Another First!

With each of our kids I have preferred to bathe them in different ways. With Owen it was mainly the baby bathtub. Jack I loved the sink and with Ella I would bathe her in the tub with me. As for Zeke I love taking showers with him. We have a shower head you can pull down and I just pull it down and I lay him on the floor of the shower and he kicks and grabs for the water...he loves it. On Thursday morning Zeke needed a bath, but I didn't want to get in the shower with him since I had 4 other kids to look after. So into the sink he went!

 

 

Cute big boy...hanging on!  

 

 

The bubbles started to pop so Mama helped him be modest!

 

 

It was hard work trying to balance and sit up!

 

 

This cute boy could chew on things all day long. 

 

 

Baby burrito all clean!

First Christmas Craft!

On Thursday I got out a Christmas Craft to do with the kids. One of my fellow MOPS Mom gave me this ornament kit. Thanks Jessica!!!

 

 

Instead of making ornaments I just decided we would glue the trees to paper. The rest of the pieces were like stickers. Of course I still helped them a little with the placement of things.  

 

 

Jack of course picked green paper!

 

 

Logan kept trying to eat the foam pieces and she was licking the glue...this girl things everything is food!

 

 

 

Owen did his all by himself...it's a bit abstract. You can see his main tree and then he want a separate bush as well.

 

 

Beautiful masterpiece!

 

 

Our art gallery!

It's High Time For The Highchair!

Last week pulled out the highchair for Zeke. We have just been using the Bumbo and sitting it on the table, but that makes the table really crowded.

 

 

Zeke looks so small sitting in his chair.

 

 

When he's not eating he loves to chew on his spoons!

 

 

When he is eating it's messy...he loves to grab for his spoon. He is also the pickiest eater so far. It's hilarious the child hates and I do mean hates...bananas! That's just crazy to me. In fact he really isn't fond of any fruits. If he could eat carrots and peas for every meal he's be super happy! As for the highchair he wasn't really fond of it the next day...I think he doesn't like the feeling of not being snug. So....

 

 

I improvised! It's the Bumbo Chair. We don't follow safety guidelines here!

 

 

Living on the wild side!!!

Sledding!

Last Sunday we headed up to Snoqualmie so we could have family Christmas pictures taken. It was a beautiful day! My friend Starr was taking our pictures and I knew she was bringing a couple props, but I thought I'd bring a couple too. One of them was this little red sled. The boys wanted to go sledding so bad so once pictures were over Daddy took them up the hill to go sledding.

 

 

 It totally cracked me up that they were able to sled with my decoration!

 

 

It was the perfect size for them too.

 

If they had proper snow gear I'm sure they could have done this all day long!

 

 

It was super cold and their hands were freezing! I think they played out there for about 15 minutes.

 

 

I on the other hand took pictures and then got into the nice warm van with the seat heaters on!!! As for the pictures we had taken...they turned out fabulous of course! We are sending them out as Christmas cards so I won't be posting them here until after Christmas.

Pretty Princesses!

These girls are all about princesses! Thankfully I found Ella's Cinderella dress at MOPS Care & Share. Now we have two princess dresses to play dress up with.

 

 

Such pretty girls!!!

 

 

And what exactly do princesses do might you ask??

 

 

Twirl round and round of course!!!

 

Practice Makes Perfect!

The last couple of days I've been working with Zeke on his balance.  

 

 

He starts out pretty good and stable.

 

 

Then the arms come out for stability!

 

 

Timber!!!!

 

He face planted a time or two...don't worry he's fine!

 

Then I'd sit him up and we'd do it all over again!

The Stockings Were Hung!!

A couple months ago I purchased some Stampin' Up Christmas fabric for .99! I thought it would be fun to make stockings for our family. Of course once I got the fabric I started thinking...what was I thinking!! After procrastinating for a while I started checking out patterns on Pinterest to see if I could find a simple one. I found one that was really basic and explained things well and then decided to give it a go.

 

 

First I printed off the pattern and then cut the stockings out of felt. Then I cut the cuff out of the Stampin' Up fabric and matched them up.

 

 

Then I stitched up the stocking.

