Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July to you!  We had a great time celebrating America's birthday, and I hope you did too.  We are so proud and thankful to be Americans, so we love getting to celebrate and thank those who make this country great.  Liz and I took the girls to a parade in Marietta today.  It was pretty hot outside, but we had a fun time.  When I told Lily last night that we were going to a parade in the morning, she got so excited.  We talked about what kind of things we might see there (bands, floats, etc), and she couldn't wait.  I told Mia about the parade this morning over breakfast; her little face immediately lit up, and she said "We see Mickey and Minnie and Donald and Goofy!"  She was remembering the many parades we saw at Disney World back in November.  I explained that we wouldn't see them, but we would see lots of other fun things.  She looked a little confused and said "we go to Disney World?" so again I had to say, no, that wasn't where we were going, but it would be a lot of fun.  I could see the skepticism on her face.  After breakfast, we all got ready to head out.

The girls were very excited when Liz gave them each a flag.  The three of them had decorated our windows and kitchen area to get the girls excited about the 4th, so we borrowed these flags from those decorations.  They were ready to go!

 We scouted out a great spot to watch the parade.  The girls were able to sit up high and see the parade coming down the street.  There was very little shade around though, so we warmed up quickly.  Luckily, Liz thought to bring water and snacks to keep us all hydrated and happy!

 The three Hooks girls.

 Lily doing an impersonation of the Statue of Liberty.

 The parade is about to start.

 The Marietta chapter of The Lions Club came about 5 minutes before the rest of the parade handing out American flags to everyone watching.  The girls were thrilled to get more flags, and they have played with them all afternoon.  They also loved waving to the lion as he rode by.

 The flag bearers led the parade holding an American flag, Georgia flag and City of Marietta flag.  They were followed by a military band which we all enjoyed hearing.

 We all enjoyed seeing several of the old firetrucks come out.  Both girls were thrilled when a fireman walked over and gave them each high fives.  A big thank you to all of our public servants!  This old ladder truck is carrying a sign that says "September 11, 2001 - September 11, 2011.  We will never forget."

 This was the statue we sat by.  It depicts a woman holding on to an American flag and waiting on her loved ones to return home.  It is new since last July 4, so the Marietta Mayor, Chief of Police Department and the Chief of Fire Department all walked up and put flowers in front of it.  The parade also had many current soldiers and veterans marching.  It brought tears to my eyes as everyone applauded for them as they walked by.  So many give so much for our country that there truly isn't a way to say thank you.  As several Vietnam veterans walked by, Lily asked "Why is everyone clapping?"  I could only say "it's to say thank you for all they have done for us."  Thank you to all our military members. 

 Well, Mia, this is as close to Minnie Mouse as we can get right now.  A bunch of clowns came by at one point, and both girls were excited to see a Minnie Mouse puppet with one of them, especially when Minnie blew kisses to them.

There were many small town pageant queens of all ages riding in cars too.  It cracked me up because the girls would wave so big to them and say "There's a princess!"  As one of the girls passed by, her dress was sitting in just the right way to prompt Lily to say "There's a mermaid princess!" to which Mia replied "That's no Ariel Lil!"  Lily finally concluded that they weren't really princesses, but they were just pretend princesses with tiaras on.

We headed out once the parade was over.  Both girls were sweaty (it was really hot outside), hungry (it was lunchtime) and tired (they had both woken up just before 6).  So, we headed to Chick-fil-a to eat and cool down.  After lunch, we went home and the girls helped me make cupcakes.  Please keep in mind, I can follow a recipe very well and make some yummy food, but I thought I would take a chance on a variation and make patriotic cupcakes.  So I made the batter, divided it between the girls and Lily made red cupcakes while Mia made blue ones.  The food coloring wasn't quite right though so they leaned a little more towards bright blue and pink, but hey, we tried right?  After nap time, we frosted them with white frosting and then put cool firecracker picks in that Liz found.  They turned out pretty cute and they taste delicious even if the color is a little off!  Before trying them out though, Lily had the idea to sing Happy Birthday to America, so I grabbed the video camera and recorded that.  This is the link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3DMCWVpfBo&feature=youtu.be) if you want to watch them sing.

Pretty cute, right?

