Busy Thursday!

It was a busy day, but we also had a lot of fun! After dropping Miss M off at preschool...

Painting with her teacher, S

we headed downtown to the kids' new school for Mister J's kindergarten assessment. He had a great time, and we saw some familiar faces - something we weren't sure would happen since it's a magnet school (admission is by district-wide lottery). Once we finished there, it was back to the preschool for a special event - an ice cream social and guitar music to help celebrate Week of the Young Child. The kids enjoyed the ice cream, and we all enjoyed trying to dance and keep up with the motions to the new songs we were learning!

Pre-ice cream - notice the lack of chocolate syrup drips on my children

Mister J found a friend to dance with and got away from us in the (small) crowd. Miss M stayed close and I was able to get a few pictures. She was a little slower to warm up to the dancing, but eventually made her way through the crowd to find her big brother.

While Miss M took an afternoon nap, Mister J and I turned these...
into these! With the addition of a soccer ball, we are bowling in the backyard!

I can't take all the credit for the idea, but I do love that we were able to take some 'trash' (which we would have recycled) and reuse it to make something fun without spending a dime! It took a little trial and error to decide just how much sand to use (1/2 cup per bottle, in case you were interested), which was part of the fun.

Lest you think our sandbox will run out of sand, we have plenty left over from the sandbox birthday party of '08.