 

 

 

At first I was just going to do the cuff, but at my most recent Stampin' Up party I got the alphabet dies for my Big Shot so I used that to cut out the letters for our names in felt.

 

 

Then I started working on the cuff...I followed the pattern for this part and used batting. The pattern said to use batting for the body of the stocking as well, but that was because she was using just plain fabric. I figured since I was using felt it wouldn't be necessary. After stitching the batting and the Christmas fabric together I stuffed them into the stocking and sewed them together. Except this is what happened...

 

 

Yeah I literally sewing the whole thing together! I seriously wasn't thinking that one through! I walked into the living room and showed it to Michael and we had a good laugh about it. I told Owen that this was going to be his stocking if he was bad and Santa wouldn't be able to put anything in it. Of course I said it while laughing and in a joking manner! He didn't think that was a good plan!

 

 

So me and my seem ripper became good friends for about 10 minutes!

 

 

After all that mess I stitched it together properly....much better!

 

 

The finished products!

 

 

All the stockings! This is such a wonderful visual reminder for me...there was a time in my life when I thought the only stockings hanging on the mantle would be Michael's and I's. I thank God that we were blessed with 4 wonderful children!

 

 

I know I do a lot of crafts, but this was a whole other level though. I seriously DID NOT in anyway think they would ever turn out this good!

Happy Thanksgiving...

From our 4...

 

 

Little Turkeys!!!

 

Side Note: Zeke is 6 months old today!!!

Soarin'

Now that Zeke is getting stronger he's enjoying tummy time more. He rolls over a lot from his tummy to his back, but still can't roll from his back to his tummy. It's really awesome when he keeps doing this either during nap time or at night.

 

When he's on his tummy you can see it in his eyes that he wants to move and I think in his mind he can. So what he does when he wants to get at something is lift up both his legs and his arms and shake them around like crazy. It's the funniest thing! Sing it with me now...

I believe I can fly...

I believe I can touch the sky...

I think I about it every night and day...I spread my wings and fly away!

Whoa that was one wild ride!!!!

Indoor Games!

Back in August I started a project I had seen on...you guess it...Pinterest! I needed a HUGE piece of fabric and thankfully I had one on hand. I had bought this giant piece of fabric back when Owen was a baby and I used it as a baby wrap carrier. I never really got the hang of it though so I just put away in a container for another use down the road. So happy I kept it!!

 

In the above picture you can also see my most awesome purchase ever!!! I got that rotary cutter, ruler and cutting mat on sale for $26!!! It was normally $53! Now that I have this I seriously don't know how or why I ever did certain crafts without it! It's a total time saver!

Here's the layout for our indoor hopscotch! I had a bunch of felt leftover from making the kids quiet books so I just cut them to size and laid them out.

 

 

I used my Cricut to cut out numbers, pinned them to the felt, traced them and then cut them out.

 

 

Sewing around all the felt and the number cutouts was quite a long process that involved a bunch of pins...have I ever mentioned I hate pins!!

 

 

Since there was another side I decided I didn't want to just leave it blank so I came up with this flower/bean bag game. I just free handed the petals and the numbers and then sewed them on.

 

 

I used left over fabric from the main piece and filled it with dried peas and secured it with a rubber band and then wrapped a piece of felt around the band. I made 6 of these with different colored felt...one for each member of our family.

 

 

I also added a starting point.

 

On Monday when it was pouring outside I decided it was the perfect day to bring the game out for the kids. They had seen me working on it, but every time they asked to play on it it wasn't finished yet.  

 

 

I had fun teaching the kids to throw their rocks and then hop down to them.

 

 

 

After playing hopscotch for a while I showed Owen how he could start at the end of the mat and countdown from 10 - 1 and then blast off onto the couch...he thought that was cool!

 

 

Of course soon it was time to turn the mat over and play the bean bag game. The kids LOVE this! We each get one turn and whoever gets the most points gets to be the first in the line for the next round. When play time is all over I turned Ella's old diaper bag into the storage bag for this. It even has a little mesh pocket on the side to hold the kids rocks. I have a feeling that this game set will be getting a lot of use this fall/winter!