Farm Animals

In Tate's playgroup we are talking about animals this month and each week we do a different type of animal(s). This week I was in charge and we did activities focusing on farm animals. I had a good time trying to come up with fun activities for the boys to do. In my mind, the boys will be a great audience, sit patiently and listen intently, etc. etc. Then reality hits, and I have to remind myself I'm dealing with four 1 1/2 to 3 year-olds! So, the activities didn't go exactly as planned and I learned how important being flexible is, but all-in-all I think a good time was had by all!

We made cow puppets and sang "Old MacDonald Had a Farm,"Dug for plastic farm animals in the sandbox, read a story about animals, and shook cream in a can and made butter. Tate loved it on a bagel! They ate like the animals (haystacks: Chinese noodles in melted butterscotch chips),

Like all good activities it ended with children crying, one on the ground out of the picture:) Guess we shouldn't have tried to push them for a cute picture of all of them holding their cow faces up. The bonus activity for playgroup was going to the Enumclaw Fair! We were totally pumped to go see the animals up close and personal. And that's exactly what we got because this fair was pretty small in comparison to the Puyallup. The people were soooo nice and friendly and let Tate pet the llamas (we learned the difference between llamas and alpacas-the ears and size) . . . feed a baby goat . . .
love the other baby goats up for adoption . . .
trying to reach both at the same time . . . kisses goodbye . . . not sure how to sanitize his mouth after that?
Stopped for a dinner break. We decided to save money and bring our own dinner so we could spend the money on fun activities. Somehow Tate always ends up in Blake's stroller and Blake in Tate's-I think some people looked at us a little funny. Oh well, Tate is stubborn and Blake doesn't care at this point.
Then on to the horses. Again, the people were so nice this guy walked Tate over to his horse, who won 1st prize, and let Tate pet him. I'm not sure if Tate was more nervous about the big horse or the strange kid holding him.
On to the bunnies . . . Blake tried to pet them.
Blake mastered Tate's sippy cup while waiting for Tate to draw on his tile at the

Home Depot booth.
John really wanted to go down this huge slide and Tate turned into a daredevil and went with him.

The first thing out of Tate's mouth when he got down was, "again."

And the last stop of the day was the pony rides. Ya know when we were kids we never got to do the rides at the fair, maybe that's why John and I didn't have a problem spoiling Tate (living vicariously through our children). Then, I thought, it's a lot easier and less expensive for one child to do the rides then 6 or 9 kids! The lucky first-borns have all the fun.John was holding on tight to Tate's shirt and Tate kept trying to pull his hand off. Mr. Independent is what we call Tate these days.

I couldn't get a good picture of Tate while the pony was walking around, so I thought I'd take one when he was finished so I had John move out of the way, but Tate didn't sit still long enough for me to get the picture before he started getting off the horse by himself!

Some people think we live way out in "no-where land." Sometimes I agree with that statement (okay, most of the time); but, when we can drive 20 minutes and go have a great time for about 20 bucks, not pay for parking, no fighting your way through the crowds, I think how much I really love where we live!