Wordless Wednesday: Bedtime Gymnastics

Bye Bye Olympics!

I let Kate stay up a little late tonight to watch some of the Olympics closing ceremony. She asked me, "are we gonna cry, Mommy?" We didn't, but we definitely were sad to say bye-bye to the London games. It's been a fun two weeks.

We kicked off the fun with our party for the opening ceremonies (pre-party post here). Matt was out of town, but we had a fun, girly night with Nancy and Becca, eating British food and doing Olympic crafts.

The girls dressed in their gymnastics leotards,

 Had a little tea party,

 And did some 'nastics on the couch.

 We did some Olympic rings art using paint and styrofoam cups.

And we made Olympic torches, which the girls decided made better weapons than symbols of spirit and unity. Kate continues to call it "my fire."

 Kate enjoyed the ring art so much, we were doing it again in our pajamas the following morning,

 and we started a mantle display with the art we'd created in just the first 14 hours after the opening ceremonies!

Over the course of the past two weeks, we've added a lot of coloring pages of flags, runners, gymnasts, footballers, and more, and Kate is sporting a very blingy gold medal, which she "wins" over and over again by standing up on a platform (her ring-toss base), hearing me sing the Olympic anthem (which I never remember, and usually do "Pomp and Circumstance" or the Star Wars theme instead) and give her the medal and a flower. 

We've had a great time watching gymnastics, swimming, beach volleyball, track, and "race walking." Kate has learned that some people are born without feet (the South African "blade runner"), and that all the different countries have different flags and anthems. It's been a lot of fun. It's hard to believe that when the winter Olympics come around, Kate will be turning five (and Claire will be two) and the next time we have summer Olympics, Kate will be SEVEN, Claire will be pushing five, and we'll probably have another toddler running around here! 

Go world!

Let the Games Begin!

In about an hour, we'll be watching the opening ceremonies for the 2012 London Olympic Games—and having an Olympic party! 

I admit, it was inspired not by the games themselves, but a walk through the grocery's international aisle, where I spotted the British food section, full of strange porridges and puddings, and thought, "who buys this stuff? Wait! I should buy this stuff and have a British party for the start of the London games!"

So that's what we're doing. I've been collecting food and activity ideas on Pinterest (see my Olympics board), and tonight's the night!

We're having bangers and mash for dinner (that's sausage and mashed potatoes) and these lemon-berry trifles for dessert!

And for opening ceremony-watching snacks: tea and some British snacks from the international food aisle. "Wine gums" and "Digestives," AKA "chocolate biscuits" or in American, cookies.

And for the kiddos, several Olympic crafts and coloring pages!

As Bryan Williams (or, "Brian Woman" as Kate says) just said, "the Olympics are the last television event that brings whole families together to watch." Indeed, and we're very excited! Kate has been obsessed with gymnastics since she started taking classes in January, and I've been looking forward all year to watching the Olympic gymnasts with her!

What Olympic events do you like to watch?

Bits and Pieces

A few thoughts, pictures, etc. for the week:

Derby Day

As a native Louisvillian, I love Derby. I've tried several times since leaving home to seduce new neighbors into loving it as much as I do with fun parties. The most successful was my senior year of college at Furman, where I first tried my now-famous jalapeno cheese grits. The least successful, arguably, was two years ago when the great Nashville flood occurred on Derby Day, and one by one, our party guests called to say they were flooded in and could not make it!

A month or so ago, I saw a poster for the Juleps & Jockeys event at Carnton Plantation in Franklin, and decided that's what we needed to do this year. So Matt and I got dolled up and enjoyed great hors d'ouevres, juleps, and the big race in style.

Time Flies

Not wanting to lug the big camera to the Derby event, I broke out the little camera, which had not been used in months. On it was this video of Kate, taken seven months ago, on October 2, 2011 (about a month before Claire was born).

It's amazing how much more "babyish" her voice and face seem, though it was not so long ago. (And yet I recall butting heads with her in some very teenager-ish altercations with her during this time period!)

