Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays.

Christmas is over and they are finally getting out the their Xmas PJ's. I have loved having family here for days and hosting many meals. It warms my heart to be surrounded by our family. I love all the cooking and ciaos.


Iso 1000, F3.5, 1/100


ISo 1000, f/7.1, 1/320

Trying to find our way through mounds of TOYS. Which we love. We have spent days filled with play with no schedule to tend to.These jammies have made it through two seasons. I LOVE LOVE them. They are Hanna Anderson. Soft and comfy. By far the best I have ever bought. I even bought Halloween ones. If you knew me, you know I do not pay full price on Brand Name clothes but these are MY splurge for them.

drawing

ISo 325 50mm f 6.3, 1/50

These days this how we spend some of our free time. They all like to draw. We encourage it and praise them for their creativity.

XMAS

I have started thinking about Xmas cards. I think that Superhero's is must. But the saying is what is tripping me up this year.

A flyer was put in our door for the two neighborhood girls to rake the leaves and make 5$ per yard.



That gave these three the idea to offer it at a lower cost. Than to take it one step father, they knocked on doors and with their cute little faces told the home owner only 3$ for your front yard.



They ended up doing about 4 houses and by the end, you could tell it did not matter about the money. My boys where having so much fun. Moose actually ran by me and threw his dollar at me to take home and I commented that it might be mine now and he said "ok mom".

happy monday..........................

Change is GOOD

I have been wanting to do this FOREVER and finally did.
I needed help, this was a BIG project. Recently (at least a year ago) my mother-in-law painted her kitchen cabinets. I knew I could do it with a little help. We knocked them out in about a week. Thank goodness, if I would of had to do them myself it would have taken me a month or more and it would of been torture on my family.









Started in the garage so I would not disrupt the house, but the cold weather forced us to reset up in the living room.









They are brighter and better than I could have imagined. I love them. Still tryingt o decorate, but loving the new cream cabinets. Now when do you think I can get new floors. If I am anything like my mother there is always a project in the wings.

And yes the S did turn into a 5. It's a number I have come to love.

Weekend FUN

We have dressed up for years so it was fun to. We were honorable mention at one of the parties and won a 3lb Summer Sausage. I really like summer sausage but I am gonna need help eating this one.



We had two Adult Parties to go to. And I made these... a little on the sweet side.


Commander and I are thankful for both of our parents who watched our kids so we could go out and celebrate.
We ended the weekend with this


Every year we trick or treat with the whole neighborhood. In the picture we are minus 3 of the older girls. So each house we go to 10 kids land at the door yelling "trick or treat". Two of mine went home after a short bit of hitting houses.

Today we are a wreck. Coughs, low grade fevers, and general whinning. And just plain tired..........
Tomorrow is new a day right

Not bad for a 3yo taking the picture.

I wish our days could be filled with


And I really miss heading to the pool

Go Kart Race

Do all kids beg to play video games at restaurants, have candy or a toy at every store and want to do every activity at all places they go. Like most people we give in once in a while. So this day, Commander and I were doing a little batting practice before our Sunday night Softball game. They have go Karts at this place. So we indulged the boys in them. It was fun that ALL THREE got to participate at the same time. Driving was a little hairy cary for all them. Shag gave up about a lap into int. The kid running the karts was nice enough to continue driving for him. I think they are all really enjoyed it. We should probably do more of that stuff more often.

Movie in the cul-de-sac

We put our kids to bed one night and I heard these strange noises coming from neighborhood it was about 830pm. I peek outside to see.



Cool Huh. The neighbor is testing out his outdoor theatre. I am amzed at how good the picture is.

Another night , we put the kids in bed 8pm or so. I sit down and finally check my email. It’s a neighborhood email about a movie showing in our cul-de-dac tonight. Bummer the boys are already in bed.
A minute later. We get a text.

A:Are you coming out? The movie starts in 5 minutes.
Us: No the kids are in bed
A: really it starts in 2 minutes, bummer it’s Toy Story 2, u can have a beer
Us: maybe another night.

5 minutes later we joined the group. Such a great experience to pluck your kids out of bed for. It was a good time. The kids were in front of the screen in one drive way. The adults were across the cul-de-sac in another. What a fun summer memory.

