Homemade Fruit Snacks!

I found this recipe on Pinterest and knew I just had to try it. I just happened to have unflavored gelatin on hand since I had tried to make my own yogurt last year....didn't really like the way it turned out and I haven't tried it again.

All you need is 2 packets of unflavored gelatin, 1 small box of jello...any flavor you want and 1/3 cup of water or juice. You just put the water in a small saucepan and then sprinkle the gelatin on the water and heat and stir it until the gelatin dissolves. It doesn't take very long at all.

I got the star mold at The Dollar Tree and I should have bought one more. I ended up using a Christmas Candy mold I borrowed from my friend Kim and then I still had a bit more so I just barely filled up the bottom of a few ice cube slots in a normal ice cube tray.

The star ones were my favorite although since I didn't fill the mold to the top it was a bit hard to get them out. I thought they wouldn't taste good being that thick though. As it was these are bigger than normal store bought fruit snacks.

These are quite sticky and I wouldn't say they taste exactly like fruit snacks....more like gummy bears. Owen didn't like them at all...he can't handle things with funny textures and he doesn't really like store bought fruit snacks so this wasn't a surprise in the least. Jack and Ella scarfed them down! They literally ate all of them...I got one! This made 28 snacks so it's not a ton and they don't last. It's a good use of extra Jello you have lying around. My kids won't eat Jello normally so I think I'll make these every now and then as a treat!

Felt Medical Kit!

Before I decided to make Owen a Quiet Book I was planing on making him a Felt Medical Kit. I worked on it a while ago and I just wasn't happy with it. I put it aside and had pretty much given up on it. At Jack's birthday Aunt Michelle gave Owen a medical kit since they weren't able to make it to his party. The kids love it! I thought it might be fun for Ella to play with the one I made since she's not as picky and doesn't mind if it doesn't look perfect.

Posing with her doctor bag!

Listening to Mommy's heartbeat...bum bump bum bump!

Mom checking Ella's blood pressure. As you can see I reused one of those hospital aspirators as the pump part.

Band-Aid held on by Velcro.

Mommy needed a shot!

But I got a lollipop so I'm good!

Hurray For Summer!!!

We are lovin' the sunshine, shorts, sprinklers, swimming, squinty smiles and did I mention the sunshine!

Oh To Be A Baby!

Look at those cheeks! He is so scrumptious!

Owen's Quiet Book!

When I originally decided to make Ella and Jack both Quiet Books I hadn't planned to make one for Owen. Honestly I thought that he wouldn't want one since they tend to be more for littler kids. Well that all changed once he saw me working on Ella's. He asks all the time if he can play with her book. I still haven't let the kids look at their books so they will be something new for the plane. Anyways...I decided I would make one for him and try to make the pages more advanced for him.

For Jack & Ella's books I made 8 pages, but Owen's ended up being a bit thicker due to the extras I added so I only made him a 6 page book.

I found these super cute alphabet buttons at Wal-Mart for only $1.99! I thought about sewing each of them on individually, but then I came to my senses and brought out the hot glue gun!

As you can see the rocket ship is a puzzle held on by Velcro. I found the idea for the memory game on Pinterest and I love how it has the pockets. I was tired of sewing all those little pieces of Velcro so it was nice to do something different.

Here's Owen's very own treasure hunt. I was going to do a page with a shoe so he could learn how to tie a knot, but then I remembered that his treasure map was held together with ribbon.

The map leads you to the secret pouch where the key to the treasure chest is. I secured the key with a ribbon so it wouldn't get lost. I was going to print out pictures of our family to be the "treasure", but my ink cartridge for my printer ran out...I'm either going to go through pictures that I have on hand or have Costco print more recent ones. I also decided it would be fun to for him to have something that looks like actual treasure so I put in a bunch of those smashed pennies that I've collected over the years at various vacation locations.

Here is Owen's town page. There is a garage that holds the little red car in the lower left corner. You can see the airport on the right page. The little airplane is secured to the book by some elastic it can be unwound so it can takeoff from the runway and flown around, but not lost.

The mountain with the waterfall is also a tunnel.

Also on the right page is a car wash and a gas station. I had some black letters and I used a lower case 'r' for the gas pump.

It was so much fun making these for the kids and there are other pages I would love to make. I might end up making more of these as gifts for people. It really is relaxing to just sit at my craft table and create something so fun.

If you would like to see the other quiet books I've made click here to see Jack's and here to see Ella's.

Outdoor Living!

We have been taking advantage of the nice weather lately by being outside as often as we can.

Daddy has been trying to teach Owen how to ride his bike without training wheels. Owen is a perfectionist by nature so if he can't do something perfect right off the bat he doesn't want to try. Practice is not in his vocabulary. He was out there for a while with Daddy, but it wasn't without complaining.

Of course the other kiddos wanted to get in on the action with their "bikes"!

Zeke hung out with me from the sidelines!

We are so happy it's pool an Popsicle weather!

Yay for getting to use his new Spiderman towel!

More hanging out by Zeke...really the only thing he can do right now, but he does it really well! He's laying on our new JJ Cole blanket that I got from Babies R Us with a gift card from my Aunt Linda. Love it!!! Thanks Aunt Linda!

It hasn't been all fun and games though...we've been out in the yard working hard as well. We spent quite a bit of time weeding and it looks 100% better. I didn't take before pictures mainly because I don't want to remember it being that bad. We were the trash house of the neighborhood I tell ya. Now Michael is making some changes to our front yard. He's removing these stones we put in a couple summers ago. They aren't really meant to be used like this, but we used them because we had them and Michael was unemployed at the time so we were trying to save money.

