project update....

Just because I haven't been posting project updates doesn't mean we haven't been busy working! Troy put the floor down in the closet.

(as a little side story here....when we were cutting these floor boards, I had a hold of one of them and Troy grabbed it with more force then he meant to. When I let go of it he pulled it back and smacked himself right in the face with it. He hit himself so hard he almost knocked himself out and split his forehead open a little. His nose looked pretty bad for a while, but I don't think it was broke!)He also hung the shelving...

And then we hung the clothes.

Lots of clothes!!!

He is now working on changing my closet around so I can keep the treadmill in it. I'll post pics when we are done.

And our new room is ready to be primed!

Troy did an awesome job on the drywall. We were pretty excited to start to "clean" it up for the finishing touches this weekend.

The laundry/ storage/ craft room is ready to be sanded. We are planning on doing that tonight. When we get home from Vacation we will be ready to paint, finish the concrete, finish the lighting and put up the trim. Hopefully we will be ready to host Meg's first Birthday party in August....or at least Sam's in September ;-)

Bubble Baby

Maddie thinks Megan is her living baby doll. Last night she styled her "hair" in the bathtub. I'm sure it's the beginning of a lifelong sisterhood!

making crayons

For our summer fun project this week we decided to make our own new crayons out of our old crayon pieces. I'm going to give this project only one thumb up. The kids loved making the crayons, but not using them. Their age may have something to do with this since the crayons they made were large and multicolored it was hard to color nicely with them and stay in the lines. I also didn't care for them since the were messy on the kids hands, I guess crayons have a paper wrapping for a reason! They did actually enjoy making them and choosing different colors to put together. It was neat to them that the crayons melted and so for that part I guess it was a slight success. To make them you need some old crayons....
Some muffin tins or silicone pans....

and some cooking spray.

We just preheated our oven to 275 degrees and then sprayed our pans and peeled and broke our crayons.

Then the kids filled up their tins with the colors they wanted their crayons to be.

We did stars and mini round shapes.

Then you bake them in the oven for about eight minuets and throw them in the freezer until they are set. They popped out of the tins easily and were ready to use. Sam got pretty creative with his color choices making a Florida gator crayon, American crayon and camouflage crayon. Most of Maddie's looked like "Beautiful rainbows"!

The kids DID like stacking them and playing with them which is where the messy hands and table came from, but they both got out their regular crayons to color in their books. I think for a smaller child who is just learning to color these might be great because they are easy to hold and produce lots of different colors.

Beautiful

Megan after her bath...she cracks me up!

Today Sam said "Momma Megan is so handsome!"

I said "Sam girls are beautiful and boys are handsome."

He said "I know, but Megan has boy hair. When she gets some girl hair I will call her beautiful!"

Well ok Sam, but Momma thinks she is beautiful!

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to a wonderful Daddy!

The Big Apple!

This week the kids and I have been to the Big Apple on a VBS adventure! We have all had an awesome time learning about God and making new friends. I taught 4 year olds and had such a sweet group of kids. My co-teachers were also great and made this week tons of fun. We are so blessed to be in a church that places a huge emphasis on reaching children for Christ. We have quite a few day cares that drop off their children and also an after school assistance program that brings kids that may not hear about God anywhere else. We had 622 kids and 56 professions of faith in Christ. The closing program was tonight. We enjoyed hot dogs in "central park" with Daddy and then toured the kids rooms. They were so proud of all their crafts! They sang their songs and then we all enjoyed a skit. I told our preschool Minister that I couldn't do VBS this year because I didn't have time to devote to it, but I'm so glad God changed my heart because it has been a huge blessing to spend this week with so many Christians that are sold out to reaching the lost for Christ.

34

On Friday Troy turned 34. It was quite shocking...literally! Have you every just had one of those weeks where by the end you are thinking "what's next?" ? That was last week for us. The air conditioner went out in the Accadia so we were down one car. (after taking it to 2 shops and not having a car for a whole week, it still isn't fixed!) On Wednesday I turned the oven on and a loud pop and huge flash of fire went off in the oven because the heating element burnt in half. So when Troy got off on Friday he picked me up and we did a little shopping and bought a heating element. When he went to replace it he got electrocuted pretty bad...the element had burnt off in the back as well as the place we could see so when he grabbed it he completed the circuit and got quite a pop! Replacing the element then became a huge chore of removing the stove, it's built into our cabinets, and taking the whole thing apart to get the small piece out that had broken off in the back. Long story short- my oven is fixed and Troy has the feeling back in his arm! On Saturday we made Daddy birthday pancakes. The rest of his day was filled with sanding drywall and putting up light fixtures!This is the inside of our new walk in closet...doesn't it look awesome?
It wasn't all work and no play. We celebrated Don, Troy and my birthday's on Saturday night at a pizza/ pool party at Don and Mary's. It was lots of fun spending time with good friends! Hopefully next year Troy won't have such an exciting birthday week!

