Standing, Secret Hand Shake, and O Face

Look whose standing up by himself! Ivan Boy! He's getting pretty good. As long as he doesn't reach for anything or try to take any steps, he can stay up for about 20 seconds. As soon as he tries to step though, he falls over. But I'm thinkin' that it won't be too long before we have a walker on our hands. And I'm ok with that. The kid is heavy, weighing in at 21 pounds. Just for the record, Lincoln weighs 32 and I weigh (at my last appointment, so probably more now) 130!

My happy baby

This is Ivan's secret handshake. He puts his hand up to his mouth and wiggles his fingers back and worth. If you do it back to him he laughs and laughs.

Jabberin' away. This kid's got some personality.

And...back by popular demand...the "O Face" Lincoln used to make this face when he was Ivan's age, and we thought it as so weird/funny and now Ivan does it too and we love it.

My Cute Boys

I'm sorry, but I have the two cutest boys ever, three if you count Aaron, which of course, I do! :) I love them all so much. This picture was taken a couple weeks ago. It was freezing outside, but Aaron and I were desperate to get out of the house, so be bundled all of us up and went for a walk. They love going for walks in their wagon. And it was Aaron and I who wimped out first and decided to come in. Those two crazy boys would have stayed out all afternoon in the freezing cold. I can't believe how big they are getting either. It wasn't too long ago that we were balancing Ivan's little bucket car seat on the sides of the wagon so he could ride too, and now he practically sits in there by himself.

Ivan is a few days shy of 11 months. This year has gone at warp speed. Recently Ivan's personality has been peeking out for all to see. He's a pretty goofty kid, which means he'll fit right in with this family. He loves to pretend he's just as big as Lincoln, and tries to follow Linc around and do all the things that he does. We have a regular comedy routine going between the two of them...Linc is the ham and the joker and Ivan is guy you can count on to laugh his head off at whatever Lincoln does. Ivan also does not like to be left out. Tonight Aaron took Lincoln out of the bath and was going to go set him down in his room and come right back for Ivan, but he only got half way down the hall, when he turned around and saw that Ivan had climbed out of the bath tub and was crawling after him butt naked and sopping wet. If Ivan chooses to leave the room without you, everything is fine and dandy, but if you choose to leave one without him you are in big trouble! He's still having trouble sleeping through the night, which I largely attribute to the fact that I haven't really attempted to sleep train him at all, because I don't want to hear about it from my upstairs neighbor whose room is right above Ivan's. So we're still working on that one.

Lincoln is two and a half these days. He still talks up a storm, but we're noticing more and more that the stuff he comes up with is more original and less parroted, and it's awesome! The other day I said, "Lincoln, Daddy's a dork!" and he said, "Daddy's not dork! Daddy's......a boat!" His other new favorite thing is to list off a whole string of things he likes. We were walking on BYU's campus the other day and Lincoln ran over to a patch of grass and said, "I like grass! I like mud! I like trees! I like birds! Birds go cheap cheap cheap!" It was so funny. So my new favorite game to play with him is to ask him what he likes. Then he just goes off on the most random things. Mud comes up in his lists alot. :) He's figured out that if he pushes a chair up to the kitchen sink he can get himself a drink of water or wash his hands. I have to admit I'm half excited and half dreading this new skill. We also started potty training him this afternoon. I'm not really sure I'm ready for it, but I really don't want three kids in diapers if I can help it, and now seemed as good of a time as any. So we'll be doing that adventure for the next few weeks. Wish us luck.

The Cat is Out of the Bag...

This Valentine project kept Lincoln busy for four mornings straight while Ivan took his morning nap. I found the blank posterboard heart shaped cards and glitter glue in the dollar bin at Michaels a little while ago and couldn't pass it up. The first morning Lincoln painted the hearts. I used the washable paint, and we did red and a few different shades of pink (by combining different combos of red and white paint) but after they dried they all ended up about the same light pink color, even the straight red ones. Oh well, the texture on them still looked cool. The second morning Lincoln stuck heart shaped foam stickers on the hearts. He even did an ok job of distributing them evenly. The third morning I let him have at it with the glitter glue. He did really well, and I think this was his favorite step in the process. He could open the tubes and squeeze out the glue all by himself, so basically all I did was supervise. On the fourth morning I addressed enough envelopes for all the Valentines and let Lincoln decorate the backs with different heart shaped stickers. I'm tellin' ya, projects are the way to go with kids. :)

But why all the fuss over Valentines Day? It's not even a holiday I really like. Well, I guess it's time for the cat to come out of the bag. Maybe the poem Aaron and I wrote and stuck inside will explain a little better. It went something like this:

Roses are red

Valentine's Day is for lovin'

Surprise!

