Daddy's Gone . . . but Grandma's Here!
Daddy was out of town this week, but the entourage had the happy distraction of Grandma visiting which made things a bit smoother. It's always fun for them to have a new grown up around to do things like read lots of books and build super tall towers.

The evening before Daddy left we decided to have a "Daddy Date" that I got to go to as well. We took a picnic to the park, then went out for ice cream. Perhaps the biggest excitement of the evening was getting to witness some fascinating weather. We could actually see and hear the rain coming toward us from across a baseball field! It's a good thing we had the warning too, because it turned out to be a hail shower. The girls got to watch the hail bouncing around and look at one up close. Fortunately, it didn't stick around for long and we got to keep playing outside for a bit.

Daddy's teaching the entourage to do the monkey bars.

I managed to catch them mid-dandelion blow.

Playdate to Pizza
Monday turned out to be a very social day for the entourage and I. In the morning we were invited to crash a Mom's Club playdate that Miss N was hosting next door. It involved playing in LA's bounce house and getting to eat one of Miss N's practice cakes (she's taking a cake decorating class and a had a final that night). Needless to say, a great time was had by all. Then Grandma arrived in the afternoon to find three very excited little girls waiting for her in the front yard. To top off the day that evening most of our neighborhood friends gathered in our backyard for pizza and play until bedtime. Two other families had grandparents visiting this week too, so it was quite the gathering!

All the little ladies created a pizza eating train.

Library Day
We decided to go to storytime at our little branch library again this week, since it was a more Grandma friendly event. And, of course, we got to see some of our neighborhood friends too. All three girls made paper caterpillars as the storytime craft project. We came home with these books this week:
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
From Seed to Plant
The Foot Book
Green as a Bean
The Neighborhood Mother Goose
Aesop's Fables (renewed)

Gardening
Plants and gardening proved to be the theme of the week. Grandma arrived with a collection of pinecones to examine as well as an assortment of vegetable and flower seeds. She helped the entourage put together baggies with damp paper towels and a variety of the seeds, so they can watch how different plants germinate (at this writing a few of Goose's are actually starting to sprout). We found a book about the life cycle of plants at the library. I happened across a bunch of veggie themed worksheets that the girls enjoyed working on. Grandma brought a self-watering planter we had hoped to get set up, but it leaked too much (maybe if Grandma can fix the leak we can try again later). We actually did plant a bunch of lettuce and radish seeds in a couple of berry containers to see if we can succeed in growing microgreens (I'm keeping my fingers crossed--I have something of a black thumb and even managed to kill a cactus once).

Easter Eggstravaganza
Our church had it's big Easter party this Wednesday. We had a bit of rough start in getting the entourage involved in activities, but once they got into the egg hunt things went smoother from there. It was a drop-in egg hunt for preschoolers, and  the entourage wasn't aggresive and/or fast enough to snag the eggs as soon as they hit the ground. Once the initial crowd cleared out, we had a lot of fun though. Perhaps more exciting than even the candy in the eggs was that some of the "eggs" were actually plastic cupcakes that you could take the tops off of. I think about half a dozen of these have joined the pretend food collection in the kitchen. (As a result, Goose uttered her first two word phrase: "My cupcake!") The party also involved several inflatable activities; the bounce house and the huge slide were favorites. I think Monkey and Bug went down the slide at least a dozen times each. Goose mostly spent most of this time sqatting on the ground getting eggs in and out of her basket. We got to meet live chickens and a bunny to meet and do a craft. The Easter Bunny was also there. The entourage didn't want take pictures with her, but we observed from a distance. Bug noted with excitement that it wasn't a real big bunny--it was just a person in a costume!

Worksheets
I happened across a bunch of veggie themed worksheets this week that Monkey and Bug were pretty excited about (mostly matching and counting). The only difficulty with saving worksheets as records of jobs well done is that the finished projects usually look like the've been done incorrectly. They haven't been; Monkey and Bug just like to go above and beyond. For example, one of the sheets this time instructed them to circle the veggie in the row that matched the one in the column on the right. They did this perfectly, then they informed me that they wanted to practice drawing circles and circled every veggie on the sheet. Little overachievers!

At some point this week I was working on the computer upstairs,
and Goose decided to grab several books, climb into the butterfly chair,
and snuggle in looking at books for 30 minutes or so.