Soggy day fun.

Sometimes rainy days are the best. After weeks with out rain we have had a few soggy days as of late and that means I either come up with fun and exciting things for the kids to do, or I go insane. A house packed with six young children can be fun...or a nightmare...depending on how I plan the day. So on one of the days I decided to build a fort with the kids, which is something we haven't done in a while. I got the reminder from Tiffany at My Litter of Six (check her out she's awesome!) she posted about letting her kids build a big ole fort a while back. We built a smaller version and all the kids had so much fun, then I let them watch a movie in the middle of the day which is something we never do and we munched on some popcorn while watching the movie. They really thought the whole thing was so super cool. It kept them entertained for a good long time and gave me some peace of mind...which is so unexpected on a rainy day. Our magnificent chair fort, oh so fun.

I can remember building huge forts when I was a kid and I always had a blast. There's just something so fun about hiding inside of a blanket cave.

Bubu was having fun I swear, I think he was just trying to tell me to get the irritating camera out of his face. He's not much for pictures these days.

Since we are not doing preschool in the summer time it leaves for more hours to fill. Which can be a good thing because then we have time for bigger projects. There's an art project that I like to do with the kids every summer where we make butterflies. They always love it. We start out by doing paint blot art. They have so much fun "smooshing" the paint to spread it out.

Then we (I since all the kids are little right now) cut the shapes out into butterfly wings. I give them a body piece, a pipe cleaner to turn into antennas, and googlie eyes to glue on to the wings and ta-da we have butterflies.

Which we then hang up around the room and enjoy. They are super simple to make, but with six kids it takes a while to get them done, so it's a good way to fill up a rainy day.

We also did plain old water color painting on one of the rainy days and that turned out to be a lot of fun. Even the littlest enjoyed it. Since I had them take turns they didn't tire of it for a long time and it really filled up the day. They would paint, then switch with someone else and go play, then come back to paint...it worked out well. They did of course eventually get bored of this though so we cleaned it up and moved on to an Animal Dance Party. Boy was that fun! I got out the dress up clothes and picked out some jazzy music and it was on.

Atty doesn't like to dress up, never has. So the most I could get him to do was put this Dino hat on and pose one second for a picture before he ripped it back off.

The rest of the time he wore this one red wrist band and just hammed it up. I guess he's enough of a character he doesn't need to dress up!

Bubu decided to be the Dino, and then proceeded to wear the costume for the rest of the day.

Spike chose the monkey suit...doesn't he make for a cute monkey.

Then those animals got their grove on! It was super funny and they had a blast. After they were tired of dancing they just changed outfits a gazillion times and made an absolute mess of the playroom, but they were having fun and that's all that mattered on that wet, wet, wet day.

The man gives me grey hairs!

This is my hubby. Using a power tool.

Over our pond. Balancing on boards. Over water. Power tool.

Trying to fix our stupid pond, has been an ongoing headache to say the least. We had to fix a crack in the top pond, which didn't work the first time so we had to do it all over again. For some reason the rock that the water is suppose to flow over on one side is now higher and the water won't flow over it. We have tried propping the other side up higher and such but nothing was working. So my hubby decided enough was enough and broke out the power tool. He decided to shave down the rock so the water will flow over. Which would be a great idea if it didn't include perching over a body of water with a Power Tool! The man gives me grey hairs.

Mice called bunnies.

We had a wonderful Easter. It was made even better by the fact that my husband got off work early totally unexpectedly, and was able to have the Easter egg hunt with us and dinner. Which was so wonderful. I am finally brave enough to post a belly picture, yikes! Crazy hair and all. I am trying to grow it out again, but I'll admit it's driving me crazy right now. Me and my big ol' belly. I don't know why I get so big so fast, but it's always been that way. Can you see why my midwife thought twins?!

Boys with their Neenee, my mom. She spend the night, because my friend was starting to have contractions, and we thought that she might have the baby, so I went over to her house. The contractions ended up stopping over night though, poor thing. It was nice to be able to spend Easter with the kids, even though it meant that my poor friend has to wait a little longer, and it was great that their Neenee got to be there too.

Atty stuffing his face with treats. Look at those big juicy chipmunk cheeks. So cute!

