Adventures of Evie

  Today we decided to go to the aquarium! I asked Evie earlier in the week if she wanted to do the aquarium or the museum and she really wanted to do the aquarium so off we went! We had a lot of fun looking at the fish and there is a play area in the middle she enjoys playing and sliding on. After the aqauarium we got some lunch at Tom+Chee and then we headed back home to get ready to go to Nana's.  Her cousin Katelyn was there and she was super excited to get to spend the evening with "KK" too because she loves to sing and dance with her. Mama got a much needed night off and I also got lots of videos and photos from Nana of how much fun the girls had together. It was a really nice evening and after we picked her up we all went home and blew some horns and popped some poppers and then settled in for bed. Evie didn't get to see the ball drop but she had a lot of fun ringing in the new year anyway!

  Today we had a nice chill day. We played games. We slept in. We had extra snuggles and watched TV. In the afternoon we went to IKEA just to check things out. I'm on the lookout for a new bed for Evie that is raised from the floor so we have some extra storage in her room. We didn't buy anything but we had fun looking around. We also didn't eat there which Evie was very disappointed about but we did bring home some meatballs for later! Our vacation is coming to an end and I'm both sad for it to be ending and also ready to get back to work. We have some fun things planned for tomorrow and Evie is really excited about spending the new year with her nana! :)

  We did it! We finished our new office space! This room was originally Evie's room and when we converted her playroom to her actual room this room was supposed to be the office. However, when COVID happened I ended up working from home unexpectedly and things fell through the cracks. Evie was suddenly home from daycare and then from there our whole world fell apart and it seemed like we couldn't keep our heads above water between tragedies. So it just ended up being a space that collected clutter and wasn't usable. Early last year I started the process of making half of it into an art corner for Evie but even that got derailed in the end. Now that I'm permanently at home and Evie is going to remain at home until the fall when school starts up it seemed like the perfect time to really buckle down and get it functional again. I'm amazed but happy that we managed to get it done over just about three days. We covered the desks with vinyl stick on wallpaper that I had f...

  Today was another busy day full of cleaning and organizing. We also ran around printing some new photos for the walls, picking up some more paint to finish up our desks, and grabbing a new shelf to bring the corners of my desks together. It was a dreary and cold day but we made the most of it. We also took some time to sing some karaoke and play some games!  This evening we headed up to Nana's for family dinner night and we played some more games with family and had a really relaxing evening. We brought Exploding Kittens which was new and super fun to play with everyone. Overall it was a hectic but really nice day. 

  Monday is here again and we have officially started our office renovation today. We got a few things done on the weekend, but we hit it full force today. We started the day with breakfast and some games and then after we were finished we pulled all the things out of our office and started finishing up painting, desk covering, installing drawers and shelves, and reorganizing everything. It's about 60% completed as of today and we will hopefully have it all together by Wednesday so we can take some time and relax but we'll see how it goes! Vacation week won't be much of a vacation for us but it's still going to be great to start the year off in a new, organized,and more functional space. 

  Well Christmas is officially over. It came without any snow and apparently no one bothered to tell the weather that it's even winter because it was warmer outside this weekend than it was inside. So we spent some time playing outside and I started painting and covering my desks so we can shift the office into a proper room and out of our loft. We had a REALLY good holiday this year and not even because we got spoiled with gifts. Even though Christmas day was a hectic mess of house jumping we got to spend all of it with people we care about and eating yummy food and Evie had TONS of fun. This week will be busy in other and lots less fun ways but it will be really nice to start the new year off re-organized and ready to roll. :) 

  It's Christmas Eve! It's also the official start of my vacation. Today Evie and I finished up our cocoa bombs. We make these every year for Christmas Eve. She usually gets a new pair of Chrismas jammies (which we skipped this year cause I forgot!), a book, and then we read the book, drink the cocoa and snuggle up in our jammies to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas before bed. This year we did things a little differently though. Evie has A LOT of Christmases to attend; six in fact, so this year we decided to make the bombs for Christmas morning and I let her open ALL her presents (except her Santa present) this morning. Since we have nothing to do today until we go to Nana's it seemed like a perfect day to make a huge mess of wrapping paper and play with all the toys she got from mama and Scott. She is at the age where she is really starting to love dolls so she got a large doll house, some accessories, and her very first 18" doll. I got her a Disney ILY one and s...

