Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sarah and I had fun making these turkeys while my husband and my son were building something with Legos. After we finished them and were proudly showing them off, Dan said something along the lines of, "Ohh! I can't wait to see Friends and Seinfeld tonight!"

Ahhhh, the good ole days of Must See TV on NBC and the subtle humor of my dear sweet husband. Although I really must agree with him...they do resemble peacocks!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

What do all these things have in common?

An M&M, a piece of broken glass, a plastic child-size coat hanger, a green magic marker, some plastic beads, some dried up shredded cheddar cheese, a Chuck E. Cheese token, a magnet shaped like a duck and a few giant dust bunnies. What do all these things have in common?

They were all found under my oven when my husband was trying to retrieve my watch which has a loose clasp. Apparently I was making some wild motions while trying to make a sandwich for his lunch this morning and my watch flew underneath the oven. (I really need to get that clasp fixed!)

What's under your oven?

I got an award!

I got a blog award! Yippee! I love to win things, especially nice shiny things I can put on my side bar. Because I say, the more things you have on your side bar, the cooler you are!

Jennifer, over at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman has bestowed the "You Rock the Crib" award on me. How cool is that? And if you ask my kids, I am sure they would toooootaly agree that I rock the crib. Hump....well, maybe they wouldn't agree, but Jennifer agrees and that's what's important...especially since she is the one handing out the award...

And as with all blog awards, it is my right and my duty to pass it on to some other deserving candidates...

And now, without further ado, the "You Rock the Crib" award goes to...

Megan from Fried Okra - I love reading Megan's blog every day. She is a southern girl currently living in the Midwest and she is trying to get everyone west of the Mason Dixon to speak Southern, ya'll. I hear she's even trying to get them to eat...grits!....gasp!

And...

Katie from Rosies are Red, Violets are Violet - I just recently started reading Katie's blog. She has an adopted son who is 5 years old and she is in the process of adopting another baby. You go Katie! I can't wait to read all about it!

Thanks again to Jennwa for the award. I love me some blog awards!

Pirate Treasure Hunt

As you all know by now, my son just turned 5 and we had a pirate themed party for him. You have all seen the cool invitations we made for him and the cake but what is a pirate party without a treasure hunt? (I promise, no more pirate posts after this one. I promise, I swear!)

My plan was to have little written clues around the house that would lead to a pirate map and then the kids would have to look at the map to figure out where the treasure chest was hidden.

I was starting to get pretty stressed out about the clues because I wanted them to rhyme like I'm sure real treasure map clues did back in the day. I don't really have any rhyming skills and I was running out of time so I decided to ditch the rhyming clues and just take pictures of places around the house and have each picture lead the kids to another place/picture until they came to the treasure map.

My husband, who is a real traditionalist, felt very strongly that the clues should rhyme so he took it upon himself to write them. In less than 15 minutes, this is what he came up with...

If you’re reading this you’re on the path
To findin’ me hidden treasure at last
I hid it near here many long years ago
When without my booty I had to go

The British, they chased me, never cutting me slack
But the treasure I robbed they’ll never get back
It’s yours for the taking, no doubt about that
But to find it you’ll be needing my pirate treasure map

The map also is hidden near here
If you follow the clues it soon will appear

Here’s your 1st clue – look where you eat
Under a painting you’ll find there’s a seat
Under that seat, I’m happy to say,
You’ll find clue #2 to point out the way

Here’s clue number 2 – go climb a stair
Walk down a long hall, that is, if you dare,
You’ll find a blue chair that moves when you sit
You’ll find clue number three when you sit down in it

You’ve found clue number three, you’re proving quite clever
But you’ll need clue four if you’re looking for treasure
On a small porch there is a small table
You’ll find it there, if find it you're able

Aha, you are smart ones, you’ve found number four
Now look for some gravel and a white basement door
Walk up to that door and give it a slap
By the time you have done so you will be holding the MAP!

15 minutes, people! That's all it took him to whip these out! My husband has so many talents, but who knew!

I printed the clues out on paper with spooky skull clip art around the text and then we dipped them in tea for an aged look. My husband dried them with a hair dryer to get a parchment effect and then he rolled them up and tied them with ribbon so they looked like really official scrolls. On the night of the party he hid them in the appropriate spots and he read them the clues.

We had so much fun watching them run through the house to find each clue and then finally out through the basement and into my parent's yard to find the treasure chest! I'm not sure who had more fun, us or the kids!

I bought pirate hats and swords for everyone at the dollar store because you aren't a real pirate unless you have a sword! I also bought little flashlights so the kids could see as they were running through the dark searching for the treasure.

Here are the kids gathered around listening to another clue.

Here is a picture of the kids after they found the treasure chest. My husband spray painted a shoebox black and I embellished it with skulls and crossbones and filled it will beaded necklaces, jeweled rings, gold coins, plastic snakes and spiders, eye ball bouncey balls and lots of spooky
candy that I got 75-80% off at after Halloween sales. It was a really cool treasure chest but the picture doesn't do it justice.

