Picture Perfect

Picture perfect for more than one reason. This might be my favorite picture of my son.
So we've been busy lately with a trip to Oregon for Thanksgiving and now enjoying the magical season of Christmas. A package came in the mail for the kids all the way from the North Pole!
Inside they found this...
And inside that they found this...
This little guy has been watching us and reporting back to the North Pole. At night he seems to get into mischief, though, like getting into the cookie jar to have a tasty snack or pulling out all the crayons to color but forgetting to clean up. My son has been pretty harsh with our guest. He has chewed him out multiple times and said he was a naughty elf, especially after the cookie jar incident.
For other news our baby is now 4 months old.

Three turkeys

Check out my 3 little turkeys.
So now you know what I've been up to with all my free time. Oh wait, what free time-I mean all that time I should have been sleeping but knew I had to work on my projects because the kids were all sleeping.
I used ribbon to make the turkey feathers, beak, and waddle. They were fairly easy to make and turned out pretty cute.
And I wanted to include a pic of our growing baby. I put some striped tights on her and she looked so cute with all the bright pink and other colors. I love how she is always smiling for me.

3 months old

And we can't leave out number 3 from all the fun and festivities. Here's just a few fun pics of our baby.

To start off, Vivi was blessed on Zora's birthday which was also the day that John returned from his long rotations in the east. It was a special day and fun to have so many people join us for the occasion. Isn't her bonnet too cute?

In addition, I made this little spider outfit for her for Halloween. She loves to grab the ribbons and pull them to her mouth.

Awesome October

Sorry I'm behind on posts but here's what we've been up to lately...
Before it got too cold, we went on a short hike. I wanted to do something that would use up my kids' energy, but my son refused to walk and was carried the whole way. Go figure!

For our neighborhood preschool we went to a pumpkin patch and the kids picked out pumkins. They charged by the pound so it was really cheap (less than a dollar), especially since you can see our daughter could hardly lift the one she found.

The kids also made pumpkins. I cut scraps of orange tissue paper that the kids stuck on clear contact paper with jack-o-lantern faces. My son wouldn't pose for the camera so I only have his art work.

We found this really fun website at http://tpcraft.blogspot.com/ that has tons of ideas for using toilet paper rolls. We borrowed one of their ideas and came up with this to add to our Halloween decorations.
And this is the kids being silly after we lit up our Halloween spooky jars. My son enjoyed putting out the fires that I kept having to relight.
Earlier the kids made jack-o-lanterns with orange play dough and black beans. So then we had to try spiders with black play dough, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes. I love all the eyes.

My son decided to make ghosts and cats instead since he didn't know what to do with the pipe cleaners.

And I decided to make some Halloween shirts for my girls. I would have made one for my son but I couldn't find any patterns that weren't girly so let me know if you have ideas. I made this with a Walmart $3.88 shirt, white and orange ribbon, and googly eyes.
And of course there was trick or treating.
This year we went to 2 trunk or treats and 2 carnivals. Thus I'm sick of candy wrappers everywhere but my kids are sure loving all the candy.

Say Cheese!

I know I've said this about my other kids but this time it's absolutely true. My Viv is the happiest baby ever. She smiles whenever possible and hardly cries. She sleeps so well and is so content all the time. I feel very fortunate to have such a sweetie.

Pumpkin Playdough

We love October because of the beautiful Fall weather and changing leaves. We also love getting ready for Halloween. Today I made orange play dough with a little pumpkin spice and the kids made pumpkins out of it. They used black beans to make the faces.
Aren't they cute?
Isaac enjoyed pushing in beans rather than making faces, but at least it occupied his time for a good 30 minutes. (:

Two months and happy!

So this video is for Viv's Daddy. He hasn't seen her smile yet which is sad because she smiles all the time. It just seems that everytime I pull the camera out, she gets distracted and stops smiling. But the other night, I finally caught her smiling. So Daddy, this if for you! Hopefully it motivates you to do your best on your presentation and be AWESOME. Your daughter is rooting for you!

Sidewalk Painting

Here's the new activity that we tried. I've seen tons of ideas on the internet for sidewalk paint and decided to try it with my kids. It was really easy. I just mixed cornstarch and water and added food coloring to make chalk-like paint.

Then the kids did the rest.

When it dries, it looks just like chalk, but it is faint in color. Use a lot of dye to make it show up.

Singing to her Sister

My four year old is a mother in the making. She is so helpful with her little sister and it's fun to catch her taking care of the baby. This was one of the those moments.

3 Sweet Sleepers

One of my favorite times of the day is when all three of my kids are sleeping. (I wonder why!) They are just so dang cute too when they're asleep.



The strange thing is my two oldest prefer the floor.

Viv video

I tried to get a video of our baby smiling or talking since she does these most of the time now and her dad hasn't seen it, but this is all I caught on tape after 3 tries. Go figure.

I also wanted him to see what a chunk she's become.

Princess Z

If you don't know already, Zora is obsessed with pink and being a princess. If I tell her she's silly, she responds back with, "No, I'm a princess," and if I put any clothes other than pink on our baby, she say's they're ugly. I've been promising now for months to make a crown for Zora and I finally got around to do it. Here's how it turned out.

21 days

So it's finally close enough to the time that John returns home so we started a count down chain. We ran out of green and yellow so the kids decorated white scraps of paper with crayons and stickers. They wanted to show off their work to Daddy. Can't wait to see you Dad!

Twin Princesses

Grandma sent the girls matching dresses and Vivi is finally fitting into hers. She's growing too fast, but don't they look so cute?
If you look closely, you can also see that Zora had been crying. We were trying to get ready for church and she wanted to wear her pink princess dress. Mean mom was in a hurry and made her wear the new dress. We couldn't get her to smile until she was holding Vivi. Zora is obsessed with PINK right now. Must have gotten that from her Daddy! (:

Window Art with Craft Foam

I have been trying to come up with ideas to keep my kids entertained while their Dad's away and this is another one of my projects I found online and made. So easy and fun. All you need are scissors, craft foam, water, a window, and a spray bottle or paint brush. Cut shapes out of craft foam and let your kids paint water or spray it on a window. Then they can stick the foam onto the window to make cool pictures. I used my Cricut to help with some of the shapes and this is what the kiddos came up with.
Notice how dirty my window is?

A Stroll Outside

Here's a picture of our little one with her sun hat which is obviously too big right now. I wanted to keep the sun out of her eyes while we went on a walk but unfortunately, I should have thought of wind instead. Our little jaunt didn't last very long because Vivi couldn't handle the wind blasting her in the face.

Fingerprint Fun

So I've been looking for fun things to do with the kids to keep then busy. One thing we did while Isaac was sleeping was Zora helped my make thank you cards using her finger and ink pads. We got a little carried away with some of them but here's what we came up with. You can make just about anything that has a circle or oval in it's shape. I'm thinking we'll try making some pumpkins for Halloween, and maybe a spider too. For winter we'll have to make a snowman. This was really fun to do and easy to make. Even with my limited art ability, they look pretty cute and I'm sure Grandparents will love them knowing it's their little one's fingerprints on the page.



This one is our favorite. It reminds us of the Hungry Caterpillar that Zora loves to read about all the time!