Child of the earth

My favorite times with Katelyn have been times outside. Katelyn is without a doubt a child of the earth. She lights up when we go outside. She is always excited for an outdoors adventure.

This girl doesn't care if it's raining or snowing...sunny, windy, cold, warm...doesn't matter. Just let her do something outside. So obviously as the weather is starting to turn slowly to spring Katelyn is embracing it.

She's checking out the garden and wants to know when we can get to work. I have really good garden helpers around here!!

I love that Katelyn isn't afraid to get dirty. She wants to roll in the grass and throw it all over herself....

She's already asking when we'll have tomatoes in the garden. Poor kid has quite a wait for those!

Katelyn's job is bringing the compost bowl from the kitchen to the compost pile. She does a good job and is always happy to help.

She's a pretty sassy girl. She knows her mind for sure. Of course that has to be tempered at times but I really do love her personality. She's got spunk!

And here she is rolling on the ground again! (No we haven't had snow recently...I just found the picture and it cracks me up.)

She's turned into a great little bike rider.

Aunt Shirley sent easter egg sidewalk chalk and Katelyn loves it. (Thank you!!)

Such a fun girl. I'm so excited for all of the new outside memories we have to make this year!!
The anticipation of spring is glorious!

Katelyn loves rainbows, strawberry ice cream with sprinkles, cupcakes, hearts and dirt. :)

I love this girl!!! And it's really big love.

February in a nutshell

I just need to sum up February. It started out just fine. Then for two weeks our house was full of illness. And then the month ended fabulously!!

The beginning of February left us to our own antics because it was so cold. So one fun night started out with a Michael and Katelyn tinker toy creation.

Then Katelyn got crazy.

And the living room became a scene from Where the Wild Things Are. She decided it would be fun to run in circles dancing around the tinker toys while Michael and I whistled John Philips Sousa marching band music. Let me remind you...yes, we really are this cool.

Katelyn was thoroughly entertained for quite a while.

I love this girl.

Another milestone this month was a big girl bed. I know...she's three and a half. But she loved her crib. She NEVER tried to climb out of the thing so we weren't in any hurry for the big girl bed. But we finally decided that it was time for the switch. The funny thing is she still calls for us in the morning. She won't get out of the bed until we come in and get her. She's a girl who lives within her boundaries. :)

And this is what her room looks like with the new addition. See how I found a quilt that matched so I didn't have to do any other redecorating? Smart, right!!!

And then the illness came. On the same night Katelyn got the flu (fever, runny nose, coughing...miserable) and Michael got the stomach flu. Michael was down for three days and Katelyn was on the couch for a whole week. It was so sad...and her cough was just lousy. Katelyn has never had more than just the sniffles. In the last two years she's gone to the doctor for her two year old and three year old well visits....that's it. So it was hard to see this super active, healthy kid curled up on the couch for days. She lost three pounds that week (and she only weighed 37 to start off!) But she's better now and eating us out of house and home so I think all is well.

Katelyn has been starting to write letters. She was doing A, E, F, L, T. Then all of a sudden a few days ago she was at the table with her markers while Michael and I were cleaning up after dinner and she said, "Mommy, look. I wrote my name." I was expecting her to have written a few letters...but no, she really did write her name. All by herself. I'm going to frame it. :)

We went out to Red Robin the other night because I really wanted a hamburger. (Please note...I never say this. We eat red meat about once a month maybe.) Katelyn got a balloon. She held on to that thing all night and then was devastated the next morning when it was on the floor because the hellium had leaked out. She kept asking why it wouldn't fly and could I make it fly over and over.

For dinner tonight we made White Chicken Chili, cornbread and a salad. So yummy!!

And to wrap up February with a bang and kick March off with much celebration, Michael got a job as a project manager for a German company in Frankfort (20 miles from our house) that manufactures plastics for the automotive industry. (Background....Michael speaks fluent German, worked for 10 years as an automotive engineer and has been doing engineering consulting for a company that manufactures plastics for the last six months). Yep, it's that perfect. He starts on Monday.

So we had a bumpy patch but we are healthy and ready for spring to get here. We're starting to plan the garden. The seed catalogs are on hand.

Just a day....

Yep it was pretty much just a day. Normal routine. Katelyn stacked some things (she loves stacking, sorting and moving things from one container to the other....fascinating really.)

She balanced her fruit square on the top of ther stack. She thought she was pretty tricky.

(If I could figure out how to keep her bangs from parting down the middle that would be great...any suggestions? No matter how much I wet her hair down in the morning and comb it all into place it always parts right back down the middle.)

