The Boys!

Chase and Parker are about 2.5 years apart. They just started really playing together within the last 3-4 months. They would play along side each other but not really together. It has been such a blessing to watch them enjoy one another. Don’t get me wrong. Most days they fight more than they play, but their friendship seems to be getting stronger.

Parker is so imaginative. He will pretend that a piece of wood is a cell phone or a book is an iPad. He will turn anything into a sword or a gun. He loves to dress up. This is so different than Chase. He is very literal and has never been into pretend play. However, he is learning from Parker. It is so neat to see Parker teaching him.

They are very interested in superheroes (Star Wars, Transformers, Captain America, The Incredibles, etc.). They often have battles. I love hearing the conversations that are setting the stage for the battle, gun noises, cries of agony as they are “stabbed” or “shot.”  Sometimes they are too rough and they end up hurt or in an argument. However, I love that they are pretending and enjoying each other.

Here is a picture of them playing with Parker’s new carseat and the box that it came in. They told me that Parker was Captain America that he was “getting strengthened.”

We are giving Maggie the kitchen set for her first birthday because we knew that the boys would be able to enjoy it as well. They will play with her and teach her how to pretend as well.

It really bothered me that Chase had no interest in pretend play. I felt like we ruined him with too much TV and computer/phone games. Growing up, my brother and I would play with our toys for hours. I would play with dolls and he would play with Playmobil and his cowboy dress up toys all the time. I am so grateful that this part of Parker has shown through!

11 months!

Maggie is moving out of the baby stage into “toddlerhood” so fast! She is standing up and cruising around everything. She is even trying to let go of some things. She loves to play with her brothers even though they are a little too rough some times.

She has started to love the park. She really loves to swing, and doesn’t like to get out. It is so nice to be able to take her to the park with the boys.

Here is a video of her walking with her princess car from Grandma Green (please excuse my poor video-taking skills):

Appearance: She isn’t changing as fast. People often comment about how blue her eyes are. They are very blue and don’t look like they will be changing anytime soon. People also comment about how much our kids look alike. It is hard for me to see, but they definitely have similar features.

Sleep: She takes a morning and afternoon nap. They are 1-2 hours in length. She goes to bed at 6:00 and is very cranky if she is awake past that time.  She isn’t waking up much at night. She is sleeping through most nights.

Diaper Size: Still in size 3.

Clothing: She is now pretty much in 18 month clothes and some 24 month thrown in.

Height: Not sure

Weight: Not sure.

Head Circumference: Not sure

Eating Habits: This girl loves to eat! She is eating mostly anything we eat. This is a wonderful stage. I love to not worry about packing so many different types of food.

Development: She is getting more and more active. She says “mama'” and “dada.” She has major separation anxiety. She does not like strangers to hold at all. She gets into EVERY single drawer and cabinet in the house. This girl is like a whirling tornado! Her top 2 teeth broke through at the end of the month. The bottom 2 are still growing in.

No Half Marathon in 2012

Looks like this won’t fit into my schedule this year. Abe and I started the training program. We were doing well, and then 2 rounds of the flu and colds hit our home. This slowed us down, and then I started to stress about getting runs in. After some discussion, we decided that it really wasn’t that important and surely wasn’t something to stress about. It was hard, but we gave up that goal.

Three kids need lots time and energy. I want to be there 100% for my kiddos. I will have lots of time to run someday

Family Rules Printable

A while ago I posted our Family Rules. Here they are:

 

I thought others might want to be able to print them or adjust the original file to personalize them for your family. I created the file in Microsoft Publisher and then save it as a .jpg file.

Here is the the .jpg printable. According to MPIX.com you can print this up to 20”x30.”

Here is the Publisher file.

Happy printing!

