Magnetic Letters

What could be more fun than a set of Bananagrams you ask? Bananagrams with magnets on the back :)

We've had several different magnetic letter sets in the past but most of them made obnoxious noises, only had one of each letter, were hideously ugly and/or usually ended up spread out all over the kitchen floor.  Ever since grandpa helped me transform our gigantic chalk board into a magnetic giant chalkboard I've been wanting to make a new set that was a little less....all of the above.  I thought these Bananagram tiles would be perfect--lots of letters for word building and the tiles just feel good in your hand--kind of like dominoes if you know what I mean.....

Try to stay with me now because this was a really complicated project.  First I took some adhesive magnetic tape and then I cut a piece and put it on the back of each tile.......ta da :)

So far, David loves them and spent the afternoon finding matching pairs of letters and asking me to use them to spell words out for him.  Henry mostly loves to steal them and hide them in a corner so David can't use them.

I have a feeling that the issue of letter magnets being strewn across the floor isn't one that's going to be resolved any time in the near future, but somehow these are just so pretty that it doesn't seem so bad anymore.  In any case these are located in our new "bonus room" which we have affectionately dubbed the library so out of sight out of mind :)  At least they aren't singing irritating songs about letter sounds.......

I think these are well on their way to becoming a favorite around here.....

The Boys' Room

So aside from taking the children to the zoo and lopping off all of their hair, I've been a tad bit busy setting up the house.  I unpacked everything pretty quickly--well as quickly as you can with two and a half littles attempting to help and no husband actually helping--and by everything I mean absolutely nothing in the disaster that is our garage....

None of the rooms are finished since I need some man help to hang up the super heavy things and rearrange furniture and watch children while I hit the antique/thrift stores in the area but the boys' room is coming along nicely and since I've had some requests for pictures I thought I'd oblige :)

If you look closely you will see that the movers decided to put the beds together bunk bed style so Henry currently has both headboards while David got stuck with the two footboards....I'm waiting for Chris to come home and remedy that situation.  I decided to store our extra twin mattresses (what don't you have random twin mattresses laying around your house too?) under the boys' beds so now we need bed skirts to hide those as well.  I think I want to put some shelves or cubbies over their beds so they can each keep their special treasures safe--from each other......

I ended up putting most of the toys in their bedroom so we got this IKEA shelf to hold the baskets--this is pretty much everything except the trains which are in the living room which is the preferred track building location and the games and puzzles which are up high in the closet to inhibit rousing games of dumping-while-mommy's-not-looking.....

I want to build some of these shelves along the other wall to house our picture books and make a little reading nook spot with pillows, etc.--but again--man's work :)

For now our books are being housed in some makeshift cubbies in the closet--which we keep under strict guard day and night.......

I prefer the room with the closet doors closed :)

I'd hate for you to think that the boys keep their room neat and tidy at all times though, so here are a couple of shots I took later in the morning.  David informed me that they made a "trampoline" after a stint of manic costume changes.  But, since everything has a place it really only took five minutes to get this picked up before naps :)

PS about five minutes after these pictures were taken, I came back to David calling me, saying Henry was "hiding."  Apparently "hiding" meant he had been shut into the costume suitcase that David was sitting on top of.  Henry thought this was hilarious..........I did not......so we had a little talk about why we don't lock our brothers into boxes, even if they do ask you to, since they need air to, you know, breathe.....

Military Cuts....Or, I Should Have Known Better....

The boys were in desperate need of haircuts--as per usual I waited until they literally couldn't see out from under their bangs before giving in--which incidentally is the same rule of thumb I use on the dog :)  Instead of taking all the trouble to drive into town or do it myself, I made the decision to just take them to the barber on base where Henry and I were promptly separated from David in the name of efficiency while I called across the room from our chair, "just a trim!"  Then she pulled out the clippers--which were apparently set to zero while I looked on in horror......

