Easy Cheap Entertainment

On Saturday the boys went to a birthday party for a friend from church. They had a great time and when they left they each received a goodie bag. The bags only lasted to the car, as they both unpacked everything in the bags as soon as they were buckled in. Their favorite thing in the bag were the punch balloons. You know what I'm talking about, those balloons that have the rubber band on one end and after they have been blown up you can punch them. A favorite of mine growing up and my kids seem to enjoy them also.

By the time we got home Seth had lost his balloon, I know seems hard to do when they did not get out of the car, but it happened. Jared started blowing up Noah's balloon and it popped after a couple of breaths. Luckily, I had a $1.00 bag of 3 punch balloons in the closet (gotta love The Dollar Tree) and two of them were the same colors as the missing and popped balloons. This meant that all 3 kids now had their own balloons and our house was a happy punchy place to be on Saturday night.

My Favorite....

I couldn't resist sharing this picture of Jared and the kids. This is a daily ritual at our house, reading to the kids. Jared and I share this time, but I had to get a picture of him and the kids together, my favorite people and picture subjects.

Cherry Pie

This week I attempted my first pie. I love to bake; cookies, cakes, bread, but pies have always seemed harder and more scary.

I decided to go for it this week when on of the Small Things on the Home Sanctuary blog was to make something from scratch. We have a few bags of fresh cherries we picked this summer, which we froze, that were just sitting there waiting to be used for something. While, I will admit that the pie was not the prettiest pie ever made it tasted great, and once it is paired with some vanilla ice cream who cares what it looked like in the pie plate anyway.

For those of you interested in what it did look like here is a picture for your viewing pleasure.


Also, while the pie was not as hard as I thought it might be, I think that I will stick to the cookies, cakes, and breads for awhile and maybe try again later.

Watermelon

If you know our family, you know that watermelon is a favorite treat at our house. We eat watermelon all summer and rarely go a day without watermelon available for a snack, with lunch, or for desert. Yes, I said desert. Watermelon is such a favorite for my son, Noah, that he turns down cookies, ice cream, brownies, and any other sugary treat you can think of for desert.

This picture was taken on Sunday after a birthday party in the backyard. I was putting away the food after everyone had gone home and Riley caught me with watermelon in my hand. This is Riley enjoying her 4th piece of watermelon for the day and I think she would have eaten more if we would have let her.

Company Girl Coffee

For several months now I have been reading a blog called Home Sanctuary. This blog focuses on doing "Small Things" around your home to help make it a sanctuary for you and your family. I try to do the posted "assignment" each day, it helps make me feel like I'm accomplishing at least one thing every day. This week she started "Company Girl Coffee" where we can share each week, I love this idea, although we'll see how good I am at participating.

This week my favorite small thing was working on my bookcase. This is something that I have been putting on my To-Do List almost every day for the past couple of weeks, but never actually completed. This week I did.....

Before


After


Contrary to what it looks like, I took about 30 books off of the shelves and as much as I would like to put decorative objects in with the books, my kids are still too little for that to be an option right now.

If you are wondering about my classification system, the book are arranged by subject and then my size within the subject.

First Day of School

On Wednesday the boys started "school", this is a relative term since at our house this means Mother's Day Out for Seth and Preshool for Noah. Seth is only going 1 day/week this year, but he could not be happier. He keeps telling me, "Mommy, I big to go to school!" He has never had separation issues, but I was a little bit bummed when he pretty much ran through the door of his classroom without slowing down to say good-bye or give me a hug.

Noah was excited to be on the preschool side this year and walked right into his class, although he did stop long enough for me to give him a hug.

I'm not sure if Riley was happy or sad that day. She likes having me all to herself all day, but I think she missed having her brothers around to play with. While we didn't get to do anything exciting our first day together; we spent the entire day at home with a plumber fixing the bathtub and running new pipes under the house; I'm looking forward to the next few Wed. hopefully we can do some fun things, just the 2 of us.

Here are a few pictures of the first day of school.

Seth

Noah

Happy Birthday Noah!!!!!

I know this is a couple of days late, but I still wanted to wish Noah a very Happy Birthday! I can't believe that it has already been 4 years since his birth, where does the time go?

He is such a joy to us and brings a lot of laughter to our house. He also is very much the oldest child and likes to tell Seth and Riley what to do, along with trying to convince everyone he is in charge. Noah loves to run, play games, go to preschool, read books, paint, just about anything that requires movement and creativity. He is a great kid and one of the loves of my life; I can't wait to see what the next 4 years and beyond brings us.

I have loved every minute of being his mother and I pray that God will grant me many, many more years of this journey.


Sept. 2004

New Design

Hope you enjoy the new look for the blog. I found a site with free templates and could not resist the change. I hope you enjoy it and if you are looking for a new look for your own blog, I highly recommend LeeLou designs.

More pictures

I thought I'd post a few more pictures from this past weekend. These are all of the kids with my parents and grandmother.

Labor Day Weekend

We had a great Labor Day weekend, complete with a family birthday party for Noah. My parents arrived on Friday afternoon and fun started. On Friday night after dinner Jared and I took Noah on a special outing with us by himself; if you know our family dynamics, you know it is a very rare occasion when 1 child gets to go with both parents by themselves. On our outing we took Noah to pick out his Scooter, the birthday present from Jared and myself. We had a lot of fun at Toys R' Us letting him try out a couple of different styles of Scooters until he decided on which one he wanted. He did stay true to the last month of asking and picked out the Spiderman scooter.

Saturday was mainly spent in the driveway riding his scooter while Seth and Riley rode their tricycles or big wheels. On Sunday we went to Jared's parents house to swim and enjoy a cookout for Noah's family party. He received many great gifts of which his parents at least are very grateful including clothes for this fall, I know the gift every 4 year old wants more than anything. While I enjoyed the clothes, Noah enjoyed getting a helmet and knee and elbow pads from Jared's parents and Candyland and Hungry Hungry Hippo from my parents.

Needless to say, since Sunday we have played multiple games of Candyland and Hungry, Hungry Hippo and he has ridden his scooter every chance he gets. On Monday night, after it had cooled down to 90 degrees, we all went to the park to ride the scooter, tricycle and walk, it was a great night.