  It's Christmas Eve EVE! Today I had a really short work day and we decided to get a jump on the weekend and clean the house and relax. We spent the day painting our nails for the season and tidying up. Next week we are taking a break from preschool and I'm taking a break from work and we're going to create a new and hopefully more functional office space for both of us. When I originally set up my office it was meant to be temporary. Then I moved Evie's room to the larger room that was previously her play room in hopes of re-creating the office but since it all happened in a hurry it just never came together. So fingers crossed we will be able to get it all done and still have some fun! :) 

  Today we started the big job of cleaning out Evie's toy bins. We got everything in its proper place and in the process, we found a lot of her missing LOL dolls. So of course, after that happened all she wanted to do was play with them. This is a really easy activity for me to do while I'm working so I let her set them up and play with them for an hour or so.  Yesterday was an emotional day for me...in the evening I found out that my elderly neighbor had passed away. We hadn't seen a ton of her since the pandemic, but she was a super sweet woman and I'm going to really miss her. The day I moved in she brought me a flower and a letter that's still on my fridge about how she was looking forward to getting to know me and how she hoped I would love my new home. She also loved Evie so much and even planted a special flower bush in her yard to pick flowers from for Evie because she once said she loved their color. Evie also loved to pet her little dog through the fence, ...

  Today was another hodgepodge day. We started the day off with some worksheets that were originally from Space Week. It wasn't that long ago that we did these originally and I was pretty impressed with how much better she did with them this time. She is learning incredibly quickly and it's so fun to see how much she changes from week to week. We are starting to work on letter sounds as well and hopefully soon we'll do some small sight words. She already can recognize the words "zoo", "funny", and "up". So, we'll start working on some more short words like that and continue to read a lot. We are getting ready to move my office to set up a more functional permanent space for us to work in so today we moved some of her quiet corner items and there were some puzzles in the box she really wanted to do. So, I helped her put those together today as well. Still a pretty lowkey day. Tuesdays are typically family nights but since it's a holiday ...

  It's Christmas week...which feels insane! I can't believe it's already here. This week we are using up the last of the activities I planned for 2020 that we either didn't get around to or that we had extra sheets for. Next week I am on vacation, and I hope to get the first month of the year set up during that time, so I want to clear out all the stuff we haven't used yet.  Today we made a little farmers market out of beads, felt and fluff. Evie used to be super great about eating and then over the last year she's gone from very easy and adventurous to being SUPER picky. Recently she's starting to get back to trying new things and eating more variety and I love activities like this one where we can talk about food and where it comes from and why it's important to eat lots of different kinds. It was super easy for her to stuff and thread beads too so she could do it almost all by herself which she was really excited about. After we finished making all ...

  Today I had a day off, so we decided to have another museum day. Some of the other things to do around us still require reservations and while I understand and appreciate their dedication to safety, I do like that the museum has dropped that requirement which means we can go when we feel like it without having to plan it out in advance. We usually visit the children's part of the museum to play and learn and while we did do that today as well, we also did something special... The museum currently has a really cool special exhibit going on called The Science of Pixar. Every time we get in the elevator Evie talks about how much she wants to go see it and points out her favorite characters on the poster so today we finally did it.   ...and it was pretty cool! Evie got to meet Wall-E, Buzz, Dory, Edna, and Mike and Sully which was really cool and then we got to play with all sorts or rigs, lights, cameras, and computers to see how Pixar takes her favorite stories from ideas to m...

