S Week- Sports

We played several sports during S week, but the highlight for Trip was an envelope of sports pictures that he got in the mail from Noni. My mom had been cutting pictures out of the sports section of the newspaper for a while. Once she had a nice collection, she sent them to Trip. He had loved going through these pictures and is very serious when looking at each one. He identifies each sport and gets excited about them all.

S Week- Spaceship Lunch

Trip loves the "Space Adventures" Goldfish because they have special shapes. The stars, moon, and spaceships came in very handy for this lunch and he was excited to see them on his plate. The spaceship is just bread, hot dog, carrot, and olive. I used mini chocolate chips to make the S.

S Week- Spring Stained Glass

 This was a fun simple spring project. I cut up some tissue paper

and taped some contact paper to the table, sticky side up.

 Then, it was Trip's turn to stick tissue paper pieces to the contact paper.

It took a little work to get him to lay them flat instead of crumpling them up, but he got the idea.

He stuck on quite a few colorful pieces, then I filled in the rest and sandwiched our work with another layer of contact paper.

Next, it was time to trace some flowers.

Once I cut out the flowers, Trip had a great time taping them to the sliding glass door. He was very proud of his work and we are now enjoying some bright spring colors.

S Week- Sandcastles and Sandpaper

Trip had lots of fun helping me make part of this sandcastle lunch. He crushed the cookies for the sand using a bat,

and then a bottle.

He also helped mix the pudding.

Then, he ate all of the lunch except for the cookies and pudding! Not that I'm complaining, but it was funny!

Later, we tried to make a sandcastle out of the leftover cloud dough from our Excavating X's activity. It sort of worked, but we didn't have quite enough dough to make a good castle.

We also tried coloring on sandpaper with crayons. Trip wasn't too interested in it, however so it didn't last long.

He quickly turned over the sandpaper, colored the guys on the back, and moved on to something else.

S Week- Six Snails for Lunch

These six snails were a fun and easy lunch, of which Trip ate every bite (except for the celery leaf grass). The shells are tortilla roll-ups with cream cheese dip inside. Hot dogs, carrots, and some celery finished them off nicely. I realized afterwards that the eyes really should have been on the tentacles instead of on the heads, but oh well, that will be something to figure out next time.

S Week

With all our our craziness lately, S week got stretched out over a couple of weeks, with activities here and there whenever we had a chance to fit them in.

Since so many fun words start with S, Trip has enjoyed several special lunches, including a sandcastle,

six snails,

and a spaceship among the stars.

We did a simple spring stained glass craft.

Sports were of course a big part of S week. We played many different ones, both inside and outside. Trip also got a envelope from Noni filled with sports pictures that she had cut out of the newspaper. That was a big hit!

Thanks to Bapa and Granny, Trip now has a superhero cape and mask. He had lots of fun playing superhero, having me fly him around the house, and coming "to the rescue."

Trip also enjoyed playing a game he invented the last time Noni was here, which is coloring numbers in Mommy's sudoku book. He especially likes this game when one of us pretends to be upset that he colored the numbers.

Easter Recap

Easter was extra special this year since Trip was actually excited about it and understood more about what we were doing and celebrating. As pastors of a small church, though, Easter is also a crazy time.

We decided to remodel the foyer of our church the week before Easter, which was a crazy but worthwhile endeavor. With the help of many people, we sanded and re-stained the wainscoting, painted the walls (half of them twice because our paint had not been mixed properly at the store and was darker at the bottom of the can), and built a coffee bar/information table. The transformation was really spectacular and it's very refreshing to walk into a warm contemporary space rather than a very outdated one.

Another group of volunteers helped us stuff a thousand plastic eggs with candy and put on our second annual Easter egg hunt for the kids in our community. We had a great turnout and will probably have to double the number of eggs we do next year. Last year, Trip didn't care about finding eggs, but this year, he was much more interested.

He was also very determined to get to the picnic tables and see what was in those eggs.

With so many projects going on, I was thankful that we had done some fun Easter activities before things got crazy. Trip did enjoy a couple of Easter egg baths. One with just some plastic eggs

and the other with some glowing eggs. With a little work, a glow bracelet will fit inside a medium/large plastic egg and makes for a fun bath toy or nighttime egg hunt.

Trip also enjoyed lots of surprises from our extended family, including a large egg filled with goodies that his Aunt T sent him in the mail.