Drawing Faces

The other day Becca and I were playing downstairs in the playroom. She loves to draw with the dry-erase markers on the easel. Usually it's just scribbles, but this time I noticed that she has figured out how to draw faces. Maybe this is something all 3-year-old girls can do? Samuel certainly did not do this at that age. I very clearly remember his 4-year checkup at the doctor's office where they asked me if he could draw a person and I had no idea because he never had. Now, of course, he draws all the time, but at Becca's age (3 years and 2 months), he could not have done this:

 

Operation Christmas Child

Each year, through our church, we participate in something called Operation Christmas Child. We fill a shoebox with little things - toothbrush, toothpaste, stuffed animals, toys, etc... and it is sent around the world to a child who may not have any other presents at Christmas, or who may not have ever received a gift before in their life.

All year, we put aside a percentage of Samuel's allowance in his Share Jar.

(We do actually put aside a larger percentage than what you see here. This picture was taken after we spent the $ this year.)

At the end of the year, he is allowed to take this money and pick the things he wants to go in the shoebox. When you donate a box, you get to pick if you want it to go to a boy or girl, and pick an age range. We always pick someone close to Samuel's age to make it more meaningful for him. This year, he took the share money to the dollar store and picked out a bunch of things to go in the box. He really considered each and every thing before putting it in the cart - "would I like to play with this?" "would I think this is fun?" "this would probably break right away", etc...

In years past, he has had a hard time when we buy all of this stuff and then we have to give it away, so this year we did 2 things to make it easier:

1. We bought the items and then immediately brought them to church and dropped them off. Not having them ever come home with us made it easier to give them away.
2. He took some money from his Spend Jar and used it to buy something for himself at the dollar store at the same time.

Here is my proud little helper, dropping off the box at church:

Future Artist (perhaps in a tattoo parlour)

Seriously, child, what do you have against drawing on the paper? Why must you always use your legs as the canvas?

The amazing hat

Samuel was home sick 2 days this week. The first day he was really out of commission, sleeping most of the day. But he started to feel a lot better on the second day, so he spent quite a long time making a hat. As you can see in the video below, it's not just an ordinary hat. It has 2 balloons attached to straws. I don't think you can see these other features, but it also has a snack compartment, a hidden pocket for a comic strip, and he is currently working on how to attach a cup of water somehow. I love these little sneak peaks into his personality. Maybe he is going to be an inventor or an engineer someday?

Happy Halloween!

Despite the icky weather, the kids had a great time trick-or-treating tonight. Samuel dressed up as a transformer. Up until about 4:00 this afternoon, Becca had been planning to dress up as a knight. However, she found a pair of bunny ears in our dress-up things and changed her mind. Since we don't have a bunny costume, she wore part of a monkey suit that Samuel wore a few years ago. However, since it was so cold out, she had to wear her coat over it so you can't really see more of her costume than just her bunny ears. To keep warm, Samuel wore 4 pair of pajamas on top of each other under his costume. I half expected him to fall down like Randy in A Christmas Story and not be able to get back up since he was so bundled up.

 

The perks of being a big kid

At the main branch of the library here in Fort Wayne there is a super cool reading tower:
















Alas, you have to be ages 7-12 to go in it.





















Samuel was 18 months old when we moved here. He has been to this branch of the library many, many times. Every single time we go there, he counts down how much longer he has to wait until he is old enough to go up in the reading tower. Lucky for him, he just turned 7 a few weeks ago. He was super happy to be able to check it out. Becca, of course, was not. Now I guess we start a countdown for her...

The Birthday Project - FAQ

If you missed the video posted on facebook the other day, here is a link:



I have been getting a lot of questions from people about the project so I thought I would provide some more information here.

Q - Where did you first hear about this?
A - I saw a posting on a blog written by a friend of a friend. She first learned about it through pinterest. The girl with the original idea is named Robyn Bomar and she is from Florida. I don't know her at all. This is the link to how she spent her 38th birthday. The whole project was born out of the tremendous response she received from that blog post. She then started a website specifically dedicated to The Birthday Project (link here).

Q - Where did you get all of the ideas for the 38 acts of kindness?
A - The list we used was a combination of things I had found online (Robyn's original post, other people who have done the birthday project for their birthdays, googling "random acts of kindness") and some ideas I thought of on my own.