We have another bun in the over.

We sent these Valentines to our parents and siblings to announce that we are having another baby. Yup. It's true. Swan #3 on it's way. It was a little bit sooner than we were planning on, in other words, a surprise. But we're excited all the same.  On Monday I will be 15 weeks along. I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for March 1st and two weeks after that we will find out if it's a girl or a boy. My due date is August 7th. Yes, that will be the second August child. Apparently November is a good month for us. ;)

The first trimester is thankfully over. I was nauseous most of the time. But I only threw up once. So that's an improvement over when I was pregnant with Ivan.

I'm excited for another baby. I love babies. I'm also kind of freaking out, wondering how I'll manage 3 children with only 2 arms. And they will all be pretty young and pretty close together, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. :) The question everyone always asks, "Do you want a girl or a boy?" is sure to come, so I'll take some time to explore it. It would be really convenient for us to have a boy. We already have everything we could possibly need wardrobe wise, toy wise, etc. for one. I have the perfect boy name already picked out. (That's pretty much what I do from day one for the next 9 months is name the baby over and over and over again.) That doesn't mean I'll say what it is though, because I'm still making sure Aaron likes it for real. On the other hand, I don't think I would mind having a girl this time. The first two pregnancies I was dead set on having boys. But this time I feel ok with either. That being said, if I do have a girl no one is allowed to drown her in pink lacy frilly foofey awful stuff. Purple is great, yellow is better, brown good. Pink is out. No pink.

Anyways, there's our big news. It feels kind of nice having it out in the open. I was a little nervous to tell everyone. But I'm starting to show some, and so it had to come out. And now that it's out, I'm glad. :)

H Day: Houses, Hands, Hearts, and Hugs

Today we went to Suzy's house for H day. She made these cute little H books for the boys to color and give to their daddy's. It had the lyrics to the song I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home, printed out with cute pictures to go with that the boys got to color. The song has lots of good H words in it that she pointed out along the way. Home, hands, hug....to name a few. And the boys were able to look at the words and pick out big and little H's.

After that, Suzy brought out a really cool set up of the song The Wise Man and the Fool Man. She had a paper house set up in a bucket of sand, and a paper house taped to a rock (which she put in the bucket after we were done with the sand part). She had filled an empty soy sauce bottle with water, and she let the boys take turns pouring "rain" onto the houses while we sang the song. Both boys thought that was a blast. Anything to do with water usually catches Lincoln's attention, especially if he gets to splash it around. :)

The last activity was an instant hit because it had to do with building and with marshmallows. :) We helped the boys construct houses out of toothpicks and marchmallows. They loved it, and were even willing to have the help. Their favorite part of course was eating the marshmallows, which we made them wait to do until after we'd taken a picture. :)

Lincoln's marshmallow house

Lincoln was being kind of a stinker the whole day (except when he got excited about what we were doing) and wouldn't smile (or even look) for the picture.

All in all it was a fun day for letters. I have really enjoyed doing this every week with Suzy. It's always fun to see what she comes up with, and I think the variety makes it that much more fun for the kids too. I have "I" next week, cross your fingers for me to come up with something...

The Friend

This year we decided that Lincoln was old enough for us to read him The Friend magazine. So we ordered it to start coming along with our Ensign. We've started reading the kids a story out of it each night at bed time. I love it! I thought it would just be a good experience for Lincoln, but I'm finding that the simple way the magazine shares the principles of the gospel have been really good for me as well. One of my favorite stories this month was Losing Apollo. It put in a different perspective for me how our Heavenly Father always answers our prayers. And how he loves us and cares about us so much, that sometimes he tells us no.

