It snowed! (Sort of)

Just some cuteness!

Snow! Just kidding...

We haven't gotten much of the white stuff here yet this year, and we all have a case of cabin fever due to self-induced house arrest (we have yucky colds), so I took the plunge and made my own snow.  I saw the idea here.

 Measure 4 cups of flour.

 Add 1/2 cup baby oil.

 Mix well.

(hold the bowl so your son doesn't dump the whole thing on the floor - which is where we should have started anyway!) 

Thoroughly enjoy yourself for over 30 minutes!

And the cool part is that it cleaned up rather easily.  I just had to let go of the messy part during play.  And besides, it smells good!

Building/Construction Theme Week

I am not really sure what inspired me to do this particular theme with the kids, but it was a huge success.  We started the week with a fun snack - make a building out of graham crackers, pretzel sticks, and peanut butter.  It didn't quite look like I imagined it in my head, but then again I was dealing with a 2 and 4 year old!  

 James enjoyed smearing the crackers with peanut butter and smooshing them together.  And of course eating them. 

 Rose's looked more like a building (after a little guidance on where to put the peanut butter), and she wanted her snack without the mess - so some fresh crackers were retrieved from the cabinet.  I have to say that it was a big deal for Rose to get her hands messy with the peanut butter, she is currently in a hand washing stage.

 We went to a cool place called the National Building Museum and they have a room for the kids to build in.  All sorts of fun toys - big legos, blocks, a huge playhouse, a train table, etc - and Rose built this neat building.  James of course came running across the room and knocked it down for her.

 Later in the week, I thought we could do some real hands on work.  We found a 1x2 in our basement, some roofing nails (they have a great big head to aim for), and the lightweight hammer.  There were some smooshed (yes that is a word google!) fingers, but they both really enjoyed getting to use my tools.  

 Lots of supervision was utilized, especially at the end when Rose got to take the (slightly loosened) nails out.

 Totally stole this idea from here.  I am pretty sure James enjoyed eating them more than building, but it was a good activity for a cold afternoon.

We enjoyed several story books at night time and reference books during the day.  Although I do have to say that it is difficult to find story books about construction vehicles.  Here are a few we liked:

Jack's House by Karen Magnuson Beil

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton

Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site by Sherri Rinker

Number 3!!

In case you weren't aware (unlikely) we are expecting number 3 the first week of June (I am keeping my fingers crossed for late May)!  We just got back from the longest ultrasound ever - 2 hours, and 3 different people pushing on my stomach later - we have these cool pictures to share.

 Thumbs up in here!

 Ok, face is a little weird looking, but the cuddly look was too cute to pass up.

 Aww...

Profile shot.

And, no, we don't know the gender yet, we'll let you know when he/she is born.

Snow Theme Week

Now that we are out of the holiday season and I am no longer feeling the effects of early pregnancy, we are back into the swing of things with school.  Rose loves doing projects, but we have been going slowly.  Our first week back was easy - snow, even though we didn't have any fall from the sky.

We had a snowflake snack - we did this last year too - but they really enjoyed it again.

We also did an interesting science experiment, which you can see Rose recording in her science journal.  I got this one from I Can Teach My Child, and it was one of the ones that the kids loved.  We did it several times that day, and again the next.  

You take a small piece of Ivory soap, microwave it for 45 seconds (or minutes as Rose kept saying), and watch what happens.  We thought the end result looked like a pile of snow, but it definitely did not feel like one.  We put it in the bath and James thought it was great - nice and mushy like mud - but Rose freaked out about the little white pieces floating around.

We also made coffee filter snowflakes for our front window and colored with white crayon on black paper to make a snow scene.  No specific books this week to share, like I said we are going slowly back into school.  

Christmas Day

 Opening a few gifts at home, before Mass.

 The tree at Nana's.

 Waiting to go open their presents (and the only good shot I have of their Christmas outfits!).

 Oh my gosh, look at all those presents!

 With her new Tangled doll.

 Getting in the ATV for the first time.  

The bike she had been asking for since her birthday.  It does NOT have training wheels (she can do everything but start on her own) but it does have a doll seat.

Overall, it was a nice day surrounded by family.  The kids had fun, ate mostly cookies, and were worn out pretty early.  

Jesse Tree

Ok, so I have been saving this one to share for a while.  Way back in the summer, I organized 23 other moms to do an ornament swap so that we could all have a complete Jesse tree set for the 24 countdown days (of december) to Christmas.  Here is some info on a Jesse Tree.  Anyway, each mom/family made 24 of the same ornament, sent them to me, and I reorganized them into 24 complete sets and sent that back. 

Each ornament has a bible verse to go with it.  The kids really enjoyed the middle stories, but had a harder time relating to the O Antiphons at the end.  Regardless, they enjoyed hanging the ornaments everyday.

A little holiday fun!

So these pics are from my cell and aren't the clearest, but you get the idea.  Back in pre-kid era, my office had a holiday door decorating contest.  My officemate and I came up with this Mr.Potatohead style gingerbread cookie idea.  We laminated all the pieces and stuck them on the door with a roll of tape.  People would come by and rearrange the pieces all the time.  We won the contest, but even better, I got to keep the pieces.  I finally broke it out this year, and the kids had a blast. I used painters tape and stuck all the pieces on the backside of this post.  They got pretty goofy with some of the arrangements, but Rose was pretty much a stickler for keeping it pretty orthodox.

Holiday Cheer

Tiny Tots Concert

 She really got in to it!

 They let them see how the instruments worked after the concert.

I have been taking the kids to the Tiny Tots Concert at the high school Dan and I graduated from since Rose was born.  But this was the first year Rose was actually excited to see all the costumed people coming around.  The highlight might have been getting to hug them after the concert!  James on the other hand was slightly afraid of them and had to be dragged around after his sister, hiding behind me the whole time.