Unseasonably warm winter

Somehow, Kansas City still has yet to receive 1 inch of snow this year! With average January temps in the 40s and 50s,  not teens or 20s like usual, Joseph and I have been spending lots of time outside enjoying the great weather. We even made it to the zoo a few times... in January! Yesterday was no exception, as we've had highs in the low 60s all week. Bizarre!

Joseph made a beeline for the train station as soon as we got into the zoo. Of course, we had to wait a bit for it to arrive, and Joseph knew right where to wait. As if I could forget, he'd sign train repeatedly while watching down the tracks for it to appear.

After about 10 minutes, it arrived, and someone was thrilled! It's so nice to be able to go to the zoo during the weekdays off-season, as it's rather empty, and the rides never have lines. Joseph is getting spoiled by having lots of options in picking where we can sit.

The train runs by an outdoor bird exhibit, then past llamas and camels before entering the kangaroo area. The kangaroos were hopping around, and Joseph had fun watching them and pointing them out.

After we returned to the station, I asked Joseph what animals he wanted to go see, assuming he'd say Dumbo. Nope, apparently, he really only wanted to see birds and hippos. Umm, ok. We've only seen the hippos once at the zoo before, so not quite sure why he picked them, but we boarded the tram to Africa to try and check out the hippos!

On the way, the tram passes by the elephant pen, and all of the elephants were out. Of course, once he saw them, Joseph wanted to go see "more Dumbo" so we made sure to stop by before we were done.

Just before the hippo exhibit, Joseph discovered this stone hippo at the entrance to the boat ride. He was so excited! We spent a few minutes playing with the stone hippo before I could convince him to see if we could get a view of the real thing.

Boy was I glad we got there when we did. So was Joseph!

 Why, because both hippos decided it was time to get out of the water and take a stroll over to their ramp back to their housing area while we were standing there. I've never seen the hippos get out of the water before, so it was actually rather exciting. Joseph loved it!

We returned to the main part of the zoo after seeing the elephants, took a handful of rides on the carousel, checked out the snakes, deer and polar bear, before it was definitely time to head home for naptime.

I definitely miss the snow and being able to take Joseph out playing in it, but it is nice to be able to get out of the house and go to playgrounds, parks and do things we've never done in the middle of winter before!

Christmas week in Florida

It seems like ages ago, but just a few weeks ago we were able to get away for a few days to my parents' new condo in Destin, Florida. We flew down super early on Tuesday morning after Christmas and met up my with my parents, sisters and brother-in-law who were all there already. 

It took about two seconds after walking in the front door for Joseph to notice the Christmas train set... the new addition to the "under the tree" fun! It was a really cute remoted controlled train with lots of interactive things, like lights that would turn on when the train passed, songs playing at the train station, etc.

Joseph needed Grandpa to show him how it worked for a few minutes before he had it all figured out. During most of the trip, we could find Joseph hanging out in this corner, trying to convince everyone to play with him!

Such a big kid! 

We also had Christmas with my family, so Joseph opened up a bunch of new gifts. Jen gave him this great magnet set with posts and balls, Ashley and Mikael gave him his first Legos set and train puzzles, and Grandpa and Grandma (whom he now refers to as Mimi and Papa) gave him a Cars 2 remote control car set, Thomas PJs, and a Thomas phone, among other things.

After opening gifts, we headed down to the beach to play in the sand for a bit. The weather was beautiful but a little chilly, so we didn't stay down for too long.

Uncle Mikael helped Joseph build sand castles. After watching Mikael fill buckets and dump them over, Joseph decided to give it a try. Except his aim was a little off, and he dumped the whole bucket right down his sweater!

It definitely caught him off-guard, but Mikael brushed him off and got him going again.

Pretty soon Joseph was an old pro at scooping sand with his shovel and filling the little buckets and cups we had lying around.

After dinner and bathtime, Joseph stole Grandpa's hat and headed over to the trains to sneak in a few more minutes of playtime. We caught him in the act looking too cute!

The next day we spent some time shopping at the after Christmas sales at the outlet mall, and Grandpa, Grandma and Jen took Joseph to the mall to ride a train that drives around the stores. He had ridden the train when we were last down in April, but immediately freaked out and hated the experience. This time, he loved it! We met up with them inside Bass Pro Shops, where Joseph couldn't get enough of the huge fish in the aquarium.

We had a great lunch at Dewey Destin's on the bay where Joseph got to watch hundreds of seagulls fight for food. We spent the rest of the day hanging out back by the condo, letting Joseph nap and play with all of his new toys.

Thursday was the last day with everyone as a group, so we took advantage of another beautiful day and headed over to The Track, a small arcade, amusement and mini-golf park. Joseph made sure to ride on the train with Daddy and Grandpa.

I promise that every time the train stopped, he'd ask for more, even though he doesn't look like he's enjoying it much in the pictures. It's really hard to get this kid to smile while he's taking everything in!

 After a quick trip on the swings by himself, he dragged Grandpa over to the little carousel for a ride. Again, no smiles caught on camera, but he definitely seemed to enjoy it!

This time he was big enough to fly on the airplanes by himself as well! Of course, he's so little it was really hard to get a good shot of him, as most of the time you'd just see the very top of his head sticking out above the plane.

 The person working the ride dipped the planes down at one point, so we could at least see him and that once again, he was calm and just taking it all in.

We then headed over to the mini-golf course, where Joseph quickly figured out the object of the game was to have the balls end up in the hole. So he became our impartial helper! We realized that there wasn't going to be any point in even trying to keep score, as Joseph would chase down each ball as it was hit, pick it up and drop it in the hole.

