Crayon Making

Every month Nya has a science assignment to complete for school. Well this month I was very excited to see that her assignment was for making crayons. I saw this on Pinterest and have been wanting to do this, so the timing was perfect!

First, we had to peel the paper off of some random crayons...

Then we placed them in some silicone heart shaped muffin tins that I purchased around Valentine's Day.

And voila! Our final project:

Nya is taking three to school and keeping three at home for coloring new projects! How fun!

Mini-Me and I are up at 4 AM....not sure why...

Nya and I were both having trouble sleeping in today...not sure why. I was up at 3:30 and when I couldn't go back to sleep, I decided to read a book on my Kindle. Then Nya came into our bedroom saying that she couldn't sleep, either. I figured that we may as well get up. While I have been finishing up the kitchen, Nya has been watching a movie on my Kindle. She loves that thing!

Getting Settled...

So we finally moved into our new place last weekend. It feels great! We are so grateful to my inlaws for allowing us to stay with them for almost a year! We miss them but we know that they are happy to have their space back to themselves just as we are happy to have a space for us, too.

We are renting a house in Bowie. I am in love with the neighborhood. When we are ready to buy again in a few years, I would love to find a house here. We can walk to a great park and the neighborhood is awesome for taking walks/runs. We have a porch out front with a swing and I love sitting out there in the evening just taking it all in. I can reflect on how blessed we are.

I've said it before, but I didn't know if we would ever be able to move on from the Baltimore nightmare and I am so thankful that we have. For a long time I worried about Nya's childhood experience. My parents provided my sister and I with the best childhood and I want to provide Nya with a great childhood as well. Now that feels possible.

She has a fenced in backyard and a front yard to play in. There are some kids in the neighborhood for her to play with. When I was a kid I took that for granted. Living in Baltimore opened my eyes to a whole new world. We didn't have comfortable outdoor living space for Nya to play in and I wasn't sure about the neighborhood kids. Our current home is small but almost double the space we had in Baltimore, so it feels spacious to us. I think that all of the housing experiences that we have dealt with over the past few years were meant to help me appreciate what we have now.

Baby Girl is Turning 4!!!

My baby girl is turning 4 tomorrow! We are so excited and cannot believe how fast she is growing up! We have decided to just make it a birthday weekend. With so much going on right now (moving, taking classes, state testing, etc.), we decided not to have a big birthday party and that seems to be OK with Miss Nya! Yesterday, Kwesi and I took a cake and juice to her school so that we could celebrate with her school friends. It was really cute.


Of course, when we went to BJ's to select a cake, Nya had to have the Barbie cake.

Here is her class with Ms. McRoy!

After the party, we went to pick up Mani and headed out to Arundel Mills. We had been wanting to take Nya to see The Lorax. Great movie! Great message, of course. Great graphics and music, too! We all really enjoyed it! I can't wait to get it for Nya when it comes out on DVD.

After the movie, we decided to take Nya to Dave and Buster's. Every time that we have taken her, she has loved it! She could barely sit still to eat any dinner. She just kept asking if everybody was ready to play games. She doesn't quite have a handle on any of the games. Another little boy was helping her play Skee-Ball because she couldn't throw the balls hard enough or she would throw them into somebody else's lane! But she was happy and of course that's all we wanted to see.

Today I have class all day so Kwesi will be entertaining the girls and tomorrow we hope to celebrate with the rest of the family.