Goodbye, Old Computer

Our computer is dying.  It's been pretty slow for a while, but now it will not boot up all the way.  It gets super close to finishing the boot-up and looks like it's done, but it's forever "thinking" and will not let you open any programs.  Fortunately, we think the hard drives are probably okay...and our pics and stuff are likely intact just waiting to be downloaded somewhere else.  I've been wishing for a new computer for a while, but have been making due with the one we had...but now we'll be getting a new one.  Until then my computer time will be limited to our laptop which is even more painfully slow than our desktop...so while I'm very "behind" on posting things and there is a lot I would like to show you, I probably won't be posting much for a week or so.  Probably all for the better, so I can get more done on all the Christmas projects I would like to get done.

Snow Drifts

We got our first big snow a couple nights ago.  School was cancelled yesterday, not because the roads were too icy, but there were too many snow drifts across them to be able to drive until they got plowed.  Some part of our yard had snow nearly a foot deep and other parts, you could see the ground underneath.  Our covered front porch had snow 6 inches or so deep. 

I know many of you reading this are already thinking I'm a snow wimp.  I'm sure this snow storm wasn't all that big compared to ones we'll see later, but it's still kind of new and exciting to us. 

Our five little pumpkins still sitting on their gate.

We've never lived in a place before where you got snow drifts.  Portland and Seattle get very wet snow.  Even when we lived in Utah, I don't remember ever getting snow that blew into drifts. 

Anyway...this morning there is school.  I felt a little bad as I sent Firecracker walking off through the snow to the school.  We didn't think about shovelling the path yesterday.  I felt a lot better when I saw the snow was only a couple inches deep once she got to the path outside our back gate.  (That's about the time I took this picture.) 

Then I watched her as she walked across the big vacant field to make sure everything went okay.  We can watch her walk all the way to her school from our back window.  Then as Firecracker walked, she slowed down quite a bit and kind of doddled.  I opened up the door and yelled at her to hurry, she did a bit, but then slowed down again...then I realized the snow was up past her knees and she was having a really hard time getting through it.

Poor girl, she's in kindergarten and her mother sends her out to walk to school by herself...through snowdrifts.  I quickly put Sweet Pea in her crib and told Little Brother to be good while I ran out to help her through.  I figured it was better to leave them here for 5 minutes than to leave Firecracker stranded in the snow for 5+ minutes while I got them dressed warm enough to go out...and anyway then what...try to pull all three kids through the snow drifts.  Anyway, she made it through and is presumably having a fun half day at school before we made the drive to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving.

Besides the dicey walk to school, the kids are loving playing the snow.  It's too dry for snowmen, though, so for now we'll still have to build our snowmen in the house.

If you're not lucky (?) enough to have snow, or your kids are going stir crazy because they're cooped up because you have snow, you can check out my last couple posts with some winter activity ideas.

• Building pretend snowmen
• Best Ever Snowflakes...which I have to say...when I finally got a chance to go outside and look at them, they look pretty good from the outside too.

I'm off to pack the car...

Best Ever Paper Snowflakes

...or at least these are the best that I have ever made by a long shot.  Today I took our fall leaves down and put up a bunch of these.  Before when I've made paper snowflakes they always turned our square and weird looking.  Now I've learned some tricks to making beautiful round ones. 

Surprise Snowstorm?!?

...in the living room.

Little Brother's birthmom Liz came to visit last week for several days.  We all had a great time with her, but Little Brother especially enjoyed the visit.  After all, what's not to love about an extra grown-up in the house whose willing to spend all her time playing with you?!? 

Liz thought up all sorts of fun new games...like building snowmen in the house.  Okay, I think Little Brother initially started it by making snow angels in the carpet...

...But Liz kept his imagination going.  They kept adding more cold weather gear as they went along.  You start by rolling the snowball.

Thanksgiving Ideas

I thought I'd link to some of the things we did for Thanksgiving last year since I was new to blogging then and a lot of my current readers probably missed them.  Sorry the pics aren't the best...these were taken with our old camera before it died.

Turkey Rolls!  Our rolls have always been pretty delicious thanks to my good friend Patti's recipe.  You can find the recipe and directions by following the link.

Here's an idea for making Turkey cards by stamping your child's hand.  You've probably seen them all over the internet lately.  (The best examples were mailed out and this was the one left to take a picture of...sorry. )

The Ugly Pumpkin Book and Activity.  We're planning to read this again this year with a different activity...but in case I don't get around to posting it, here's a fun took to read and super easy felt activity to go with it.


And of course you'll want to check out the Leaf-Turkey Shirts I posted about yesterday.

Leaf Picture Shirts

Maybe you've been wondering where I am...or not...we've been thoroughly enjoying a visit with Little Brother's birthmom...plus the day getting ready for her visit and the days catching up after, so blogging has been on the back burner.  We did some fun stuff with her, which deserves sharing, but I figured I better go ahead and post about this since Thanksgiving is almost here and if I wait much longer, it will be too late.

Generous Surprises

I thought this was a nice thought for Sunday, especially leading up to the holidays.