Yum-o as Rachel Ray would say. Commander suggested I try this deli, because he knows how much I love deli sandwiches. Currently my oldest and I share a Wise Guy at Spicy Pickle. (Which we love) Now we have found a new one to share as well. The Itialain at Snarf’s is just as good. I love that my oldest has a great flair to try new foods. He likes to eat and will pretty much try anything. As long as one of his buddies is not there to tell him how gross it might or might not be. Moose can eat more than me by far. Sometimes at dinner he has about 3 servings. He is a skinny guy that is literally still running around from the time he is awake. At some point we will need to teach him portion control so that he does not struggle later in life. Commander and I love food. I am sure we hope that all 3 will have an appreciation for it. Well maybe when they are able to buy their own food. The thought of three teenage boys in the house eating at once scares me. We will be solely shopping at BIG BOX stores probably once than once a week to feed them. If I have it correctly we’ll have an 18 yo, a 17 yo, and a 14 yo for 3 squares a day. Instead of saving for college maybe I should save for a food fund.





Now that was a GOOD sandwich.........................

“I’m Indy Jones”

You have to love the imagination of the 3 year old. He is Indy Jones, with the hat, satchel, coat and gun one day. Sandlot baseball guy, then Wolverine the next day. Whenever he is doing something that is naughty he is usually a character, not himself.





I thought that I would share this last one, because it is cute to me. He stopped napping. I have made my peace, but some days he sneaks one in.

Chess

Chess is game I remember very little about. I know there are pieces that move a certain way and there is strategy. To see all the neighborhood boys out playing chess was a little odd. I associate this game with mature adults. Not rowdy neighborhood kids. None the less they were quiet for most of an afternoon doing tournament style chess with each other. Now I have not seen them play it since, but it was a quiet afternoon in the neighborhood.

Build to Grow

Lowe’s has a great kids program called Build to Grow. It is really awesome for kids. They provide the space, tools, material and instructions. The staff is friendly and willing to help. We have done a couple of the projects this summer. I think we literally stumbled upon this program the first time over Memorial Day weekend. We went in for something else and saw this going on. Our kids were immediately excited. It was neat to see the independence and concentration among them. You’re suppose to register for the day and location for the program. At one location there were only 12 kids, another had at least 50 kids. That one was fun to hear all the hammering at the same time, along the LONG isle of Lowe’s. This will something that we defiantly come back to.









Check out a class in your area at Lowe's

Mars needs more MOMs

Everything about books is cool to me; the smells, the feel, the rollercoaster of liking or not liking a story. So the boys and I go to the library pretty frequently. I am trying to foster this same love of books. Currently my kids are not patience enough to look through the shelves to find the books that may peak their interest. They go through more in a SMASH AND GRAB way, not sitting and lingering on covers of pages to see if there is a spark. Our typical run through is to hit the major sections of superheros, military and bugs. Than I normally have a stack of children’s book ‘s I have already reserved. I reserve them based on recommendations by other mom’s, amazon searching of books.

One search I found this book. Mars needs more moms by Berkeley Breathed. The story is the beautiful imagination of a toddler whose looking for his mom on Mars. Great story but better illustration. By far my current favorite…………… It is vivid, lively and loveable. The colors just pop. I was in awe almost every time I have read th
is story. It ranks higher than the David series by David Shannon.

This is our book recommendation.

So what books would you recommend that we go check out?

playing catch up

It seems that small details need to be finished and it is hard to find the time when the pool and summer fun calls us to come play.

Quite Day for lego Building

It was rainy and cool out, so we needed to find something to do. It just so happen that all the neighbor kids came calling each other at around the same time due to boredom. Yes I think I might be the crazy mom who invites ALL the kids into my home at once for a play date. All nine kids (not sure what the 4 siblings not pictured here were doing) were content on me bringing out the legos. Dumping all of them on the floor and asking them to build something. Music was playing in the background and it was fun to listen to some of the kids sing along. They just talked to each other and the pleasantness lasted for a surprisingly long time. Maybe 60 minutes- wasn't counting but it felt like forever, I folded about three loads of laundry. Anyways, all good things come to an end with some sibling dispute (luckily it was not ours this day).

Cabin

This year my parents bought a Cabin in the mountains. It's fun to drive about an hour away from home and just be. They have been doing a TON of work to fix it up and make it slightly more modern. Nothing too fancy just updated. My boys enjoy going so much, that one evening this summer when they were headed to bed (later than usual I might add) they begged to go to the cabin. After a small debate on the how late it was.
9:00pm we loaded in the van and went.
Two of them fell asleep on the way and I was thankful for my middle child staying awake and talking to me the whole way.