Q- Where did you get all of the signs/cards used that day?
A - I found most of them on this girl's blog. She had just completed her own birthday project and very generously shared her creations online for others to use. I found the rest of them by looking in the quote section on pinterest or doing a google image search for quotes about kindness.

Q - How long did it take you to put everything together?
A - I first stumbled across the blog posting sometime last spring, and I knew right away I wanted to do this for my next birthday. I thought about things A LOT between then and now, and it's a good thing I did because in order to fit all 38 things in in one day, a lot of prep work was required.

Q - How exactly did you do all 38 things in one day?
A - I made a spreadsheet of all of the acts we were going to do. Then I grouped them by area of town. Then we went to those areas with our lists in hand and made sure we did everything in that location before driving off to another area of town.

Q - Was this expensive to do?
A - Yes and no. Since I had a while to plan, I tried to do/buy a little bit every week or two. Meg and Erin also helped contribute with different things ($, gift cards, package items, etc...) It helped a lot to have them do that. I donated a lot of things we already had (toy train set, old bridesmaid dress, Becca's old swing, etc...) to help keep the cost down. I also opted not to do some of the pricier ideas I came across (example: pay for someone's groceries) and instead did things like put coupons in the grocery store.

Q - Which of the 38 acts was your favorite?
A - I loved all of the things we did at the Dollar Store. The kids (and their mom) were so genuinely touched that we gave them balloons, it was fun to hide the dollar bills in different places, and the employees who worked there were so enthusiastic about what we were doing. Even though they were not the actual recipients of any of the acts, they were excited about our plans and they were fun people to share with.

It was such a fun day, and I thank Meg and Erin for coming all the way to Fort Wayne to help me out with it. You girls are the best!

Three!

October is a busy birthday month at our house. Samuel turned 7 last week, and Becca turned 3 this week! She brought cupcakes to preschool to share with her class (I found the idea for these on pinterest, of course):

Then we made a Hello Kitty cake for her at home:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, because those 2 things weren't sugar-filled enough, I took her to a special kids baking class at Country Kitchen SweetArt, a local cake and candy making place. The theme of the class that morning was "monster treats" so we made a monster cupcake, a lollipop that looked like a spiderweb, and decorated a giant marshmallow to look like Frankenstein. As you can see in the pictures below, Becca had a great time doing this (and especially taste testing the frosting and sprinkles!)






















































































Happy Birthday to my sweet girl!

Seven!

Samuel turned 7 last week. He is super into transformers these days, so he asked for a transformers birthday party.  His birthday parties the past few years have been very involved, so this year I decided to scale things back a little. We still did fun things, but nothing like making Buzz Lightyear costumes for every child in attendance (2010) or creating a cardboard version of Lightning McQueen that kids could fit in (2011) .

Here is the invitation:



I told him that since he was turning 7 he could have 7 kids (including him) so he picked 6 friends to invite.

The kids had a lot of fun painting robot banks:

















In order to find their cupcakes, I set up a simple treasure hunt. In the picture below our neighbor from down the street (who we hired to help us at the party) is reading the clues to the kids:




Here are the cupcakes (made by a friend) which were hidden in the dryer:

We had a pull-string pinata. Each child took a turn pulling a string. One of the strings opened the pinata. Becca actually pulled that string.



One neat thing the kids played with at the party were these water beads. You can get them all kinds of places - Michael's, Wal-Mart, amazon. They start off really tiny, like the size of round sprinkles. You place them in water and they grow (over 4-6 hours) to the size of marbles. They are squishy like gummy bears and they are a really neat sensory experience to run your hands through. I made ours extra cool by hydrating them in glow water (break open a highlighter and run water through the sponge until you get all of the color out.) Then if you use a black light, the water beads will glow in the dark.

 

And what would a birthday party be without presents? Samuel got all sorts of new transformers from his friends, along with art supplies, a nerf dart gun, and even some transformer pajamas. All in all, it was a great party. Happy Birthday, Samuel!

I ♥ Pinterest

I am probably the last person in the world to sign up for pinterest. Everyone I know has already been on there for months. However, just because I am late to the party does not mean that I, too, cannot lose hours of precious time by being sucked into the pinterest black hole! And what an amazing black hole it is! I had no idea all of the things you could find on there. Here are some things I have found and tried recently that I really like:

1. No bake granola bars



Here's the link for those. They are easy and good (although I'm not really sure how healthy they are, as the title of the recipe suggests).

2. Two-Ingredient Pumpkin Cake

















Here is the link for that.

