Swimming Lessons

Tonight, Nate took Natalie to her first official night of swimming lessons. It was a basic introduction to getting the children comfortable with the water. Nate is hoping that they do a little more Wednesday night. It was a good bonding evening for Nate and Natalie though. Nate picked up Natalie from the boys' house, and Natalie was very excited about her Daddy picking her up. She told the boys exactly what was going to happen - "My Daddy is going to come get me and take me to swimming lessons." She was very excited about her special evening with her Daddy.

We had a great weekend! Friday night, we had a nice family night - hair cuts, dinner, and an outing to get Natalie her booster seat for the truck. Saturday, we went to the zoo with some of our friends. Sunday, after church, Nate and Natalie ran errands. After Natalie's nap, we had some other friends over for the evening.

On a separate note, Natalie is enjoying drawing pictures of people. I love watching her do this! Seeing her drawings of people's heads, legs, arms, ears, and hair is awesome. I need to save a copy of one of these. She was also having fun writing names today. How neat to watch this process!

Natalie's Spring Break

We had a week at home so I thought this might be a good week to work on potty training. I've heard such good success stories from people in the neighborhood about just making the switch to underwear. Well...we tried it for about 3 and a half days with some successes. On Thursday after Natalie had woken up from her nap, I told her it was time to go potty and put on her underwear. She replied by telling me that she was not going to wear her underwear, and that she would not go in the potty. It was at that point that I thought we would try it later this summer.

Natalie, Nate, and I had fun with friends and family. We celebrated my brother Dave's birthday today since he was in town. It was a perfect day to fly a kite, and that is just what Nate and my nephew Zach did for at least an hour. Nate was quite proud of tying four reels of string together to get the kite 444 feet up into the sky.

While we were at my brother's home today, Natalie decided to redecorate their fireplace with a nice shade of blue crayon. It really irked me because I was about a minute away from moving the little girls onto the folding table being set up in the kitchen.

On the way home, Nate asked Natalie, Are you going to be good for Mommy this week? She replied, I'm not really sure about that. At least she was being honest. We will be eagerly looking forward to Nate's return home on Friday.

He is Risen!

Our family had a good Easter weekend. We tried very hard to impress upon Natalie the fact that Easter is not just about Easter egg hunts and candy. I do believe that she does have an understanding of the real reason that we celebrate Easter. Hearing her enthusiastically state that Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed! is awesome. I love the fact that she'll sing I Know that My Redeemer Lives with us. Along with this understanding came a fun Easter morning with her 3 cousins finding eggs and her Easter basket. All 4 children were great in church afterwards.

A silly tradition that our family has after our dinner is an egg cracking contest. Last year, Natalie was the winner. This year, the title transferred to her cousin Ella.

Today, was a day to wind down from the fun we had with our family. Natalie and I spent the day at home working on potty training. There were quite a few successes along with a handful of accidents. It will be wonderful if we have many more successes this week with fewer accidents. I know she'll get it...let's just hope I can keep up with the laundry. :)

Tonight, Natalie came out of her room with a new line a little bit after I had put her to bed. She claimed that her room was spooky and scary. We had a short discussion about this and checked out what she thought was scary with the light on. I hope that this is the end of that stalling technique. We'll see...

Egg Hunts

As I was reading the last post, I really miss the warmer weather. Tonight, we went to the park so Natalie could race for Easter eggs. It was much different from last year in terms of the weather. This year, I dressed Natalie in thermal underwear, a long sleeve tee, a turtleneck, a sweatshirt, and her warmest winter jacket. Even with all that clothing, she did get cold after an hour of being outdoors. I think I may have had more fun at the Easter egg hunt than she did. :)