A lot lately I've been seeing our Heavenly Father as a parent figure (this should be a no brainer, but for some reason I've been having a lot of ah-ha moments about this relationship) and seeing how He treats and loves his children the same way I am trying to treat and love mine. Obviously, He is a lot better at it than me. :) But maybe as I am experiencing all the many feelings of parenthood, and how I still love my children even when they are driving me up the walls, I'm starting to understand a tiny bit better the way our Heavenly Father feels about each one of us. I've had a really strong testimony of the fact that he does love us for a long time, but I think just recently I'm starting to get a glimpse of the extent of that love.

I'm grateful for The Friend, and for the time I've gotten to spend seeing the gospel through my childrens eyes and through the eyes of the child in me that makes everything so simple.

Louie Louie Night

Molly Gittins, Me, Tindy Weston, and Ben Weston

Ok, I suppose it's time to bring up my past. For those of you who don't know...I am a band nerd. Yup. Or at least I was senior year of high school. And, I loved it! Last night was Louie Louie Night. I'll explain. My band teacher, Mr. Qualls, is in his 25th year of teaching band. To celebrate he invited all of his students from the past 25 years to come back to Fremont High School and participate in the pep band at the boys basketball game. It's called Louie Louie Night because the only pep song we played the whole night was Louie Louie! I guess you'd have to be in the band to appriciate the humor. :) And we all got to wear leighs.

Me and my cymbols. You can't hear in the picture, but I'm making the noise for the cymbols with my mouth, because it was while the game was going on and you aren't allowed to play instrments while time is running.

They were having a BBQ in the band room at 4:00pm, but Aaron had class at 3:00, so we missed it. :( But I packed up our stuff and picked Aaron up on campus right at 3:50 when he got out so we could get up there as soon as possible. One problem though, I forgot my flute! Oops. When I was in high school I played the cymbols in the marching band, but during pep band season they have a drum set, so there is really no need for cymbols. And since the pep music is simple enough (I'm not very good at the flute) I usually always played my flute during pep band. So, I didn't have my flute, but I decided to play the cymbols anyway. And that ended up working out just fine because there were so many former students there that all the percussion couldn't share the drum set, so they got out the marching equipment anyway, so there were a couple other people playing the cymbols too.

This is an action shot!

Funny story: Right after we'd gotten in the gym, and were waiting for the JV game to get over, a kid tapped me on my shoulder and asked, "What grade are you in?" I laughed and replied, "I am about five years graduated." He said, "Ok, never mind." I must have given him a questioning look, because he pointed to his friend and said, "He just wanted to know because you are playing his cymbols and if you were younger than him he was going to trade you (I was playing the medium sized set, and he had the giant set), but you definately pull rank on him, so you just keep doin' what your doin'."

Lincoln playing Tindy's trumpet

For most of the game Aaron and the boys sat in the stand right next to the band. But he brought the kids over to see me for a little bit. I was thinking that the boys would think my cymbols were the coolest things in the world. Who doesn't love something you bang together to make a loud noise? But my cymbols couldn't compare to Molly and Tindy's trumpets. First, Molly showed them hers and let them push the buttons. Even Ivan got a kick out of that. Then, I let Lincoln stay and stand by me while we played, thinking that if he saw me crash the cymbols together, he'd think I was cool. Nope, he watched the trumpet section (which I was standing in the middle of, because that's where all my friends were. I never stood in the right section when I was in high school, no reason to start now!) the whole time. After we played Tindy let him hold her trumpet, and it was all over from there. He figured out where to blow, and how to push the buttons. It was pretty cute. I suppose I could be ok if my son turned into a trumpet player. Some of my best friends are trumpets...

Here's your "Where's Krystal" for the day. Can you find me?