Michael ripped them all up and edged the yard and made it look more smooth and curvy rather that straight and square.

Then he put in this plastic edging stuff. Next comes more rock that will be laid all around the yard. Yay for no more exposed dirt aka mud!!!

Growing!

Our cute Zeke Man has been doing some growing! Recently I've noticed how much more chub he has in his face. The other day Ella's baby doll was laying fairly close to him and I noticed how much longer he was than her.

Zeke is 7 weeks old now and it's blowing my mind!

Just for fun these two pictures below were taken pretty much right after he came out of the oven.

Such an itty bitty boy!

It's also crazy how red he used to be. It's nice to see his sweet milky white skin now.

Sometimes life is just rough!

Light Sabers In Action!

Jack loves Star Wars and he's wanted a light saber, but for various reasons I haven't really wanted to get him one just yet. So what do you do when you don't have what you want...use your imagination! We have these bubble wands that have become the kids' light sabers.

These are all action shots from a light saber fight with Daddy!

Here comes Darth Jackson!

Ella joined the dark side to fight Daddy!

Ahhhhh!

Check out Jack's Light Saber...love how the sun is making it look like it's really lighting up!

He's retreating! The dark side is defeated again!

Fourth Of July Celebrations!

On July 3rd we went down to Ga-Ga & Pa's house in Orting to celebrate the 4th. We almost didn't come since the kids were in the midst of a tummy bug, but it seemed like they were on the up and up, but then on the way down there Owen threw up in the van. He really wasn't feeling well, but we had already exposed Ga-Ga, Pa, Uncle Ry and Aunt Stephie a few days before so what was done was already done!

Since we were spending the night and everyone had the 4th off and not the 5th we decided to do our fireworks on the 3rd instead. I know I know...I broke the law, but seriously it just makes better sense to me. We didn't go crazy with fireworks either so our show lasted all of 15 - 20 minutes maybe. I bought the smallest boxed set they had and was I in for a shock. My word...inflation has hit fireworks hard!!! Sheesh!

It's amazing how saying the word fireworks got Owen's mind off his tummy ache. He was outside raring to go in no time flat.

See the Solo cups? Another idea I got from Pinterest so the kids wouldn't have sparks get their arms. I was also hoping it would make Ella feel safer, but she wanted nothing to do with holding a sparkler.

We set the fireworks off in the backyard and the kids watched from the covered patio area.

This kid is a total nut!

Ella Bean talking in the show!

Cheesers!

Pretty!

The next day we at a BBQ with family and friends. I didn't take too many pictures though. We had a horrible night sleep so I'm sure that had something to do with it. Ella and Zeke both slept in our room so that was interesting. Zeke went to bed way later than normal and he kept Ella up. He woke me up around 3:15 to eat and then when I went out to go to the bathroom I noticed the door open to the room where Owen and Jack were sleeping. I checked the bathroom, but Owen wasn't there so I checked his room to see if he just wasn't sleeping in the same spot...nope not there. I decided to go check downstairs before I woke Michael up to help find him and there he was sitting on the top step. He was so hungry he couldn't sleep. Since he was puking we didn't let him eat before bed. I took him downstairs and got him some toast. I ended up staying up with him until 6 when my mom got up and then I went back to bed. Needless to say I was TIRED!

Ella and Anna playing in the sandbox!

Uncle Ry got the boys new water squirters...I'm thinking he got that idea from my post about the sprinkler park. The boys have been having a lot of fun with them.

Aunt Stephie had some wonderful snuggle time with Zeke Man!

Later on the 4th I pulled out the Pop Its for the kids to throw. They were all a bit exhausted at this point so they weren't as excited about them as I thought they would be. Oh and do you see their cute outfits...Aunt Stephie LOVES to shop! They looked so festive for the 4th!

During this mini vacation Zeke had a hard time sleeping unless he was being held. Also since he went to bed later on the 3rd his little body got all confused and for 3 days he thought that midnight was 9pm...his normal bedtime. Needless to say we had some late, exhausting nights! On Friday I decided to nip that in the bud so I woke him up at his normal rise and shine time and then kept him to a 3 hour schedule the rest of the day to get him back on track. Praise the Lord for a kid on a schedule!

Jackson's 4 Year Pictures!

The years are flying by I tell ya! A couple weeks ago it was time to head to Sears for Jack's 4 year pictures. This year he did MUCH better than last year. For some reason he wasn't thrilled with showing his teeth when he smiles, but after a while he opened up and we got some pretty cute pictures!

My big 4 year old boy!

One cool dude!

He finally gave us a great smile for the very last picture!

I always love checking out the previous pictures to compare so I wanted to link to the past years pictures. When I was looking for Jack's 3 year pictures I couldn't find them posted on the blog. Shame on me!!! So here are is 3 year pictures...better late than never right!

I'm kind of thinking that I forgot to post these because it was SO incredibly  hard to get him to cooperate for these pictures. I think I probably just wanted to forget the whole experience. Thankfully my mom was with me during this photo session. I think Michael might have been painting. If she hadn't been there Jack just wouldn't have had his third year pictures!

Even though we had a hard time these three pictures turned out great!

He's so cute how he clenches his fists. He's doing the same thing on one of his two year pictures. To check out his other birthday pictures click on the links below.

 2 year pictures - 1 year pictures