Happy 4th of July!!

This was inspired by my friend Valerie from the Frugal Family Fun Blog. She made sidewalk chalk paint with her daughter the other day and when Cyan saw it, she couldn't wait to do it too!!! These fireworks were made by me and splattered by Logan. :) (Mommy tip: He came inside completely splattered in corn starch and it came right off with a washcloth... food coloring and all. Even off his tee shirt.)

Making the paint was really easy. Just 2 Tbs corn starch, 2 tbs water, and a few drops of food coloring. We tried to double the recipe, but that didn't work out so well, so we continued to make small batches well into the afternoon.

They spent over 2 hours out there on the drive way, making fun creations.

Hope everyone else is having an amazing Independence Day!

Photo Friday

This was not staged... this is one of her favorite places to be. Isn't she cute!?!

Invitations to Wonderland!

Cyan's birthday is on the 13th. Her party this year is Alice in Wonderland. I have gone a bit over the top, but I always do for their birthdays, and I love it. Really I do. This year, everything for this party seemed to just fall into place. Her costume was found and perfect, I have been collecting tea cups and tea pots from every garage sale I come across and I have had some really wonderful finds too! And then, the invitations. Our whole group has these huge kid parties. We have figured out that if the invitation sets the mood of the party for the kids, then the whole party is already a success. Each and every child spends a week being excited about it, get ready for it, picking their outfits, and gifts to bring, etc… The party is already a bang without us even having to plan killer kids games. (But of course, we still plan killer games. This year it is painting the roses red and croquet of course. )

The caption on the cute little piece of paper rolled up on the back of each envelope says "Find a looking glass close at hand to read your invitation to Wonderland!" And when you get to a mirror there is this:

Cyan Elora requests
the pleasure of your company
in Wonderland
for the celebration
of her very merry 8th birthday

Saturday July, 11th 3pm

Follow the white rabbit to (our address)

Respond to Val @ (our phone number)
or off with your heads!

As for the rest of the party... well I am sure someone there will be taking pictures. ;)

These wonderful invitations came to me by way of a chance google search... and Viva la Violette. She built this custom invitation for me in a matter of days and sent them priority so they would be here in plenty of time for sending. She is even using some of the ideas in her shop. Wonderful customer service! I will be recommending her to my friends. (And just as an aside, it was only $6 more than it would have been for me to do it ALL myself, to have them custom made and shipped to me! I was really impressed!)

Early Ed ~ Tongs and cotton balls

On the early ed shelf this week is a tray with 10 cotton balls, tongs, and two plates. Having already tried the other transfer activities it took very minimal explaining for him to get the idea of this one.

Pick up, move over,

Put down:


Then yell at the top of your lungs "I DID IT!!!!" and look COMPLETELY adorable:

This activity is one of my new favorites. Not only does he love it and continue to do it in his spare time, but you can see the finger dexterity get better each and every time he does it:

It is very easy to see the connection between this activity and early writing.

And I have to admit, the photo opportunity was quite wonderful:

Acidentily picking up two cotton balls.

Informing me that he was "almost done".

More on Logan. He has been a handful these last two days or so. Pitching fits, yelling at us when we say no, deciding that he isn't going to eat anything unless he is standing... and on top of that, he is allergic to something random that we can not identify. About a week ago, he got hives all over his pour little body. Thinking that it was the strawberries I had just brought home (first of the season) I tried to get him to avoid strawberries for the next week... but the hives kept coming. And being that it was strawberry season, and I was freezing as many as I could, I knew that I couldn't keep them from him completely. So again... I just assumed it was the strawberries.

Well, two days ago, he got into the strawberries I was topping while I thought he was down for nap. Made a huge mess... and I waited with him, with Benadryll on hand to see how bad the hives would get. Nada. None. It is completely something else. And I have no idea what it is. Luckily, it looks like they are clearing up, slowly but surely.

On top of that though, he has been adorable lately! He is really starting to talk completely in sentences all the time. They are clipped and short, but very clear. A couple of weeks ago he was playing outside with the kittens and his big plastic car and he came running in crying. When I asked him what was wrong he said "MAMA! Dat kitty, right der, ate my dirty string cheese!!" and low and behold, there is Bo, string cheese in her mouth, growling at Logan every time he came near. LOL! He also has started to ask us all day long "Hi! How you doing today?" lol... it is completely adorable. If his new language skill didn't come with the screaming back at us when we said no about something... well, it would be the cutest phase yet.

Book pick of the week ~ We Like To Nurse

We got the book We Like To Nurse by Chia Martin for a bit of help defining animal families. The kids and I have been playing this game Animal, Animal, Animal in the car for a while now, and always, one of the first questions is 'is it a mammal?" When Cyan says yes, I am thinking mammal as defined by having live young, warm blooded, nurses... etc... Cyan was thinking 'has fur". So I decided to clear up a bit of that and put some books on hold at our local library to help define the attributes of a mammal. This one was one of them.

All of the animals in this book are mammals... and it tells tiny details about ways the animals adapt to their environments along with nursing. Like the picture above.

