What-What?! Week of July 2nd

Summer!  It's finally kind of here, if you ignore the clouds and the days that it's still cold...

Yesterday, the kids did some little painting kits:

Oh, Osric has short hair now... it is crazy how different he looks now.

No, they are not wearing shirts.  Yes, they did get paint on their bodies.

Osric's happy cupcake.

Painting her kitty.

Later that day, we went to a little wooded park on the East side of Marysville.

Reading the plaque on the bridge that crosses the little creek there -- this was built by boy scouts.

Watching the creek.

There were tons and tons of Morning Glories everywhere.

The place used to be a Christmas tree farm before it was donated to the city, so all the fir trees are planted in perfect rows.  Out beyond this, there's a little meadow area, which would probably be lovely for picnics.

The park doesn't have a playground, so afterwards we went down the road to Jennings Park, which does.  We found out that the Marysville Historical Museum is right next to it, and is now open, so we're planning on taking a trip there sometime soon.

What-What?! Week of November 13th

Not much going on this week -- mostly just working, though yesterday I did do some crafts with the children.  Saffron very nicely shared her big craft bin with her brothers, and they had a good time making stick puppets and wands:

Making her wand -- pink hearts and sequins.

Little birdy puppet -- the base is a GIANT pom-pom.

Corwin gave his bird the biggest tail.  This is also the only non-blurry picture I could get of him with his bird.

"I cast a spell on you!"

All three reading together. <3

What-What?! Week of October 23rd

The name of the game this week is Halloween crafts. :D

Our house is now decorated for Halloween:

The husband and I made gravestones to decorate our front yard, with lovely quotes like "Oops", and "What?", and "Are you still serving breakfast?".

We also bought the kids some Halloween door hangers, which they had a good time coloring.

I only have a picture of Saffron's finished one, though?

Michael's Weekly Kid's Craft

Every week, Michael's does a kids craft event with holiday themed crafts.  We've never gone before, so it was new to us.  This week was yarn ghosts, and the kids also colored pictures of their costumes while they waited for the hot glue gun to warm up:

I love Ozzy's potato people.  So cute!

"BOOOoooooooooOOOOOOOOooooooo"

Corwin's has big BIG teeth.

Osric decided to color blood on the mouth of his ghost, to make it extra-spooky!

What-What?! Week of September 11th

This last week was pretty quiet -- it was nice to only have to work four days, though.  We never made it to a park or out hiking, but we have cleaned out closets in the anticipation of upcoming birthdays.  So it's nice to have less stuff, anyway.

Yesterday, I taught the big kids how to make breaded lizards:

(From left to right): Mine, Saffron's, and Corwin's

Saffron had some trouble figuring out how the beading part worked, but Corwin got it surprisingly fast.  He was looking at mine and using it as a pattern without me having to tell him what to do.

They want to make more today.  I have a feeling we're going to need more pony beads...

What-What?! Week of April 24th

Long week.  Starts again tomorrow. :/

Origami Things

Corwin with his fox puppet and swan.

So last weekend, we hit up the thrift store, and one of the things we picked up was an origami book.  I've done a couple of animals with the children, and Corwin has been very interested in it.  He's actually better at the actual paper folding part than either of the other two kids.

Saffron was excited, not that you can tell from this picture.

Ozzy was very excited, but also very blurry.

Luckily, I found that I have a ton of origami paper, so we'll be rolling in paper animals for a good long while.

Last weekend, it was actually nice enough that we ate outside all weekend.  We had the kids help us with some yardwork; we told them that we'd give them a penny for each dandelion flower they picked.  All told, they picked a total of 324 dandelion flowers -- and there was still more (!!!).  Still, seems like a good $3.24 spent.

What-What?! Week of October 18th

So, recently I've taken to not writing my blog post until Sunday morning, rather than a day in advance.  This is nice because it gives me more time on Saturday to do things, but not so great because I've been sleeping in until 10:30 or later on Sundays.  This week, I've really been dragging and needed the sleep.  I feel SO much better now.

Anyway, so this past week, we had friends over and made the last Lowe's Build and Grow project, which is a haunted bird house:

We haven't put them up outside yet, but we will.  Possibly on the back fence or something.

I also made "quicksand" with the kids (a mix of water and cornstarch, along with food coloring), which was a lot of fun, but extremely messy.

Mixing in the poor creatures who fell in.

Saffron opted to use all ponies.

The huge mess.

 Yesterday morning, the husband and I took the kids to the thrift store to shop for costume clothes and pajamas.  Had to buy PJs for the kids, since they've outgrown last year's.  Corwin actually cried earlier in the week, because he was so disappointed about the selection of pajamas in our house.  We also bought books, like we always do, including the Lego Star Wars visual dictionary, which is a pretty serious thing:

 

Oh, yeah, and we also have a massive mushroom in our backyard:

Okies, that's all for this week.  I'm gonna go grab breakfast, and by breakfast, I mean lunch. :P

What-What?! Week of October 11th

Sorry this is so late in the day.  I slept a lot, and it was refreshing. :P

Earlier in the week, the kids did a craft where they made themselves a little town to play with:

Cereal boxes opened up, and the kids are coloring on the blank side.  We then taped them up.

The finished product.

It's a bit hard to read, but the stores we had in our town included a Toy Store, a restaurant for vampires called Vampire Drink (how creepy is that?!  Thanks, Corey), a Pet Shop, and a Mall.

They had a really great time playing with them, so great that they killed a dinosaur:

I was able to fix it.

Not too much else goin' on.  The husband worked almost 50 hours this week, so that's a goodly amount of overtime, though I hate him being gone so much.  I made (another) apple pie.  It's delicious.

Next week, I'm going to do a big post on Corey's Lego creations.  I seem to have collected a lot of pictures and videos of things he's made.

What-What?! Week of September 20th

ARRR!  Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day!  YAR.

We didn't do too much, though.  We had pirate ship sandwiches, which we ate too fast to take pictures of (oops).

Peach pie.  YUM!

This past week, I actually did some cooking.  I made the grossest vegetarian chili, which the husband says wasn't too bad, but I was thoroughly disgusted by.  It had good bones, but I have to do some research before trying again.

We picked up a lot of apples, which we're eating, and will turn into applesauce or other things.  I made a caramel cream cheese dip yesterday that turned out really delicious with these apples.  I bet graham crackers would be fantastic, too.

The kids did some craft stuff.  I printed out some coloring pages, then put them into sheet protectors.  Then the kids could add decorations using playdough.  Surprisingly, the one who was most into it was Corwin.  Saffron tends to be more art-oriented, but this just caught Corey's imagination.