My Kids are Funny

Hi all!

It has been WWWAAAYYY too long since I posted anything on this blog, and doubly embarassing since the last post I wrote was Christmas cards I made then never got around to sending. Kind of tells you how busy December was.

Praying you all had a blessed Christmas and are ready to roar into 2012.

I don't have much to say, but my kids have spurted a few funnies in the past twenty four hours so I thought I would share those:

1) Tanner in church last night - "Why is Josh (the pastor) telling us to listen to a song about peeing? Why does he like pee so much?" The song was actually "Yearn" but our pastor has a broad Texan accent!

2) Nicolas in the middle of the night - Nicolas has a tendency to talk, loudly, in his sleep. Last night he woke up his brother, who found Nicolas sitting up in bed. Nicolas pointed at his shadow on the wall and told Tanner, "We need to build him his own clothes closet." Yeah, I don't think so!

3) Amanda tried to pay me a compliment by telling me I am smarter than a pig! Thanks, I think! LOL

Happy New Year!

Christmas Cards!!!

I finally got back into crafting! It felt really good to just sit down last weekend and PLAY! Of course, with Christmas only 2 months away, I chose Christmas cards! I know eventually I will need to sit down and whack off a stack or two if I want to have enough to send out, but not this time! This weekend was all about exploring and having fun and being creative! I especially loved our mother/daughter craft time, but unfortunately I can't show you Mandy's as I don't know where she put them! LOL     It's hard to tell on these cards, but there is actually lots of bling and glitz. The snowflakes all have smooch spritz on them. The truck is coloured with a metallic green gel pen. The ornaments are outlined in Dazzling Details.

Definitely one of the best parts of Christmas crafts - lots of glitter and shine!

Pinatas...

Nicolas' party was this weekend, and he wanted a pinata.

He worked really hard to make one, layering paper mache on a balloon.

Unfortunately we learned that it is important to start way ahead of time as it wasn't drying well. ( I would recommend at least a couple weeks!)

I tried to speed the process up with my heat gun and ended up with a mushy lump in the bottom of the bowl as I accidentally popped the balloon. Oops!

However, once Nicolas shed a few tears over his smushed pinata, we regrouped and tried to find a new way to make a pinata. He decided on a box pinata. Luckily for us, we had several deliveries this week so we had lots of boxes to choose from.

He made this lovely boombox pinata. Didn't it work out beautifully?

After Nicolas found a box that would work, we cut out two circles for the speakers.
We also attached rope in the bottom of the box (which became the top of the pinata) so we could hang it later.

He then spray-painted that side of the box black as we didn't want to spray paint it once the foil was in. Nicolas also spray-painted two small squares of cardboard at the same time, that we used for the centre of the speakers.

We then cut a piece of cardboard out bigger than the circle, cut a small circle out of it, and covered it with foil. We use tape on the back to anchor the foil in place, and especially to reinforce the cut-out area.

After that we used duct tape to tape the black squares onto the back of the foil squares, and the foil squares on to the inside of the box to make a speaker front. We then filled the box with goodies and scrunched up newspaper (to keep the goodies from all gathering in one spot in the box) and secured it with duct tape. Nicolas then spray-painted the rest of the box. Each side took two coats, and he had to do a couple sides at a time so they could dry.

While the pinata was drying, Nicolas made the buttons from the leftover speaker circles as well as by cutting out rectangles. He and his sister painted these red with tempera paint.

 Amanda also decided this would be a good time to get a belly-button ring.

The pinata was a tremendous success. The boys were 10-14 years old and it took them about 10 minutes to whack it open. They certainly earned their prizes!

Eliminating Excuses

My kids have daily chores to do. Some day they may even have weekly ones.

One of my biggest challenges is that they can never remember what they are supposed to be doing, and so spend significant time going back to finish up missed steps, making ten minutes of chores take twenty, thirty or even more minutes to do.

I have tried many ways to help them, including master lists we check off afterwards, and chore packs that they wear on their bodies. The checklists were forever getting misplaced, and the chore packs bothered my sensory sensitive child, who then would remove (and therefore lose) it. The other difficulty I had, especially for one child, was an inability to work through the steps in a logical order. Do you know how difficult it is to wipe down a counter when you haven't reloaded the dishwasher yet?

I think we may have found a solution that works.

I have made detailed cleaning lists for each room. Each list is being taped inside a cupboard door of its designated room. That way they can just open the door, start at the top, and read and complete one step at a time. Voila!

The lists are being posted tonight as our printer was being ornery, but we have been test-driving the lists this week by putting the computer in the room with the list on the screen, and have had fabulous results.

P.S. I can't figure out how to post the lists in here, but if you would like a copy let me know!

Wednesday Wackies

Some times kids say the most hilarious things! I just had to share a couple from this afternoon.

The first one is a conversation I had with my son T.
I sent him in to the dollar store to grab 2 cans of diced tomatoes. He came back with 5.

Me: I thought you were getting 2 cans.
T: It's not my fault! You didn't give me clear directions. You told me to get 2 cans of diced tomatoes!

(I discovered later that the reason he wasn't clear is that he thought I wanted 2 big Costco-sized cans and they only had the regular size ones, so he wasn't sure how many he should get in that case!)

The second was between my friend C and her son J when I dropped my kids to their house:

J: Mom, where do T, N, and A live?
C: (told him our city name)
J: No, not WHERE do they live, what planet?
C: Earth
J: You mean,  they live on planet Earth, the same planet as us?
C: Yes, John, the same planet, Earth.
J: Really, Mom? Do they really live on same planet Earth?

So now you know, we are aliens who come from a planet where 2 and 5 mean the same thing!

Hope you all had a wacky day too!

Face Paint Fun

Amanda asked for face paint at her birthday party. My mum and sister very kindly picked some up, but then I forgot to use it.

Yesterday Amanda and Nicolas came to me asking for some, and I managed to oblige them. I am not artistic, so I am impressed with how well it turned out. I am sure the true artists are cringing but we had fun! LOL

Birthday Fun

Amanda turns 8 next week, and I got off easily for her party.
Instead of the typical little girl party where I had to entertain them with mind-numbing games she elected to have a BBQ with her friends and their families. Bonus - easy for me!

She had a Hello Kitty theme but I was so behind getting ready that there was no way I could get a Hello Kitty cake done. Instead, she let me off easily and we made rainbow cakes. In fact, I was so far behind, the cupcakes only got baked 6 hours before the party, which meant the icing knocked the top of the first cupcake I iced. The kids called it an icing cookie! After that, I piped the icing on and spread it VERY gently, and managed to keep the rest mostly intact.

Here is how our cupcakes looked:

One of the big advantages of a BBQ is that Michael does the cooking!

Lots of kids, lots of balls, which also meant lots of time digging balls off of the roof and out of neighbours' yards!

The birthday girl getting ready to blow out her candle (there was an "8" candle behind the sparklers).