I hope I can teach my children to be more like the older boy...and that we can find those who need help this holiday season and know how to help them.

I'm a sucker...

...for the school book orders...especially their books that are $3 and under.  Yep, a big sucker!  Parents like me are the reason the book order companies exist.  You remember the book orders, right?  They haven't changed much since I was a kid.

I know I'm not the only one whose a sucker because last time I went to Goodwill, I scored someone else's old stash of bookorder books for 50 cents a piece.

I used to dream of having my kids' bookshelves filled with nothing but nice hardbound of great works of classic children's literature.

But I'm starting to see the value in the cheap paperback bookorder versions too...and even the value in some of the mass produced, popular character books that are not quite great literature. 

• The paperback ones actually hold up pretty well when you reinforce the binding with good mailing tape.   (If you don't know what that means, click on the link.  It will extend the life of your paperback and boardbooks by at least 3 or 4 times.)
• My kids LOVE the books with their favorite characters, even if I don't see them as great works of literature...and who wants to spend full price for those kinds of books?
• I don't have to pay shipping...which is important when there are no bookstores nearby.
• And most of all...Firecracker WANTS to read them and it gives her motivation to read more.

So guess what my kids' stocking are going to be filled to the brim with this year?

Santa Claus Sightings

I'm wondering if anyone can help me out.  Every so often...maybe once a week or so...Little Brother looks out across our backyard through our sliding glass door and says, "I see Santa Claus!"  This happened at least 6 or 7 times over the last month or so.  We can't figure it out. 

Here's a closer look.

And so it begins...

I've started on Christmas presents.  I actually started last week because...believe it or not, my "blog life" is usually a couple days to a week behind my "real life."  The real shame about craft blogging and Christmas presents is that you're super excited about the presents you're making for people because the idea is SO brilliant and perfect for your loved one...but YOU CAN'T SHOW ANYONE...yet.

So I made awesome progress on a project, using some of this sweet thread.  In fact, I emptied the spool of thread on this project and just have a little pink left on the bobbin...all the while listening to Christmas music.

Don't worry, though.  Even though I won't be able to post about most of the gifts, I've got a few projects from last Christmas I never blogged about, as well as some from even farther back before I had a blog at all.  I'm also hoping get some archiving done, so I can share some "Best of..." posts with you to help you find some of the better stuff in my archives to give you some ideas of things to make for this holiday season. 

And I might sneak on a few pictures of stuff I'm making for my own kids, we'll see.

Anyone else started their Christmas crafting yet?  What are you all working on?

Colorful Chameleons - Book & Activity

Today was one of those days when I wanted to skip "preschool."  I didn't have anything planned and was in a bit of a slump.  Little Brother kept bugging me though, "Mom, When are we going to do preschool?!?"  I guess I must be doing something right if he loves it so much, huh?

Anyway, I pulled A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni off the shelf, just to read it to the kids.  It's about how a chameleon is sad he doesn't have his own color like other animals.  He decides to hide on a leaf the rest of his life so he'll finally have a set color...but then fall comes and the leaf changes from green to yellow, and then to red before falling off the tree.  (Perfect story for this time of year!  I would have known that sooner if I'd actually picked up the book!)  Then he finds a friend chameleon and they decide to stay together so even if they don't have a set color, at least they'll match each other.

I'm ready to be "over" our color unit, so we can move onto other things, and I figured if I read this to the kids, we could take it back to the library.  It wasn't until I'd finished reading the book that an idea came for our activity, and it turned out awesome and was so easy!

I grabbed some wax paper from the drawer, and traced the chameleon on the cover for each of the kids with a permanent marker. 

I thought about cutting it out, but then realized the tail and legs would last about 30 seconds if they were cut out, so I just roughly cut around the main shape.  Then I handed the chameleons to them and we ran around the house helping the chameleons change color.  Little Brother LOVED it, and it now ranks among my favorite preschool activities to date. 

We had yellow.

And green (this dresser is a prime candidate for a re-paint).

And orange on our pumpkin jars (and see the fall paintings made it on the mantle eventually)

T-shirt scraps colored

And "woody" colored as Little Brother called it.

Perhaps my personal favorite "road" colored...black and yellow striped.

And of course because there's still so much Halloween candy around, we have candy colored.

"Outside colored"

And he even found his way onto one of our window leaves like in the story. 

And of course there were many more we didn't take pictures of.

Sweet Pea was a little disturbed that hers didn't have a color of his own, so she tried to color him with a marker...but I wasn't going to hand over the permanent markers so she could make it stick.

Now this brings me to the real point of this post if you've read this far...if you ever don't feel like doing activities with your kids or you think doing preschool types activities with your kids is too hard...just do it!  Even though I didn't have anything planned this turned a blah morning into a great one for me and the kids.  They love the activities and don't care if they're last minute or silly.  The more you start to do these kinds of activities with your kids, the more the ideas will come, and the better the relationship with your kids will be.  There are days when my kids drive me crazy (at moments today even), but it's pay-back in a small way when they beg for "preschool time" because it lets me know that they really appreciate the time and attention they get with it, and I've been amazed at how much they learn.

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