At School with Caleb

Today I helped out in Caleb's class for their holiday party. It was a lot of fun to get to hang out with his classmates and they all kind of made me feel like a celebrity. "Are you Caleb's mom?" was the question of the day. They did some bingo, some snacks and some coloring pages before it was time for the school day to end and our two week vacation break to start. Caleb loved that mom came to help out with his class.

Gingerbread House

Tonight Caleb, Lorelei and I made our very first gingerbread house together. Lorelei decorated one half of the rooftop while Caleb took the other. She put the wreath on the front door and he decorated the little tree out front I got the task of putting this baby together and putting down the path and snow. It was a MESSY little project, but the kids had a lot of fun with it, so we'll do it again next year.

We Saw Santa Claus!!

Caleb and Lorelei on Santa's lap! This is the first time the kids have ever been to the mall Santa and if you can believe it...Caleb was a bit apprehensive about it! After he saw that it wasn't scary he was perfectly happy to sit on Santa's lap and give him a gift suggestion or two.
Once we were done with Santa we strolled over towards Lorelei's favorite Christmas tree and once again, pictures in the little face cut-outs. Better ones because I specificially brought my camera along for these very pictures. The one above is Dad with the kids and the one below is me with the kids.

This is the coveted mall Christmas tree. As you can see I didn't even really get the whole thing in the picture. It's MASSIVE! Lorelei wants one at her house when she grows up.
Of course, the kids always need to throw a little pocket change into the wishing well...
And Lorelei had to show me which sized ornaments she likes best.
Dad got creative and tried to get her smiling face in the ornament. It kind of worked out alright!
After we were done with our Santa visiting and picture taking at the mall we went over to Old Country Buffet for dinner. It's a win-win because the kids can pick what they want and so can the adults. No one goes home hungry! After dinner the kids made up some ice cream treats. Don't they look scrumptious?
Caleb (above) and Lorelei (below) enjoying their ice cream creations.
The End. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

We're going to try something new this week and particpate in Photostory Friday.

Boy Scouts

I'm not Caleb's preferred parent on scout nights. He wants daddy every single time there is a meeting, but this week it had to be me. I hadn't actually planned to stay because of course I had Lorelei with me. But...she saw other kids were staying and that made her want to stay so...instead of more arguing {it's been an all-around VERY bad day} we stayed.

The boys made a project and then did a group activity that involved following directions and doing different types of walks. It was loud, obnoxious and kept them busy.

I took a whole bunch of pictures since this is the ONLY meeting I have taken pictures at {normally I'm at Daisy's}, but I've lost my USB cord for my phone and so I'm stuck relying on the photos to upload via mobile to Facebook -- which hasn't been reliable today. But, enjoy the two I do have. :)

The Korea Project

Caleb and I have been working together on his latest project for school. He had to pick a country to research and then write a one page speech, do a poster board that contained specific information AND create something that represented that country. These are the information pieces we made for his poster board. We spent a lot of time on the computer where I showed him how to use a word document, set spacing and font changing and adding pictures. All in all it ended up being a fun project, but a lot of work. I certainly don't remember 3rd grade being this detailed when I was there. Tuesday is the deadline and the only thing we have left to do is get these glued/taped/pasted down on his poster board. I'll share the completed parts of the project tomorrow.

Washable Paint

I bought some paint awhile back so that I could try my hand at making some handmade ornaments. The ornaments were a bomb, but the paint has proven to be a stellar investment. The kids had fun the other night making me some pictures and the best part is? I was smart enough to buy washable paint AND to put down some newspaper first.

Storm Pictures

These were taken last night before it got too dark. It snowed until almost 6PM here, but we still didn't end up with all that much. Maybe 3-4 inches at best? Regardless, this morning I'll have to drive the kids to school because it's a whopping 0 degrees and I don't want to torture the kids this early in the season.

About Four Posts Ago...

I blogged for the 400th time!

It's amazing the memories I've captured here on the blog that looking back, I wouldn't even remember if I hadn't written them down or mentioned them somehow in writing.

I suppose it helps that I have two really cute subjects...

I'm hoping that next year I'll be able to blog every single day so I have an even better collection of thoughts about my two crazies. I've already started practicing this month to get into the groove of it.

Badge Night at Daisys

Lorelei listening during the short ceremony.

Lorelei reading what was written on her baggie of badges.

The girls doing their friendship circle thing at the end of the meeting.

Tonight Lorelei received a whole bunch of badges that she's earned since beginning with scouts this year. She received her Pumpkin Patch badge, Juliette Low badge and Fire Dept. badge. She also earned four of the petals towards completing her flower: light green, yellow, dark pink and orange. She was really, really excited that she "won" new badges for her vest. Thank goodness I have a month before the next meeting to figure out how to sew them on!