Stuff Kate Likes

Gymnastics has definitely usurped Sesame Street as Kate's current obsession. Rather than begging to watch "AbbyElmo" all the time on the computer, she wants to watch gymnastics videos on YouTube. We all enjoy going to to her "'nastics" class on Thursday evenings.

Here she is doing the bear walk across the even parallel bars...

 And playing Memory before bed every night. I admit I love it too (except when she realizes it's our last game of the evening and she suddenly "forgets" which order we were taking our turns in and pulls other shenanigans to prolong the game).

Beachward Ho!

We are going on vacation soon, and to enhance the anticipation for Kate (and help her to learn to count backwards!) I created this fun beach countdown garland for our mantle. Each day, we take something down  and count the days remaining until our trip.

We have been looking forward to this vacation for months. With such a busy spring, we just can't wait to relax and play together as a family. I keep saying I don't care if it rains the whole time, I just want to take it easy in our beachfront condo! We're going to have a great time.

Life on the Go

Life has been insanely busy lately, which explains why my first post in over a week is to share a few cell phone pics while pumping at work. Our weeks (Monday through Thursday) have been simply insane ever since I went back to work about six weeks ago. I'm glad to be a working mom, but we've just been run ragged. I will upload pics from my nice camera soon, but these few I had on my cell from the past few weeks offer a glimpse into our day-to-day life right now.

MONDAY
The start of another week. I wake by 5:30, get showered, give Claire a dream feed, and go downstairs to get things ready for the day. I love that early morning time, especially if we remembered to set the coffee pot the night before! Once the kids are awake, it's off to the races, and we all get out the door by around 7:40. I've been thinking that since workplaces are so casual these days, "Casual Friday" really has no meaning any more, and we should implement "Dressy Monday" instead. I often dress up a little more on Mondays—partly because it's easy just to wear whatever I wore to church on Sunday, and partly it helps get me back in the professional mindset for my work week.

I saw a blog post from Kem Meyer, communications director at Granger Community Church, asking people how they would depict their work in one visual. I immediately drew this:

My work, both when I edited books and now editing Ministry Matters and Circuit Rider, is all about making information and ideas more accessible to church leaders for use in their ministry. The arrows on the left, heading into the funnel, symbolize making authors' writing clear and well-organized and aggregating the work of many writers. The work is then distributed in print and/or online to reach many church leaders and advance the work of the church.

TUESDAY
Matt has been taking a pastoral care class on Tuesday nights this year, so every Tuesday afternoon, we "trade off" the kids at my office so that he can get on to his class and I can take them home. Usually I meet them in the parking lot, but sometimes Kate wants to come in to my office to color with my highlighters, eat my leftover lunch, spin around in my chair, and watch Abby Elmo on my computer. With all but that last activity, I can manage to get a little more work done before heading home with my girls.

Plus, I love having a growing collection of Kate-art on my wall.

WEDNESDAY

Just kidding. Not Chicken McNuggets. Amazingly, all our running around does not typically result in junk-foody meals. These are actually pictures Kate took with my camera of her play McDonald's food our dear church secretary gave her. Wednesday night is church night, and I meet Matt and the girls at church for dinner, a book study, and choir.

THURSDAY
Kate has gymnastics on Thursday evenings. She still gets anxious during the opening warm up, but gets really into it by the time they break into groups for various activities. My action pics never turn out that good, but here's Kate sitting patiently on the mat until it was her turn to do the balance beam again. She's done so great with the rings and uneven parallel bars—she loves hanging and flipping. I can't wait until the Olympics this summer. She will love watching the gymnastics on TV!

Matt and I love going to "'nastics" too and watching Kate play. (Matt is sad when he has a Thursday night meeting and has to miss it.) It's another "busy" thing, but definitely one of our favorites.

By the weekend, we are more than ready to chillax and have fun. Speaking of fun, I have to share this cool knit hat I saw in Parents magazine. Kate would look just like Matt if she wore that!

I'm sooo glad it's Friday again. Time to relax.

(Actually, this pic Kate took of me toward the beginning of maternity leave, back when I actually was relaxed most of the time!)

It's a very busy season of life, but it will be over soon enough and I don't want to wish away a moment of my girls being small. They'll still be small this summer, right? :0)