Happy Valentine's Day!

The other day I was trying to get a good picture of the girls together to send out to family and friends for Valentine's Day. I'm so thankful for digital cameras; I think I took about 50 pictures, but at least we ended up with a few that look okay. Our most successful shot was with Anna sitting on Kate's lap, so that Kate would stay still :)

Now that Anna has a pretty good concept of holidays as well as giving, she is participating more in activities like making valentine's cards. This is exciting for her (and me), however, it means that it takes us a LONG time to make and write in cards for all of the people she thinks she should give one to. They were almost all done on time ... she just needed to write in Matt's and Kate's cards yesterday morning before breakfast :)

Last week was a COLD week here in Wisconsin, with highs in the single digits - yuck! Then on Sunday and Monday we got a brief taste of spring with some sunny warm days. I think yesterday the temperature was in the upper 40s - hooray! Today it's windy and cold again, but at least some of the snow melted these past few days. Yesterday Anna had a lot of questions about when spring was coming; I think she actually said at one point "Since we can see some of the grass now, that means that spring is almost here!" If only that were true!

So we're still doing lots of indoor activities. Playdates, trips to the Children's Museum, playgroups, Bible Study, etc. Last week Anna started up her second semester of Kindermusik, and Kate went to her first class. Anna still loves it, of course. She was so excited about the new music, the new game she got, and the new instrument (resonator bars). Kate was really fun to watch during her first class. She seemed pretty confused as soon as Anna left to go to the room across the hall, but then when she realized that this class was just for me and her, she got the biggest smile across her face. She's already been listening to the CDs from this curriculum for several weeks and brightens up whenever she recognizes one of the songs during class. This kid also has a pretty strong love of anything musical :)

Sunday Anna started up another round of swimming lessons. Kate was a bit bummed while we were at the pool because she didn't get to go in the water. Unfortunately, she won't be old enough for anything other than the "water adjustment" class until she's 3. Kate certainly doesn't need another round of "water adjustment".

And finally, one of the indoor activities we've started recently is "mattress surfing". Somehow Matt ran across this activity a few weeks back and thought it might be fun. The basic idea is that a kid holds onto a mattress as it slides down a flight of stairs. I wasn't quite sure of how it would work, but Matt coached Anna through her first few trips down a small part of the stairs until she was good enough to do the whole flight. She loves it. Plus, constantly running up the stairs to go again is a great way for her to burn off energy. We haven't had a lot of success uploading videos to blogger, but I'm going to try to get this one posted. Keep trying back to check if it doesn't seem to be working the first time you look at this post.



A few things we've learned from our mattress surfing experiences ... Kate isn't quite old enough to understand that you're supposed to hold on tight (she hasn't been injured, but we just don't trust her to do the whole flight) ... Adults need to use a longer mattress (Matt tried and got some pretty wicked carpet burns on his knees.)