Ira was a good little egg finder. I did have to keep reminding him to look for eggs first before eating them, so that his brothers didn't end up with them all.

Easter family picture. I made every one dress nice for the dinner and we had a great time.

Our egg hunt ended up being in doors, because of course it was raining as it does on all holidays here in the NW. If you noticed the huge pile of laundry in the background it ended up being a great place to hide eggs, kinda like looking for a needle in a haystack. My couch gets lonely, so the laundry feels obliged to keep it company.

Atty looking for eggs. He made that bunny basket. Filled it up with lots of eggs, which I had filled up with dried fruit, nuts, and yogurt covered raisin, because I am admittedly a bit of a health nut. My poor kids. They did get some candy in there Easter baskets though, so they are not total deprived. Although I tend to put more trinkets and little toys in there then candy.

Ira loved this egg the most, didn't want to put it in the basket, carried it around instead. Silly kid.

Banden wanted me to take a picture of every egg he found, and he found a lot! It was funny. He was so proud of his finding skills this year. Kept telling me "I'm a great finder mom."

All of the kids made these cute bunny baskets this year. Although they ended up looking more like mice this time around for some reason. I think it's the whiskers, I'll have to use something different next time. I used something different for the whiskers last year and they looked a lot better. The kids had so much fun making them though. Ira went crazy with the decorations. The foam shapes were suppose to be just for the nose, but he had other plans. Anyways that was our Easter, hope you all had a great time too.

I'm going to be hurting tomorrow...

Phew...busy day.

It ended up being a gorgeous day here in the soggy NW. Spring cleaning! I started out by attacking the laundry room with a vengeance. I could no longer handle the stench. Seriously. It was the combination of my husbands boots drying on the boot dryer every night, the mountain of laundry, the cat box that I can't empty right now and my husband conveniently forgets to do All The Time, along with the stinky nasty carpet (who puts carpet in a laundry/mud room?). So I hauled most everything out, vacuumed, and sprinkled baking powder on the carpets. While I was cleaning I stumbled upon some bulbs I recently bought that desperately needed to be planted, so I decided to take a little break before getting out the carpet cleaner. Out into the sun I went, the boys and I got our gear and headed up front to the flowerbeds. I then got lost out there for hours. Planting, weeding and pruning. When I was done the boys helped me pick up all the weeds and put them in the wagon. I love gardening and it was so nice to get out there and fix it all up, it really looks great now. I can't wait until every thing starts blooming. Any ways we headed back in, and that's when it hit me. My whole body started aching. It's been awhile since I have done that much yard work. Yikes! I wanted to stop and curl up on the couch, but I resisted and instead put on a movie for the boys and got busy cleaning the carpet in the laundry room and putting every thing back. Except the cat box, which I moved out to the hubby's shop, think he will empty it now? I know I'm evil. Then I moved on to the playroom and got the boys to help me clean up their mess (which by the way is already a mess again as I type, ugggg!) then vacuumed the house. I have to clean the carpets in the playroom tomorrow, and bleach toys, oh the joy. Now I need to finish dinner, hubby's coming home late from work tonight, and I really need to clean the kitchen because I haven't washed a dish all day. I am going to be hurting tomorrow. I can feel the ache in my legs and back and arms, gardening really can be such a work out and I always have a tendency to over do it. Oh well, it was a beautiful, warm day once I started on the garden, I just couldn't stop until it was complete. It was so warm that I got to air the house out which was nice. Nothing better then fresh spring air. We also had a picnic outside for lunch and the boys really liked that. I think I might have even got a bit of a sunburn on my face, that's not hard for me to do though, getting sun burnt is what I do best, being fair skinned and all.

Oh and I still have a mountain of laundry to deal with but now it's a clean mountain on the couch, so we're making progress.

Pinch Patrol, no green, no mercy...

HAPPY PATTY'S DAY! The tricky little Leprechaun's left us gold coins, so exciting. We left them "rainbow candies" being as it is there favorite. We usually make a Leprechaun welcoming box and deck it all out really nice and then rig it to try and trap a Leprechaun, but some how St. Patrick's Day snuck up on me and we didn't have enough time. All the kids are little enough that they didn't call me on it, but if this had still been at the old daycare, I would have been in real trouble!

