Starlight Parade

There is nothing better than a night parade!!!
A parade at night when it's nice and cool,
they close all the streets down,
the floats are extra cool lit up with lights,
the marching band puts glowsticks inside of their drums,
it's just tons of fun.


One and friends waiting for the streets to be shut down:

(MN.2, MN.1, One)

So I know this one is blurry, but if you click on it, just check out how many kids are playing in the street. In the middle of downtown! Super fun!

More playing:

(MN.2, One, Two, MN.1)

Can I just say that I love that Two is down there with Batman, playing with all the boys? All of One's friends have little brothers. There's not a girl to be had in the entire bunch! At One's birthday party, the boys make Two the "bad guy"....she just sprayed her spiderweb at them and chased after them. It was no big deal. Of course, when the neighbor invited Two over to play with her daughters and Two wasn't quite sure what to do...well, I think Two is in need of some girl friends!

My favorite grad/youth/babysitter came to say hi. Turns out it was prom night! No marching in the parade for her this year. One thought they were getting married!

(Her date is wearing DaddyMan's tux!)

Here is Two showing me how to smile:

What would a night parade be without glow sticks?!

(Um, can you tell that Two's favorite color is still yellow? Yellow shirt, yellow chair, yellow glow stick?)

There were silly smiles:

And Storm Troopers:

It was definitely worth staying up late for!

(clearing my throat - Did I mention we got home around midnight? :o) )

Randomness with tons of pics

Wow! So I didn't mean to take a two-week break from blogging!
I even kept crafting and taking pictures
so who knows what happened?!

Here is the big catch-up:

We went to story time about alligators
and my craftiness didn't quite extend to cutting in between every single tooth.
Two seemed happy enough with it.
Here she is roaring at the camera because what other sound does an alligater make?



We went for a walk in the park back behind our library:



But walking was not enough for Two, she preferred to fly:



I made Three his own set of keys, complete with key fob.
The finished product is somewhere in my mama van,
but as a consolation prize
here, at least, are my materials:

(Materials were about $2, then throw some old keys that you don't remember what they belong to or go to any place that makes keys and ask for a few from their "mistake" bin (free).)


As an only child who had a sibling for a short little while, watching my kids play together is always one of my greatest joys and something I make a point not to interrupt.
Here is One with his legs wrapped around Three
so Three wouldn't fall down
all while rockin' the baby toy air-guitar style!



I planted flowers.
Here is one that is still alive:



And some impatiens look adorable in these pots on my patio table:

(Do you see the roses in bloom in the background? Love them too!)


We got goofy at the mall:

(Then got issued a new credit card when the photobooth company got hacked into... Oops!)


One got his bobcat badge
and some really rockin' make-up:



I'm working on making a reusable snack bag:

The process is slow going because I am making a go of it without a pattern and, oh yeah, I like my sleep.
The fabric is a leftover scrap from this skirt.
Mental note: next time fork out the money for the pattern!


We went camping with friends over Memorial weekend.
DaddyMan made paper airplanes for the kids to throw into the campfire.
It was such a hit, I'm pretty sure it is our new tradition!

Breakfast



And most recently we've taken this guy back to the kidney doctor.

His bad kidney is still several times "normal" size. Another function test is back on the books. Hospital gowns, IV's, catheters, radio-active dye followed by radio-active diapers... We've got our fingers crossed and prayer chains full of prayers for good results because I'm pretty sure bad results will send him to surgery.


Up next are some grad gifts but those will need to stay top-secret for now since I know my favorite grad reads the blog.
(HI Kimiiiiiiii!)
Stay tuned!



Whew!
It's good to be back!

More than socks...

We lose pens! Pencils too. And unfortunately, those "lost" items have led to all sorts of "creativity" on my walls and some furniture. The main culprit is One and seeing as how he actually needs access to pencils for his homework, I'm taking an idea from the doctors' office....the humongous flower pen!

Here are my supplies:

floral stem tape ($2 Joanns)
fake flower bouquet ($2.50, 1/2price at Joanns)
pens
pencils
lentils (left over from these beanbags)
cute pot for the "flowers" (remember?)

(I made sure to make all the pencils flowers and the pens leaves so that when I actually needed one or the other, we wouldn't have to go digging for what we were looking for. Need a pen? Grab a leaf! Need a pencil? Go for a flower!)


The finished product:

How cute is that?!
Using what I had on hand, this cost under $5 and went together in about 15 min. It's headed for my dining room table (where all the homework is done).
Decorative and functional....I love it!!