Maggie’s Nursery Projects

Maggie will be one next month, and I am now just getting around to taking pictures of the projects I did in her room. It was so fun to decorate for a girl. My mom and I went to Joann's last year and I picked out a fabric that I liked. I wanted something feminine, but not over the top girly. There were so many choices, but I kept going back to this fabric that had apples and pears with a blue background. It was so refreshing and cheerful.
Here it is:

Her crib bedding was made by my Grandma and was used by my sister, Chase and Parker. I just needed to change the ties on the bumper pads to something girly. I wanted to line some baskets with the fabric, make a bow board, and some wall art.
Here is what I came up with:
My inspiration was from this very talented lady! I actually traced the pear and apple from the fabric. I then enlarged or decreased the size of the images for the embroidery and felt cut outs.

The baskets with new liners. I used this tutorial. It was a little bit of a brain teaser, but once I figured it out it was very simple.

The bow board. I used an old memory board and covered it with new fabric.

Here is her name. This was the last project because we couldn’t decide on her name. My inspiration was came from a lady on Etsy. She had each letter framed separately. I thought it was so neat! Unfortunately, the link to her item no longer works. I embroidered her name on matching blue fabric and framed them in IKEA frames. I believe the frames were only about $5.oo. I found the fabric at Wal-Mart for about $1.50/yard.

I had a frame without glass from the game board art project. Got my inspiration from this blog. I found the punch at Michaels, and I had the paper in my scrapbooking stash. Very inexpensive and I was able to use the frame.

Here are the bumper pads with the new ties.

Game Board Art

My mom was de-cluttering her cabinets a while back. She came across some of my old board games. The games were missing pieces, so she decided to get rid of them. She threw them out in the trash can. A few hours later she went out and recovered them from the trash. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them away.
The next time she saw me she mentioned that she had these games and was wanting a way to save them. She mentioned that maybe we could frame the box lids. I took a look at them and loved her idea. After thinking for a while, I thought it might be easier to find frames to fit the game boards rather than the box lids. The game boards measured 19x19 I believe.
I started searching online for frames. I checked out Aaron Brothers and it was going to cost about $140 for 3 frames. I came across square frames from IKEA. They were perfect. They were 20x20 and only $20 per frame!
We headed over there and picked up 3 frames. We came home, cleaned the glass, and popped the game boards into the frames. As we were hanging them up, my mom accidentally stepped on one and the glass broke. I went back and picked up a 4th frame, and I used the glass-less frame for another project for Maggie’s room.

There were some game pieces left as well, so I decided to use them as well. I used the $1.00 wooden frames from Michaels. I painted them white. I covered some cardboard in fabric and hot glued the game pieces to the fabric/cardboard. They turned out pretty cute:

Chutes and Ladders Player:

Candy Land Player:

Memory Card:

These relics from my childhood have been preserved and gave our playroom some much needed wall art .

Coffee Table

I am not a huge fan of lots of furniture and knick knacks. It makes me feel kind of claustrophobic. We also have little children, so the more we have the more they can run into or destroy. However, we were in need of a coffee table. When we have people over, there was no place to put our drinks  food  in the Family Room. The kids needed a place to color and do homework. Abe needed a place to work at night. Maggie needed something to pull up on and walk around. It was time to look into a coffee table.

I started browsing Pinterest for ideas. The barn wood from other projects (here and here) came to mind. These ideas were really neat:

My favorite!! It had instructions as well which was very helpful. The only issue I saw was that it was a little too narrow. I loved the storage potential and the wheels. I wanted the boys to be able to roll the table out of the way, so they could wrestle with Daddy .

I emailed my Grandpa the website. He thought it was doable! We went and scoped out the wood pile, and found some nice pieces. He and my Dad went down the next day and found AMAZING wood. We measured and chose the dimensions we wanted. It was very rough and we were slightly concerned about splinters. He ended up planing the wood and made it very smooth. He used L-brackets and dals to make it very sturdy. We envisioned 3 little kids standing on the table . He worked very hard and about 3 weeks later the table was finished. We figured that the wood alone would have cost $300-500. I spent about $50 in supplies. I have no idea what you would pay for something like this, but it would be quite costly!!

Here is the finished product! It ended up being 48’x38’ and about 20 inches high. It is perfect for our family room. We use it all the time. So grateful for all my Grandpa’s labors!

Top:

Storage Area:

Side View: