'Tis the Season

'Tis the season for:

Gingerbread masterpieces....

 

 

Visits from loved ones....

 

 

Enjoying Christmas stories...

Quiet talks with Santa....

Dressing up...

Christmas parties...

Nativities anticipating the birth of a child...

Art projects....

Twinkling lights...

Cookies, music, mail boxes full of joyful greetings, and hopefully a little time to sit back, reflect and enjoy it all.

Merry Christmas, friends and family!

Fun with Paint

My kids love painting.  What kid doesn't?  So, Pierce and I have been working on several paintings together.  Ones worth keeping!  This is a fun and easy activity for even the young ones (Pierce is 3), and the finished product is great!  So far, he's done a shark, an alligator and a whale (all his choices for favorite animals). 

Here's how it works.  I bought a few canvases (they are so cheap at the craft stores) and some acrylic paints.  I let Pierce use his favorite color to cover the canvas (covering the table and giving him a smock first!  This is messy business, people!).  His strokes are not perfect, in fact, they are horribly messy, but it looks kind of neat that way.  There's something about covering a white canvas blue that can hold a child's attention until every little white spot is gone!  Then, lots of praise for a job well done and a break for the canvas to dry.  This works well because the attention span of a little one has already been exhausted. In the mean time, find out the child's favorite animal or image he wants to paint (keeping it super simple!) and find some of your kids books with pictures of this item in them.  Use your favorite illustration and copy it free-hand onto a manila file folder nice and large (to cover your canvas).  Use a pencil for lots of corrections if needed!  Then cut out your image carefully and use what's left of the file folder after removing the image as your stencil.  Help your child choose an appropriate color for their image (or let them choose an inappropriate one!) and mix it up for them.  Tape the stencil onto the dried canvas (a little tape won't hurt it!).  Then give them a rounded foam brush to dot the new paint color into the stencil.  By dotting the paint instead of dragging it with a brush, you'll keep it from going under the edges of the stencil.  Dot, dot, dot until his little heart is content and the image is fully covered, then remove the stencil and enjoy the masterpiece!  With Pierce's whale, we went back and added the white spots over the black after it had dried (using pieces cut from the same stencil drawing).  And then I showed him where to dot the eye.  So simple!  This beauty will go in Pierce and Grant's bathroom once Brett gets a fresh coat of paint on the walls.

This is such a fun activity and the child actually paints everything on the canvas, so it is truly their creation that they can feel proud of that.

Inspired by an image on Pinterest, we did some work in our mudroom, and Pierce's alligator (or is it a crocodile?) is proudly displayed there.  The idea with the mudroom wall of art is to have one piece from each child, but we are waiting patiently on Grant to produce his first masterpiece, and until then, Sydney has two pieces displayed.  This was also a fun project, another little item on Brett's long Honey-Do list. The pegs were only $5 at Michaels (less if you use your coupon!) and he painted them with leftover trim paint we had in the attic.  The art was free!  And a few frames were less than $25. Our mudroom looks and functions so much better now!  Thanks to Brett and Pinterest and my little artists.

Fabulous Fall

I love the fall.  Is it because I was born in the fall?  It seems like everyone always loves the season they were born in.  Hmmm...  Anyway, what's not to like about fall?  Nothing! Some of my favorite things about the fall include: changing colors, cooler weather, putting the sunscreen away, pumpkin bread, apple picking, pumpkin patches, roasting pumpkin seeds, and Halloween.

We enjoyed all of these things as a family this fall.  Here are a few pictures to share.  I hope your fall was a lovely as ours.

Apple picking (in the rain!) with great friends in the NC mountains!  We picked and ate a bushel! YUM!

Climbing Chimney Rock!  The kids loved the climb... Brett, not so much!  He voted for the elevator, but lost the vote to the rest of us (not carrying babies, of course!).

The kids enjoyed our local pumpkin patch - spider web climbing and all.

Heave ho!!!

 

Summiting a monstrous hay mountain.

Milking a cow ain't all that easy, people.

One smart looking group of farmers!  Look closely at the "wife" - it's not me!

Little Red Riding Hood, a cute monkey and a scary shark.

Quick picture before the monkey fell asleep!

Brett decided to assemble a quick last minute costume - good ol' Dick Cheney.

 

I hope everyone enjoyed their fall as much as we did.  I'm sorry to say, but tomorrow morning Christmas bells will officially be ringing.  And it is over in the blink of an eye!



Grant's Baptism

Sweet little Grant was baptized this weekend at our church.  It was such a nice weekend and fun celebration. Thank you to all our friends and family who joined us for this special day!  Here a few pictures of the baptism and celebration at our house.

