Kids and crafts

We have had a lot of excitement around our house lately. It has been raining a lot and the kids have been cooped up inside. So that leaves me straining my poor non crafty brain to come up with activities to keep them busy and the house relatively clean. After we got our new bed delivered last week we have a lot of styrofoam and cardboard. And I thought to myself that we need to do something neat with these materials. After looking around a bit I found a pile of pictures I was just going to stick in a photo album and inspiration hit.
Tada! Picture wall art. And the kids were very excited to "help." Though they mostly just threw the pictures around until I said, "Hand me one" so that I could hot glue it to the styrofoam. One perk though these are super light and I mounted the little ones using painters tape, so when I get sick of it or when the kids are 30 and yelling at me to take their baby pictures down it should be an easy job.

My Little Artist

This is Isaac's latest masterpiece.  Here is the story that goes along with it: This is Isaac fighting a monster. He is throwing orange juice on the monster because monsters don't like orange juice. So he throws the orange juice on the monster and the monster runs away.

This is Daddy going to singing practice. He goes at night so it is dark and so that is why there is dark by his head.

This is Daddy when he gets to Mr. Bill's house for singing practice.

This is Abigail showing off some of the packing material from our new bed. She gave it two thumbs up after snuggling this morning.

I came back in the room and this morning and this is what I found. Isaac and Indiana snuggled up to watch Super Why together.

Lots of cute sayings

We just had "third christmas." We had christmas at thanksgiving with the Simpson family. Then we had christmas at home on chrismas day. And we had christmas at new years with the Malnati family so the kids were very excited for "third chrismas." On the way up to my parent's house Abigail exclaimed, "Oh no, we already took our christmas tree down, we need to go home and put it back up and decorate it!" She calmed down when we assured her the Mima would have a tree at her house.

On Saturday morning Uncle Peter asked Isaac if he wanted to watch cartoons and Isaac said, "Yeah, except Uncle Pete we call it Cars 2."

My new year's resolution was to start cooking healthier meals and pack Jake a good lunch for work everyday. Sunday I made roasted carrots, parsnips, turnips and brussel sprouts. Indiana ate some, Abigail ate the carrots, and Isaac liked the turnips. The leftovers got put into spaghetti sauce for dinner last night and went over pretty well. Jake showed Isaac how to cut up the parsnips and get a piece of pasta with the parsnip. The dinner mantra last night was "Taste the pasta not the parsnip."

This morning Indiana was very upset. She was playing with Niko's toy and Niko kept chasing her. Poor kitty just wanted her toy and poor Indiana just wanted to play with it too. I think this was the first non sibling related fight Indiana has gotten into. Outcome: Niko won and Indiana is down for a nap.

Christmas Lyrics?

Isaac was sitting at the table today singing, "You butternut squash, you better not cry." I didn't know that was the way that song went. 

Cleaning and favorite colors

So every couple of months the house just gets to the point that I can't stand it anymore and I just have to rearrange the mess. Last night as I was laying in bed I got the itch and wanted to move some of the toy genres into the kids rooms and set up specific areas for everything. So this morning we got the handy laundry basket out and went to the basement and ground floor and gathered up all the trains and cars and their paraphanalia to put in Isaac's room and all the baby dolls and Little People toys to go in Indiana and Abigail's room. Then I went through each room with varying amounts of help from the children and we found homes for each of the groups of toys so that now they can put them away instead of the old throw everything in the toy box method we had been employing. While all of this was going on Isaac got in his head that we were "making a new house" and he decided we need to paint too. So he's following me around saying, "We can paint my room blue next because that's my favorite color, then we'll move to the basement and paint those walls. This will be quite a bit of work Mommy." And Abigail chimes in, "And paint my room yellow because that's my favorite color." I finally had to tell them that we are NOT painting any rooms today and that we probably will not be painting for a while.

She Escaped!

This morning when I came downstairs with Indiana, Isaac and Abigail were still upstairs playing in Abigail's room. As I was unloading the dishwasher I happened to notice that the neighbor's black and white cat was in our driveway. I didn't think much about it and kept unloading and tidying up the kitchen. Suddenly I hear a scream from upstairs and Isaac and Abigail start running down the stairs screaming, "Mommy! She escaped, Niko is outside. We must have left the garage door open and she got out." They were at the front door by this time, and still in their pajamas, and were ready to run out and "catch" Niko. I told them in was the neighbor's cat, but they had to go to the basement and verify for themselves that Niko was still here. It was nice to see them concerned about their pet though.

Why are you crying?

Last night Isaac and Abigail were picking up their toys and putting them into a bag. Then Isaac found the cat toy, a piece of hot wheels track with a string tied on it, and decided he was Santa and that was his whip for the reindeer. So Isaac was riding his reindeer around the living room and he'd stop and give Abigail or Indiana a toy out of the toy bag. Well that was all very fun. So Abigail decided she would join in and Isaac told her she could be mrs claus since he was Santa. After one toy delivery though isaac took off and Abigail started screaming. When she finally calmed down enough to tell me what was wrong she said,"Isaac took my reindeer." yes, she was crying because he pretended to take her pretend reindeer and she couldn't pretend she had other ones. Merry Christmas.