And here they are dividing up all the loot!


I think the kids had fun. I know my husband and I did! I would have never thought I would go to this much trouble for a kids birthday party but it was cool working on a theme and carrying it out. We have always just had family birthday parties for the kids and I have always said that I wasn't going to have a friend birthday party until my kids asked for one. Well, Peter asked for one this year and I guess now, there's now turning back!

Pirate Ship Birthday Cake!

The theme for my son's fifth birthday party is PIRATES! In honor of this them I (with lots of help from my mom!) made a pirate ship birthday cake. I followed the recipe/instructions from Family Fun magazine and I have to say, while mine doesn't look quite as good as theirs, I am very pleased with the results!

Here is the cake right after I made it...

Those are candles coming out of the "cannons" and the cannon balls are Milk duds!

Here is the cake after I put some of Peter's pirate stuff around it. I wish I had thought to put the cake on blue paper so it would look like water.

Peter was pretty happy with it!

Not bad for a theme cake on my very first try!

It took me two hours, but I did it!

Last spring, my mom got Peter several toys in the Mega Blocks Pyrates series. Peter had just entered his pirate phase and fell in love with these toys. However, these toys were for kids seven and older which meant that mommy had to attempt to put them together. The toy Peter loved the most was the Pyrates Lighthouse. It was a large lighthouse with a light that worked and lots of little islands and ships and men that circled the it.

The concept of this lighthouse was really cool but the execution was greatly lacking. The pieces Would. Not. Stay. Together. I spent many hours quietly cussing under my breath while trying to get them together. Even my brother and my husband who grew up on (and loved) Legos didn't have much success. And since they both had jobs and didn't have hours and hours to spend working on it, the onus of putting this $%^$% lighthouse together fell on to me.

Several times I got it together only to have the thing crumble in my hands at even the slightest amount of pressure. It was more than I or my son could take so eventually he and his friends began just trying to come up with other creations that, while still pirate oriented, had nothing to do with the &^*%$ lighthouse.

So, imagine the concern I felt when all my son wanted for his birthday were Legos Bionicles. Most of these Bionicles were for ages 7 or 8 and up. I told him that he would have to put these things together with the help of his older friend Cody or his Dad or even by himself because I did not want to have anything to do with them. The first morning after his birthday he started working on one himself and decided he better wait until Cody came over. Cody, who is 8, was able to put three of them together in one afternoon! Peter (and I) were beside ourselves!

This morning however, Peter decided that he wanted to put the Bionicle set his Aunt Cathy gave him together. I could not convince him to wait until we saw Cody later so I decided to try to put it together with him. We started right after he got up at 8:15. He didn't want to stop for breakfast so we kept going. We were making good progress until Sarah came down at 9:15. She was enjoying hiding the instructions and sitting on the parts. There was a lot of yelling but finally, FINALLY at 10:15 we were finished!

I am so proud of me! But I better be careful because you know what they say about pride. It goeth before a fall and I have a feeling I could be falling on this thing as we now have many different Bionicles in all stages of completeness all over the house. But Peter is happy and I must say I did feel a great sense of accomplishment this morning. Perhaps the package should read...Ages 38 and up!



Peter was quite pleased with the finished result!

It may not look like it but there were over 200 pieces in this set!

Sarah wanted her picture taken too!

And just for the record....Lego's are MUCH,MUCH, MUCH, MUCH easier to work with than Mega Blocks! I didn't feel the slightest need to mutter obscenities while working with these Legos. Peter can even do a lot of the work on these and he can even complete the sets marked for ages 5 or 6 and up and he can complete the ones that are marked 7 and up with less than 50 pieces. He feels very proud of himself and I am excited that he can do them alone.

Happy Birthday, Take TWO!

I don't use my video camera very often. It usually comes out at birthdays and Christmas. I always like to make sure I get the kids blowing out the candles on their cake and I like to get them unwrapping their gifts on Christmas morning. Other than that, I will occasionally get the camera out if the kids are doing something really cute (although usually by the time I get it out and turned on they have moved on to fighting or nose-picking or something equally unfilmable) or sometimes I just get it out when I remember that I haven't had it out in a while.

I was in charge of filming my son blowing out his candles on Tuesday night and my husband was in charge of taking the pictures. In all the excitement of the singing and the candles and the cake, I accidentally turned the camera to STANDBY right as we started singing "Happy Birthday".

Imagine my dismay when I realized that I didn't have this important life moment captured on film. But wait! You don't have to imagine my dismay and sadness because my husband took a picture of me sulking and feeling like a big ole retard. Here I am in all my glory. Note the Bedazzled shirt...

My mom, in her infinite Grandma wisdom suggested that we redo it and film the second time around. So, that's exactly what we did! Peter was very excited to get to blow out his candles again and I redeemed myself by hitting RECORD and keeping it turned on. It was a win-win for everyone involved!

