Snow day!

We got a good amount this time!
Photo set here

oops!

I was talking to Mom yesterday and she reminded me that I haven't been putting things on the blog. Oopsies!
It's been a very busy summer. I swear, Rowan has spent more time away from home than he's spent here! And we only have one more week until school starts back up again.
It's been SO RAINY that we haven't been out in the pool as much, or outside as much.

I promised pictures, though, so here are pictures of John's birthday.
John's birthday pictures
Flickr has changed their format, and I'm not a big fan of what they did. But it is what it is.

We had some entertainment this morning. Niall lost two teeth last night, but one is somewhere in the bottom of the pool. He put the one he had in the pocket with a note about the other one and hoped for the best. Our tooth fairy hasn't exactly been reliable lately. Imagine his surprise when he woke up to find this!

 

A teeny tiny letter!

It looks like we're going to be getting a new and more reliable fairy. Niall is excited about that. Will she bring golden dollars? Toys? Hotwheels cars?

 

Niall thinks it's pretty awesome.

The Harry Potter Project

So, it's been a while since I blogged. I could keep telling myself that so much has happened and I have to catch up, but that's overwhelming and only leads to me putting off updating. I've decided, instead, to just jump in now and post about today.

Our house is small for a family of our size. 1200square, and we can now say that we are definitely living in every inch of it. See, the boys have been chafing each other raw with living in the same room. It's not unheard of, and really not something I can blame them for. It's tight in there, and they have such different personalities. It's not easy!
But we only have 3 bedrooms...

John told me about how when he was a kid, and he and Dan were at each others throats, but they only had 3 bedrooms, his parents converted the dining room into a room for him until Ben moved out. We don't have a dining room, and we have a LONG time until Rowan goes to college, but it was a good idea - repurpose a spot for someone so that everyone has their own space.

One day, it hit me. We have a walk in closet in our master bedroom. That closet has a window. We don't actually USE the clothes in the closet most of the time. Most of the time, we use the clothes that are in our dressers. Half the time we can't even walk into our closet because of all the shoes on the floor. John's shoes are boats. Have you seen his feet?

I thought, and measured, and took everything out, and measured again. I thought some more, and climbed into the attic to measure the crib because it converted to a toddler bed and was smaller than the car bed. It would work if I took a shelf out and we figured out where to stash some clothes. John thought it was a pretty good idea, even though it looked like our closet had thrown up all over our bedroom.

I felt kind of bad about it. It seems very Dursley to stick a kid in your closet, even if it's the smallest kid in a good sized closet. But it has a window, right? Harry Potter didn't have a window.

We took out the shelf and spackled the holes. I found a mostly full can of purple paint, "Italian Fantasy," in the shed, so I painted it. I also had an extra vinyl Eleri that my friend made me when she made the one for the dress up station. The dress up station does not fit in her new room, but the spice racks I got from Ikea do, and they make nice little bookshelves.

She's spending her first night in there tonight. I just tucked her in, and she's smiling so big her face is about to crack. I wonder how long it will take her to fall asleep?

 

Looking in from our vanity area

 

I had to use the iPad to take pictures. I couldn't back up enough with my camera!

 

 

 

Take a picture of me sleeping!

 

 Take a picture of me building!

 

The fairy lamp isn't plugged in, but it's pretty.

 

The steps are from Mom, since Annabelle doesn't use them.

 

I think this is going to work out really well. Now we just have to get our room looking this good! 

SNOW!

It's still coming down out there, but the kids are in for lunch. This is a pretty ideal snow as far as things go. Big flakes are sticking to the grass and roof, but the road is just wet.
Pics of Rowan and Eleri. Niall was not out there long enough. The child who has no problem walking out there barefoot to make a print in the snow doesn't actually like to STAY out there when properly clothed.

I love baseball

I do. It's such a great game. And I really love having a kid who also enjoys it.
There's nothing like a fall evening at the ball field.

 

 

 

Summer is almost over

I haven't blogged much this summer. We've been all over everywhere. I fell off the photo365 wagon, too. Too much to do in too little time.
I just picked Rowan up from camp this morning, and we have one more week before they start back to school.
Crazy.
Here's are some stills  I took off the camp video. I think they say a lot about how Rowan feels about Victory Juction.

Camping Adventure

We went camping last week. For me, it was the first time going camping since having children. For the Pixie, it was the first time going camping EVER. We had a blast.
The campground was this little place called Lake Powhatan, right outside of Asheville. A little over 4 hours of driving for us, and about 6 hours of driving for our friend Anne and her family. Another friend, Ellie, was supposed to come as well, but her van broke down - fortunately BEFORE she left town - and she wasn't able to come.
How was the first camping adventure with the kids? It was awesome.
We had campfires

We made s'mores every night.

