Hi-Ho Cherry-O & Popsicles

  Today was a special day.  Today, I taught Anna Beth how to play her first board game...Hi-Ho Cherry-O.  It's the one where you have a cherry tree, orange tree, apple tree, and blueberry tree and you spin the spinner and "pick" the correct number of your fruit off of your tree.  Seems pretty simple, right?  Have you ever played with a 2/almost 3 year old?
  I must say, playing with Anna Beth was quite different from the last time I remember playing this game.  We had a blast.  She won 3 of the 5 games...and the competitive side of me is okay with that :)  The timing of playing this game was very important - Lynnsie is nowhere near ready to play such a game and I don't think we would have made very much progress had she also had her little hands in the fruits baskets on the board!  So, we played after Anna Beth got up from her nap while we waited on Lynnsie to wake up and have our special snack.  Call me cheesy, but I want our family to family game nights and stuff like that as we grow (in age and in family size).
  Now onto our second fun thing of the day...we had homemade popsicles!!  Not that these were hard to make at all, but the girls had great fun eating them.  They were an absolutely mess when all was said and done.  I found these popsicle trays at this great kitchen store in Gulfport last summer and I realized last night, we had a nice big pitcher of Kool-Aid in the fridge.  I poured some into the popsicle trays, popped the lids with the handle on them, and into the freezer they went.  The girls were pretty red and sticky when it was all over with, but they loved them!
  It may not seem like playing a board game and eating "homemade" popsicles are all that special, but it's something I did with my girls and that is the only requirement for "special" in my book!