Parade of Puggles

After 9 months of Puggles, we are set to have our awards program tomorrow night.  My how much each girl has changed in 9 months!

Each Wednesday night as we wait for everyone to arrive we have a table activity.  Pegboards (shown here) and Play-doh are the most popular.

Some kids really get into their pegs.  When Mr. Woody is there, they like to make one long tower that reaches the ceiling...mainly to see Mr. Woody stand on the table.

These little ones have become good pals through the months.  They've learned to resolve conflicts, share and are pretty sweet about looking out for one another if someone is crying.

To begin lesson time, we sing our Puggles theme song, get our stickers (very serious business to a Puggle) and then sit "criss cross applesauce" for our lesson.  The lessons were mostly about what God created (each week something different He created) then we seemed to repeat them all this time focusing on being thankful for those things.  Puggles is lots of fun, but I wish the lessons were a little more....something....and less monotonous.  Hope was the youngest Puggle and I feel sure that she could have learned a little more.  AWANA program are you listening?

After lesson time the children were supposed to color a page that reinforced the lesson.  I liked to mix that up a bit with sometimes crayons, markers, water colors, or dot dabbers.  It is amazing how much more time water colors or dot dabbers can spend than crayons. (an hour and a half with 2-3 year olds can be very long!).  After coloring we would have free play...sometimes we would go to "the big room" where there is a playhouse and slide, but other times we took Puggles Parades through the church looking for a certain color, etc or we would take (the most popular) buggie ride.  Imagine a giant red plastic stroller that holds 6 children at a time.

Then came snack time!  This was the last night so I figured Popsicles would be okay to drip all over our Puggles shirts as they would not need to wear them again. 

Let's take a minute to appreciate that this little one did not get even a drop of her RED Popsicle on her shirt.  Only a small ring around her sweet little mouth.  My how they've grown up (tear).  When we first started, most did not speak in complete sentences, most wore diapers, and some cried when they were dropped off.  By the end, everyone talks up a storm, we are all potty trained and no one cries a bit when they are dropped off.  They even clean up after themselves during snack time and have memorized our songs.  Until next year...

Glue...lots of glue

If you guessed Hawesville for our last adventure, you are correct.  Christy, I sure hope John didn't take you there thinking he was taking you to the Edgewater Grill in Newburgh.  There is also a place a few steps up from the Riverview Restaurant in Indiana.  Not exactly sure where but it also overlooks the river.  Woody and I stopped at it on our way back from a canoe trip on the Blue River one time.

Now, on to the glue.  Hope spent the day yesterday gluing.  Sounds exciting, eh?  Well if it's the first time you'd been let loose with your own bottle of glue, you might be excited too!

First, the traditional Elmer's glue.  We glued little colorful pompoms.  Lots and lots of them. Covered several pieces of paper.

Then, we moved on to the glue stick.  Not as exciting as the Elmer's, but when I told her lots of kids use glue sticks in school it was a hit and she was determined to master it.  Do they still let kids have "school boxes" with their crayons, glue, pencils and scissors or is it all community supplies now?  I sure hope there are boxes because I've already explained the concept to Hope and she is most excited about it.

We also tried to glue yarn.  This required much more supervision so there are no "in progress" shots of that.  Doesn't seem that hard, but it is.  This morning she woke up asking to glue some more.  I thought we would learn the concept of patterns and glue balls...blue, yellow, blue, yellow, etc.  That was not a hit at all.  She stripped her clothes and ran through the house crying for almost 2 hours straight until Sesame Street came on.  Don't mess with a girl's glue projects.

This One's a Little Harder....

If you guessed Island, Ky for our last adventure you were correct.  I think the locals pronounce it "Ah-land."

Today's adventure is a little harder, I think.  I had personally never been here before, though Woody believes he has taken me here before.  I say it was another one of his many girlfriends he must have brought.

No time for good pictures.  I'll explain later.  This sign may or may not offer you a clue.

This view of the Ohio River is your best clue.  Along the road there are actually little parking places where you can stop and enjoy the "scenic overlook" much like the ones you see as you drive through the Smokies.  I know this isn't exactly Gatlinsburg, but it's one of our area's best views.



There's a small restaurant here.  We ate a very late lunch.  Not exactly a date type of joint, but it's wonderful if you feel like getting away and seeing no one that you know...or seeing no one at all, really.  It's the type of place where it's okay that the cook's barefooted granddaughter kept riding her scooter in and out of the kitchen.  I can't even remember what I ordered, but I remember Woody's!  He got fried chicken fingers.  His plate looked like when you order that at Colby's (minus the cheesy garlic bread).  For you health nuts who would never order fried chicken at Colby's...I'm talking huge portions of huge chicken fingers fried to perfection...enough to feed a family.  Oh, and the reason I couldn't stay to get good picture:  See that window to the side?  We were standing right by it, probably taking this very picture, when a bird flew full speed into it.  Wham!  It hit the concrete immediately.  We had to leave while Hope still thought the veterinary ambulance was on its way and that the bird would be okay.



Another view of the river.  Also, this is our revised "smile for the camera face."  I'm not sure it's really an improvement.  Just a different bad.  We'll keep working on it.

Bob Ross

I thought everyone knew who Bob Ross was.  My mom had no idea who he was, so apparently I was wrong.  Bob Ross is an icon of the 80's and 90's PBS channel.  He teaches oil painting.  His white man 'fro is his trademark...along with his "happy trees."  I first discovered him during a very long snow break from school when I was a kid and have loved him ever since.  He has a soothing voice and I like to watch him paint in the same way that most people like to sit and watch cooking shows.  I don't own a single oil paint or an easel and I've never painted a single happy tree.  Still, I wanted to share the love with my little artist so Woody ordered me a DVD of Bob's from his Netflix account.  Hope loves the "Painter Man" too.  Only she wanted to paint along.  So, out came the Neat Sheet and water colors.

Let the fun times begin.  That's him, by the way on the TV.

Waiting for further instructions.

Mixing her colors. (I REALLY don't like the water colors to mix, but I bit my lip and let her work.)

Hard at work.

And last...the happy trees. Ahh, the "Joy of Painting!"

Where are we now?

Let's continue with our game....where are we now?

There's a little "park" (Woody, is it a park or just a landmark spot?) with a wooden bridge that I believe Woody told me used to go over the train tracks.  It's a good little photo spot...or if you are like these hooligans, a place to do bike tricks.

It's fun and a little scary to run down the steep bridge.

There's also this red train...that makes me think I was right about that train tracks thing earlier.

You can climb up and pretend to drive the train.  It's also another good photo spot if you can ever get your kid to look at the camera, which I could not.

But the real reason I wanted to make the xx minute drive to this spot was for this!  The Dairy Freeze!  If you go, just don't bring your camera and start taking pictures.  The locals look at you like you might be a Yankee.

They serve blue ice cream! (well sort of blue) It comes in other colors/flavors also but I practically forced Hope to get blue because it reminds me of the Holiday World blue ice cream (that I was never allowed to buy as a kid!).  Hope was not nearly as in to the ice cream as she was the cone...the bottom of the cone.

Having no bottom to your cone causes you to need to lick fast to avoid dripping.  Dad had to intervene and give an assist.

Because she just kept going back to the bottom of that cone.

Last note on the ice cream:  Do you ever get to the bottom of a Blizzard only to find just plain old vanilla ice cream.  That will NOT happen at the Dairy Freeze.  This is the bottom of my Oreo Blast (or whatever they call their version of the blizzard.)  Big, huge chunks of Oreo.  Yep, that's the way they do business here in ___________?