3. Miracle cleaner using Dawn and hydrogen peroxide

I have used this for spots on laundry and on the carpet, and it works really well on both. Here is the link for the cleaner.

There are tons of great ideas on pinterest for making things that glow - glow water, glow ice cubes, glow bath time, etc... We are going to try those next, so look for a post soon about if our glow experiments are successful.

Wine and Canvas

Back in July I had the chance to do something really fun with some friends: a Wine and Canvas painting class. Basically there is one instructor at the front of a room, and then about 20 people who each get their own easel, brushes, and paints. The instructor walks everyone through how to recreate a painting. Sometimes they do famous paintings, but the night I was signed up for was just a yellow background with some flowers.

Although I love to do crafty things, I have never really tried painting before (except for art class a zillion years ago in school). It was really fun! And you don't need to know how to paint at all, since the instructor tells you things like "pick up the biggest brush in front of you, add a little green paint, and then make a line from here to here."

The classes are held in different restaurants in Fort Wayne. The wine part of their name comes in because you can order food or drinks from the restaurant and they are brought right to your painting station. Wine and Canvas is a franchise, so if there is one near you, I'd definitely recommend checking it out. It was tons of fun!

Here are some pictures from the class:

1st grade

School started here this Wednesday. Samuel is now in 1st grade, which is a little bit of an adjustment for him since it means he will be there all day (instead of just the morning like he was in Kindergarten). Here he is before getting on the bus that morning:




Boarding the bus:
















Checking out his locker (we took this picture last week during registration):

At back-to-school night this week, his teacher had hung up self portraits that the kids made. Here is Samuel's:

So far he seems to really like his teacher. I know it's only been 3 days, but things are off to a good start!

Mission Accomplished!

Check out what Samuel figured out how to do yesterday:

We have been working on this off and on for a long time, so we are all thrilled he figured it out!

Why she gets a bath at least once day, sometimes twice

Although you can't see it in the pictures, I did actually give her paper to paint on. Apparently it is much more fun to paint yourself...

Rhyme Time Video

Here is Samuel's part from Rhyme Time (sorry it isn't the best quality. The only way I could figure out how to extract part of the movie was to view it onscreen while recording it with our camera.)

And here are a few more pictures from Kindergarten:

Field Day:

Eating Lunch in the Cafeteria Day (this was such a big deal for them since they were normally just in school in the morning. They felt like such big kids when they got to eat in the cafeteria one day):

Kindergarten graduate

School ended here last week, so Samuel is all done with Kindergarten now. He is officially a first grader. How did he get to be so old? Here is a picture of him with his teacher on the last day of school:

He had the most awesome teacher this year. She did some of the neatest things with the kids in her class. The shirts they are both wearing in the picture above are kind of hard to see, but it's a picture of all of the kids in the class (on the front) and their signatures (on the back).

On the last day of school, the parents were invited to come in and watch a movie called Rhyme Time. It featured each child in the class acting out a nursery rhyme. Samuel did The Itsy Bitsy Spider. I have a copy of the movie, but I'm not sure how to just show his part, so for now a picture of him in his costume will have to do:

If I can figure out how to post part of the movie, I will do that soon. It is really cute.

Bored with Breakfast?

If you're stuck in a breakfast rut, try something new: eat like a cat.

Calling All Umi Friends...

If you've seen the show Team Umizoomi before, you'll recognize that as a line from the opening song. Becca loves this show, which teaches math concepts through these 3 super cute cartoon characters, Milli, Geo, and Bot:

Our local rec center just offered a Team Umizoomi event for kids her age, so we signed up. It was just for an hour one morning, but they packed a lot into that hour. Here she is after making her own Milli hat, complete with long ponytails:

Milli uses her ponytails on the show to measure things, so here is Becca measuring things with her ribbon ponytails:

They glued shapes onto foam to make a shape belt like Geo wears:

They solved some missions, one where they had to find stickers of animals who lived in the sea and put them on a poster:

And one that I didn't get a picture of (but was her favorite!) where they had to hunt around the building for (stuffed) animals who were supposedly missing from the zoo. It was so cute seeing all of these 2-year-olds running around finding the stuffed animals.

She also got a special snack (cookies in the shape of numbers) with frosting she got to spread by herself (okay, that part might have been her most favorite):

And at the end they all did the crazy shake dance that they do on the show:

It was a really nice program and she had a great time!