Another week has gone by

So last Saturday we had a joint family birthday party for Red and Punkie. Just 30 minutes before the party Red and I went downstairs to get a book and we noticed there was a flood of water coming in the basement door. With quick work from everyone everything was under control within 5 minutes of the party starting. A game had to be slightly altered (some papers were all wet so I had to put tape with numbers down instead), but it worked out.

We did a Pirates and Princess theme. We started with games based on the princess theme (including Valentine card treasure hunt "the ball invitations", freeze dance, midnight--like 'shark' in a pool, and a 'slipper' race--with their own shoes). Then we switched to pirate games (walk the plank--like a character walk, pirate-pirate-who's got the loot, pirate islands--hard to describe since I don't know the official name of the game, and I think there was another one too--but don't remember what it was). Here are the cakes we made for the kids:

Red's had candy rocks and crushed oreos on it. He enjoyed helping with placing the decorations on. He had chosen a cherry chip cake mix, with cherry preserve filling and cream cheese frosting. Punkie's had a really cute pink tiara on it. She had french vanilla cake, cheesecake filling, and a vanilla-almond frosting.

Oh, two more cute moments:

This is Punkie's personal handshake with Daddy...

And this is a cute little visitor we had. Punkie and Red loved having a little baby around for a short while.

Red's ski video

Out with the old and in with the new...

Hair and teeth that is. I got a haircut on Monday and as people have been telling me: You chopped your hair off! Hmm, I think I'll fire my hairstylist.

Then Chief lost his front top tooth (a few days after his cousin who is the same age--they'll match again just like they did last year at this time when they were both missing a front bottom tooth).

While I was getting my hair chopped off, the boys were sliding down the mountainside on skis. Here they are enjoying their Christmas present from their uncle and aunt:

Ahhhh, the perfect ending for the perfect day.

Today is Red's birthday. He has celebrated by having a party with a few friends. We just did a simple one: playing 'Huckle, Buckle, Beanstalk' (think hide and seek with a toy), "Red" Says, Duck-Duck-Goose, pin the tail on the donkey, a character walk, making placemats, finding a harmonica hidden in rice, playing the harmonica whenever a word was said during a book reading (yeah, I know, reading a book for a party?!?), and we had ice cream sandwiches and played with balloons. All in all it worked out for a one hour party.

One last post-Christmas thought

I made a list of sentances for Red to finish just before Christmas. Here it is:
What I like most about Christmas is...the presents.
My favorite Christmas decoration is...ornaments.
The one gift I would like to have for Christmas is...binoculars for Andrew, candy for skiing.
Somehing I could give as a gift to someone is...my sister's toys to Jason's sister.
I celebrate Christmas because it is someone's birthday. That person is...Jesus!

I just love how sharing he is with his sister's toys. Oh, and he is still disturbed that he didn't get the medicine he wanted for Christmas. I have no idea what he means by that.

Pausing for a sec

So I'm pausing from life for a second to give an update. Here's a few pics from the last week or so.

Here's a pic from the ice experiement we did last week:

On Monday the kids had a field trip to the local airport. We took a go-cart around the ramp area to see the different kinds of planes and the runway area.

Here's Red and Punkie calling their Grandma (this is for the benefit of their Grandma):

Here are some misc pics of Punkie (usually with her doll) and when she was making breadsticks this week:

Lest you feel bad that Chief isn't featured, he did take lots of videos with my camara this week.

Oh, and here's a pic of why we are even more broke right now--my hubby had to fix the alternator and belt in his car.

Things are going well. But Red did cut some of his bangs off today and Chief faked being sick to stay home from school yesterday. Hopefully we made the day boring enough that he won't do it again.

Welcome to the new year!

So the holidays are officially over. I took down Christmas decorations a couple of days ago. We had fun, as evidenced by this video clip I took when I thought I was taking a picture:

Chief made sure we had everything just right for Santa: the cookies, the milk and the letter. Santa even took the time to write back!



We loved the opportunity to visit with family--even if that did mean Punkie and Daddy caught a highly contagious stomach bug that several other family members also caught. Here are a couple of pics of Red teaching his one year old cousin all about MP3s and another one of the same cousin and his great uncle (sorry Greg, but it's true):

And here we are just glad to be home.

I taught preschool yesterday. We are learning about families. Basically we read a cute book, made a representation of the kids' families by making a snowman picture out of foam pieces I bought from Michaels back when Chief was in Kindergarten and I taught a "station" one day about families to his class. No matter how many times I try to use up all the snowman foam pieces the container always seems full! Augh! How do I get rid of them?!?! For the snack we made snowman marshmallow people with marshmallows and toothpicks and drank hot chocolate with whipped cream. We skipped recess because we had played some discovery games earlier for letter sounds and bug shapes/colors/species (thanks Mom!) and learned our password for the day--which is learning h0w to read words with the same ending letters (thanks Sis!). We finished up by learning the properties of salt and it's affect on water. I had frozen blocks of ice for the kids, mixed up a water/salt/blue coloring solution, gave the kids syringes (without needles) and let them go at it. They really enjoyed it. I think I'll teach them about more snow/ice themed science tomorrow and we're planning on preparing a surprise treat/cards for another mom who teaches them (it's her b-day Sunday).