.....okay, it's not sooooo bad, but I think David's looks even shorter than it is since it's so blond on the bottom and then fades up to red.

And what are the children doing in long sleeves you may ask?  Well, I'm pretending it's fall here and not an 85 degree nightmare.  David lasted all of two minutes after our little photo shoot before he changed into a t-shirt--partly because it was hot and partly because *gasp* this shirt has buttons and what kind of a mother gives her children clothes with such horrifying things sewn on?

Butterflies Are Not For Squishing

You can probably just prepare yourselves for two years of gratuitous pictures of the children at the zoo--we bought a membership and it's pretty much their favorite place to be.

This time we splurged and paid for the extras--the train ride, the carousel, the petting of the stingrays and.....the only one of the experiences that is actually worth paying extra for.....Butterfly Hollow......

We were the only ones inside and the butterfly keeper (notice all the butterflies on the underside of her hat) came over with a butterfly for David to hold.  His reaction was so precious and he was so excited to be holding the butterfly--he kept saying, "He likes me! He likes me!"  I however was terrified that this cute scene could turn horrifying at any moment.....unlike the butterfly keeper, I have seen up close how quickly my boys can go from sweetly observing nature to ruthlessly squishing nature and laughing maniacally.  Luckily David did no such thing and once he was done he just handed the butterfly back to safety....after I convinced him it really didn't want to go take a swim in the pond to cool off that is.

We also had great grandma with us which was so much fun.  The boys loved having her all to themselves and I loved having an adult to talk to in the evenings :)  

We also decided that we both need to plant this flowering bush/ground cover thing in our gardens.  I have seen it growing all over town so it can't be too high maintenance here and the zoo finally helped me to identify it.......but planting bushes is definitely mans' work, especially considering that all of the tools need to be dug out of our ridiculously stuffed full garage.....so that project will just have to wait......

Someone's Four.....

We celebrated David's birthday in the new house with minimal decorating and a melted and then refrozen ice-cream cake he picked out at the commissary before we actually had keys to our house.....he didn't seem to mind though.......what more could a kid ask for than to wake up with balloons all over the floor and birthday bunting stung halfhazardly around the kitchen?

He loved all his presents but the Spiderman mask and silly string were especially big hits, as were the Bill and Ben trains we picked up shopping aunt Elizabeth's garage.....don't mind the foggy picture, as soon as I stepped outside into this humid disaster we call home with my camera, the lens immediately fogged over--I'm not sure what the protocol is for taking pictures in ridiculous humidity--letting the camera sit outside and acclimate first?   We definitely didn't have time for that :)

I can't believe my little man's already four!

Roughing It

Well, we've officially moved in--and by moved in I mean we are living in our house and hopefully we will have furniture by tomorrow--so we've been roughing it......

I rented some camping cots from the marina here--they tried to convince me that I didn't want them as they were 1950's cots and don't have whatever features a newfangled cot would have, but I figured anything was better than sleeping on the floor.  Of course later that night when I attempted to assemble them I found that only two cots actually had all of the pieces and the other was just a bag of metal rods without the canvas bed section which is kind of important....So I did what any good mom who desperately wants her children to go to bed would do and gave them the good cots while I slept laid on the floor and stared at the ceiling until dawn.  Then since Chris had arrived for the weekend, the first order of business was to purchase a new queen mattress for our guest room/nursery that we could sleep on until the rest of the furniture arrived.  I never knew how good a mattress on the floor could feel! 

We also subjected the children to a two and a half hour drive (each way) to the nearest IKEA so that we could pick up the bookshelves and storage pieces I wanted so that Chris could lift and assemble everything while he was still here.  They were just as excited about two hours spent in IKEA as their daddy was but everyone was a real trooper and now our house currently has one set of bookshelves in the bonus room, one cube shelf in the boys' room and one mattress set in the guest room--which is currently the only place to sit down that's not the floor.....and a tunnel system made from boxes in the living room.....moving is so fun :)