A Week In Review

This week was somewhat unusually busy for us. We kicked it off with a great visit from my mom, brother and stepdad last weekend. Branna also had a few opportunities to have play dates with friends and we started "preschool".

When my mom comes for a visit, Branna knows that she's going to get the extra special treatment. Case and point: After eating a great out-to-eat lunch, we stopped by Wal-Mart. It was quickly approaching Branna's naptime and it was starting to show. She adam

ant about not going into the store. As I was walking around the car to get Branna out, I saw my mom whisper something to her and whatever was said, made things better. I didn't think much about it, until we got into Wal-Mart and Branna proudly announced that she w

as getting a bicycle. Yep, Grandma Honey bought Branna her first "bicycle". (It's actually a tricycle, but Branna doesn't know the difference right now.)

Fortunately the weather was great for outside play, so Branna spent most of the next morning riding her bicycle. She hasn't quite figured out how to pedal, but she's getting

better every time.

We also had a couple playdates with Branna's friends: First, we traveled to San Marcos to visit with our friends Lisa and baby Ella. After that, we had our friends Jackie and Naomi over. Since we live so far out of town and away from most our friends, we don't get to have company over often, so this was a special treat for Branna.

Branna and Naomi are good buddies and it's a lot of fun to see them play together at church. They can be so silly together. At the playdate, they seemed to have a good time playing pretend shopping and dressup.

Lastly, we started "preschool". I put preschool in quotes, because it's just me getting a few subject specific lessons together for the week. I was starting to feel like we were needing a little more structure to our day. With me trying to wrap up my research and spending as much time as I can on that, I was concerned about neglecting Branna's needs, especially when it came to expanding her knowledge about the world around us.

It's not anything big, just an hour or so a day learning about whatever. For our first week, I chose birds. (Right now, Branna really likes chickens... go figure.) Branna really seemed to get into "school" and had a good time working on our projects. As you'll see in the pictures below, we talked about chickens, ducks and penguins. By the way, if anyone has any good preschool websites that have free resources, please let me know!