We played with glow sticks

and rocks

We made ice cream 

And the kids got dirtier than I knew was possible.

It was a blast.

We also learned quite a bit. We learned the value of melatonin after a couple of nights of the Pixie being far too excited about sleeping in a tent to actually go to sleep. We found that silicone hot pads are better over a fire than cotton ones, and that fireplace tools would have been excellent to have around. We learned that Niall would rather run barefoot on gravel than wear shoes, and that Anne can climb a tree in a skirt and flip flops. Anne and I figured out how to hang a huge tarp over most of our site when a sudden rain storm drenched us on our last night there, and we made food with fire all week. 

Another big thing we learned is that our tent is not quite adequate for 5 people, even if one of those people is very small. lol We fit, barely, but the sleeping arrangements were comical.

The brown outline represents the edge of the tent. The boys' mats didn't go all the way to the bottom, so that's where the random flotsam (shoes, clothing, flashlights, glowsticks, etc) accumulated. 

John was on the far left. Eleri insisted on sleeping (when she did sleep) perpendicular to him with her feet in his face. Niall was on the next mat over, with Rowan on the far right. I curled up in the space that was left. I woke up with Niall's booty in my face too many times to count, and got kicked by all three kids often. Once I woke up to find Rowan ON TOP of Niall and had to shove him off. It doesn't really look all that cramped when you look at that drawing, but stick figures are misleading. We take up a little more space than they do.

We all agree that camping was awesome and we are going to go again. Camping with Anne and family needs to be at least an annual event. But we also all agree that before we go again, we're gonna need a bigger boat. I mean, tent.

I took a bunch of pictures not seen here. If you'd like to see the whole set, just go here. 

Stay put tablecloth!

I've had this idea kicking around in my head for at least 6 months now.  It just took me until today to try it out.
I got a cheap PEVA (vinyl like) table cloth from Walmart last week. I like these table cloths. They wipe up easily, and you can get kooky prints for whatever holiday. But I also knew that in my house, a table cloth would get yanked on and anything sitting on the table would go flying.
Enter scissors and elastic.

I put the table cloth on the table, and trimmed it a bit at the corners so there wasn't a great bunch hanging down. I then zigzag stitched over the edges that I trimmed so they wouldn't get weird and make the table cloth fall apart.

Then, the big idea. I tacked down some elastic, and stretched it as I sewed it down. I used a narrow zigzag set to a long stitch length - I think on my machine I had it set to a width of 2 and a length of 4. The elastic I used was 3.8" wide. I didn't take any pictures of the process because I didn't think of it, and had no idea if it would actually work anyway. But here is what the elastic looks like once it's sewed on.

 

 If you've never sewed elastic before, it's pretty easy. You just have to stretch it as you go, and use a zigzag stitch so it can spring back tight again. I have no idea how much elastic I used, either.  I had some leftover from another project, and used the rest of that, and then opened the new package and used some of that. I'd be a better tutorial person if I kept track of things like that. But in my experience, you can't ever have too much elastic laying around, so over estimate what you need.

Once you're done, whack it on your table. It looks like this underneath.

 

FANCY!

And it looks like this from above.

I'm pretty excited about how well it worked and now easy it was to do. I now have plans to collect all sorts of different prints and change them out for seasons and holidays. Why didn't I try this sooner?

The Doggy Dentist

Rowan got his braces off last week, and when the orthodontist took them off he mentioned that he was extra careful not to pull out any of Rowan's loose teeth. Apparently, he has quite a few in there!

 

Look, Mom! No braces!

Rowan mentioned that his molar was pretty loose this morning. It was, but it seemed like it would be a while yet. Not so! He wiggled it all day, and by this evening he had it loose enough to do something he's been wanting to try for a while - the doggy dentist.

See, we've joked in the past about how we should tie a thread to a loose tooth and tie the other end to one of the dogs, and then tell the dog there was a squirrel or bunny so they would run off, and pull out the tooth in the process.

Rowan wanted to try it out for real.

So, we did! I got a long piece of thread and tied it around Rowan's loose tooth. We put the harness on Bosco, and went outside to tie the other end of the thread to the loops where the leash clips on. Then John held Bosco so I could snap a picture of the setup. I mean, we needed evidence of this.

 

All hooked up and ready to go.

