their own play dough!

We have made play dough many times...but due to the hot water I had been doing the most part. But with Happy Hooligans recipe...the kids can do it themselves. The clay is a bit different but works just fine.

Recipe:
120 ml hair conditioner
240 gr flour
2 tea spoons oil
Food coloring.
Just mix it up and knead by hand.

As you know we go for the process not the end product  :-)

It did not take long for K to start experimenting and go his own way ...  For me it was so much fun to listen to the kids talk about what they were seeing, feeling and smelling. How the color of the clay changed, that the bubbles needed more paint to make better prints etc. It was a fun afternoon.


K was wondering what would happen if he pressed down the towel with his chop stick...conclusion: it gets wet.

 How much do all the bowls weigh together?  He noticed that the marker moved up when he added something and down when he removed it.  ...also he liked stacking things up ...towers!

BIG 4!

Yes! K is 4! We celebrated his birthday with friends and family. He enjoyed all the attention and had a good time with his friends playing at the craft table.

The next was his first day at school. We dropped O off at the day care and drove to school. We were early so he didn't have to walk into a class room full of kids. We first said hello to his teacher. He was shy for about 10 seconds :-) after that he took of his shoes and went up to the building corner (the room has a split level..building corner is on the top level). He came down for a few hugs and a bunch of kisses....and told me I could leave.   ...so happy that he settled in straight away..but it was an emotional moment for me.

My sweet K ..with his big smile..shirt on backwards...socks not matching is 4.  A big new adventure has begun!

O also had an exciting week. He visited his new day care.  He liked straight away...we walked in ..he saw the kids at the table and went over ..climbed on a chair..and smiled. Another emotional moment for mom but the kids seem to be doing fine.

It has been a bit busy wit the party , first school/day care mornings so no time to upload the b-day pics yet. Here are a few of fun times in the last few weeks.

Our winter door...snowman vlag (flag). K made it and named it. He didn't feel like cutting so I had to do the cutting and he made the snowman. The winter sun and heart were made by K and his friends. We learned the letter W and added some snow.

 ...winter sun craft.

 Our own skating ring! Thanks to a few dads in our neighbourhood :-)

 Fun play...with playmobil.

 K and buddy Yoel playing games