The Weekend

Teresa has been asking to go to the museum for the past few months and we were finally able to make it happen this weekend. She was really excited the night before, she kept waking up and asking me if we were going to the museum in the morning. We went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and I didn't realize until we got there that she was actually wanting to go to an art museum - as we were walking in she said "I can't wait to see all the paintings!". She didn't mind, though, once we got inside. They were both so cute, just in awe of everything we saw. Nora had to say goodbye to every exhibit. T surprised us and absolutely loved the skeleton and mummy exhibit, she even sat and watched the little History Channel video on archaeologists digging up bones for about 10 minutes. She would have watched longer, too, but we had to get a move on before our parking limit was up.

No pictures, we didn't even bring the camera. I know, it's shocking. On the way home T piped up from the back seat "Guys, thank you so, so much for taking us to the museum!". And then Marc and I did a little fist bump in the front seat for having such a polite girl ;).

Today we surprised the girls by taking them to Disney on Ice. They love the princesses, of course, and when I saw that they had one with Merida coming to town I knew we had to take them.

We just told them we were taking them to a fun princess surprise:

And some shots with Daddy before we left:

We were pleasantly surprised by how good our seats were. The girls were so excited waiting for it to start. 

Here's Nora when she first saw Mickey and Minnie. She loved all the princess shows, but definitely perked up the most when Mickey and Minnie were out. She actually started shaking with excitement when Mickey first came out. 

The show was so fun, honestly it way exceeded my expectations. They had a couple of opening acts and then had little condensed versions of The Little Mermaid and Tangled. Then after intermission they did Brave and Beauty and the Beast.

We had thought Maximus was the most impressive, they had two people in that horse suit skating around, but then the Brave ice skaters totally started Irish dancing (or Scottish dancing, I guess) on the ice! Seriously, I would have broken at least two limbs if I had tried that. 

Nora was getting pretty tired and cranky for the second half, but they both had so much fun. When we were leaving T asked if we could do that again sometime. She was so funny before bedtime, too. We stopped at the commissary on the way home to grab a few things before the big storm headed our way, and when we were getting ready for bed she said "Thank you so much for taking us to the museum and the princess show and the commissary!", as if they were all equally fabulous and exciting.

Soccer, again.

Teresa had her last soccer game this past week. Her whole season was pretty interesting. She did pretty well the first few games. After being a bird for a large part of the first game, she did a lot better the second time, and actually participated quite a bit. She wasn't a soccer prodigy or anything, but she kept up with the pack and got a few chances to kick the ball. And she had a ton of fun while doing it.

Then we had two completely awful games. She would go out on the field and fall down and start crying. She was super whiny the whole time and just walked around with her arms crossed saying "humph" the whole time, and refused to participate at all.  Once she started acting that way for a second game I told her she could either play like she was supposed to, or we would go home. She kept up the attitude, so we packed everything up and headed home in the middle of the game. By the time we got in the car and were ready to leave she was promising up and down that she would play without an attitude if we would let her go back.

We went back.

She fell down on the field and started crying and refusing to play.

So we left again. After a few serious discussions (and we might have made her throw away all her soccer stuff) she decided that she would give soccer one more try. We let her get her stuff out of the trash and came up with a plan for her next game.

We spent the next week watching videos on YouTube of little girls playing soccer. I would point out when one of the kids would fall down, and just get back up without crying, or how the other team would try to get the ball from the kid who had it. She was super pumped for her game all week and couldn't stop talking about being a soccer star.

I was so nervous when we got there last Saturday. Let me make it clear that I wasn't expecting her to be the most super awesome soccer player ever. I just wanted her to actually try and participate, and I knew that she would have fun if she would just try it. And we made sure she knew that too.