G Day: Goats Gruff, Grain, and Glitter Glue

Today was G Day. I already mentioned I was planning on doing a goat theme. I think it turned out ok. I introduced the boys to goats by playing the song Bill Grogan's Goat off of the Silly Songs CD (I couldn't help it). Then I read them the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff. In an effort to save time, I made them each a set of stick puppets beforehand. I found the pattern online here. Since I didn't have craft sticks, straws worked nicely. So everytime I talked about one of the characters in the story, I had them hold up the character I was talking about. They seemed to like this, although they had a little bit of a hard time keeping their goats straight. Lincoln's favorite part seemed to be the end. When he retold the story to Uncle Kyle later, he skipped straight to the part where the troll on the bridge gets pushed into the water and makes a big splash. Forget the goats, it was all about the troll and the bridge for him. :)

After our story we all went into the kitchen for some creative art. I had printed out a picture of a goat for each of them. I found those just doing a google search for goat coloring pages. Then I got out three different kinds of grain: oatmeal, rice, and corn kernels. Each boy for a glue stick, and the objective was to glue the grain onto the goat to decorate it. Well, the glue sticks didn't work as well as I'd hoped, and my regular Elmer's Glue was in the room where Ivan was taking a nap. So, we improvised. Lincoln and I have been making Valentines, so the glitter glue was still out in the kitchen. We decided to use that. The goat glueing grain project didn't turn out quite how I had envisioned it. Lincoln's kind of ended up a big sticky mess. But that's ok. It was still fun.

Life is so Random

When I was a kid, I had this awesome cd (actually I believe it was on tape, weird, remember those?) called Disney's Silly Songs. I think my Grandma Lemmon gave it to me (correct me if I'm wrong Mom) and I'm sure she regretted it when I listened to it the entire 5 hours I drove with her and my grandpa to St George to visit them. Good times. Awhile ago (probably over 6 months ago) I looked everywhere I could think of for it so that my kids could listen. No luck. I couldn't find it anywhere. So I pretty much gave up looking, figuring that maybe it wasn't a very big thing, and had probably gone out long ago. I put it out of my mind.

So this week is my turn for letter day and the letter is G. I have a few things planned, but I always like to try and find a fun way to introduce the letter to the boys. Usually it's with a story that has to do with the letter somehow. The theme I've sort of chosen to go with for G is goats. So I was searching the library catelog for goat stories. Since I didn't have anything specific in mind yet, I just did a very basic search in the children's section for the word goat, to see what it would come up with. And low and behold, what pops up on my screen but Disney's Silly Songs cd! (There's a song entitled Bill Grogan's Goat on there.) It was so funny! Of course I reserved it, and now have the cd in my possession. It's just as good as I remember too! :)

Today I Made...

A crayon carrier that rolls up and fits in my diaper bag. It holds 12 crayons, and it's going to be awesome for church, waiting rooms, restaurants, etc. I came up with the pattern on my own after looking at lots of different ones online and not finding exactly what I wanted. I think I might make a bunch and try to sell them. My sister-in-law wants me to do a craft fair with her next December and this is one of the ideas I might use. It didn't take me very long to make, about an hour and a half. And after making one, I already know a few ways to make it even better. So we'll test it out on Sunday and see if it keeps Lincoln entertained at church.

Good Memories of Being Sick

So, my title sounds like an oxymoron. Or I sound like a moron for writing it. Or something. Well, my little family has been sick for the last few days. Let me tell you it has been anything but fun. But, one good thing that has come of it, is that I think I have a better appriciation for being sick when I was still living at home. I have some great memories, not of the actual being sick part, but of the part where my mom and dad took such great care of me.

Growing up being sick went something like this: I'd wake up with a high fever, or puking, or feeling generally miserable for one reason or another. My mom would tuck me into her bed, which was always softer, and had more pillows, and somehow magically always made me more comfortable than being in my own bed. I could watch TV or a movie in bed if I wanted to, but usually I was feeling so miserable that I just slept. My mom would bring me Sprite with a straw, and would wake me up when I needed to take medicine. She'd even bring me toast with butter, cinnomon, and sugar on it. When my dad came home for his lunch break, he's always bring me a chocolate Premium Creamie popcicle. For the longest time growing up I thought cinnamon-sugar toast and Creamies were magic "get well" food, because I only ever had them when I was sick, and I always felt a little better afterwords. It wasn't like either of them waited on me hand and foot or anything, and it definitely wasn't worth faking sick for, but when I really was feeling lousy it was really nice to have parents who loved me and took care of me while I was trying to get well.