First Snowfall

We got our first real taste of winter today in the form of snow! {12/07/2009} Yep, the white stuff is back and we were completely unprepared! Lorelei had to wear a pair of boys boots, the snowpants are a few inches too short and I had to wrangle up a new pair of gloves for miss Lorelei -- but they'll be warm anyway. I guess tonight we shop for winter stuff.

Cookie Decorating with Friends

Friends joined us for what would have been our Friday night family night this week. We decorated some gingerbread cookies, had pizza for dinner and then the kids played for a good two hours while the mom's had adult, uninterrupted conversation.

Snack Time Reading

After school today the kids sat down to have a snack of chocolate chip cookies and milk. When I pulled Caleb's new library book out of his backpack he immediately asked to read it to Lorelei. And how could I resist getting in at least one picture; even if it was on my Blackberry?

Star Wars Monopoly

After baking some cookies and before putting up the tree -- we played some Star Wars Episode 1 Monopoly today. It's been sitting in a closet for years, but finally the kids are at an age where the most basic points of the game can be played and it's GREAT for money counting and math skills. Caleb won. He was literally just going around the board collecting money and poor Lorelei and I didn't stand a chance. We had a good time though and it was nice to play a complicated game with them and not have an argument break out that stopped the game before we were ready for it to be finished.

The Day After Turkey

I put up the tree today. I know, I know, I should probably let the kids help, but I'm a bit obsessive about where the ornaments go. They are used to this and honestly, after an ornament or two are sick of helping with it anyway, so they let me be. The tree is 7.5 feet tall and prelit (same tree we had last year) and that's every ornament minus about 5 that we lost due to poor repackaging on my part and the two that fell off the tree today. Of those two at least one was salvageable. Thank goodness because it was one of Lorelei's ornaments that she's very fond of. Oh, the wonders of super glue! I also put up the stockings and we found that Caleb's stocking has been lost somewhere in the shuffle. Thankfully he was okay with using one of the other stockings we had (there were a few extras) and so it all worked out quite well.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from my Little Turkeys

Family Night

I'm trying really hard to get in the habit of having a once weekly family night. Right now, Friday seems to be the best night to do this. Sort of an "end of the school week" celebration. Last week? Didn't go to well and the kids ended up in bed early for bad behavior. Tonight? Went really well!

This week I had a free movie rental from Redbox so we picked up Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It was super cute and we all really enjoyed it. Daddy sprung for pizza and we had popcorn and juice for "dessert". Before pizza arrived the kids played a few rounds of their own made up version of Sorry! Sliders.

Can't wait for next week!

Girl Scout Swap

Back in October when we were visiting Wisconsin, Lorelei missed out on an opportunity to do a Daisy Swap. Now, I'm not entirely sure the point of swaps, other than to create interaction from girls in different troops. Regardless, she was given a swap to create, but we weren't there so she didn't get to trade with a girl from another troop.

Tonight, after realizing we had this swap still sitting in our "things we didn't do while in Wisconsin" pile, we finally put her little swap together and pinned it on her Daisy vest. She didn't get to trade like the other girls, but at least she still got to participate. And maybe at some point down the road she'll run into a fellow scout in with a swap to share.

And yes, she's in her pj's. After their bath this morning, both kids decided that they wanted to wear pj's the rest of the day and I can't say I blame them!

A Scrapbooking Time Saver

Scrapbooking has been one of the most popular hobbies for years and years now. I remember being so excited to give it a try and being sorely disappointed by 90% of the things I came up with after I'd cut and clipped and pasted and arranged for hours on end. I think I have one or two pages that I actually wouldn't mind showing people and the rest are pretty much garbage in my eyes.

So, I had kind of given up on scrapbooking for awhile. I still have plenty of papers and albums and "stuff" to do it, but I lost interest in pulling it all out only to feel like my pages were just mediocre and not worth the time and effort. Especially considering I only scrap at night while the kids are asleep and not getting into the "pretty papers".

A couple of days ago, on Facebook, a friend "became a fan" of something called How Times Flies. I was curious and clicked on the link to check out the fan page. Turns out...it's a digital scrapbooking site! I've been a fan of digital scrapbooking for about 3 years now, but every single time I try it I again meet with failure. In fact, I used to use a site called ScrapBlog.com, but gave up when they started using their credit system for page designs and fun embellishments on top of the cost to print.

Regardless, I decided to check out the website for How Times Flies and was simply amazed by it and the relatively low cost. It's $5.50 per 12x12 page. And while that's not "cheap", it's less than the cost of most of the pages I've tried to create once you factor in all the gadgets and gizmos necessary to make a professional looking scrapbook page. Everything else? Free. All the templates are premade. They are stored for you until you are ready to purchase. They are EASY to use. In fact, I've made almost 20 pages since I first discovered the site just a few days ago. In addition, you can share the pages (for FREE!) with friends via email and via Facebook.

Here are two samples I made using pictures from last year:

If you'd like to try it out: HowFastTimeFlies