Mommy and Daughter Day

Do you have a great homemade Mother's Day gift idea? Share it here!

I know I promised another Mexican Cinderella post this week and here it is Monday's post and time for my Fairy Tales in Different Cultures post, but I decided to wait this week since we did not do the crafting I had hoped over the weekend. So stay tuned for the Mexican Cinderella coming soon with (hopefully) some great Cinco de Mayo crafts.

This weekend was a bit hectic. It was Stewardship Sunday at my church and since I head the Stewardship Ministries Team, I was in charge. Luckily I have a wonderful committee with many talents and many other volunteers to help. We did our final push on the campaign and then provided a luncheon. It went well, but I am tired. 

Yesterday, Steve went hiking with some of his friends from work, so Hazel and I had an entire Saturday to spend alone. The only thing we had to do was be at the church at 1 p.m. to set up for the luncheon. I had also received a message from my aunt. Her step-granddaughter needed help with a Flat Stanley school project. We decorated Flat Stanley (though we made her a girl so we call her Flat Sophia) and took her a few places to take some pictures. More on Flat Stanley another day since I thought a blog project to do with it. We stopped at the library to get a Flat Stanley book and found out there was a Mother Goose Story Time starting in five minutes so we stayed for it. Then we went to run our other errands and go to Lakeshore Learning for their free craft. Now it was after noon, so we headed home for a quick lunch and then to get to church. I bribed Hazel into helping at the church with ice cream afterwards. 

We headed to the local ice cream place/farm. Hazel wanted to check out all the animals, so we both got frappes (the Boston term for a milkshake) and walked around. We stopped in the middle section to see the cows and goats.

Then we headed over to the calf nursery. We had a fun time checking out the calves.

Next to the nursery is the poultry cage. They didn't have the food machine out yet, but the male turkey had his feathers up trying to impress the female. Hazel said he impressed her. The female turkey did not seem too impressed though.

Then we headed over to the big cow barn. This farm sells the milk and ice cream from their milk of their own cows. The first door of the big barn is the section reserved for the very pregnant cows--to birth in two to three weeks. We found one little baby sitting with its mother there as well.

Then the next two doors have the other cows. We found a few grooming themselves and these cows seemed hungry or at least were very interested in all the people at the doors. They came over to say hi and Hazel thought they got a bit too close (as did another girl who had gotten licked by one).

Hazel was almost licked by the mostly white one. We were petting them on the noses. Her tongue was the same color as her--white with black spots. Of course our favorite picture was of the cows kissing.

We saw the ones in the middle again. One was getting a drink this time.

Then we bought some milk and frozen yogurt to take home for Daddy. Hazel fell asleep in the car. She hadn't been sleeping well this week since I had so many meetings at night. She slept for a couple of hours and I took a nap as well. Then Steve came home and we went out to dinner, but the wait was too long, so we ordered take-out and sat at the bar while we waited. Hazel thought it was fun to sit at the bar and drink apple juice from a fancy glass. Then we headed home and had some dinner and went to bed. That was our fun Saturday!! The best part is we got outside for the afternoon!

Mother's Day Gifts

This year for Mother's Day we bought some wood boxes at one of the craft stores for $1. We also picked out some acrylic paints at Michaels when they were on sale. The other day it was warm out and our Mother's Day is only a couple of weeks away, so we painted outside.

Sharing Saturday 13-17

Well my first news is that Chelle over at Having Fun at Chelle's House has decided her life is a bit too crazy to keep co-hosting with me right now, so I am back to being solo. If you have not had a chance to check out last week's wonderful ideas shared, you really should. I was so inspired!! Here are my features. First of course is the most clicked from Gift of Curiosity.

1) From Gift of Curiosity: Earth Day Crayons I love this idea for recycling broken crayons to look like little earths!
2) From Little Wonders' Day: Garden Planting Picnic So fun to make simple food for a picnic in the shape of flowers after planting your garden all day!
3)  From Buggy and Buddy: Go on a Sound Walk What a fun activity to get you moving and outdoors!!
4) From Mums make lists: 25 Essential Toys for Babies Love that they do not require batteries!
5) From Toddlers Through Preschool: Measuring Shoes Full of such great ideas in learning about counting and sizes.
6) From Toddling in the Fast Lane: Paper Bag House Love that this craft goes with a lesson in both Spanish and English.
7) From Wesens-Art: Spring House Love this little paper house. It reminds me of springtime!

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here or earlier this week, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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From Your Hostess: This week has been busy for me, so only a few posts including Adelita: A Mexican Cinderella, The Rain Came Down a Virtual Book Club for Kids Book and a Trip to the Andes with Daria's new CD and E-book!

 

Now for This Week's Party 
 
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A Day in the Andes

Today I am going to explain our "trip" to the Andes thanks to Daria. Daria recently published a new CD and e-book about a child's life in the Andes. The CD is called Cancioncitas De Los Andes/Little Songs of the Andes and the e-book is called A Child's Life in the Andes.  Both were released April 2nd and Daria was kind enough to offer us a free copy of each to review and we LOVE them!! The combo pack of the book and CD are available at Daria's Little Village Store for $12.99. You can also buy just the CD at iTunes and Amazon.

Now before I go into how wonderful these activities are, I want to give you a little background. Daria lived in the Andes in Peru for part of her childhood. Needless to say she knows much about the area firsthand.

Now onto this great book and CD. Every time I play the CD, Hazel says to me, "Mommy, I like your music." The music is not like the music we normally listen to or even the other amazing album of Daria's that we have. We began our journey to the Andes by just listening to the CD a couple of times and loved it. 

Now that our mood was set, we sat down to read the book. We learned all about life in the Andes including what food was native to there. (Sorry we didn't have a play potato or I should say I couldn't find it if we still have it.) Plus about the animals and life in general for the children. Then there were all sorts of coloring pages.

Hazel only colored this llama so far, because we were busy doing the other activities like making musical instruments. We had already made a rainstick, so we some zampoñas following the easy instructions in the book. Hazel loves trying to play them!

Then we decided to follow the suggestion in the book to have a stuffed animal parade, but we decided to use our two llamas (one stuffed and one plastic) and also to use our two instruments. We had Steven video us. (Fair warning, he is not the best with a camera of any sort!)

Now if you are interested in exploring the Andes from your home, please stop by Daria's page and buy her new CD and E-book. They are amazing and we really enjoyed them! Thank you to Daria for sharing these wonderful resources with us!!

VBCfK: The Rain Came Down

Here is a quick educational activity to go along with David Shannon's book, The Rain Came Down. David Shannon is the author of the month for the Virtual Book Club for Kids. Last week we shared a simple activity to go with Duck on a Bike.