Easter

This year for Easter we had grandma (buni Gaby) and grandpa (bunicu Dodo) Lengyel at our home. It was wonderful! They arrived at the end of March and by the time April came we were ready with the the menu for the most delicious traditional Romanian dishes that I grew up with. Not only were the appetizers and the main course finger licking good but also the deserts were amazing. Fresh flowers and beautiful painted eggs added to the beauty of the table on Easter morning. The children enjoyed the Easter egg hunt with daddy, buni Gaby and bunicu Dodo after church in our own back yard. Their baskets were full of chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnies within minutes and it did not take long for them to start eating them. That evening we also got to Skype and wish Happy Easter to the rest of my family in Spain. It sure was a special Easter that brought back many memories. Even better I was able to see the joy in my childrens eyes and add that to the wonderful memories that I will cherish forever.

Nature Center

We love having the nature center just few minutes away from our house. It's always such a fun place to go and visit/play when the weather does not allow us to play outside. Here are some more pics taken in the spring.

Sweet as honey

   We all just melt after sweet little Michael. We also keep saying that we could eat him up for lunch!

Preschool lessons

Two of my favorite lessons that I have taught this spring have been dinosaurs and colors.  Everyone learned new things and had lot's of fun.

Arrival to 9:30 Welcome and Gather

Sharing time

Letter Q and number 3

9:45 – Story/ Lesson time

All about dinosaurs. What was the biggest dinosaur? What was the smallest?(practice page) What did dinosaurs eat?

Book : Count-A-Saurus by Nancy Blumenthal

10:00-Activities

Crackled Eggs

Hard boiled eggs get rolled on a paper towel, cracking the shells but not crushing them. Then they get placed in some water that has been mixed with food coloring. After the eggs have soaked for a while, the children will remove the shells and notice the tie-dye look on the egg. We will discuss that dinosaurs hatched from eggs but they were a lot bigger than these .

Digging for bones
Mix some sand, cornstarch, uncooked rice, in a bowl. Put some slightly broken noodles which will represent the bones into the bowl. Have the children dig through the sand and find the bones.

10: 20 -Snack

10:30 – Craft :Dinosaur Skeleton

Colors

Sharing time

Letter V and number 8

9:45 – Story/ Lesson time

All about colors. Primary colors are red, blue, yellow.
Secondary colors are made by mixing primary colors.
Secondary colors are purple, green, and orange.

Book : Eric Carle's paintings

10:00-Activities

Color mixing on paper

Science

Colored Jars
Collect five large clear jars. Fill 3 with red water, 1 with yellow water, and 1 with blue water. Show children the 3 red jars. Discuss the color red. Show them the yellow jar. Add yellow to red. What happens? Add blue water to other red jar. What happens? Discuss color mixing

10: 20 -Snack

10:30 – Craft

Modern Art Mazes

    Need: paint, paper, marbles, boxes or pie tins, spoons

Pour paint onto plates. Place a sheet of paper in each box. Ask children to dip the marbles into the paint, spoon them out, and gently drop them onto the paper. By moving the boxes children can create maze-like designs.

 10:55 - Singing time

Finding Colors
Oh, can you find the color blue,
The color blue, the color blue?
Oh, can you find the color blue,
Somewhere in this room?

I See Blue
I see blue, I see blue.
Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
I see a blue...(take turns with all the colors)

Chess tournaments

Jasmine participated in quite a few chess tournaments this spring. She has done an amazing job in every one of them and received a medal each time. This fall she will continue to be part of the math and chess club at her school. We are very excited because Andrew will join Jasmine in the chess competitions in his first year in school.

Everyone is busy during break time:)

Hello again!

It's been so long since I blogged I don't even know what to post first. I took some time to look through my previous posts so I can try to remember the series of events that happened this year in our lives. I have so many things to post. I hope I can update most everything :)My dates will be close but not as accurate as I would like them to be for our family journal. With that said let the new posts fill this blog. Most of them will be highlights due to time restrains. I sure have missed writing and posting our little adventures.

Martisor-1st of March

Mărţişor is the traditional celebration of the beginning of the spring in Romania on the 1st of March. Men offer women a small decorative object called Mărţişor consisting of a jewel or symbolizing a flower, an animal, insect, etc... tied to a red and white string. This is a symbol of the coming spring, which the woman wears pinned to her blouse on that day, and up to two weeks after. I also remember boys offering martisoare to girls and kids offering martisoare to their teachers. It is a fun day in my country. I have not worn one in almost 13 years so this year I changed that. With the help of my children we made plenty of martisoare for us and our friends. We used clay to make simple designs and when they were dried we painted them with acrylic paint. They turned out very cute and I mailed some out to my friends but unfortunately I didn't package them well enough and many of our friends received them broken. Also, with Michael getting sick in February lot's of Martisore did not get mailed and are still sitting on my desk. I will definitely do better next year. So, if you are one of my friends and would like to wear a Martisor next March please leave a comment and I will send you one.

Happy birthday sweetheart

At the end of February we celebrated the third and last birthday that month for my honey. He is the best husband and father ! We love Jeremy with all our hearts and we are so grateful that he is always here for us. La multi ani iubi you are the BEST!!!

Valentine's day

Our Valentine's Day was filled with all things sweet and lovely!

Parties

Roses

Valentine's decor

Our sweet children/Iubirile noastre

Love and Kisses to all :)

Prince Michael is 1 year old!

Our sweet baby turned one on the 6th of February. Why does time fly so fast?! Every time our children get a year older I feel the need to reminisce about the day they were born. I can close my eyes and vividly remember the first time I held Michael in the hospital. His smell, tiny feet, cute little nose, perfect mouth, etc... Oh, how I love this boy!!!I could eat him up!!!

I love the way he hugs me when I pick him up and how he gives me kisses when I don't expect them. There are so many things I love about our sweet angel but I am not the only one who can't get enough of Michael. The older children love him to pieces also and they can never stop kissing him to the point that he will struggle and scream just to get away from so many kisses. Even though he does not like to be kissed to death by Jasmine and Andrew he sure enjoys following them around and playing with them in the toy room. He copies their every move. I know he adores them just as much they adore him.

Michael loves to play with balls. It really doesn't matter what shape and size they are as long as he can kick them and throw them. You should see this boy kick a ball! Such a tiny frame having such strength and speed with the balls; very impressive. Who knows; maybe a soccer star in the making.

So, for his birthday I made him a soccer ball cake just for him and he loved it. He received several presents among them, there was a ball pit with 120 small plastic balls plus his own small soccer ball. After opening the soccer ball he did not want to open anything else because he was so preoccupied with kicking the ball.

Michael says words in both of our languages (English and Romanian). Here are a few of them: ball, mama, tata( father), daddy, dodo(grandpa), papa(food),tai tai (bye bye)plus lots of other words that are not in Romanian nor English. He loves to talk and uses his finger to point at things he wants.

His stats at his 1 year old well checkup were 21 pounds and 32 inches tall.

We love Michael with all our heart! He is our little ball of energy and we are so grateful Heavenly Father send him to us.