Suddenly now I am a mom with sick kids, and I'm sick, and believe me, if there's any cinnamon-sugar toast to be had, I'm the one making it (at least while Aaron's at work, he takes really good care of me too!). And forget sleeping until I'm well. Sometimes I wish I could just go back to my mom's house and curl up in her bed for awhile. But, something else that's amazing to me, is the love I have for my own children. Even when I feel like I'd be better off having someone smack me over the head with a large rock and left for dead, somehow I still manage to wipe noses, change diapers, make food, and snuggle two cute little guys who feel at least as miserable as I do. I'm not trying to say that I am amazing or to pat myself on the back, not at all. But when you love your kids you can keep giving and giving to them, long past the point you thought you'd be able to.

Not Computer People

Aaron's coworker had this posted on his desk at work. We thought it was pretty funny. Aaron decided to go find this and post it, when he started using these exact steps to fix our printer. He says this counts as his post.

People Bug Me!

Ok, I'll probably read this tomorrow and think I totally overreacted. But that's tomorrow, and this is today. And today I am bugged. And it's dumb, too because it wasn't actually even that big of a part of my day, probably 5 minutes total, but I'm still bugged. My husband will read this and tell me I'm ridiculous, because he is much too nice of a person to ever be bugged. But that's him, not me. I'm still bugged.

We have been apartment managers since October. It's a good job for us to have right now, and I feel like it's a way that I can contribute a little bit, monitarily at least, to our family. The job has some nice perks; however, it also has a few people that come along with it  that I'd like to throw a snow ball at. It's winter, and awhile ago it snowed pretty heavily. The parking lot of our complex became and ice skating rink. The owner doesn't like to have it plowed unless the snow gets really deep because there isn't a lot of room to put the plowed snow, and therefore it eats into the parking spaces, and then people complain. The parking lot is too big for us to shovel. So pretty much it's on it's own. It's usually pretty slippery and icy. I realize this condition is not ideal, and I feel bad that the tenants (that includes us by the way) have to walk on ice to get to their cars. This year, the owner decided to try some heavy duty ice melt in the parking lot. He ordered it, and it took a long time to get here. But when it got here, we spread it on the parking lot and it worked wonders. The ice was almost melted, and then....of course, it snowed again last night leaving the parking lot covered again, and quickly turning into and ice skating rink once more. So that's the parking lot story.

Well this morning, Unnamed Tenant comes knocking on my door. I open it, and am greeted with, "I need the snow shovel, I am NOT going to go out on ice AGAIN tonight." At which point, I turned around and walked away from the door into the back, and Aaron handed her the snow shovel. I don't know if they had any further conversation. I was semi-bugged then. Why not say, "Hi/Good morning/How are you? etc., I was wondering if I could borrow the snow shovel, I just feel like getting some of that ice out of the way." Or something even remotely pleasant. (Usually we leave the snow shovel right outside our door, and tenants know that they are willing to use it whenever they want as long as they bring it back. It just so happened to be really windy a couple of days ago, so we'd brought it inside because it kept tipping over.) Anyways, so I was slightly bugged by this person, but she took the shovel and procedeeded to begin shoveling the parking lot. And Aaron, bless his heart, was like, maybe we should pay her for her time? And I was ornery and I said, "No! If the owner wants to pay to have the parking lot shoveled by hand, he would have us do it."

Anyways, then a little while later, Unnamed Tenant knocks on my door again, hands me the shovel and says, "I didn't make much progress. (Ya think?) You know, you aught to talk to the owner about buying an ATV and putting a shovel on the front. It wouldn't take very long that way, and if you'd get it before anyone drove on it, then it wouldn't be so icy." I probably gave her the dumbest blank stare. I didn't know how to respond. Aaron, who was sitting in the chair next to the door, said, "Actually the owner has an ATV and he just bought a shovel for the front of it." But we weren't about to go into all the details about the parking lot, the owner, and the ATV with this woman. She left, I shut the door.

I don't know. I guess what bugged me so much about this whole encounter was the fact that she acted like we didn't give a flying fig about the condition of the parking lot. When in reality, it's a topic we discuss on a daily basis. So I'm venting. There you have it. People bug me.

Letter F: Fish, Faces, Fingers

Today, my friend Suzy taught the boys about the letter F. First she gave them a paper with a big F and a little f on it. She talked about how fish starts with the letter F. The on the bottom of the paper she traced the boys' heels and then their fingers to make a fish. Then the boys got to color their fish. This is how Lincoln's turned out. He wanted me to color the little f and kept handing me the colors he wanted me to color with. He also wanted me to write Lincoln and Mommy on his paper. (He actually wanted me to write Suzy and Nathan on his paper too, but I told him that was for Nathan's paper.) Linc is getting better with his coloring skills. He's still no where close to staying in the lines, but he'll say things like, "I color eyes black." and then scribble black over the eyes. So we're coming right along. :)

The next activity Suzy had, I thought was so cool! She had cut out four circles. On one circle was an empty fish bowl, on another was a head without a face, on another was a fish and plants, and on another was a face. We taped the empty fish bowl and the fish back to back with a straw in between, and the same with the head and the face. (Make sure you get the orientation right or it won't work.) Then when you twist the straw between your fingers fast enough it creates the illusion that the fish is in the fish bowl and that the face in on the head. It's really cool, and the boys loved it.


After that Suzy passed out Shark Fruit Snacks, and we loaded all the kids in the car and took them to Jay's Jungle, a pet store, and let them look at the fish, turtles, snakes, rats, hamsters, birds, and puppies, that they had in the store. All the kids loved it, even Ivan and Kaitlyn. So I'd say F Day was quite a success.

Get Us Outta Here!

We've been going crazy in our apartment. We've actually been feeling a lot like the video above :) A classic, if I do say so myself. The kids are tired of being in the house, I'm tired of being in the house. Our house is tired of us being in it. Today was the last straw. The sun peaked out from the clouds and we escaped. I got down the Radio Flyer out of Lincoln's closet (still the best $5 bucks I ever spent), I bundled up the boys and we walked around the block a few times. The fresh air did wonders for us. :) I hear it's supposed to storm a bunch later this week. I really hope not. I enjoyed going out side today and am hoping we can do it again tomorrow.

E Day: Elephants and Eggs

The holidays are over, so it's time to get back on track with our letter days. It was my turn this week to do "E". I decided to do an egg and elephant theme.  Lincoln really loves to paint, and we haven't gotten it out in awhile, so I picked activities that would allow us to get out the paint.  When I was little, my Grandma Lemmon did this activity with us where you poke a hole in each end of an egg, and then blow out the yolk. You are left with a hollow egg. We used to glue little squares of tissue paper on it and then paint a clear coat over it. I thought tissue papaer might be a little advanced for two year olds, so the plan was to just let them paint their eggs.

The night before Aaron helped me do some prep work. We washed the eggs first and then poked holes in each end and blew out the center of the eggs. FYI, it helps a lot if you stick the pin inside the hole and swish it around to break up the egg yolk.

Then, since these are supposed to be decorative eggs, we made egg stands to put them on out of the egg carton. Then we covered the stands in tin foil so it would look fancy.

I know it's a long long way from Easter, so I modified a little bit and decided that these eggs could be Valentines eggs. Ya, ya, I know, Valentines Day is still a ways off too, but it's the closest holiday we've got. So I found some heart stickers that the kids could stick on their eggs after they were painted, so help spice things up a bit.

That was the egg part. For the elephant part, I got the awesome idea to make a paper sack elephant puppet off of a website a friend shared with me called ABC Stuff. It's an awesome website and has multiple activity ideas for each letter of the alphabet. She had a link on there to a sight that had a pattern to print out to make an elephant puppet. I didn't think cutting would go so well for the kids, so I printed out the patterns on cardstock and cut out the pieces for them and made them each their own little envelope (whatever it takes to stick in another E word right?) with all of their elephant peices in it.

That was all the 'before' work. And I think having it all ready made the day go a lot smoother. When Suzy, Nathan, and Kaitlyn got here, I sat the boys down in special "story chairs" (our banana chairs, I hoped having special chairs would help their attention spans, it only sort of worked) and read them Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Suess. Which just so happens to be about an elephant to tries to hatch an egg. Not only that, but it's got a good moral (patients and hard work pay off in the end) as well. Double winner.