The art is simple. All my kids have read it at least once, including Logan. But I think that it carried with it a strong lesson, and I thought it was worth sharing.
Does anyone else have some wonderful nursing or mammal books to share? Leave a comment! I love new books to look at. :)

Sibling rivalry...

OMGoodness. It has gotten so terribly bad at my house. They are not even nice when they talk to each other and they are not wanting to be mean. Their tones are driving me crazy! But then, after about half a day of listening to the bickering I find myself yelling things like "BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!!!" or "STOP YELLING!" So stupid. But man... after 4 days of this, I am so sick and tired of it!

I need some ideas. Does anyone have any besides "just don't kill them". lol... (My husband is full of great advice.) I have already taken away the tv time (always a factor in bad attitudes) and cut back on the sugar (usually the same, but not always). I just need some tools. Even if they don't work, something to work with to get me to stop pulling my hair out would be nice.

It doesn't help that Logan has had his first two monster fits in the last two days, and he has started yelling back at us "YES I CAN" when we say no.

Sigh... I am worn out.

MTM ~ Independence Day!

Today over at Muffin Tin Monday Michelle's theme of the week was 4th of July!

Two days ago, while looking around on the internet for fun kid food options with a 4th of July theme I came up with very little that was healthy. So I set out to make a menu that wouldn't be completely loaded with junk, but also not devoid of fun. Armed with a few goodies from market yesterday, I set it my mission to make a healthy lunch that was loaded with red, white, and blue.

Top: This cup was filled with raspberry lemonade with frozen blueberries in it (it looked really good, but they got a hold of it), and then large pretzel rods, and a star shaped sandwich.

Bottom: Orgnaic strawberries and blueberries from the market seperated by homemade whipping cream. Cream cheese to dip the pretzels in and sprinkles to decorate them with. They LOVED that:

Red, white, and blue sprinkles = $2

Pretzel rods = $3

Independence to play with your food = Priceless.

We have a mouser! And the circle of life...

Samson brought in a rat today, still alive, to show us that he could. He just turned 3 months old. WOW! What a mouser! He brought it to us, and then growled when we tried to get it... and that was when I noticed that the poor thing in his mouth was still very much alive... and also very broken. So I shooed the cat outside, followed him around (while he growled at me), and when he put the rat down and it tried to feebly hobble away on it's two remaining working legs, I hit it on the back of the head with a stick, killing it quickly and more humanely than my hunter cat would have.

And then I noticed the STUNNED and broken face of my daughter in the sliding glass door.... Sigh. She has such a good heart, but she really doesn't understand the circle of life yet, nor does she understand putting something out of it's misery. It was a long conversation.

Awwww... gotta love cool summer days.

Today it was about 65* all day long. It has bouts of warm sunshine, and bouts of cool breezes that made the wind chimes in front of the house ting with a nice rhythm. The kids have been outside all day long. We have been having fun with sidewalk chalk and crafts. Who knew that recycled cereal boxes, and $5 worth of sidewalk chalk could make up such an afternoon.

My newest fun craft project:

Boxes and lids made from old cereal boxes:

Craft-a-long coming soon. :)

Cyan and our neighbor friend Page decorated this one with little wooden hearts I had stashed in my craft stuff. They considered them a huge find for today. :)

Then, this afternoon, something magical happened...... well magical in the land of two-year-olds anyhow: A fire truck stopped right in front of our house!! (Our neighbor across the street is a firefighter. ;) )

Logan even got a badge sticker and got to go into the fire truck AND turn the lights on!

He was in seventh heaven and he waved until they were out of sight.

Photo Friday

Book pick of the week ~ Chickens Aren't the Only Ones

This was one of my very favorite books when I was little. I remember asking my mom to read it nearly everyday for a while there. It was the reason that when we came across this at the beach, I knew what it was! Anything that leaves a 20 year long good impression has to get a moment of recognition.

So this weeks book pick is Chicken's Aren't the Only Ones, by Ruth Heller. Packed full with information on the worlds egg layers in a quick and poetic tone, this book is sure to fascinate even the youngest book lovers.

This page says "The Ostrich lays the largest egg, and the hummingbird the smallest."

The beautiful artistry doesn't hurt it's fame in my mind either. Looking at all these eggs on this page compared to one another always fascinated me. I would always try to guess which egg was the robins egg, and where in the world the chicken fit in to this picture with all their colorful eggs and all chickens ever laid was brown, brown, brown. (We had our own hens and I don't think I had ever had white eggs at the time. Or cows milk, come to think of it.)

I loved the part about the ocean egg layers as well... Alex recently used the egg sack laid by a shark as a clue in our Animal, Animal, or Animal game we play in the car.

This page says "The mother seahorse lays her eggs inside the fathers pouch. He keeps them there until they hatch and then he's through. I think that's nice of him, don't you?"

Such a beautiful book, and worth checking out!

Finger print art

I pulled out the art supplies the other day. There was much jumping and excited gasps as I pulled out this finger print art book from Ed Emberley.

The boys drifted away rather quickly, but my art deprived daughter stuck it out for over an hour, making everything she could think of out of her fingerprints and showing me all of them.

This picture she made for grandma Shari: