Yellow, yellow, everywhere!

Luke and I were playing outside yesterday, when he excitedly yelled, "Mommy! A yellow butterfly!" (Okay, he didn't actually say "butterfly" it was more like "flutterby.")

I couldn't believe when I looked where he was pointing and there sat a small yellow....well, is it a moth? We'll call it a butterfly.

I quickly grabbed my camera and took a few shots.

It's amazing how many yellow things you can find when you focus on one single color.

A yellow train!

I couldn't believe our luck! While out running errands yesterday, we were stopped by a train...a YELLOW TRAIN!

I was so glad I had my camera with me, and Luke was so excited to see a yellow train.

It's really amazing how quickly Luke is learning his colors just by focusing on one color at a time.

Yellow has been more difficult, however, and I think we'll concentrate on yellow for another week before we move on to learning another color.

Yellow Jello

As we continued our learning activities about the color yellow, a trip to the grocery store was in order.

I can't personally imagine any other reason in the world to purchase a box of yellow jello! And while we were there, we bought yellow plates and yellow plastic cups, too.

We also took lots of fun pictures of yellow fruits and vegetables, yellow mustard, and even yellow Sponge Bob Square Pants halloween candy buckets.

Even though Luke didn't like eating the yellow jello (he did try it, but quickly spit it out), we had fun "cooking" it together. And he was more than amazed when, several hours after putting it in the refrigerator, it was no longer water!

I couldn't talk anyone else in the family into eating the yellow jello, either.

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Learning Lellow

Yellow is such a difficult word for small children to say, so in addition to learning to recognize this color, we're going to work on saying in correctly, too.

Yesterday, we took Brandon and his friend to the train station to catch a train to Chicago to catch the Cubs/Cardinals game (Cubs won, by the way :).

I wanted to catch some pictures of Luke with Brandon next to the train, but Luke got pretty nervous when it came into the station and didn't want to get anywhere near the train....he just wanted mommy to "hold me!"

We didn't have any problem with the instructions over the loud speaker to "stay behind the YELLOW line."

However, although Luke decided to assert some independence and not pose for pictures for mom, I did manage to snap a quick shot of him doing a Power Ranger move next to a bright yellow pole.

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Learning our colors - Red

With the weather being wet and rainy the last two days of Red Week, we turned to inside activities to learn the color red.

Our "red hunt" was a blast! We took a shopping bag and walked through the house collecting red items: We found a red apple in the refrigerator, we found a red towel in the bathroom, and the toy box was a treasure trove of red cars! We found a red pillow, a red comb, and Brandon's red car sitting in the driveway (except we couldn't figure out how to fit that in our bag!)

After the hunt, we got out the coloring book and crayons we received from the firefighters we visited a few days ago, and colored this great big fire truck picture.

Another fun week, filled with lots of fun activities for spending time with 2-year old Luke, while also learning all about the color red.

We're thinking yellow will be the color next week....

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Field Trip Rain-Out

We tried our best to make it to the playground with the red slide and the red playground equipment, but we got rained out.

We drive by this playground every morning taking the big kids to school, so Luke and I decided it would be a fun place to visit during red week.

Minutes before we arrived, it started sprinkling, and I told Luke we might have to go to the red slide another day because it was going to be wet. But Luke thought about it a second and then announced, "I know! We can take a napkin to dry the water off the slide!"

He was so certain this would work, and I always have an extra stash of McDonald's napkins in the glove box, so we decided to give it a try.

Well, as soon as we parked the car, the downpour began in earnest. He did climb quickly to the top of the play structure, but even his napkin wasn't enough to dry the slide, so he refused to slide down it, fearing his pants would get too wet.

I got one quick picture before we ran back to the van.

We'll have to make a rain date for the red slide outing....

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Our RED field trip

I decided that RED week wouldn't be complete without a trip to our local fire station to check out the big red fire trucks!

Luke and I stopped by the Pekin, Illinois Fire Department completely unannounced, and were treated like royalty!

Luke got a chance to climb on every single fire truck. The fire fighters got a kick out of how excited he was, and kept asking him "what color is THIS truck?"

When we left, Luke received a "Jr. Firefighter" badge, a red plastic firefighter hat, some stickers, a firefighter baseball ("strike out fire!), and a coloring book, so he can color his own red fire trucks.

Such a fun time!

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Seeing Red

This week is RED week, and are we ever seeing red!

Yesterday, we did the usual errand runs, and had fun at WalMart picking out red apples and red peppers and red towels and red shirts and red trucks and red trucks and red trucks (Luke LOVES trucks!).

But by far, my favorite picture was this one of my little male model posing next to a red fire hydrant.

I swear, I didn't tell him to pose that way....he's just had his picture taken so many times in the past week and half, that he walked right up to this bright red fire hydrant, leaned provocatively against it, and said "Okay, mom, take my picture."

What a ham!

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The Green Chair

Luke and I went on a small field trip this morning.

I belong to our local Freecycle Group (if you don't know about Freecycle, check it out at http://www.freecycle.com/), and the other day someone posted that he had a green recliner to give away.

Now, when I read this post for a free green recliner, two things popped into my head:

1. "Jack's chair" in the living room has seen better days. The cushions are threadbare from so much lounging and reclining and television viewing, and we'd just been discussing that we needed to replace it (we bought it 10 years ago at an antique store for $20 and had it reupholstered. We've definitely gotten our money's worth out of it, but the style no longer matches our style, so it's time for it to find a new home!).


2. Green! Did you say green!?

I've gotten several good items from Freecycle (the entertainment center in our downstairs family room, for starters), and I've gifted several items to other Freecyclers. However, when someone posts that they've got a green recliner, clean, good condition, pet-free, smoke-free home, they just got a new chair and this one no longer fits in their house, I thought, "Woo-hoo! My lucky day!"

So off we went to pick up our new green recliner.

Well, I've learned a valuable lesson in that everyone has his own definition of the words "clean" and "good condition."

Brandon, my 20-year old son who went with me to lift the chair into my van, at first refused to even get out of the van! Only when he saw his poor mother attempting to lift it by herself, did he grudgingly get out to help. Once it was loaded into the van, Luke began yelling and crying in the back seat to "get the chair out! Get the chair out! Get the chair out!"

Jack and Brandon both asked me why I didn't just leave it, and I said because that would be breaking the code of the Freecylers! If you say you will pick something up, you must pick it up. "No shows" are the worst! They waste your time! They require that you then repost and have to deal with another possible no-show.

So, I'll put the GREEN chair on the curb, stick a "FREE" sign on it, and it will ultimately be gifted to someone who appreciates it.

It is green (although it looks a little blue in the photo).

But it won't be coming into our house!