After that we headed to the kitchen to paint! Oh, I should mention, the apples on the table are for "Eating", which starts with "E". Couldn't think of any egg snacks that sounded good, so I got creative. The boys painted the paper sack first. They painted it gray. The only color I got out to begin with, so that at least the body and the face would look elephantish. You'll see what I mean in a minute. When they were done with the sacks we put them aside to dry and got the elephant pieces out of the envelopes. Then I got out more colors so the boys could be as creative and artistic as they wanted to be. :) They didn't let me down either.

Here's Lincoln painting his elephant ear a nice mix of red and orange. We haven't used brushes very much with him, but let me tell you it's LOTS less messy than finger painting. And he still loved it. So I think from now on I'll have him use the brush for inside, and save finger painting for outside. It was also a nice addition to have the garbage sacks taped to the table. I usually just spread newspaper, and it's more of a hassel, and paint still always manages to get on the table.

When the boys were done with the elephant parts, we put those aside to dry. I took their painting plates away, and got them different ones with only Valentines Day colors on it. Then gave them their eggs. They seemed to have a little bit more trouble painting the eggs because the eggs kept rolling away from them. But I think they enjoyed that too. Once the eggs were nicely painted, we washed up and let the boys down to play while everything dried.

They had a good time playing together, which they always do. Unfortunately the paint did not dry fast enough, so we had to send everything home with Suzy in pieces to have Nathan put together after nap time. We put ours together after nap time too. Here's how they turned out:

Not quite as professional looking as the elephant puppets the lady on ABC Stuff made, or the eggs I used to make with my grandma, (and actually, the ABC Stuff page did some blown eggs as well, that are really well done), but hey, for two year olds, not too bad. :) And we had fun doing it, which is really all that matters.

Magnet Obsession

We seem to have come down with a bit of a magnet obsession at our house recently. Lincoln got these cool "Mag Neato" blocks for Christmas. They are sort of like blocks with magnets in the ends to tey stick together when you build things. They also stick to every other metal thing in our house, fridge, dishwasher, washer/dryer, front door, and the latest, Lincoln trike. The other night Lincoln finished eating faster than Aaron and I so we let him down from the table to go play. When we peeked in the living room a few minutes later we saw him decking out his trike like this. It's the rage around here now. And heaven forbid if Ivan get close enough to touch one, oh man!

Rough Schedule

Poor Ivan. The new church schedule is a little rough on him. He couldn't even make it through a jar of peas.

Book Review: Stargirl

by: Jerry Spinelli

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'll start off by saying that young adult/teen fiction, is not my genre of choice, so that may have something to do with my only giving it two stars. I thought the book was cute, and it does make a good point. But there were a few things that bothered me about it. 1. There was SO MUCH stupid drama, but considering the intended audience, this point probably isn't valid as a complaint. But the drama bugged me. 2. I didn't think it was believable how mean the student body was to this one poor girl. I could see a group of students being this mean, or even blaming her for the basketball team losing, but not the WHOLE school. Maybe my high school experience was completely different from everyone else's, but there were lots of little groups that conformed to each other for sure, but the whole school did not conform to anything, really, as a whole. So I find it hard to believe that an entire student body would shun a girl for being compassionate to the hurt player of another team. Especially because she wasn't doing mean things, but lots of odd nice things. I understand and agree that on occasion she didn't know her boundaries, but that doesn't make her a criminal. Maybe the author thought it had to be all or nothing to get his point across, but it kind of bugged. 3. I wasn't a big fan of everyone thinking that homeschooling was a good explanation for Stargirl's "weirdness". I know plenty of weird people who were not homeschooled, and plenty of normal people who were. But that's not really a big issue, just a point I wanted to make.

I really liked the character of Stargirl. I thought she was really well done in all her excentric behaviors. Of all the characters I think I connected emotionally with her the best. I felt so bad for her, that even her own boyfriend couldn't just accept her for who she was. I'm glad she had Doris as a friend.

So, I don't know. The book was pretty good. It had a good message. It was not my favorite. If you like young adult fiction, you might like it.

