McLinky Weekly Blog Hop: Introductions

Hello and welcome to the Weekly Blog Hop and to Katie's Nesting Spot!
I orginally started my blog as strictly an online journal for my family. I wanted some where to record little snippets of what we're doing. This way I'd have everything already written for when I eventually get around to scrapbooking my piles of photos. It quickly evolved into a creative outlet and a place to share the learning adventures I have with my toddler.

I love blogging about our daily life, the fun parts and trials of raising a toddler. For me the best part of blogging is becoming friends with other bloggers. I like meeting new friends and learning their stories. I recently begun writing reviews and doing giveaways so you'll also find a few of those peppered throughout too. My interests include crafting, scrapbooking, photography, learning new things like how to use my sewing machine, trying new recipes, and throwing themed play dates.

I'm also a co-founder of ABC & 123: A Learning Cooperative, where we share educational activities from around the web but mainly from our wonderful readers. As a former kindergarten and special education teacher that's a way for me to stay involved in the career I loved and plan to return to after my hiatus to be a stay at home mommy. Come visit me there too! I'd love to get a lesson submission from you!

What began as a fun little thing to do after checking my email has rapidly grown. I'm looking forward to finding some great new blogs to read! Please leave me a comment so I know you've been by. If you like what you see please consider becoming a follower. I'd love to see you at my place again!

Good Things Come in Threes

I have three great reasons to be happy today! For the first two, let me say thank you to two of my most loyal readers for giving me these fun awards!
Kim at Four Crazy Kings awarded me the Panda Super Comments Awards for being a frequent and consistent commenter on her blog. Stephanie at A Pocket Full of Buttons gave me the Humane award for:

"The Humane Award honors certain bloggers that I feel are kindhearted individuals. They regularly take part in my blog and always leave the sweetest comments. If it wasn’t for them, my site would just be an ordinary blog. Their blogs are also amazing and are tastefully done on a daily basis. I thank them and look forward to our growing friendships through the blog world."

Thank you so much girls!

The third reason is because it was ten years ago today that Brad proposed to me. He's coming home in a little bit and taking us out to dinner! Not having to make dinner? Maybe I should retitle this Good Things Come in Fours☺

Please Touch Museum

Seeing how it's going on three weeks since our trip to Philadelphia, I thought I'd better hurry up and share some more of the fun we had while visiting Brad's older brother Jeff and his wife Jody.
On Saturday we went to the Please Touch Musuem, whose mission is to enrich the lives of children by creating learning opportunities through play. Play we certainly did! There are lots of exhibits all designed to get kids creating, exploring, and investigating while interacting with their parents. All the different areas give kids many different opportunities to develop important life skills like building relationships, cooperation, negotiation and compromise through play. It was neat seeing which exhibits ER was most interested in and what she liked doing the most. No surprise that the art, rock climbing, grocery store, and Alice's Adventures were favorites and exploring the cars and trucks got a hands down.
The first really successful stop was in the program room where they had various art projects, an alphabet fishing station, and these giant foam weights set up. I think the biggest hit of day was definitely in the ShopRight Supermarket. It's where kids can get a mini shopping cart or basket and then pick all kinds of play food from the shelves. There's even a register to check out, and ER really liked that. Have I mentioned that ER is a really active kiddo? She's alway been motor driven and has never been content to sit around. The rock climbing wall in the ABC Games had to be done over and over.

Then it was on to her new favorite thing, riding the carousel! She got lucky and went on twice once with Uncle Jeff and then again with Aunt Jody. Jody even added this status update to her Facebook account, Jody: Couldn't think her niece could get any cuter, then she exclaimed "This is so exciting!" while riding the carousel!! I'm melting:)

We all enjoyed Alice's Adventures immensely. Isn't this shrinking room, inspired by the beginning when Alice has fallen down the rabbit's hole and is trying to follow him, cool?

Speaking of rabbit's hole, here's ER going down! She snagged that playing card costume as soon as possible! She's a big one for dress up right now.

She really like painting the roses in the Queen of Heart's garden, like a good little playing card should. She also got to have tea with two very special guests, Uncle Jeff and the Hare.

It was a really fun day for ER; we stayed right up until the closed and still didn't get to see everything and play everywhere! We also enjoyed the Waterworks, Fairytale Garden, and City Park exhibits. Less engaging to ER were the Please Touch Garage, Flight Fitness, and Flying Machine. It's a fun place to spend the day, my advice would be to come early and plan to stay a long time!