 Approaching carefully from the side - check out the determination on his face!

After a few holes, he figured out that it would be fun to actually hit the ball before running to grab it. Uncle Mikael was great at showing him the perfect technique.

This hole had a little hidden ramp that you were supposed to hit the ball down, which would take the ball to another playing green slightly below. Joseph was great at making sure everyone's ball made it safely down the ramp.

At the next hole, we filled his pockets (and overalls) with all of the balls. He decided the best way to shake them loose would be to jump, even though he still hadn't mastered jumping yet.

 Watching him shake, shimmy and squirm to get ball after ball to fall out of his pants legs was too funny!

Friday we took my mom and dad to the airport, while Ashley and Mikael got on the road to head back home early. Jennifer, her boyfriend Elliot, Joe, Joseph and I grabbed some lunch and then headed to a nearby park where Joe and Elliot were going to play disc golf. Jen, Joseph and I played on the playground and then headed back to the condo for nap time. We hung out for the rest of the day, and Joe and I managed to spend some time in the hot tub after getting a run in. Saturday we packed up my parents' car with their dogs and made the normally 12 hour drive back to St. Louis. We got out of Destin a little later than anticipated, and between stops for the dogs and stops for Joseph, the trip took just over 14 hours. We managed to pull in to my parents' house about 20 minutes before the ball dropped on the New Year!

It was definitely a quick, whirlwind trip, but fun to get away for a few days, especially since the weather was so nice. Joseph definitely became a seasoned traveler in 2011!

Handmade Christmas gifts

As I mentioned previously, I opted to make my sisters' Christmas presents this year. Ashley and Mikael were fairly easy to sew for; with Baby Olson on the way, it was time for some freezer paper stenciled onesies, homemade sleepsacks and burp cloths.

Since they didn't know if the baby is going to be girl or boy, I opted to make a bunch of Cardinals and Mizzou stuff. I found a few onesies in different sizes and whipped up these three:

The last one was on a whim, knowing Mikael would get a chuckle out of it. Apparently, he and Ashley saw a similar onesie the day before in a store in Florida and joked about getting it, so I'm glad they didn't!

Of course, I forgot to take pictures of the burp cloths and sleep sacks. I made 6 burp cloths - 2 Mizzou, 2 baseball related and 2 gender neutral baby animals. You can kind of see the embellishment on the picture below:

Jennifer's gift was the most time consuming project. I had seen a project on a blog I follow (Made) that the blogger was making for her daughter's kindergarden class, and I knew it would be a great and unique gift for Jen. The idea was to make literacy bags for the kids to take home and work on with their families. I found the book the blogger was using as a guide "Home and Back with Books," bought it and it has tons of great ideas for teaching kindergardeners and 1st graders. I had a hard time deciding how many bags to create, but the core idea was that the book offered suggestions on a theme, 3-4 easy reader books on the topic, and a craft/project for the kids to complete.

Luckily, we have a few Half Price Books stores nearby, so in early December I made a few trips to each, looking for the books to fill the bags. I quickly realized that I could end up going way overboard, and pared the books (and topics) down to the point of making sure I had 3 books for each topic, and ended up with 7 different topics.

At that point, it was just a matter of designing the covers of the bags, and creating the related project. Some were much easier than others, but I had fun making all of them, even though it was incredibly time consuming!

Bag 1: Time. This bag has a removable clock on the front, held on by velcro, and arms that move around the face of the clock. The books therefore all related to learning to tell time.

Bag 2: This is where the initial idea came from, as I basically copied Dana's cookie jar. I made a dozen cookies out of felt, and sewed the cookie jar, complete with the zipper enclosure, to the front of the bag. The topic for this bag is subtraction.

Bag 3: This bag teaches both about penguins as animals and the environment they live in. I included a small stuffed penguin that matches the ones sewn on the front for the kids to read their stories to.

Bag 4: Another science related bag: Frogs. This one had the easiest project, as the book had photocopies of frog pieces for the kids to color and glue onto paper bags, to make hand puppets.

Bag 5: Weekday tote. The books all related to learning the days of the week. Another super easy project that involves placing the days of the week in order and then making a funny story about each day. I loved the  ones that didn't require too much extra design work!

Bag 6: Noises. This project turned out more fun than I initially thought it would be. The book offered 6 items to gather and place in small matching containers, and the kids would have to shake the container and guess what was inside. I ended up spray painting yogurt cups so that they were identical, and then filled them with rice, beans, gravel, bells, pennies, and I'm blanking on the last one!

I didn't get a shot of Bag 7, which was based on identifying colors through a felt bear. The project was the most time consuming of all, so I was finishing it as we headed to Florida to meet my family. I hand sewed a variety of shirts, pants, shoes and hats in different colors for the bear; the kids are supposed to "dress" the bear and then color a picture of the bear all dressed up.

I became so invested in the project, I realized Jen probably wouldn't understand it all upon opening it. I'm pretty sure she liked them though, and I hope they get plenty of use in her classroom this spring!

Joseph was anxious to help open gifts, so he helped unwrap each of the boxes for Aunt Jen, even though they were as big as he is!

And that's what kept me sewing and crafting like a maniac through November and December. I'm easing back into it all this month, with Joseph's 2nd birthday just weeks away! More pictures of our Christmas week to come, I promise!

New Camera...

So we aren't missing or dead in a ditch somewhere, we promise! Joe and I have been having fun using our new camera, and I finally decided we needed to go through the pictures we took on Christmas and the week after so I could update the blog. Except there were over 1200 pictures on the SD card! So it's a work in progress, and I promise I/we'll get back to updating soon.