On a New and Improved Thing-a-ma-jig

When we moved to Virginia, we had to leave our old thing-a-ma-jig behind and there was much crying and gnashing of teeth involved in this decision.  The kids were kind of attached to the old thing.  In case you don't know, a thing-a-ma-jig is a contraption built completely from found objects and leftover bits and pieces of this and that.  You can't have any plan in mind when you start construction, it's always a work in progress and it's never really finished.  It's all very technical.  In Florida all the wood we used had been collected by us from the river on base.  Alas, here we don't have a river right across from our house so we haven't done any thing-a-ma-jig constructing since the big move.  However, over the past few weeks Chris finally took the initiative to haul bits of this and that home that washed up out of the Potomac River at some of our favorite parks.

It's not stealing, it's free beach clean up services.

Well, long story short, a new thing-a-ma-jig has been born--this time with the added bonus of wheels thanks to a defunct lawn mower that the boys stripped for parts.  I think Chris loves working on it just as much as the boys do.  It justifies his hoarding of any part or do-dad that could ever, maybe, possibly, come in handy.  The kids love to pull it back and forth across the yard and David is desperately trying to figure out how to install some sort of engine.  Probably because he's the only one strong enough to pull it while it holds passengers.  The cousins seemed to like it too.

Who doesn't love a thing-a-ma-jig?

Dinosaurs, Parties, and Thing-a-ma-jigs....Oh, My!

Our zoo has a new dinosaur exhibit with very lifelike animatronic dinos.....

I tried to get a picture of the boys and the dinosaurs but they were a little too lifelike for their taste.  And loud.  David ran away from the T-rex with his hands over his ears.  Later he informed me that he "didn't care for" the dinosaurs.

After a morning at the zoo I had the good sense to also take the children to our neighbor's Alice in Wonderland themed birthday party.  David picked out the most Mad Hatter's tea party-ish outfit he could think of, complete with a pocket watch a la the White Rabbit.  This was really cute until about thirty minutes before the party when he began running around the house yelling "we're late, we're late, we're late!"  Precious.

Once we arrived, our friend asked if David dressed up like Doctor Who for the party.   Well he isn't wearing a Fez but, yes....yes apparently he did come as the Doctor.  What can I say, the boy loves his bow ties and bow ties are cool :)

The boy also loves having his picture taken......

.....unlike his brother who has developed a serious aversion to mommy's camera......

David has also recently begun insisting that he and Henry wear matching outfits whenever possible--a desire which, let's face it, I hope lasts forever :)

The men folk also had time to work on David's "thing-a-ma-jig."  It has been added to and subtracted from for the past few weeks and  is now sporting a dashboard with various really important functions......

....my personal favorite is the toast option.

There are also plans in place to add wheels and a pulley system.....I'm really not sure what's going on....thing-a-ma-jig creating is not my area of expertise.  All I do know is that David really thinks it needs some wheels and was pretty insistent that we should give him the wheels off of our wagon and two tires from daddy's car.  I told him daddy needed all his wheels so he could drive to work.  David thought for a moment and informed me that he would drive daddy to work in his thing-a-ma-jig.  He's a problem solver :)

But he still can't have the tires......

Three

We threw Henry a Cars and Trucks and Things That Go party for his third birthday because Richard Scarry books are his favorite things right now, second only to vehicles of any kind.  If he disappears, you can usually find him reading one to himself and if you try to sit down and read it with him he will tell you that he wants to read it "by himself!"

I'm sure people with more sophisticated software and computer prowess than I possess could come up with much fancier invitations than these but in our house we make do with what we have!  I will say though that cutting out all those pickle cars by hand seemed like a much better idea before I actually started doing it.....

.....the same is true for cutting out goldbugs from yellow posterboard......I hid a bunch of these goldbugs all over the house and yard which Henry and David thought was hysterical (if you aren't familiar with the book, goldbug is hiding on pretty much every page). 

For decorations I used (surprise!) our homemade birthday bunting--which goes up for pretty much every birthday celebration in our home and I also made some paper garlands from an old, used Richard Scarry book I picked up at our local used bookstore.  I've never destroyed a book on purpose before and it was really hard to make the first cut but it was really fun once I got going.  We really live on the wild side here :)

We also transformed our thing-a-ma-jig into a pickle car....I was pretty proud of myself with this one and Henry thought it was fun :)

Okay I was also proud of myself for my sprinkle cake masterpiece.  It's supposed to be a two layer cake but I had a cake-tastrophe when I was removing one of the first layers from its pan so I had to make a second cake and ended up with three usable layers and one plate of extra cake parts in the fridge...I mean you don't just let good cake parts go to waste, am I right?

Henry was beside himself with the desire to lick all of the sprinkles off the cake once he laid eyes on it and it may or may not have needed some sprinkle patch jobs before the guests arrived.....

The pinata was a big hit too....well really, who doesn't like pinatas?  Chris said he was surprised at what a good job I did stuffing it.....I'm not sure if that was a complement or not....maybe he was afraid it would be full of healthy granola bars and toothbrushes instead of the generic matchbox cars and copious amounts of candy.

To all of our little guests' parents....you.are.welcome :)

We didn't have party games planned, mostly because I really dislike the idea of rounding up a bunch of one to seven year olds and attempting to make them all do the same thing at the same time.  Instead we just had activities strewn around--a table for coloring Busytown coloring pages, a sand table with construction vehicles, bouncing balls and balloons....but mostly the kids played (i.e. wreaked havoc) in the boys' room where they ran with their stolen candy to devour it away from the watchful eyes of their parents.

David said his favorite part of the party was getting presents and "eating all the yummy cheeseballs."

Henry says his favorite part was the sprinkle cake.

It was a really good day....even if I still couldn't manage to get one good picture of all of my men together.....

Well, at least Goldbug is smiling.......and we did get one good picture of my littlest man :)

A big thank you to everyone who made the day so special!  

And check out my pinterest board for info and sources for all of my party inspiration :)

On Summer Weekending

We've been packing a lot of family bonding time into these summer weekends.  We've had to, since Chris's current summer work schedule involves being gone every morning before anyone else is awake and getting home just in time to put the boys to bed.  Margaret is mostly out of luck and has to get in all her daddy time on Saturday and Sunday.

It's super lame but almost over.

Last weekend that meant that we all went to the quilt shop together (and by "together" I mean I went inside while everyone else stayed in the car and listened to Chris read Lord of the Rings) and then out for a rainy picnic/playground/geocaching adventure (this time I stayed in the car and read while Chris and the children frolicked in the downpour).  Togetherness.

Once we were home, Chris and David also spent a good bit of time out in the yard adding a tailgate to the thing-a-ma-jig.  It's got some sort of pully system and it's pretty spectacular.  David also wanted to add a license plate or eight so that it could be "street legal" as soon as he also gets a driver's license.  And an engine.

Instead of helping with what was clearly a male-bonding project I sacrificed myself and staying inside in the air conditioning and worked on hand quilting baby Christopher's quilt.  I wanted to try out quilting with perle cotton this time but when I went to the store to get some they only had size 5 thread in the pretty colors when what I actually needed was size 8.  Since I just wanted to start my project right then I got the size 5, too thick, thread thinking to myself, "how bad could it be?"  Well, it's been fairly difficult to work with but since I'd already brought it home I figured I'd just go with it.  I think it's looking pretty cute even if it is doing a number on my fingers trying to pull it through all the layers.

It's actually quilting up pretty fast and I think it will be done soon, which is good.  My third trimester fatigue is combining with my lack of husband to create one very tired mom.