Counting Down...

We are great fans of 'counting down' On my IGoogle, I have several countdowns; trips; birthdays; visits, etc...
SO Advent is only another reason to do a countdown!

We had a few options this year.
A friend gave us a Playmobil Advent calender. It has a bunch of little tiny Playmobil figures and pieces.



Everyday you open a box and voila! One more piece of the scene is revealed and placed in its place..
Leigh folded up all of the boxes and put this one together herself.






We also are doing a Blessing Box this year. We were gonna do it last year and time got away so we started it early and were able to get it done in time to start the day after Thanksgiving.
The idea is that you red a card everyday about something you are blessed with that a lot of people are not and you make a little contribution depending on how. you are blessed.
For example:
Are you glad you have indoor plumbing? Give 5 cents for every roll
of TP in your house, counting all the stored away rolls.
and
In some countries of the world, most people cant read. Are you
thankful you can read? Put in a penny for every book in your home.
It also brings into play math and money skills.

Then we have a regular cardboard one that I got at Target on the after Christmas sale that Carson is doing for fun.

He even shared with Talia...



Oh yeah and chocolate one that is similar to the cardboard one....
Other friends are doing some really cool things too.

We were talking about maybe doing these type of countdowns for other occasions. We sometimes do like treasure hunts with clues.

Princesses

OK, I'll admit it, I'm not overly partial to the whole 'Disney princess thing' I think it is a money sucking commercial venture. That being said, Leigh loves princesses, whether or not they are Disney. She's seen a lot of different princesses, including some actual princesses to see what they are all about.

She's actually more into the 'fairy thing'

Anyway, she picked out this book from Bookman's, (our great local used book superstore...)
and it was called, "Disney Princess Crafts"
I was really surprised at how neat some of the crafts were! They were very generic, (even though the book itself is divided into sections titled by a particular Disney Princess name...)

We made the "Jeweled Scrapbook" from the Aurora section...cute!
We used a hinge, bought for 25 cents at the Habitat for Humanity Re-store,



Construction paper, glitter, sequins and a ribbon to hold the pages in...
easy peasy!

Carson's



Leigh's



I think we will be making more stuff out of this book..

Tale of two trees

Last year, my mom sent us a "Christmas in a Box" craft to do. We saved it until this year and got it out last week.



The kids decorated it and put it on the mantle.



They were able to do most of it themselves. The little ornaments hung on the ends of the little cardboard branches.





Then we got our tree on Thursday (adopted it from a nice Jewish family...) and had to put that up this weekend.





We have been house bound due to the Chicken Pox, so it has been great getting stuff done for the holidays.









We're gonna try and decorate the house this week also. Thanksgiving is now just 1 days away! Spending it with friends!

Have a happy!!

Three

Hours Old....

One Candle!

Two Candles!

Three Candles!




I can't believe it's been 3 whole years since he's been here....
He's still a little pip squeak!

He's exactly where he was 3 years ago too....laying right next to me in bed, sleeping.
The wonder of it all.






That's about as prosy as I will be getting...its been a long day.
Love ya little man!



What a crazy,
sword,
firetruck,
Spider man,
cowboy boot,
swimming,
book,
scooter riding,
pretzel
loving
kid!!

Not for the faint of heart..

Apparently, a super hero cape CAN make you fly....even a homemade one...

Asian Inspirations

The kids and I went to Lee Lees market last week with our HS group to seek out foods of Asia. This used to be one of my favorite haunts pre-kids. It is about 2 miles from our old abode. It has a marvelous selection of vegetables and spices to behold. I hadn't been in for about 8 months though. I was reminded how much I enjoyed shopping there while we were visiting. The kids picked out plantains, bitter melon and enoki mushrooms. We also got both nori wraps and rice paper wraps.
We sauteed the plantains and the kids thought they were 'ok' I think they were expecting them to taste exactly like bananas...
The enokis we sauteed with some cabbage and bean sprouts and rice and made spring rolls.





Both kids liked the spring rolls though



We also purchased some Indian foods that we had eaten before out but never cooked. We had bhaji and idli for dinner another night.

The nori sheets, we used just tonight to make some sushi like rolls for dinner. There was leek and tofu in them along with white basmati rice.



Both kids tried them but only Carson ate the whole thing...

Win a vitamix!!

For the Grand Finale…

Go, Go do it!! Enter if you want to give it a try!

BUY NOTHING!!

ok, so I want to get on the bandwagon with this in August. Crunchy Chicken always has some great pep talking going on surrounding this, so watch her blog


(And click on the link to the right over there)------------->

Earth Day

I have no inspiring blog today filled with ideas and the wonderful things we did to commemorate the day.

We just got up, relaxed, colored, rode to the splash pad down the greenbelt and played in the water.



W have been talking lately how our current living situation is a lot more lower impact than we once were. By living in a condo right now, we are 'sharing' a lot of resources that we would otherwise be using solo.



Of course that will change once we move but we will continue to be as low impact as we can there.

Here's a great Earth Day link from Optimum Health via No Impact Man
called Thirty One Tips to reducing your Impact While Saving Money

There are some interesting ideas there.

The kids in there chosen 'green' clothes..

4/21/2009

My Famous children:


I want to one of those mamas who write pages of witty prose or reflective lines or overly flowery, deep or intelligent dedicated tomes on each of their childrens' birthdays; or composes personal letters to them yearly (posted on their public blogs to the whole WWW), but well, I'm not.

Actually I don't even want to be come to think of it.

Today was Leigh's day. She was five. We let her decide what she wanted to do.

We started by visiting our friend Casey at his job (Office Max)



She's like me in that respect, all things office supply are fascinating! I especially like the displays there, so artfully arranged!

Anyway, next we went and played at the Chandler Mall play area while we waited for the Lego store to open!



She spent 45 minutes deciding on something in there.



She ended up getting a set and a PAB cup full of bricks. She even picked out something for Carson to get.

Then on to the Souper Salad for lunch
followed by the Dino museum. (Carson picked those two things for his birthday and she wanted to do the same.)

She put together a woolly mammoth puzzle with her daddy





We came home, [played with Legos for a bit then went to Chipotle for dinner.

By the time we got home from all of that, everyone was spent and there were some overly tired kids in the house. It was not too soon by the time we were ion bed and asleep.

It was 102 today in Scottsdale...I can't believe we are in the 100s already. Summer is on the way!
Tomorrow is Earth Day. I'll post more on our activities then.

Egg hunts

Being a vegan, we didn't dye any eggs this year.
The kids still got to go to TWO different egg hunts:

The first was on Saturday at our friend Sandy's townhouse community.
They are very outgoing there.
The rain didn't deter anyone.
And they have old school playground equipment...nice!



Those eggs were filled with change.



The kids made enough to get Sonic slushies and a bag of suckers!




The SECOND egg hunt was on Easter at my friend Ruth's picnic.



Those eggs were filled with candy!



Some of which my kids didn't like..Darn!

It was a great day for it. Not too hot or cold, about 78 degrees.