And then the game started. And she was amazing. She seriously did so, so awesome the whole game. She was running around the whole time. She always knew where the ball was and was trying to get it. She kicked the ball a ton. We were so, so impressed with her! And she was having such. a. blast. the whole time. She did start to get tired toward the end, and came over to tell us she wanted to sit down, but we just told her it was almost over, and to keep playing and she totally did! We were so excited for her. She was so excited for herself. I seriously could go on for another few paragraphs about how fabulous she was. She just was so energetic the whole time and she tried so hard the whole game. There was one super fast little guy on the other team, and a couple of times he got the ball and was just flying down the field ahead of everyone, but T just kept after him the whole way, instead of getting all grumpy about it like the previous games. She was awesome. She was so, so awesome. She talked about it for the rest of the day and kept telling us that she was a soccer stars. Not a star, a 'stars' she would correct us.

She did pretty well for this last game, too. Not as amazing as the game before, but still pretty good. She'd had a rough night before, so she was a little grumpy, but still participated for most of it and tried really hard. I'm so proud of her, she really tried so hard the last two games and had such a fun time. She was so cute, once after kicking the ball (way outside of the boundaries, the coaches had to chase her down so she didn't go in the parking lot) she threw her little arms up and said "I scored a gold!". We didn't bother correcting her.


Marc made this little video of the game, T wanted to have a video like the ones we'd watched on the computer. There's a little bit of Nora at the end, too.

soccer from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

And some pictures:

Me and the T before her last game:

And Nora, too.

The little orange team we played this week was so cute, and pretty much the only team that didn't cheat. We couldn't believe how much cheating went on in 3/4 year old soccer. One team had a bigger girl that would stand on the sidelines until her teammates got the ball close to the goal, then she would run out and kick it in for them. The team we played the day we went home early used a goalie for most of the game, which is against the rules. And the team they played the day of T's awesome game was the most frustrating. The coaches from each team also acted as the refs, and the coach from the other team kept conveniently getting in the way of our team when they would have the ball - she would stand right in front of them and not even attempt to move out of the way. She completely blocked T from scoring at least twice. Somehow all the other coaches were able to ref the game without getting in the kids way...Anyway, I just thought it was super ridiculous. But the orange team was cute, there's no official score kept, but they definitely won. 

And I know this is already the world's longest blog post, but I had to include this picture of Nora with the ball. She was so cute the whole game, she would cheer for Teresa "go Teresa, kick, kick" over and over, it was adorable. Nora loves to play soccer, as well, and seems to have a fair bit of natural talent at it. She can kick the ball the whole length of the field and right into the goal without messing up at all. She was itching to get in there and play at every game. 

The Annual Pumpkin Patch Post

I took the girls to our favourite pumpkin patch/petting farm last week. Marc was a lame-o and had to work, so we went with some friends from church instead. I took a few pictures and snagged a few from my friend, Amy, as well. Teresa was really excited to get her pumpkin, the whole time we were with the animals she kept asking me about it, and when I told her it was time to go to the patch she gave me a big hug and said "oh, thank you so, so much Mommy!".

It's such a cute little farm, they have all these cool play structures from fairy tales that the kids loved climbing all over. T saw this bear and immediately requested having her picture taken with it.

The kids are all big fans of the cow train. T lucked out and got the purple cow.

Nora was so excited to ride the horses. She kept chattering about it the whole time we were in line, and could barely wait for her turn. Once we got up there? Not such a fan. She perked up about half way through and decided to like it after all.

After T's long history of pictures on horses, screaming her head off, she shocked me this time around and was completely excited about it and loved every minute of it.

After we fed the goats, it was time for the main event: the pumpkins! Teresa, Mina, and Ian immediately started assembling a big line of pumpkins. 

The babies were not interested in group pictures.

It's not so easy getting three three-year-olds to smile at the same time...

Classic T face:

Yelling "CHEESE"

Best buds.

This was hilarious - Teresa wouldn't stop yelling cheese, so Mina took matters into her own hands.

She also didn't like it when T tried to ditch picture taking:

 The girls all loved this fun little castle play spot. They acted out all sorts of princess scenes. 

   

The next day we painted the pumpkins. We figured it was a better alternative to the way last years turned out. You know, when Teresa lost it under our end table and we didn't find it for three months....

 

They started out with red, blue, white and yellow paint, which caused T to declare that she was painting a 'Merican pumpkin, but they ended up being mostly pink, which made our little princesses pretty happy.