Let it Snow!

So it's the day before Thanksgiving and we're all home on a snow day.  Gotta love the weather.  We tried to make the best of it by bundling up and heading out to play in the snow!  What toddler doesn't love that?!  So check out our fun adventures...

All bundled up and ready to play!

Haha, I guess the snowflakes tickled!

Snow bunnies!

After this, Ellie fell down and got snow on her mittens, which she thought was 'dirt' and was then convinced that she needed to wash her hands.  

Andy: "Do you want to build a snowman?"  Ellie: "No."

So we sat on the porch, out of the snow, for a little bit and took some selfies...

Cheesies!

Then she discovered that there was snow 'dirt' on the porch and it needed to be cleaned off and put back into the yard with the rest of the snow...

"Clean up, clean up!"

And then we discovered her true calling ... shoveling!  She didn't want to stop even though her mittens were wet and her hands were cold so it was time to come in...

And then we came inside and could NOT get the snow gear off fast enough.  Snuggles in the bathroom in front of the heater were followed by a nice nap.  Ok, there was quite a bit of screaming and kicking in there, but she got to the nap part eventually.  Hope you all are enjoying your winter weather and have a safe and fabulous Thanksgiving!

A Lesson in Painting

(Hold on to your hats, folks, this is gonna be a cute one...)

So Andy has been working diligently on sprucing up our laundry room - to my very particular specifications.  A coworker of his redid his kitchen and gave us his old cabinets for free, so Andy repainted and put new hardware on them.  He's mixed up the perfect color of teal for the walls and even moved around some of the appliances to make a more functional space.  Now it's time to paint the trim before we replace the awful linoleum on the floor with slightly less awful linoleum.  Hey, we've got like a $5 budget to work with over here.  Anyway, he thought that this would be a good time to teach Ellie to paint.  The walls are getting repainted anyway and the floor is getting ripped up, so it really didn't matter how messy she was about it.  So, I give you Painting with Daddy 101...

A little baby yoga while Daddy gets more paint on the brush.

She was really concerned about her toes being dirty.

This one was Daddy's idea.

And it only took a 30 minute bath to get all the paint off!  Maybe someday soon we'll try full-body finger-painting :-)

Update: my dad just reminded me of one of MY first painting lessons just a few years ago...

REVIEW: Goodnight Ark by Laura Sassi, illustrated by Jane Chapman

Next up on my Z Blog Squad Recommended Reading list is Goodnight Ark, by Laura Sassi, illustrated by Jane Chapman.

Ok, the only way I can describe this book is ADORABLE!  It's geared toward younger children, but with paper pages, I wouldn't leave your toddler alone with it.  Unless you've got a super well-behaved toddler.  In which case, please call me so your kid can give lessons to my kid.

But I digress.

Everything about this book just screams adorable-ness.  The story is a classic - Noah's Ark.  But author Laura Sassi puts a super-cute bedtime spin on it.  The storm scares the animals and they can't sleep.  So what do they do?  Crawl in bed with Noah, of course!  Two by two they all pile in until .... well you'll just have to read it and see what happens.  

And no, I have no idea where MRS. Noah is during this whole story.  But I don't think that detracts from it at all.  Maybe Noah snores, so she had her own bed.  Maybe she was seasick.  MAYBE she was up late blogging.  Who knows.

The illustrations in this book are cute as well.  Jane Chapman makes all the animals look realistic, yet cuddly at the same time.  Check it out...

Don't you just want to snuggle those tigers?!  The snakes even look friendly!  But they're not overly cartoon-y.  It's a pretty nice balance, I think.

We love this book.  It's rapidly becoming a bedtime favorite.  Every time an animal comes in to crawl in bed with Noah, we like to give Ellie a chance to try and name the animal.  She's good with Elephant (Ef-fent) and Tiger, but we're still working on those Quail.  I really like that she can learn about a Bible story (from a different perspective, which I always enjoy) and also have an opportunity to practice things like animal names and sounds.  Multi-tasking, I think they call that.

Ok, final verdict: I love this book and I really recommend it - especially if you have a little one who likes to read stories before bed.  We did remove the dust jacket from this hardback copy, just to make it easier to handle, but we do that with all dust jackets, so it's not a negative to me.

Disclaimer: Zondervan provided me with a free copy of this book for reviewing purposes, but all opinions are 100% mine.