They have played with their parade flags all afternoon.  They have been marching all around the house making their own parades and waving them everywhere.  At one point, I put the Cedermont Kids DVD called "Songs of America" on, and they just marched in a circle around the rug, singing along to the songs and waving their flags.  At the end of each song, they would point the flag at the tv and say "Happy Birthday American!" (not America, but American).  I asked each of them before bed time if they had a good time celebrating America's birthday, and each gave me a resounding "Yes!"  Happy 4th of July!

What Do You Need?

As the many Beatles fans in our family can tell you...All You Need Is Love.  Even Mia agrees!

Blueberry Picking

I often get ideas in my head on things I want to do that will be good for family fun and memories.  Sometimes I actually follow through on those ideas and make them happen.  For instance, our family went to an apple orchard last fall because I thought it would fun for the whole family, and it was great (see that blog entry here).  We all loved it.  So recently, I got it in my head that I wanted to go pick summer fruits.  By the time I thought of it, all strawberry farms were closed so I decided on blueberries.  I found a website (http://www.pickyourown.org/ if you're interested) that lets you find local places to pick your own fruits and veggies.  A little research time on that site, and I found what I thought was a little farm in Hiram which is about 30 minutes away from our home.  So this morning, Bama and I took the girls (Ryan is in Alaska right now) out to go blueberry picking.  I'll be honest, in my head was a picture of a quaint little farm; basically a smaller scale of the apple orchard we visited.  I was wrong.  We arrived at a family's home about 10:00; it was in the middle of a country neighborhood, but it wasn't a farm for sure.  There was a poster board on the front porch (along with their own honey that they were selling) with instructions on how to pick, pay for and freeze blueberries.  There was another car there with a couple of individuals which made us feel a little better, but we were a little unsure of ourselves.  We decided to just go with it and start picking!  Turns out, even though it wasn't exactly what I was imagining (it's a LOT hotter now than last October in the North GA mountains), it was a fun time.  I'm really glad we went, and we now have a half-gallon of blueberries frozen.  Please let me know if you have any great recipes calling for blueberries; I'm searching!

They had three rows of blueberry bushes in their front yard.

 Mia was excited to pick and show off the blueberries.  She enjoyed eating them too.  The poster board sign said they do not use any kind of pesticides on their blueberries, so they were safe to eat right then; we couldn't resist trying a few.

 Lily enjoyed being in charge of the collection bucket as she picked.

 Liz showing off a handful of freshly picked berries.

 Just a picture to prove I was there too!

 Mia searching a branch for blueberries that were actually blue.  Not all of the berries were ripe yet, but the girls did a very good job of only picking the blue ones and not the red, not ripe ones.

 Lily studied the branches to get the right ones.

 Poor Mia was so hot after awhile.  She found a nice little shady spot to sit and pick.

Cleaning off a bush.

 Examining their loot.

 Having fun!

 Filling up the bucket.

 Mia got a lift from Bama to reach the berries a little higher up.

 By the end, Mia was picking the little yellow flowers instead of berries.

A quick picture before measuring and paying for the berries (you can see we're standing in front of their house).  Lily seemed pretty excited, and Mia couldn't wait to dig in and eat them up.

Overall, this was a fun little excursion that I'm glad we took.  More family memories made, and that's what I was after!  We continued our fun after this by stopping by the Dollar Tree (a favorite of the girls) where we picked up more 4th of July decorations; they can't wait for America's birthday!  Then we had lunch at "the Tokyo restaurant" as the girls call it.  We love going to hibachi restaurants!  It was delicious as always, and the girls did really well watching the chef and eating a good lunch.  They both did really well with their kid-friendly chopsticks too; I was impressed!  This was a fun way to start a nice long weekend!

Too Cute

Our little Mia is almost too cute for words.  She makes us laugh a lot with the funny faces and voices she comes up with.  It's a good thing too because she is such a curious, outgoing, messy, adventureous and fun-loving little one that we often find ourselves saying "Mia Hooks, what in the world are you doing?!"  But really, take a look at this picture...how can you stay upset at this cutie?

Lily's Imagination

I love Lily's imagination right now!  She is so much fun to talk with because you just never know what she is going to say, or what kind of a song she may come up with.  Often while we're eating, I will remind her to actually eat her meal and she'll reply "I can't help it; I just love to talk."  A few days ago, I came home from work, and Lily showed me the games she had come up with.  Now, it's not unusual for her to come up with some sort of game or play for us to act out; she loves being the "cruise director" as the Mommy Morning Out director called her last year.  This time though, she had actually drawn out her games on paper and had come up with rules and a point to the game.