Happy Birthday, Peter...again!

turkey cookie

Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Tuesday was my son's fifth birthday. On Monday, we went to a birthday party for two of our neighbors at one of those inflatable bouncy places. This particular place is not a chain so it is a little more, shall we say "homey" than most of these types of places. And there are lots and lots and lots of mirrors on the wall because when it is not being used as an inflatable bounce place for kids birthday parties it is used as a gym where competitive cheerleading squads practice. Thanks to these mirrors, I got a nice 2 hour long head to toe view of myself and if that doesn't make you want to go on a diet, I don't know what will. I even turned down the birthday cake...which I would never normally do.

Since this isn't a chain they play whatever kind of music they want to play. Normally, they play high- energy songs like "Who Let the Dogs Out" and "YMCA". But on Monday, Miss Deborah decided to mellow it out a little with some kiddie tunes. Right as she switched CDs, Peter ran and jumped into my arms and then "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" came on. Instinctively I started swaying to the music and singing it aloud to him.

As I was holding him and singing, memories of Gymboree Play class came flooding into my head. Instantly I was taken back to Peter at age 9 months sitting on my lap during one of the classes. I can remember tapping his head, shoulders, knees and toes to the beat of the music. Tears welled up in my eyes when I realized he was five years old now and that the time had passed in what has seemed like just a moment.

I am not a very nostalgic person. My husband likes to tell me that I have no soul. Usually he tells me this as I am throwing away junk souvenirs like ticket stubs, baseball programs, boarding passes from businesses trips, brochures picked up from rest stops, etc, My husband thinks that if anything has been in our house for more than two weeks it has a history with us and we should not destroy it. (Which probably means that he wants me to hang on to that old tuna salad in the back of the fridge.)

So even though I am not the least bit nostalgic, as soon as that song came on, I felt his life flash before my eyes in an instant. I could not believe that the same little baby that used to sit on my lap and try to pop the Gymboree bubbles as they floated past his face, could suddenly feel so long and lanky in my arms. And how could it be that the same baby that used to want nothing more than to be held by me and never wanted to be more than a few feet away from me could suddenly say, "Put me down Mom. I want to go play with my friends."

I've been humming "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" all day and am always teary-eyed by the time I get to "eyes and ears, a mouth and a nose". Maybe it's PMS or maybe I'm turning into a softy in my old age. Or maybe, just maybe, I have a soul after all. (And Dan, no this does not mean we are keeping the holey socks in your dresser drawer. I've seen them and it's time they go!)

Happy Birthday, Peter.

This is Peter holding a Bionicle he received for his birthday. He was a very happy boy!

Evidence of my uncraftiness

I have mentioned before how crafty my friend Jennwa is and how my son always wants to go live with her. That doesn't hurt my feelings at all because I figure, hey, she's got 4 kids, she probably wouldn't notice one more. And if he's over there that would leave me lots of free time to surf the web, eat bonbons, have my nails done, etc. And I'm not too upset because her son said that I was the most beautiful girl in the world. Oh wait....he said that about her.

Oh, well.

This afternoon the kids were particularly whiny. Sarah decided not to bring a balloon home from the birthday party we attended and she was regretting the decision. And to make matters worse, Peter was taunting her with his. Then he decided he wanted to go play with some toys that my parents keep at their house. They aren't home so I told him no. So he began to whine and taunt her even more with the balloon which lead her to whine even more and, well, you get the picture.

I had to get them to stop whining before my ears started to bleed so I made them put their shoes on and out the door we went. I decided that we should collect some leaves and make a craft with them! I figured the fresh air would stop the whining and the craft would help me to overcome my feelings of inferiority to Jennwa. If you've never visited her blog, you really should. She has 2,147 Halloween crafts in the October folder and she has made at least that many turkeys this month. Can't wait to see all the Christmas crafts she puts together!

Anyway, we all got some leaves and the whining miraculously stopped...thank you God..and then we headed back inside to....

Uh. Did I tell the kids we were going to make a craft with these leaves? Crap! I guess I didn't think this all the way through.

On the fly, I decided not to get too crafty and just go with some basic leaf crafts. I told them that we could glue the leaves to paper and make a collage or we could do leaf rubbings. Sarah is all about glue so she decided to make a collage. Peter wanted to just trace the leaves so I decided to try my hand at leaf rubbings.

3 minutes later this is what we had...

Peter decided tracing leaves was "stupid" so he split...

Sarah decided to dump a bottle of Elmer's glue onto her "collage". See her proud smile? See the ENTIRE bottle of glue on the paper?

And just so you know that I'm not entirely uncrafty and incapable of completing a craft, here's a picture of my beautiful rubbing.
I think I'll leave the crafting to Jennwa. Or send my kids to her house. They can craft with her while I'm eating bonbons!