Family Rules Canvas

This weekend, while Chris was away at a conference, I carted the boys off to aunt Kate's for a girls crafting weekend and we make these family rules canvases.  Kate went for a simpler, sanity saving version but I decided to go the difficult route and cut out all of these strips of paper as seen in the original inspiration version.  I think her canvas came out super cute and looks a tad more polished than mine--which came out a tad bit wrinkly from the Mod Podge and a couple of the lines are a tad bit difficult to read on the pretty papers I chose.....oh well, here is the final product............

Those hard to read rules are:

everything is a gift from God...take care of your things

too much TV is BAD.........too much READING is GOOD

keep your promises

I've got some extra paper so I might put new strips on it one day and redo them so they are more readable but that day is definitely not today!

 

I think it will live here on top of the play kitchen so David will be able to see it every day and learn all of the new rules by heart..........well a mother can dream........

Tape Town

I've been wanting to do this for a while now, I bought the painters tape about three month ago and since Elizabeth was coming in with the kiddos yesterday I thought it would be the perfect time. Of course I didn't get any pictures of everybody playing but just imagine two more toddlers one baby and every single block and piece of play food we own on top of the rug and you'll be close. David really liked running his trains along the "tracks" of course......

Pacies Are For Spitting

David has really been hamming it up lately and he loves to entertain Henry...and tip him over and tell me "Henry fall down" with his most innocent look, but that's another post all together. I caught the tail end of this interchange which lasted a good five minutes. David would put the paci in his mouth and then , much to Henry's delight, and with all of the dramatics he could muster he would spit out the paci. Such a good big brother (well except for the tipping over part!).

Snow is for Scooping

Last night we got about five inches of snow dumped on our little town. Since I don't like being cold I brought the snow fun indoors...inside the sink to be exact. David was having a ball, as the snow melted he demanded "more snow, more snow!" and sent me out with my bowl and scoop to gather more wintry goodness off of the picnic table. We buried dinosaurs and trains (surprise, surprise David wanted to play avalanche), made it snow all over the place, and David's favorite--making snow volcanoes. Your eyes are not deceiving you. David is wearing his big boy underpants with no diaper underneath! Apparently the key to getting him to go on the potty is to ask him where his pee pees go, not tell him to put them into the potty and then (and only then) will he show you where pee pees go. Of course shortly after these pictures were snapped he had his first accident of the morning all over that chair...and the rug....and a little on the cabinet......

Sleeping Babies and Dinosaur Digs

We went out for a walk today and Henry thoroughly enjoyed himself....

Back at home I finally put together this sensory table for David. It's just his water table filled with ten pounds of rice, which is really not as much rice as it sounds like, I think it could use another bag to top it off. I buried his dinosaurs in the table and he has had a lot of fun burying his animals and trains and then rescuing them again. I also gave him a bunch of funnels and scoops to practice his pouring skills. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner!

Well, I guess there's that....we've also been working on our sweeping skills.......

Pine Cones Are For Collecting

We finally had a taste of spring and freedom yesterday! The snow is melting, the wind stopped gusting, and it was warm enough to go outside without risk of frostbitten noses. David was ridiculously happy! We took two walks, one before naptime and another once Daddy came home. David got to walk all by himself and he did a great job of not running into oncoming traffic...He spent his time jumping into leftover snow piles, collecting rocks and pine cones and running around laughing hysterically. He's too funny! Don't mind the band-aid nose, he looks silly but he won't stop scratching his "boo boo."

Sitting Pretty...Or Should That Be Handsome?

Henry is growing up so fast! He loves to stand and show off--he'd be a whole lot happier if he could figure out how to get there without our help though! He still needs a boost to get into a sitting position and a boost to stand and hold on to something. I still blame his ridiculously giant head. It's got to be hard to lug that thing around.....

I Heart Valentine's Day

We had a wonderful Valentine's Day--Chris came home early from school (bearing gifts of flowers and candy) so we could spend the afternoon together! He brought me these great flowers--I love tulips, they're so nice and droopy--and after the kids went to bed, we had a romantic candle-lit dinner by ourselves....Nothing says romance like a baby monitor, am I right?

The Makings of a Gallery Wall

This week I decided I could no longer stand looking at this sad wall the way it was--with a splattering of randomly placed frames--I thought I could keep it that way but my true nature eventually emerged and I needed to bring order to the chaos. Not one to just wing it, I cut out the shape of each of my frames from some newsprint paper I had left over from my artistic days and arranged them on the wall before hanging the pictures. This drastically cut down on the extra nail holes. This is also the point Chris walked in and our exchange went something like this, Chris: "Do we have all of those frames?" Me: "Of course we do or I wouldn't have made a space for them." Chris: "We have brown square frames?" Me: (Pointing to the Michaels bags) "We do now!" Chris: (In mock exasperation--I hope) "Of course we do."

Well what was I supposed to do--I mean, we needed to fix our sad wall and the frames were buy one get one free :)

You may notice at this point in the process our sweet picture of David changed frames--well my method was not full proof--as I was taking down the paper, i.e. ripping it off of the wall without just taking the time to remove the picture first, we sadly lost a frame. It came crashing down and shattered into a million pieces--the plastic innards, not the glass. It was beyond repair. This led to a mini disaster trying to find a replacement frame. Apparently it is no longer "in" to get brushed nickel frames because I could not find a replacement anywhere. I settled on the white, because if I got another brown frame I'd have to rearrange the whole thing to balance out the frames because I'm that picky. I also apparently permanently attached that picture of David to the backing in the original frame and it took Chris and I an hour to remove it in a process that involved Chris sawing it out with his knife so I could fit it into the new frame. I think the wall turned out great though!

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And here is the finished corner of the room! As David would say. Ta Da!

Banana Stealing Cuteness

I took these yesterday as we were getting ready to leave the house. The boys were being so cute, Henry kept lunging at David's banana, but David was not about to share his banana with Henry! We ended up going the local mall--well it used to be a mall, now it has four stores and a karate studio--either way, it's warm inside and David needed to RUN. He looped the mall four times, running at top speed and climbing on benches before reaching up his arms saying "up, up, up" and refusing to walk one more single step! We are going back today to burn off some more energy. It's funny, I thought I'd have at least another thirty years or so before I became a morning mall walker....

UPDATE:  I showed this to Chris and he asked who the kid in the vest was, poor Henry.....

Home Made Playdoh

So the homemade playdoh David and I made a few weeks ago is still going strong! He loves to stamp out letters with these cookie cutters I bought at Walmart (a giant box of 100 cutters for $10!). He likes to line up the letters and smush them together Word World style to build his "words"--well at least he understands the general concept that words are made from letters, we can work on forming sensical words later....Of course the game of playdoh eventually turned into a rousing game of "Avalanche!" In case you aren't familiar, this game consists of taking whatever activity mommy planned and using the parts (cookie cutters for instance, or crayons, felt food, anything will do) to make a big pile on top of a train who then yells "help! help!" until another train comes to his rescue. Maybe it's a boy thing?  Oh and don't get excited about the underpants--he's got his diaper on underneath, it's still his preferred use of big boy underpants! 

The Joys of Cardboard

We've been having a great time this week playing with cardboard boxes of all sorts. When we got David his new car seat--we went with the Graco Nautilus--Chris decided to try to top my box fort with one of his own. David loved all of the doors and windows, especially when Henry rolled up to one and he could pop out and scare him! David has also decided that he likes to play trains just as much when the railroad tracks are drawn on scrap cardboard as when the real wooden ones are placed lovingly on the train table that his parents spent hours searching for to find just the right one and then days more refinishing it to make it perfect. Oh well.....