Today it was cold out. Bitter cold. I had a chill all day that I just couldn't shake. My hands and feet where frigid. We went out for Mexican food tonight and when we got home and got Katelyn to bed I mad a cup of tea. The stove top was so warm I just needed to get my hands and feet toasty. It worked. I told Michael that he would have to go with me to the emergency room if I burned the bottom of my foot on the stove...I'm sure they'd throw me in the looney bin. :)

Just another day in Lexington.

MORE winter fun

Michael had some great pictures that we downloaded off of his phone. He picked Katelyn up and let he play in the snow when they got home the other day. Katelyn LOVES to play in the snow. The first thing she does is throws herself down to make a snow angel. I love this picture. It's classic Katelyn.

These pictures are awesome. Watch the progression of footprints. It reminds me of a Family Circus cartoon.

Here's the sidwalk....

Here's the yard...

The snow was no longer fresh by the time she was done. Michael said she took a great nap after this adventure.

We went to Chuck E. Cheese to play on Saturday because we needed Katelyn to burn off some energy and then we stopped at Dairy Queen for Blizzards. Katelyn's favorite is vanilla ice cream with M&Ms in it.

Katelyn's got a pink bean bag in her room and she really loves her big girl reading corner.

Katelyn being silly at dinner. She ate everything. Broccoli is her favorite. There's never any left. After dinner Katelyn and I did some serious coloring in the BIG Kai-Lan coloring book.

I figured I owed everyone some more pictures after such a delay. :)

If one more person tells me to update the blog....

Seriously...I'm going to start charging each of my family members for times they view the blog. I'd be rich! I should get a bonus check for all of the griping I've heard because the blog hasn't been updated in three weeks. It's winter....we haven't gone outside in two months. Our photo opportunities are limited. But here are the highlights of trying to do our best to have some fun while trudging through January....

Since you are all such big fans...you're in luck...you can follow her music career. She's quite the rock star. She'll need her faithful following in order to make it big.

Legos. We've played a lot of legos over the last few weeks. And by we, I mean Michael and Katelyn. I don't have the Lego gene...but those two would be happy to build stuff all day.

This was an exciting moment. They used all of the Legos in the tub and built it all up on the car. Katelyn thought that was fun. I think it's very Dr. Seuss-ish.

I was getting dressed for work one morning and when I came downstairs Katelyn was watching cartoons and she looked like this. I asked what she was doing and she said matter-of-factly, "Michael brought me the paper."

Aunt Shirley...this one's for you. Here she is playing with her Disney Princess paper dolls that you got her for Christmas. She really likes them!

Katelyn helped me make rice crispy treats and we brought them to church to share with our friends for snack. Any time I'm doing anything in the kitchen that involves measuring ingredients or mixing Katelyn is right there with me wanting to help. I'm learning to be patient in a whole new way. :)

Katelyn is learning how to use scissors. She loves to snip snip. She won't cut in a straight line she just wants to make little cuts all along the edges of the paper. And she wants to DO IT HERSELF. I let her have the coupons after I was done with them....You can never start them too early on couponning!

This was really funny. She was all dressed up in her church dress and she put this whistle around her head. She wore it like that all evening. She thought she was funny. Telling jokes and being silly is really important to Katelyn these days.

This is what our living room has looked like all month. A big old pile of stuff with Katelyn in the middle. Yep...I'm ready for the playing outside to start back up again.

And really...does it get any sweeter than this? I love, love, love these two...and they make the cold alright.

I'll try to be better at posting...but I do work you know!

More goofing around

Saturday was a glorious day. Katelyn slept until 8:45 and then we were all in our jammies until noon. Now that's the way to ring in the new year!

I made pumpkin waffles...which were oh so very tasty and we watched the Rose Parade. Katelyn played helicopter with Michael...which is one of her favorite activities. The take off...the turbulance...the bombings...the landing. There is much belly laughing to be heard. The more Katelyn is thrown around the louder the laughter. :)

Seriously, don't you love this???

For dinner I made kielbasa and homemade sauerkraut with some potatoes and onions thrown in. It was a super yummy winter dish and I got in touch with my Polish self. :)

Katelyn likes to play school. Mommy gets to be the teacher and Michael's the lunch lady. I think that's funny.

Here's our star student. We gave her an A+ for the day.

Then we made up a Blues Clues adventure about a letter that came in the mailbox from grammy and papa that said "We love you Katelyn" and made her guess what it was all about as we drew pictures. This is our evening entertainment around here. Please note that Papa has a golf club in his hand and that's how Katelyn was able to guess who the letter was from.

A three day weekend and today was back to work...a whole five day work week this week. How will we do it?

But we booked a condo in Destin, FL for mid-May when Michael finishes school. Only 4 1/2 more months to go and then a whole week on the beach. That's what's going to get me through winter.