August on a Razor

So, I've been telling people about August's skill on a Razor. She's been watching her brother and sister, and of course wanted to keep up. Pretty much as soon as she began walking, she began wanting to push a Razor around. She's graduated from pushing to riding, in short bursts, and here is a video of her current skill level.

Our Advent Calendar

A month or so back, I was looking for ideas on making our own Advent Calendar. My mom made one many, many years back that was hung with little presents, one for every day in December leading up to Christmas. It was the most excellent advent calendar we ever had. Not that the chocolate ones aren't bad, but this one was different, therefore more fun.

Also, I've been wrestling with the idea of how to not let the kids decorate my Christmas tree because I'm somewhat anal about how it's decorated....

Anyway, as I was perusing the different sites, I came across a post about a recycle bin advent calendar. I liked the idea a lot - it looked cool, and I already had all the supplies (except that I had just recycled my Pottery Barn Christmas catalog). The lady whose idea this was, instead of stuffing the pockets with candy, stuffed them with little ornaments and gave her kids a Christmas-tree-shaped-rosemary-bush to decorate. And all her ornaments were made from recycled stuff. Sounds cool, so I thought I'd copy. Not sure about using recycled stuff to make ornaments, but I have plenty of craft supplies so I'll be making some ornaments that the kids can hang on some manzanita branches I've ordered. It'll be our "holiday tree" and I'll reuse the branches to hang easter eggs at Easter, and maybe ghosts and bats at Halloween. I won't be stuffing all the pockets with ornaments - not that creative and I don't have that much time, plus, what's an advent calendar without chocolate? Can't take all the fun away.

So, Marlena and I worked on this calendar this morning. I had already precut all the pockets, and all that remained to do was find pictures to glue them to the pockets, arrange the pockets, glue them on, and then find the numbers 1 thru 24.

We're both really happy with how it turned out. Wolf thinks it pretty cool, too. So, I decided to show if off, 'cause this is my life now. Doing crafts... in addition to cooking, cleaning and wiping dirty bottoms and teary eyes.

The whole thing...
























And a close up of the pockets....



















By the way, I reordered the Pottery Barn christmas catalog and also used the Crate and Barrel christmas catalog. The holder and pockets are made from Trader Joe's paper bags, and the numbers are from the flyers you get in the mail.

And realistically, I think the kids are still going to want to help decorate the tree....

New Picture of the Kids...

Here is the latest picture of all three kids together, smiling and looking at the camera! Got it with the first shot! Can you tell they're having fun?

Marlena's Gap Tooth Smile

A recent picture of Marlena and her new smile. She lost her tooth after eating a dinner of tacos. It actually became completely turned around and was poking her and bleeding. She finally calmed down enough and I just plucked it out of her mouth. The tooth fairy was pretty generous and gave her a toonie and a loonie.

Happy Easter

We enjoyed what's become our Easter tradition again this year. Meeting our friends at a petting zoo in a nearby town, followed by a picnic and easter egg hunt. This year we planned ahead and looked for a park to have the picnic at rather than driving aimlessly around hoping to stumble across something.

It was enjoyable, if a little cold, despite being April, and somewhat sprinkly.

Here are some of the best pictures, not particularly "Easterly", but recent, of the kids from the day.

Halloween 2010 - August

August doesn't get a home-made costume this year. Maybe next year. She did get a flower-petal-hooded jumper. She wore that to a Halloween party this last weekend. And I tried to dress up as a little girl with August as my doll. My first thought was to be a gardener, but I have no gardening supplies. Then I thought about being a florist - but really, what does a florist wear that screams florist? I don't know, so I went with the little-girl-holding-her-doll option.

Don didn't get dressed up. Originally he was supposed to be a scuba-diver (octopus, jellyfish, scuba-diver...) but that didn't work out...

Halloween 2010 - Wolfred

Wolf's costume is a little on the dark side. He's an octopus. I tried to paint the suckers on using glow-in-the-dark fabric paint, but the sweatshirt material just sucked it up. Instead I used a circle craft punch and punched out a lot of white circles, then colored dark circles inside and glued them on. I think it worked out pretty well...

Halloween 2010 - Marlena

This year I decided to be proactive and take pictures before we went trick-or-treating. The last 2 years, taking pictures while trick-or-treating has always been more miss than hit.

Marlena originally wanted to be Cinderella for Halloween. She received a really beautiful dress-up Cinderella dress for her birthday and thought that she would be sure to win a costume contest with such a beautiful dress. I had to burst her bubble and tell her she probably would not win since there might be more than one Cinderella. Since winning the contest was/is important to her (she was really upset that she didn't win last year and Wolfie did) I was able to convince her to be a jellyfish. I did add lights to the hat, figuring that I would be a more responsible parent this year by dressing at least one child in a costume more visible at night. Last year both kids were dress all in black... So Marlena is pretty happy with her costume, even tho the hat with the battery operated lights is a little heavy. The costume contest is Friday, so we'll see how it goes.

Much Better, Mom...

If I had categories of posts, this one would belong under "Kids say the darndest things..."

Wolf has pretty regular bowel movements. Usually right after breakfast. This morning was no exception. I was feeding August and Wolf was standing at the end of the chaise part of the couch when I noticed he was having his morning poop. After he was done, he looked up at me, smiled and said, "Much better, Mom, much better".

Marlena's First Trip to Disneyland

Back in March (March 19th to be exact), I took Marlena to Disneyland for the first time (it was my 2nd time). She LOVED it. LOVED LOVED LOVED it. We met up with my friend and her daughter and had a great time.

Marlena keeps asking when we can go back. My answer is usually "Not anytime in the near future". Poor girl.

Anyway, here is a video of our day - it was a long one and for everyone's sanity I didn't include all the videos, just the highlights.