Playing in the leaves

Sunday was such Indian Summer weather! It was gorgeous outside... so much so that Liesl was running around in her diaper and bare feet... which was a good thing for her clothes because as soon as she saw me raking leaves, she jumped right into them and started rolling around in them and throwing them in the air and burrowing into them. I dont think that any of us taught her to do that. I guess it is just one of those things that kids just know how to do. I hope there are a few more days of Indian Summer for us this fall. We will be able to enjoy the sandbox, swings and leaves more. What a fun day.

Trick or Treating at Huckleberry Railroad

This Saturday we had a great time trick or treating at the Huckleberry Railroad. Liesl dressed up in her Tinkerbell costume, which she is in love with (and wore the whole weekend to Costco and Joann Fabrics on Sunday too). They have booths all set up in the park, a themed train ride and cider and doughnuts at the end of the trick or treating.... we did it more at the beginning. Liesl didnt care really about the candy, more about that she was gathering things and carrying around her bag (or purse). She enjoyed the pirate house there, the dragons and the disney princess stops the best. I also cannot forget the demonically maniacal carousel they have there that Liesl and I went on. It was about 3 times as fast as a normal carousel and it wasnt just for halloween. I hung on for dear life and they made me ride the horse with Liesl because it was "too fast". I was glad for that. She chanted "wheeee, wheeee, wheee" the whole time. We were lucky that she took a little nap before we got there for an hour.... wish it was a little longer though but we had a train to catch! Hopefully we can get back from Caseville soon enough on Saturday to find another place to trick or treat this weekend too.

Momma's Birthday

Well I had a rather nice birthday. On the weekend, my Kaethe Tante and Kathy, Aunt Barb, Steve and Frantz Onkel, and Mom came to have breakfast Saturday morning. Liesl had a good time with her Kaethe Tante as always and played a lot in the yard in her sandbox, her swings and showed Aunt Barb her rock garden which she is very proud of. Monday morning when I dropped her off for the day at her Oma's house as she was drifting back to sleep she mumbled "I Love You Momma" and slept in for her Oma which was nice. I was able to score her some free tickets to Disney Princesses on Ice for this evening which she is very excited about seeing. I hope that she will listen to Oma Ronnie and I from this morning when we told her that she will need to sleep like sleeping beauty this afternoon so she is fresh to see the princesses tonight. As I was leaving this morning she proceeded to say "...and see sleeping beauty, and Ariel, and Tinkerbell, and snow white, and cinderella.....". She was heading out to the Rainforest Cafe with the Omas and Opa and Ota this afternoon and for playing in the kid-scape at Great Lakes. She was so excited to go she kept telling everyone "Im going Rainforest Cafe too". She has been telling me "Happy Birthday" all week and last night daddy got us some food and cupcakes to celebrate from what daddy calls "whole paychecks" or whole foods....mmmmmm...mmmmm the cupcakes were heavenly. Liesl of course got to blow out my candle which I dont think I could keep her from. Looking forward to tonight's skating performance. I am sure she will love it.

The Fairies are changing the leaves momma

Liesl has been obsessing about Tinkerbell since we went to Disney in August. She now has seen the 2 Tinkerbell movies and has been watching the leaves change on the trees and points out to me that the Fairies have changed the leaves colors. Very cute. I am so glad she likes fairies and dragons and such. We also have a dragon book that she likes me to read her. It is a big picture book by one of my favorite SciFi authors. She loves to pick out the dragons in the pages.

Looking for my Barbies in Oma's attic, I didnt find the Barbies but I did manage to find a bunch of books from when I was little up there and I have been reading them to her. I found some Ranger Rick books, a Ronald Dahl, some kid joke books and some others. I started reading her Little Witches in the October spirit last night and she liked it a lot. We also got some potty training gear last night...Some princess panties, training pants and a potty ring. She is liking the potty ring very much and has been really good about going on the potty during the day.

Looks like yesterday and today are zoo days for Liesl. She had a really good time yesterday because it was nice and cool, the animals were out and or feeding time. She got to see a lot of action with the animals. Her favorite from yesterday were the Meerkats. She keeps saying "Meerkats digging hole". Oma Ronnie should be happy because the Meerkats are also her favorites. She was up at the crack of dawn today with her momma getting ready, even got dressed and breakfast before we got to Oma Ronnie's so she is ready to have some fun today!

I am hoping to get together another fall project this weekend. She keeps on saying "making project Grady" remembering her project from last weekend. Hopefully something we can hang up for fall. Maybe I will get some wreath material and start from there.

September is Over???? Already?

Ever since Oma Ronnie and Opa took Liesl to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch she has been repeating "Elephants not real, Monkeys not real". She was a little afraid of the animatronic animals and Oma and Opa told her that they were not real to calm her down. I dont know if she necessarily knows what Not real means yet but she has been trying to apply it to a lot of other things. I let her know that the Elephants and Monkeys we see in the zoo are real and that is why they are behind barriers.

This past weekend, Liesl and I went to Dee Morrison's for a "girl's weekend". Liesl had tons of fun playing with Grady, making crafts, roaming in the woods and playing with his many trains. Friday, when we got there, we went for a walk for fall items to make a craft with. We took some items from outside like leaves, sticks and flowers, some ribbon and contact paper and made sun-catchers. After Grady had finished his, all of the ladies wanted to make one for themselves.