Mother's (Satur)Day

We spent the day at the lake for Mother's Day:

Check out Three's new chompers!

My teacher appreciation gifts

So, heading up Teacher Appreciation for the entire school kind of pushed ideas for my own personal gifts for One's teachers to the back burner. He took pictures he had colored on Monday, and while I'm sure they were just the teachers' most favorite pictures ever, I wanted to give them something else as well.

I remembered seeing a tutorial for Decorated Hand Sanitizer that I thought was so cute. Check it out here, it was really easy!

Here are my materials:

(Well, in full discloser, the goo gone is my neighbors but I definitely needed it and will certainly be buying some of my own! )

And here they are finished!

I'm really happy with them. I'll be attaching a personal note and viola! A hand-made gift for about $2!

Kinder Open House

I can't believe Kindergarten is almost over! I couldn't believe One was even in kindergarten but now it's just all so exciting, he's doing so well, that I'm okay with him getting older and even *gasp* going to first grade.

Open House was tonight. One was very seriously taking us through a reading chart. Here he is when Mama got snarky and tired of reading all the letters and words that I started purposefully saying the wrong letters instead:

One with his best friend MN.1:

Reading to Two in the Reading Center:

With the fabulous Mrs P:

Reading a Spanish book:

One and Super Senora M:

I am a proud mama!

Film Canister Reveal

Here's what the film canisters became:

Cute fake prescriptions!!!
Because our school is dual-immersion,
the staff received one in each language.

Ours read:

Headache Helpers
Use as needed.
Return for refills.

and

Salvadores de Sanidad (Sanity Savers)
Usa cuando necessario.
Devuelve para rellenos.

These were so easy!

1.) We gathered film canisters for several weeks.
(Places were happy to give them to us (for free), but since most people go digital now, it took awhile. Don't worry though, if we hadn't picked them up, they would have been recycled!)

2.) We filled them with M&M's (any small candy would work).

3.) We added address labels (from the Dollar Store!) with our fake prescription on them.

It took less than an hour for me to complete about 70 of these start to finish.

TP Reveal

I've been showing you pictures of toilet paper rolls...

Here's what they became:

A fast un-tutorial:
toilet paper rolls
rolled in a half-sheet of tissue paper
tied off with raffia
with a 3x5 card "label"

Pretty cute, huh?
Makes asking your neighbors
for all their empty TP rolls
totally worth it!

Even better.....

There are full-sized candy bars hiding inside them!!!!

These are our Wednesday THANK YOU
to our superstar staff!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Teacher Appreciation Week!

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week and I agreed to be the person in charge of it this year. No, I'm not crazy....I've actually been having a lot of fun! The community has been so generous! All I've had to do is simply ask if people would/could donate. They could say yes or no, but I must say, I'm surprised at how many people said YES! We've received free bagels from Panera, free burritos from Taco Del Mar, free drinks from Sonic, a several other donations from local businesses! It's been amazing!

First of all, we decided to do a STAFF appreciation and are celebrating everyone at the school, not just the teachers. That amounts to roughly 70 people!

How much food do 70 people eat? I don't know!
I don't know, yet I went shopping for them today anyway!
Because we are feeding them breakfast in the morning!

Panera Bread donated 2 dozen bagels for our staff.
Then I bought 4 bags of grapes
20 oranges
6 packages of cream cheese
and 2 dozen humongo muffins.

Hopefully it will be enough! Stay tuned for what we're doing throughout the week for our staff! It involves more crafty stuff that you might want to try for yourself! Here's a hint:

Saturday

Not quite on Sunday
but here's a picture of us at the start
of our first geocaching experience!

Tea Time!

Here's my table from the tea:

A hot pink sheet from Two's bed
tea cups that I've picked up from my favorite store over time
plus a few from the antique shops that were
carefully placed at a grown-ups chair :o)
and see those cute pots?
Remember how they looked yesterday?

And here is Two and myself all dressed up for the Tea in our hats



DaddyMan provided the music for the Tea
It was so cute to see Two run over to DaddyMan for hugs
....or to twirl his music stand around while he was playing his violin...



The girls at our table were all vying for attention
from our one and only available gentleman...


We all had fun! And the best part was that the men of the church were our servers!
They did a really great job. It was such a nice treat!

I'm not missing, I'm just busy!

Busy preparing for Teacher Appreciation Week next week.

(yes, those are tp rolls & film canisters....stay tuned!)


Busy preparing for the Ladies Tea at church tomorrow.

(a little paint turned these into something fabulous...)

I'll do better next week!