Then we made a lucky shamrock cookie and of course decorated it with "rainbow candies" in honor of the Leprechauns.

The kids were very excited for the Patty's day party. They did a great job helping to decorate the cookie, and of course lick off their utensils when done (or at least almost done).

Then it was time to enjoy, green milk and all. Those are plastic fancy glasses, just so you know. The kids just love getting to drink out of fancy glasses.

Then in a desperate attempt to balance out all the sugar and green food coloring I made cheesy biscuits and stew. I tried to go a bit Irish on the stew and used cabbage and potatoes. except I didn't have regular green cabbage, oh well.

I acknowledge that it doesn't look very tasty, but it was delicious. I wasn't very prepared this year, because my pregnancy hormones took over this last weekend and I was a sick sad little mess. Had to send hubby to the store for groceries on his only day off in the last 10 days. I would have started puking at some point for sure, probably while waiting in the check out line, into someone else's grocery cart. Things always get a little lost in translation when I send him grocery shopping, even though I send him with a DETAILED organized by food groups list. Oh well. He was a dear for going.

We also made a cute little art project, Leprechaun hats.

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So all in all we've had an awesome day, even if I was flying by the seat of my pants. I can't preplan anything to save my life right now, it's really irritating. Brain is mush. What day is it? Where do I live? Who are you? How old am I? That one works out as long as I remember to guess about 5 years younger. ;) Yeah...it's getting pretty bad, pregnesia is what I call it and it's a sad, sad thing.

A patchwork Christmas

So this Christmas I decided to *go green*, *get frugal*, *be cheap* what ever you want to call it. ~reuse~reduce~recycle~ With this in mind and a overwhelming want to go minimal, to see how creative I could get, keep things basic and still have a fun Christmas I decided to wrap most of my presents for my own family this year in fabric. Now normally this would not be cheap and would be wasteful if you weren't going to reuse the fabric, but I have more fabric collecting in my closet then any one person should have. For various reasons it has been collecting in there patiently waiting for someone not so busy to make something beautiful with them. Well I still don't have time to do much of any thing with the fabric, but in the mean time I found it can double as an an excellent wrap. I didn't want to cut any of it, because I am going to use it for something else some day, so that made it a bit difficult, but I managed. My friend and I were going to make reusable fabric gift bags together but I of course didn't have the time. She made some though and they are really cute. I love anything frog, so I just had to use this fabric.

This present is for my mom, and I know she will love my choice of fabric for her present, she might be disappointed though when I tell her she can keep it, the fabric that is...

Another favorite, star and moon fabric. This one I experimented with wrapping so that I could tie it at the top and I really liked it this way. I have seen fabric wraps you can buy that show you how to wrap them a certain way. I was trying to make it look something like that.

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So now onto presents. I didn't have a lot to spend on them this year and I have a few special children in my life that are not my own that I wanted to do something for so I made them stuffed animals. A few kids got Sock Monkeys, which only cost me the price of a few sock, which I got a good deal on. A couple others got Bella Bunnies. Now this project didn't cost me anything because I already had the fabric, but I should have tried it ahead of time to work out the kinks, because it was harder then I had anticipated. Either way I finished them, and as long as they don't see the beautiful ones that my friend makes I'll be fine. By the way if you want to see what they are actually suppose to look like check out her blog treasuresunderthewillowtree.blogspot.com (I don't know how to link, sorry) there is also a link to her etsy shop from there. She is the friend that makes fabric gift bags too, she is one creative lady! She is also the one who showed me how to make the sock monkeys, except mine look nothing like hers. The very first quilt I ever made, I made with her. Nobody got quilts this year though, not enough time!

Here is one of the sock monkeys, this one was made from a really soft sock which made the sock monkey really squishy and nice, but was really hard to sew!

One of my daycare mom's is having a baby girl soon and asked if I would make her a sock monkey for her little girl, so I actually gave this one to her at her baby shower which was a few weeks ago.

This is a Bella Bunny. It has a cute little tail on the back. It's for one of my daycare kids.

