End of September/Early October so far...

A week and a half ago, Matt and I spent our Saturday with Marcus and Kenna painting baby Dakota's room. I thought we would be done within 3 hours…. I forgot how long taping takes. It took half the day, but it turned out so well! Here are some pics! 

Before

 During

 After!

On September 30th, Matt and I celebrated 3 years of marriage! What a crazy 3 years it has been. I praise God for Matt and the joy that he is to me. He is such an encourager! Lord willing, we will have many more years of marriage to come! 

Matt found a Groupon for the Melting Pot, and so we went there the night before our anniversary because that was when we had a sitter!

 On our actual anniversary, we went to Frost for dessert! 

Last Friday, Matt had a potluck at his work. Some of this co-workers have been wanting to see Jace, so I brought him in. He started off being shy, but very quickly was running around, waving to people, dancing for people, and showing off. He thought it would be great to sit on top of Matt's desk and pull out all of the sticky notes. 

 Visiting dad!

 This is a picture of Jace sitting in Denny's office. Denny was gone for the part of the day we were there, so we took a picture of Jace sitting in his chair to send to him. 

 And this is a random pic, but I found this beanie at Once Upon a Child, and had to get it for him! $3.50! You know me and hats… now if only Jace would develop that same love for them that I have. I did manage to grab a picture of him in it, and I can't wait for it be colder this winter for him to actually need it! :) 

Green Frog

Our "Green Frog" week turned into weeks, as these last couple weeks have just been crazy in the Pagel house. But Jace can say and recognize frog, and did well with the color green, so we will wrap this section up and move on! I didn't do as much as I would have liked for this section, but that's okay. Here is what we did!

Our bin of "Green" items! 

Exploring the bin!

 Coloring with green crayons and a green marker, and also sticking green frog stickers to his paper!

 He painted with water on this special water "coloring" sheet thing. 

 He also painted with water on green construction paper. He actually loved this.

 We played with his green objects again. One of those objects was a green plastic frog. I pretended to make it bounce and would say "ribbit ribbit" and then make the frog kiss him. Later in the week I saw him pick up a plastic frog, make it hop while he said "ree ree ree" and then made the frog kiss him. It was so cute. 

 We practiced counting to 10 with counting bears.

 He sorted all the colors of bears into their matching cup. He did AMAZING at this. I was shocked. 

 Practicing counting his beads and stringing them with daddy.

 Using green dot markers to color his pages.

 This pretty much sums up how he did with the cards. 

 He played with a red, blue, and green plastic frogs!

 He ate a special snack in a green tray with his frogs by him. 

 We read this book--"Frog's Lunch". He loved this book and wanted me to read it to him again and again. 

That was our "Green Frog" week(s)! :) 

Disneyland--Pagel Edition!

From September 18th-21st, the entire Pagel family went to California on a family vacation (minus Jace… he got to stay with his Grammy and Papi!) Barb and Denny rented a 6 room house close to Disneyland that had a pool, so that was a lot of fun! Matt, Mick, and I drove to Cali Thursday morning (Some were already there, and others were coming Thursday night). We went to Disneyland all day Friday, which was awesome. Abbi had never been, and the Pagels hadn't been in 18 years? Kenna was a trooper and went on the rides that her and baby Dakota could handle! We then spent Saturday at the house swimming, and in the afternoon, we went bowling. It wouldn't be a Pagel hang-out without bowling. ;) Ashley got really really sick on Saturday, and she spent the entire day in her room. (It lasted a week!) We were all so thankful that we decided to do Disneyland on Friday since she was feeling fine on Friday and was able to enjoy the day! All in all, it was a great trip!

 The AMAZING pool! I would love this to be my backyard! 

 Disneyland! 

 Lunch time: my failed attempt at a picture.

 <3 Pagel Girls! <3

 Splash mountain!

 Here is the only family picture we got, and I am so glad we got it! 

 Disneyland was decorated for Fall! It was so fun! 

 My mom asked for a picture when we went on Thunder Mountain… so here it was! It has been under construction the last 2 times I have gone. Let's just say it rides SO much smoother AND faster now… which led me to run off the ride looking for a restroom to barf in right after… I've never gotten sick on that ride before, but I'm thinking with all the changes it is just now another ride to add to my list of "Can't go on these" rides.

Bowling! 

There was talk about making this an annual trip, so we will see what next year brings! :)

Blue Horse

I spent some of last week and some of this week working on "Blue Horse" with Jace. It was a really laid back "blue horse" unit with it covering a couple of weeks. Some days we didn't get to it, and that was just fine. With knowing that I would be out of town at the end of this week, I knew I wouldn't be able to fit in a whole section in 3 days, so I spread it out over the last 2 weeks. Many of these activities didn't last long. I found myself getting frustrated with how short they lasted, Jace's lack of attention or desire to do an activity, and I had to remind myself that this is just for him to be exposed to these concepts, not master them. He will have plenty of time to learn that a horse is called a horse and not a "neigh neigh". Until then, we will continue having fun as mom does most of the crafts herself. Haha.

Here is our bin of blue items:

 I left the room for a minute and came back to a very excited Jace exploring the blue bin. On top of the kitchen table.

 We colored with blue crayons, and worked on sticking blue stickers to paper. He is really good with big stickers, but with small ones, he needs some help.

 We made a blue horse using parchment paper and bits of blue streamers.

 Jace played with blue glowsticks in the bathtub. 

 And still no desire to match heads and tails. He just wants to play with the cards.

 We worked on pointing out the correct animal, as well as matching the cartoon animal to the real animal. His attention span for this was non-existent. 

 We used dot markers to color his blue horse!

 He then colored his other picture of a horse with crayons.

We ate lunch out of a blue ice-cube tray!  

 We practiced sorting yellow, red, and blue bears. He knew what to do, but again, after about a minute of this, he was done. But I would hand him a colored bear and he would move it to all the different dots of the same color. 

 We painted with blue paint!

 We made a blue handprint horse. Or I should say, Jace made a blue handprint and mom turned it into a horse. 

 Jace played with blue play-doh!

 We practiced stringing blue beads again this week. We will continue to work on it. :) 

 And this is what he would rather do with the beads...