Godparents Keith and Dawn Matune (who flew in from Chicago).

The whole gang!

Nana and PapaJohn with "the general"

 

 Our cheese dinner on Saturday evening.  Thanks, Brett!

We made a quick day trip to Wilmington on Sunday with our friends from Chicago to enjoy one last day of summer! 

Aha!  Caught them!  So cute!  (Will show them this picture later when they are mean adolescents who want nothing to do with one another!)

Brett with his good friends!

4/5 of the family!  Grant decided to rest and play at Nana and Papa Johns while we hit the beach!

 



Staycation

Sydney didn't have school yesterday or today because of some Catholic Teacher training event.  Had I taken a close look at her school calendar when she started this year and noticed this 4-day weekend, I would have planned a vacation for us, but in my baby haze I did not look closely at the calendar, so we are having a bit of a staycation.  I love that word - who came up with that?  Yesterday was lots of fun, mainly because I didn't have to drive anyone anywhere!  Here's what we were up to:

A quick visit to a local pumpkin patch yielded several hours of fun.  We spent $20 on these beauties and came home to paint them.  The kids had a blast and the weather was perfect for sitting on the back porch and making a mess with paint.  I let the kids just do whatever they wanted with their pumpkins instead of trying to direct them to some cute finished product.  It was pretty stress-free this way and everyone was happy!  Pierce added layer after layer of color to his pumpkin and his last and final layer being gray meant that he ended up with a solid gray pumpkin.  But I kind of like it that way!

We made strawberry tarts for snack and had an impromptu tea party to properly enjoy those cute little tarts.  They were so cute: why didn't I snap a picture?  Here's our secret to making them: buy pre-made tarts, spread strawberry jam on them, bake for 5 minutes at any temperature and serve!  Next we hit the neighborhood park for some soccer fun. Then we made home-made pizza for dinner.  I let the kids have a "toppings bar" and put what they wanted on their pizzas.  Sydney chose mushrooms and olives, Pierce heaped on olives and sausage (both of which he later declared he did not like and picked off, the olives being to "sour").  But what a yummy and easy dinner for a laid back night with no strict bedtimes.  We usually don't have dessert during the week, but since we were technically on "staycation," I served chocolate ice cream, with copious amounts of sprinkles for the kids, none for me.  What is it with those sprinkles?  Yuck!

While I cleaned up the pizza bar mess, the kids decided to make cards for daddy (who was coming back from New York last night).  Cute idea, but major mess.  Major messes are the story of my life at this point.  I feel that I am in a constant battle with clutter and disorder, and that I am generally losing that battle.  But I got some help with little resistance from the kids to clean it up and all was well.

It's so nice to have lazy days like these.  Makes you realize how hectic our normal daily lives are.

Grant Michael

Our precious Grant Michael arrived three days later and two pounds heavier than expected on June 20, 2012, weighing 9 lbs 10.5 ounces.  He was born at 10:50 am, one year and one minute after his adorable cousin Addison.  Maybe the clock was fast and he was actually born at the exact same time?  It’s funny because we thought he’d come on Father’s Day (his due date), and he didn’t, but he still managed to pick a special day to share with Addison.  Sydney chose her birthday to share with Aunt Susan.  And Pierce decided to come on Mother’s Day.  Funny how all that works out.

According to those surveyed thus far (including family, friends, preschool teachers, grocery store cashiers, and random strangers), Grant looks just like Pierce.  Well, he’s a little chunkier, but otherwise, they must strongly resemble each other.  A friend of mine saw him for the first time recently and said, “Claire, you’ve created the same child twice!”  Ha!

Grant is a sweet and relatively happy baby (unless you catch him hungry or tired!), and we are so happy he decided to join our little family.  What a blessing he's been!  His favorite activities include: practicing his vowel and consonant sounds, cooing, grabbing his left foot, eating, sleeping and snoring.  His siblings adore him and are so good to him, giving him kisses, holding him, helping him with his pacifier and blankets.  They are very attentive!

It’s a shame it’s taken me 3 months to get some pictures and a quick post up about him, but I’ve been busy, as you can imagine.  My daily to-do list is long, and blogging is way down around number 89, right after #88 - flossing my teeth (checked that one off today!) and just before # 90 - cleaning out the guest bedroom closets.  Maybe I can get back on here more regularly soon.  We are still not sleeping through the night (that seems to be everyone’s favorite question to ask me!), so I can’t say I’m all that rested.  But, when I catch a spare moment or two, and the bills are paid, laundry is folded and teeth are flossed, I’ll post again!