End of an Era

School's out! Wooo Hooo!

My soon-to-be-1st grader was quite happy to be out for the summer, and I have to admit that I am quite happy to not have to get her to school by 7:15 for a few months. However, today was also the end of two mornings a week every week spent with my youngest. She had preschool this year on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and we hung out together on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I do work from home, so I have to admit that a lot of this time was spent with her watching Tom & Jerry and entertaining herself coloring and playing. However, there were also a lot of really nice moments with just me and her...

watching the birds,


stealing her sisters things when she wasn't around to yell about it,


long baths (with the bathtub all to herself!)...


building forts,


today especially I let her decide what we would do, and she wanted to sew! Mel commented that she wanted instructions for this little activity, there isn't really a lot to instruct but here are the things you need:


And if you are letting a 4 year old be in charge of the day and she realizes that you only have blue yarn (and she wants to make a red cardinal) then an impromptu trip to Michael's ensues...


Ahh, much better.

The book is for tracing out of, the girls are into birds at the moment so this is the one we have used. I let them pick out a bird and then trace it onto some burlap with a fabric marker. Into the hoop it goes and then I just let them sew around the lines (I've instructed them to come up from the back, move over four holes, go down and then come up in the next hole and repeat. I figure this will at least give them a feel for making their stitches similar sizes.)


After some sewing we made cupcakes. I've been wanting to make these ones for a few weeks and our neighborhood is having a last day of school party (we are actually waiting for some rain to move through while I write this so we can go) so I decided to take them to that. They were a bit fussy to make but are quite delicious. This was the first (and possibly last) time I have ever made butter cream frosting, which is also a bit fussy, but somewhat of a magical process. Good thing I like cream cheese frosting better anyway, it's much easier.




I will miss these mornings we have had together on our own, but I betcha in a couple months I will be really ready for both of them to go off to school!