This one was my favorite.  Lily drew an ice cream cone with 15 scoops of ice cream and a cherry on top.  The point of the game is to figure out how to eat all 15 scoops of ice cream and the cherry before they fall down and break the cone.  I promise we don't give her this much ice cream!

This one isn't a game, but it's her drawing of a house.  I drew the square house and triangle roof for her (I know they look like a 4 year old drew them, but no, that was me), and then she added the chimney, extra rooms (bathroom on the top right and kitchen on the bottom left), fans in every room, steps going upstairs (that's the squiggly line going across the big square) decorations to each room, a sun, clouds and Granna coming in the front door.  As she was coloring this, she thought through and then told me each detail she was adding.

Another game she invented.  This is a picture of a cat.  You are supposed to show the cat how to walk through the maze (the blue line) before the snake (that's the yellow line on the cat's back) scares the cat.

This is Lily's sticker playground.  I remember the big line of stickers on the left is her hopscotch board, but I don't remember all the other details.  I believe there are two kids playing jump rope and someone else climbing a tree.  There is also a sun, lots of clouds and a sky.

 I couldn't get this picture to turn properly on here, but this is the maze Lily came up with.  The person starts in the middle (see little blue person), and you try to get her to the "N."  I guess Lily thinks when we do mazes I am saying "there's the n" instead of "there's the end."  According to her, if you go to the bottom right, that's a hole, the bottom left is hot lava, the middle left is the sun, and Lily (she wrote out her name) is on the top left.  She loves doing puzzles and mazes!

Nothing terribly exciting about this next one, but I wanted to put it on here.  Lily and I went to Chick-fil-a's family night last week (free kids' meal with adult purchase - score!), and they were offering free spin art.  I used to love spin art as a kid.  Honestly, I cannot wait until the girls are old enough to have one of the small spin art sets for our home; I fully plan to use it more than them!  Anyway, Lily thought it was awesome too, so I put this on here to remind me of our fun evening together.

This is Lily's picture of her playing basketball.  She drew herself with long blond hair (she likes to say it's really long like Rapunzel's, but it's cut above her shoulders), and she put a basketball sticker at the end of her hand which is raised as if she is shooting the ball.  She then said "I'm going to scribble the rest orange because you play basketball on an orange field but I don't want to really color it."  She then decorated with little star stickers "to make the field prettier."

The rest of these pictures are purely for me to have record of what Lily did at this age.  Back around Easter (yep, just now getting around to putting it on here), Liz helped Lily make a few books.  Lily would dictate a story to Liz, Liz would write and then Lily would decorate the cover.  So, here are the books they made; I hope you can read the stories.

  

  

Lily is really start to enjoy learning how to read, and she works on rhyming words a lot.  Here's a book that she and Liz made together to help with that skill. 

 Our 4 and 1/2 year old is so precious; what a fun age!

Treasure Chests

Lily loves the new show on Disney Junior called "Jake and the Neverland Pirates."  It's a pretty cute little show.  She likes to pretend that she is searching for the gold doublooms like Jake and then keeping them away from Captain Hook.  She usually take the role of Izzy (Jake's female sidekick), and assigns Mia the role of either Jake or Captain Hook.  Here's a picture she drew recently; it says "Jake Neverland Pirates" across the top, and she says the four people are Captain Hook and his crew hiding in a forest as they look for Jake and the doublooms.

 Because of her love of this show, Lily really wanted to make her own treasure chest keep her doublooms (otherwise known as any trinket she can find).  Luckily, Bama is amazingly creative and can keep up with her!  She took the girls to Michaels for a little field trip.  They found adorable little chests to paint, and each girl picked out paint for themselves; not too surprising, Lily picked pink and Mia picked bright blue.  We spread out some newspapers on the table, put on their aprons and started painting.

 They both enjoyed swirling the paint around inside the bowl.

Thankfully Mia received a little help from Bama.

Concentrating so hard to make everything just right.

 The paint dried overnight, and the next morning each girl got to stick two wood pieces on that they picked out.  Lily was thrilled with her finished product!  She has enjoyed it for days now; she puts all sorts of little things in it: her jewelry, stickers, little figures, hairbands, etc.  She loves it!