So here is another one of the presents I wrapped, my son loves animals so I wrapped his present in a zoo animal print. Our tree is going to look like a patch work quilt this Christmas, cool!

Another monkey I made for one of my daycare kids, the brother of the soon to be sister. He just had to have a sock monkey too, he loved the one for his sister.

This Bella Bunny is for Bella. I wanted to attempt to make these just for her, so I could give her a stuffed animal with her name. I didn't use as soft of fabric for the head and arms and legs as I did for the other one, which I regretted in the end, but I wanted to use the purple color.

Frogs again, I'm telling you I have a thing for frogs, I collect frog stuff actually, have been since I was a teenager.

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So there yeah go, I attempted to go *sort of* green this Christmas. I even reused paper and gift bags from last year. I bought some of my presents for my boys from a mom who buys stuff at thrift stores and such and cleans them up and resells them. She is a stay at home mom and make pretty good money doing this. She cut me a deal, which was nice of her. I bought their books this year from amazon, used, and got a really good deal that way. We gave minimal gifts, meaningful ones, and I am really excited for tomorrow. Each boy got one bigger gift, and since big brother already has a bike, we got the little ones wheels to ride, they are going to be so excited!

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I still haven't figured out what I am going to do about the whole Santa thing and how to tie the whole thing into what the true meaning of Christmas is for us or how far I want to take the whole Santa thing, and Christmas is tomorrow. You think I would have had this all figured out by now, after all Bubu is over three years old, but I keep changing my mind, and I have a general ideal of what I want our holiday traditions to be surrounding these topics but that's all it is just a general idea. Actually I'd rather just focus on Saint Nicholas, but I am not sure how to tie this in and if we should only focus on him and not Santa at all...Bla, bla, bla...Oh I don't know!

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I wasn't raise with the Santa thing, so I don't even really know what it's all about. I guess the dilemma is I haven't decided if this was a good thing or not.

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Well I hope your Christmas with your family is a delightful, and hopefully less confusing, experience! Looks like we are having a White Christmas around here after all! It's been a long time since we have had one of those.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Sugar high

Merry Christmas! Keeping the babies off this tree makes me very unholiday like...

I have trees painted on the playroom walls, so I decided to deck them out!

Craziness, the lights go all the way around the other wall too. The kids love it.
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We did a fun project this week. We made reindeer gift bags for cookies. Our preschool theme right now is baking and they have been learning about reindeer. So first we made these super cute and easy bags. The kids had a lot of fun doing these, loved getting their hands traced and of course gluing on the red Rudolf nose. Then we made cookies over the course of a few days.

We (meaning I did most of the work) made sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies. I think more frosting ended up being eaten then actually used. Sugar High! Then there are sprinkles, and all kids love sprinkles, A LOT! Sprinkles and glitter are a kids best friend.

"Slowly, slowly, okay that's good, okay wow you are using a lot, careful, slowly, yikes, um okay just dip your cookies in the sprinkles, that works."

So some craft supplies, cooking supplies, and a couple bottles of sprinkles later and we had some super duper gift bags stuffed full with cookies...it was a lot of fun, and the kids were so proud of themselves. The daycare kids got to bring them home as gifts, and my kids gave them to someone special for Christmas.

Look mom I made purple!

Um, yeah, I was speechless.

Situation went a little like this;

Me- washing another child's hands in the bathroom after our painting project in preschool.

Bubu- from the dinning room "I like purple"

Me- Hummmmm..... (answer for everything when busy.)

Bubu- "Purple is nice"

Me- "Oh?" (wait a minute, purple? We weren't using the color purple.)

Bubu- "I like it on my body."

Me- "Bubu, what are you doing?"

Bubu- "It's fun, Atty too mom."

Me- Wait a minute he's calling me mom! "Bubu, come here"

Bubu- suspiciously silent.

Me- "Bubu!"

Dashing back to the dinning room, almost run into little purple man, auggggg!

Bubu- "I made purple!" He shows me his hands with pride.
Good grief...and there's Atty all grins and giggles, covered from head to toe, enjoying purple. Well what can I say, it was a pretty color they made, although not my favorite. Maybe next time we will experiment with yellow and blue.

Preschool painting projects are so much fun!