Little Project

I am always looking for new ides of things to do with Lincoln that are 1. Educational 2. Fun 3. On his level. Sometimes I find it a challenge to come up with things that fit all three. I've decided that there are probably a lot of moms out there like me looking for ideas. So, one of my new goals, is to post the projects that Lincoln and I do together, in hopes that it will benefit someone, somewhere. And if not, at least it will be a good record of the things Linc and I did together.

Today during Ivan's morning nap, Linc and I made this great tube. All you need is the tube out of a roll of paper towels, some tin foil, tape, and stickers. I gave Lincoln the tube to play with while I got out all the rest of the stuff. Then I took out a piece of tin foil and told Linc to set the tube down on the foil. I gave him small pieces of tape, and held the end of the foil against the tube, while he taped the foil to the tube. Then he rolled the tube in the foil until it was completely covered, then I held the tube and gave him pieces of tape and he taped the foil shut. You want to leave the ends of the tube open. Then I let Lincoln decorate his foil wrapped tube with stickers. When we were done it looked (to a kid at least) like an amazing tool. Then I showed Lincoln how if he held the tube up to my chest and put his ear on the other end, he could hear my heart beat. Then I switched him and listened to his. We talked about how you have a heart in your chest and how it beats, and that's what you can hear with the tube. Next I put the tube up to my mouth and whispered through it, and let Lincoln do the same. I explained (very basically) that when you listen to things through the tube, they sound louder.

We had a good time, and he keeps asking me to "hear his heart". So I think it was a success. I got the idea in our Highlights High Five magazine, and altered it slightly.

Sharin' the Wealth

For Christmas, my mom subscribed Lincoln to the Highlights High Five magazine (which is similar to the regular Highlights magazine, but for the younger age range of 2-6). Our first issue came today. I remember loving the Highlights magazine as a kid, and was really excited to share it with Lincoln. We weren't disappointed either. They have fun little stories, games, and puzzles, that are entertaining as well as educational.

Probably my favorite story/activity in this month's issue was one about space men called Add Them Up! I took a picture of the page to give you an idea. If you click on it, I think it will get big enough that you can read the words on the side. What I liked about it is that it was clever, and pretty versatile. For the younger kids you can work on counting up the space men. Which is what Lincoln and I did. But for older kids, you can use the same paragraphs to do simple addition. And if you wanted to add some of your own ideas, you could turn everything around without too much trouble and do simple subtraction. But the best part is that it's fun, so you hardly realize you're "doing math". :)

Anyways, I'm thrilled with the magazine. Lincoln and I got half way through it today. And I think he enjoyed it enough that we could read it multiple times. Also, for anyone interested they have a website that has a lot of the same kinds of ideas and it's all free. Go to www.highlightskids.com and see if you can find anything to tickle your fancy. I think the age range is 2-12, so you can probably find something. Or, if you want to check out High Five (the one geared just to 2-6 year olds) go to www.highlights.com/highfive , on the bottom of the page in the center is a blue box called About High Five, and under that if you click on Preview a Sample issue, you'll be able to print out one issue for free. It's at least worth going and getting the free one.

Our Latest Cardboard Monstrosity

As always, this year Aaron and I have set a goal to do better with Family Home Evening. I thought it might help me be accountable to something if I post about what we did for FHE each week, so I'm gonna try it.

This week we decided to have a lesson about Temples. Whenever we drive up to Hooper, Lincoln always gets excited when we point out the different temples to him (we can see about 5 from the freeway between Provo and Hooper). When I mentioned the idea of doing temples, Aaron got excited and suggested we build one out of cardboard. I was thinking something small...I should have known better. ;) But Lincoln and Ivan both loved it, and it did give us a good opportunity to talk about the different things we can do in the temples, about how Mommy and Daddy got married in the temple, and about how the temple is Jesus's house. We sang "I Love to See the Temple", and I took Lincoln around our living room and showed him all the different pictures on our wall and had him pick out which one was the temple.

Our cardboard rendition is the Salt Lake temple, in case you can't tell, and not to be sacreligious or anything, but I hope it doesn't inhabit our living room for long. :)

Scary Hairy

This is the "do" Lincoln woke up from his nap with. Love it!