  Today was a hectic day for us and I didn't take a lot of photos. We spent the morning doing some letter review worksheets and then midday Evie got to come with me to my office and meet my boss! She was pretty excited to see where I work and also to see who I talk to on the phone. Lol and just a *little* disappointed to find out that Ryan, my boss, is not the same as Ryan from Ryan's World. After I picked up some lunch we came home and made some Christmas presents for people. We had to make a quick run to the store as well to get some things to finish wrapping things up.  It was a lot of driving but we also got a lot done! Only about one more week til Christmas! :)

  Today we decided to take a break from playing and review and do some crafting. Tomorrow we are going to have a little spa day so I decided to make some things to go along with that. The holes in these are large and the needles we used are plastic so it was pretty easy for Evie to make them with help. :) She also got to design the faces however she wanted to which she loved.  First, we made the sleep mask and then we started on the slippers. It got tricky for her to do the slippers since there are so many layers to go through so I had to complete the assembly on one of them, but she did really well helping out where she could! Everything turned out really cute! You can tell which shoe Evie did and which one I did BUT they both looked really cute at the end. They're really fuzzy inside too which is nice. It was super pretty out today so after we finished making our slippers we went to the park to play... I had her choose some books to donate today and we left them in the littl...

  Today was a frustrating day for us. In the morning our internet went out and since I work from home and a lot of the activities I use for Evie are pulled from my cloud that left our schedule really out of whack.  I wasn't able to work. I wasn't able to work out (although we did some stretching together instead!) and Evie was really sad about missing her half hour of screen time. We made another lego village and played for awhile and we got some things done around the house instead. We also attempted a nap! Then we headed up to Nana's house to eat pizza and decorate cookies... Evie had a ton of fun decorating and, of course, EATING the cookies and the frosting. We even got to make a little gingerbread Mario castle... It definitely wasn't the day we had planned but it was fun anyway. ;)

  We are heading into Christmas full speed right now and due to tons of overtime, the amount of added time we need to run simple errands, and super busy weekends our weekly activities have slowed down somewhat. We are also working on a new office/preschool space in our home which is taking up some of our already limited time. So this week in addition to reviewing letters and working on her counting we are just playing.  Evie has a TON of lego's and we spent some time today gathering up the boxes of them and putting all her little princess castles back together. We had a lot of fun playing make believe with them and taking the little lego princesses on adventures from Agrabah all the way to Arendelle.  It was a lowkey day and we definitely needed the downtime! :)

The cups were back again today! Since we learned about smell today Evie got to smell a bunch of different things and see if she could tell me what they were and also how they smelled (sweet, spicy, etc). I used cotton and paper to dab things on for the most part since I was worried about her inhaling spices. This was another fun learning experience as well since it helped me understand what scents and profiles she likes and which she doesn't. We also practiced more of her letters today. Then this evening we played a fun ocean cleanup game and she got to wear a snorkel mask and fish for trash which she loved. It wasn't a super busy day, but it was a pretty fun one! :)

  Today Evie learned about taste. She particularly loved today's activity because she got to snack. 😂 This is one we actually might repeat every so often too though because she was much more willing to try the things in this cup than she typically is when they are on her plate and that meant she discovered she really likes some of the things she's been avoiding. Essentially, I set up a line of little cups with one or two bites of food in them. Some of the foods were salty (like olives!), some sweet (candied cherries), some sour (lemons), and some of them were more earthy like beet chips that she has absolutely refused to eat in the past but popped into her mouth with a smile thinking it was a strawberry and ended up really loving. She was a good sport about trying everything but the candied cherry, but she did eat it (and really loved it too) and the only thing she really didn't like was the olives. But I made sure she ate that one in the middle of some things I already kn...

  Today Evie is learning about touch! We had a lot of fun with this one and I even set up a temporary table to do the activities on which she was super excited about. We started with these little touch cards. We bought these at Micheals but you could make them SUPER easily with swatches of different fabrics or material, glue, and cardboard. I dropped two of them into individual tissue boxes so she could touch them but not see them and then she had to guess if they were the same or different. I also made her a large "mystery box" to put her hands into and try to tell me what was inside. She really had a lot of fun telling me how the things in the box felt and what she thought they might be. She did try to peek a few times!! She was also super impressed with how well I was able to guess the things that SHE put into the box for me to guess. This activity was fun for her for a few hours so we didn't do our letter review today but we'll double up another day and make up fo...