 Saturday, we went to Art Prize for the day to check out the entries in town. Liesl got to try out her new "hoppy" (sling) which I think she might have liked a little better than the usual one because there are no adjustments to screw up and she is always right close to me and at eye level. She enjoyed all of the art there. There were a few dragons, elephants, huge glass sculptures and water sculptures, wine cork paintings, carvings etc. She had a little bit of a fit in the restaurant waiting for her food because of nap time and the length of time it took to get her food but nothing I couldn't handle by taking her for a "break" into a quieter area. She was able to even see a whale skeleton and ride on a carousel.  When we were on our way back to Dee's, some of us missed the bus and were separated from the group. The next bus was an hour away and also running late but we were saved by Dee and Clara. They were able to ride the bus to the cars and come back before the next bus even arrived YAY. Funny thing, Liesl and Grady hadn't had a nap yet. Liesl was in the hoppy reasonably calm. When we were walking around I asked her to put her head on my shoulder and told her that she should just rest and I wouldnt tell anyone and she was out instantly. I thought that was hilarious!

 Sunday, we all went to the orchard nearby using various transportation means. It was really fun there. They had all kinds of kids activities including a train cart pulled by a tractor, a fire engine ride, pumpkin carriage ride, gigantic sandbox FILLED with toy trucks, bounce house, blow up climbing thing, face painting, petting zoo and apple picking. ALL INCLUDED IN ADMISSION! Liesl had a really good time there as we all did. She really enjoyed  the petting zoo where she could pet the bunnies. She mostly likes to ask someone else to pet the animals for her while she watches which is pretty funny to me. She did very well with climbing the blow up kid climbing wall and she loved the pumpkin carriage ride and face painting. She was completely out the whole way home to Shelby.

 This weekend we are going to try and go to some Mom to Mom sales to get ready for the winter as she doesn't have a winter jacket and all of her clothes are getting too small. A couple days ago she and Oma picked up the Flower Girl Dress from the bridal salon and she tried it on. She absolutely loved being a princess in it but she threw a tantrum when Oma took it off. The girls there gave her a little goody bag with some lip gloss and other things to help her calm down. She is a little princess who loves her dresses. She has a huge vocab now, probably over a couple hundred words. When you say a word to her she loves to use it and repeat it and she is repeating sentences I have no idea where she got them. We are working on her colors, numbers, animals and letters with flash cards and she is having a great time with that. Potty training is getting back into swing and we are always working on the naptime...because no naptime minimizes the dreaded tantrums. Looking forward to some sailing time with Oma and Grandad this weekend.

Let's play catch up again

Last week, mom invited a few of our girlfriends over for breakfast before we were going to Arts and Apples. Well we never made it to Arts and Apples but we did a lot of girl talk and had breakfast and lunch at our house. It was very nice to have people over. Our house is very comfortable for entertaining. Liesl played with her barbies all morning and showed off all of her plastic animals to the girls. We caught up with each other on vacations and such and shared pictures. Liesl is in to this thing with posing all of her Barbies one certain way and then mimicking them, I managed to get a picture of her lining all of her Barbies on thier bellies and then she laid next to them. very funny. She got an easel from Aunt Melisa and uncle Scott that is very cool and played with that all Sunday and was loving it. Thank you very much Melisa and Scott for the wonderful gift.

Friday night I met aunt Gloria, and the Omas at Mom's house. We were doing some last minute prepping for Melisa's shower. Liesl was quite ready for bed by the time I got there so we managed to get a few hours of decorating in while she napped. It looked quite cute with the tulle bows on the chair backs and the rose garland in the light fixtures along with mom's beautiful china on the tables. We had loads of fun making Melisa paper dollies that Liesl might play with if she doesnt decide to rip them to shreds like usual. I dont know what she has against paper.

Saturday we had a very nice day at the shower.Liesl had a nice time drinking tea, eating Liesl sized tea sandwiches and biting the heads off of swan creampuffs (Thank you Kimmee :P).  Liesl got to play with Ota and Opa and all of the other guys there and got to run around in her pretty dress and be doted upon. She was quite well behaved for the amount of sleep she didn't have again that day. She was very helpful to Aunt Melisa with opening her gifts and cleaning up the wrapping paper. When the party started to die down, she was the entertainment for all of us, posing and prancing around the room. She kept letting go of the balloons in the family room and wanted me to get them, so I pushed her up over my head by her thighs and she grabbed it. What she was having the most fun with were Melisa's shoes and a piece of tulle that we put on her head walking around in her pink spanky pants. She kept going like the energizer bunny without a nap until I dont want to tell you when. I was so happy when she finally laid her head down.

Sunday, we were supposed to go to the Renaissance festival with our friend Tamara and her son Vince but Liesl slept in until after they had left so we passed on that. It was a little disappointing but would have been more complicated than we were ready for yesterday. We decided to take Liesl to the Farm Center to visit the animals and have a picnic. The horses were out in the pasture and we were able to go out there and get very close to them. Liesl enjoyed that very much as they are a little elusive at times. After we left...we were hoping to wear "little girl" out so we took her to Blake's Orchard to run around and pick apples. She loved when we lifted her over our heads and let her pick the apples up high. It was a lot of fun out there but still took most of the trip home for her to fall asleep with assistance. .

Animal Fun

 This week Liesl has visited the Apple Orchard and Petting farm and the Stoney Creek Nature Center. She loves her animals and is happy to get back into a routine with Oma. Her vocabulary as usual is expanding exponentially each day and we all wonder where she gets some things from. her latest are:

"I dont know"
"I cant do it"
and
                                                 "I love (add anything here)"

Today she told Oma she has to go potty while at the Nature Center so got her first experience on the big potty with Oma holding her of course. When she got off, the auto flusher scared her.