Too soon

For some reason Megan decided to grow up this week.

Her hair is so long now it hangs in her eyes so I had to pull it back into a little barrette.

She started sleeping through the night consistently.

She is super fast and right on my heels all the time.

She jabbers constantly with the use of hand gestures.

She pulled a plug protector right out of the outlet.

She gives herself her bottle and cup.

She holds a book open and jabbers a story. I even think she looks older.

It's happening too soon.

Slime!

Well, it's summer.

Summers in Florida and I have a love/hate relationship.

I love that we are out of school and have little or no running around to do each day.

I hate that it is so hot outside that you melt if you try and enjoy your free time outdoors.

So this brings us to doing creative things indoors!

Today we made slime.

It was relatively easy and it actually entertained the kids for 3 hours! They loved making it themselves and then playing with it. I loved that we had everything on hand to make it and as long as they kept it on their play mats there was very little mess involved.

Here's how we made it.....

Mix 2 Tbs of water with 2 Tbs of glue

Add food coloring of choice and mix well

In another container mix 1 cup of borax with water until dissolved.

Slowly stir small amounts of borax mixture into glue mixture until consistency desired is achieved.

Remove slime and rinse in water.

Store in air tight container.

We mixed everything in plastic cups with wooden craft sticks so the mess was easy to clean up. The one thing I will say is that the food coloring seemed to slightly come off on their hands as they played with it.

The kids had lots of fun cutting, shaping and letting their slime mold around objects.
I can see us doing this again sometime. I'm also on the look out for other little projects like this. Do you have any ideas?

Tea for two please!

Maddie had me over for a very fancy tea party while Megan napped and the boys were out on boys errands. She was the perfect hostess pouring the tea(coffee) and adding lots of cream and sugar.

She also had some skittles and starbursts for her guests. When we were sipping our tea she told me "Mom you need to put up your pinky because it's fancier that way!"

She is turning into such a fancy little lady.

Kindergarten Graduation

We are celebrating Maddie's Kindergarten Graduation today with a little cap and gown photo shoot and a Krispy Kreme doughnut! She worked hard and we are proud of her!!And the best thing about the cap and gown is swinging the tassel......
Is is me or does she look 18 here? Where did my baby girl go?

Icebox Pickles

Our little garden is starting to produce! Sam and I love going out and gathering the produce and yesterday we decided to put up some icebox pickles with our abundance of cucumbers that unfortunately no one in the family likes in their raw state except me. Sam helped me prep by washing the cucumbers, green peppers and the jars. (Maddie would have helped too, but she was at a friends house.) I have never done pickles before and all our cucumbers were different sizes so I decided to make chips and slice them on the mandolin to get a uniform size.

Sam was once helping me slice potatoes on the mandolin (which I realize is a horrible idea) and he put his finger down and cut the end right off. It was a very horrifying experience for all involved. He gets a little anxious now when the mandolin comes out and he kept saying "I'm not going to help slice momma! Remember when I helped you slice and I cut my finger off?" Which of course I remember vividly so he definitely didn't help slice.

So back to this post...Sam also stirred up the recipe and loaded them into jars. They have to sit in the refrigerator 24 hours before we could try them so we are anxious to see how we did!

We have also prepped green peppers and frozen them. We have lots of tomatoes and zucchini too. We are hoping to put up some salsa and maybe can some dill pickles later on in the summer.

10 Months

Well today Megan turns 10 months old. That seems very close to one year. She is still such a happy baby girl and makes us all laugh daily! She is getting very verbal and expressive. She says "bye-bye" and waves when anyone leaves her sight. She gives great hugs and says "love you". She has said "Sam" and loves to cuddle his head and pull his little hair. She loves to sit on Maddie's lap and play. She has also learned that older brother and sister can be a little rough and take things from her and she knows how to express dislike for this as well! She has 4 teeth now and is on table food. I'm working on weaning her. She refuses to take numerous kinds of sippies and bottles. She will however, take the little bottles she took when she was in the NICU ?!? Whatever works I guess! They are small and she can hold them so I'm hoping this will be the beginning of learning how to take a sippy cup. Her favorite way to drink is straight from a glass....like everyone else at the table I guess!
She is into everything! She army crawls very fast and can pull up on small things. (She didn't pull up to this train table. I set her there to play while I cleaned Sam's room.) She has tried a few times to get up the stairs so it looks like the gate is going to have to come out. She definitely wants to be where the action is and now a constant phrase at our house is "No, No Megan!". She has a little bit of crazy hair and WILL NOT leave a hair bow, wrap, barrette ect... in it. So we go into public with crazy hair and dirty shirts all the time since her army crawling produces a dust mop effect in my house that is hard to keep real clean when it is under construction. If she were my first child this might bother me, but she is my third and I think a little bit of dirt and hair that is unmanageable is beautiful!