It's a… BOY!

We surprised our families by finding out the gender of baby Pagel on the 23rd! Our families didn't know (except Jenn, who helped me get the ultrasound for free!) so we thought it would be fun to surprise them. I'm so glad we did.

Matt and I went to the appointment and as soon as the tech placed the wand by baby's legs it was very obvious that we are expecting our second boy!!! I fell in love instantly. She said he looks healthy, which is a praise! He is measuring a couple days ahead, and has an above average sized head already… just like his big brother did. Oh boy… hoping that it isn't as big otherwise my hopes for a VBAC may be getting smaller already…

Baby Boy has a name for now, but we are keeping it a secret this time. Gives us the freedom to change it any point! I've already almost slipped up a couple times and it's been less than a week.

Here are some pics of baby boy (16 weeks+3 days):

Here are some pics we took with some blue balloons!

When I ask Jace where the baby is, he always lifts up my shirt to look at my belly. 

The Snowy Day

We did one Tot school unit in December. I was so excited about this unit, and still didn't get to all of the activities that I wanted to do, but it was still a lot of fun. The Snowy Day was the perfect book for around Christmas (we did this the week before Christmas!). I wish we lived in snow because the things we could have done for this unit could have been so much better. But that's alright. We still had fun!

We made a snowman with shapes as it's body. Jace already knows his letters and numbers, so I am starting to work on shapes with him. He was so excited to learn them. Oval and circle, and square and rectangle look very similar to him, so we have future tot school units to continue to practice shapes. 

In the book, Peter makes tracks with his feet and then with a stick. So we used pretzel sticks and whipped cream snow to make tracks like Peter.

 Jace's favorite part was dipping the pretzels into the whipped cream and eating them.

Since we didn't have snow to make footprints in, we used water and paper and made footprint tracks. :)

We had a snow man lunch!

We played with glittery snow slime! 

We painted a snowman!

We cut out snowflakes (well, I did and he watched!) He calls them "o-fakes".

We talked about how when things are really cold they turn to ice, but that warm things can melt the cold things. So I froze his dump truck in some ice and we used hot water to melt the ice away. (just like how the hot sun melts cold snow).

We practiced counting!

That was our unit. So many other things I wanted to do, but just ran out of time! :)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a very busy day, but lots of fun! We started the day off at the church football game that they do every year at 8:00 that morning. Jace had a blast just running around. He didn't stop the entire time we were there!

We then went to my parents house for a bit and we got to see the Evans family! It was such a nice time to see them for a bit! :) 

We then went to the Pagel house for Thanksgiving dinner! We took the opportunity to grab a couple family pics while we were there! :) 

 Cuddles with baby Dakota! 

 Cousins! <3

Baby Dakota!!!

My niece Dakota Madeline was born on November 24th at 10:04 am weighing 7#10oz, 20 inches long! She is such a doll and I love her so much already! Kenna's labor was short and she recovered quickly! Such an answer to prayer!

Hungry Caterpillar

We did this unit the week before Thanksgiving and and into Thanksgiving week. Since then, we have slacked on Tot school. :/ We've just been so busy! Hoping to get a one week unit in sometime before Christmas though. :)  We did the Hungry Caterpillar for this unit! It was a lot of fun and I found so many ideas on Pinterest and from Kristin (that is the nice thing about you starting tot school 3 months earlier than we started… I just get to steal your ideas!) ;)

We made a chain link caterpillar! 

 He fed his hungry caterpillar some of his snack.

 I had found a book of the Hungry Caterpillar that kids can color at Marshalls months ago. Every day we colored more of the book until it was all finished!

 Our caterpillar breakfast.

 We made a butterfly our of handprints and a caterpillar out of toes! :)

 Some more of his book!

 We read a couple of books about how caterpillars turn into butterflies!

 We made the caterpillar eat the different foods that were mentioned in the book. This activity took me like an hour to make and his interest lasted about 2 minutes. Perfect. :) At least it's laminated for the next time I do this unit. Haha.

 We practiced counting the fruits.

 We also counted to 10 with the green and red cotton balls and the clothes pins. Then we made a caterpillar.

 A butterfly breakfast!

 We worked on matching patterns.

 Coloring more of his book!

 We finished the unit by making a caterpillar with a paper towel roll and counting circles! We did a lot of counting this unit, which he LOVES.

That was it! :)