We started telling Bosco there were squirrels and bunnies, but he wasn't quite buying it. And then, a REAL bunny came out of nowhere and went hopping across the neighbor's yard. That was all it took. Bosco was after it and the tooth was out of there! It was hilarious.

 

Rowan has quite a few loose teeth. We might let Loki do the next one.

How I win wife of the year

Two words - Bacon Roses.

Oh yes. Bacon roses. One of the greatest ideas ever, with step by step instructions found right here on the trusty internets. So simple. So perfect for the man who would never want flowers but who would always want bacon.

I love my mini muffin pans though. I didn't want to destroy them. Lucky for me, my friend, Jenn, just moved. And in her move she found this old and battered mini muffin pan. She's such a good friend, she gave it to me for the bacon rose project. I don't have pictures of me drilling the holes. I did that outside and used a concrete block so the part I was drilling would be over open space. I also learned quickly that if you have both hands on the drill and no hands on the muffin tin, it will spin wildly when the drill bit goes through. The Pixie thought that was really funny.

Then it was on to the bacon baking. For some reason, the fake roses I got at the dollar tree had 15 flowers. The muffin tin only had 12 spaces, so I had to improvise. I figured little aluminum foil girdles would do the trick. Why not? And now if anyone ever googles "aluminum foil girdles" this site should be one of the first one that pops up.

 

Bacon, pre-baking, aluminum foil girdles in place

I baked them for about 30 minutes, and it worked just fine. I didn't try lifting the bacon out so the fat could drain like it suggested on the site. I forgot about that because it was lunchtime and I was hungry. But the aluminum foil girdles worked so well, that I would try it again just using those! No lifting involved, and the bottoms were crispier. This would be important if your person likes crispy bacon.

 

After baking. It worked so well!

Then I assembled the flowers. I'd washed mine ahead of time by swishing it around in a glass of hot, soapy water. I figured since food was going on it, that would be best. It was a slightly gross job, because bacon is greasy. It also made some of the stem bottoms slide down a bit, so I had to figure out how to get them to stay put. Note: tape does not stick to things covered in bacon grease.

 

But I managed to get it to work.

I can't wait for John to get home!

________________________________________________________

John's reaction:

When he first came in he said, "Pretty flowers! Where did those come from?"
And I said, "Why don't you come a little closer and smell them?
But before I even finished talking, the scent of bacon hit his nose and he said, "They're BACON!" and started laughing.

 

Blurry, laughing John.

Happy Valentimes!

More pics!

 

Yep. He likes it.

Valentines - 2012 edition

With two boys needing 30ish Valentines, it can get pricey. I saw an idea on pinterest and ran with it.

 

Some Tootsie Pops, some construction paper, and a little scissors work and we're good!

It's supposed to make it look like you have a mustache when you're eating your lollipop.

 

And they all say, "I mustache you to be my Valentine." Good times.

Pinewood Derby, 2012

 

This year we have two cub scouts, so we had two little guys who made cars for the Pinewood Derby. Today was our pack's time trials, where they ran 6 different races with the top three in each group advancing to district level.

We learned something from doing it last year with Rowan, and that's that creativity can really slow down your car. This year they went for aerodynamic design.

 

Rowan decorated his with stickers.

 

Niall decorated his with rub on decals.

Both boys were very satisfied with their cars. John had to take them so they wouldn't get broken before the actual races.

Niall did pretty well. His car came in 4th place for the Tiger level races, and he got the 2nd place award for best design.

 

Rowan did very well this year. His car came in 3rd place in the Webelos I level races, and he got 1st place for most unique.

Because he came in 3rd, he will also go to the district level races in about six weeks. John is somewhat concerned about this, because while all of our pack does the cars as a father/son build it together thing, he's heard that other packs in the area have the dads doing all of the work, or even ordering fully built cars off the internet. So we must prepare for, as one of the other dads put it, being a Pinto in a room full of Cadillacs. No matter, Rowan's still a big winner in our book.

Happy Little Christmas!

Christmas is now over for another year. I took the tree out of the house today. The pixie was not happy with this event, and stood on the porch yelling at me. "Hey! What you doing my Christmas tree?!" She did not agree that it was time for it to leave. I took the popcorn garlands off and hung them on our maple for the birds.

For our usual tradition, we went and got a Galette des Rois from La Farm bakery, so we could celebrate the arrival of the 3 kings to visit the infant Jesus.
Niall chose who got what slice because he was the one who got the feve last year. Who got it this year? Me!
And of course, I crowned John the king. Happy Little Christmas everyone!