The end of a year and beginning of a new one

This is the last night of 2010 and as I sit here thinking of the good and bad of the past year I am so thankful for everything I have! 2011 is going to be amazing with my family and I moving into our new home that we are building. I am so excited for new beginnings! We have been waiting 9 months already for our new house while living with my mom, not that it is that bad living here but it will be very nice to have our own things and space again. I am not really into doing resolutions but I do have lots of new plans for 2011.

I am at home tonight with the little ones while everyone (including my 8 yr old) went to a concert. I am sure they are going to have a blast and I am so happy that Alex gets to see his first concert and that it is Great Big Sea and Barenaked Ladies .. lol .. I am a little jealous.

Have a safe and happy New Year!!!

Thursdays blog hops

This blog hopping is fun. I have seen some awesome blogs over the last 24 hours, my house is a disaster but I have had fun reading :)

Ok so I still have lots to learn because I can not figure out how to copy someones button to put on here for the blog hop link.

love is everywhere This is the link to her page and you can join the blog hop there.
www.bassgiraffe.com another great Thursday blog hop
http://www.obviously-marvelous.com/ Thirsty Thursdays blog hop

Feel free to let me know how to add a button ;)

Wordless Wednesday

Christmas morning. Some reindeer antlers and mom's new gloves. Doesn't get much funner than that :)

Wyatt's new toys :)

Out of all the toys Wyatt got for Christmas his favourite thing to play with the last few days has been an ice cube tray with poms poms and a pair of little tongs.

He loves his Do a dots he got for Christmas and had a blast stamping every box he could find (and the dog)

He got so many neat things for Christmas but most have been packed away already waiting for the room to use them at the new house.

Winter friends blog hop 12/29

I have never done this before but it looks like fun so I thought I would try it out.

I hope I did it right :)

-follow the 3 blogs that are hosting this snack bar reviews, 3 princes and a princess 2, luvin my lil monkeys
-follow the blog before you and leave your link

Merry Christmas!!

We will be busy and out of the house for most of the next 2 days so I thought I would come on and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!! I will have lots of pictures when I come back and will post some of our holidays. We are changing up our regular routine a bit this year since we are not in our own house but it should still be a great time!

Happy holidays to everyone and their families and I can't wait to hear how everyone's Christmas turned out :)

Playing with sponges

A couple weeks ago I bought Wyatt a 10 pack of assorted sponges and didn't quite know what I was going to do with them. Well tonight he was playing in the cupboard (as you can tell by the mess of the floor) and he was putting different lids into different size containers and I thought of the sponges. He had a blast with them! I cut them into different shapes to make them more fun. I can't wait to see him play with them in water :)

Putting them in a juice container

Trying to get the lid on

he thought of using the tongs to take them back out

and put them in another bowl

Just looking too cute :) He is wearing a shirt and tie because he was just at his brother's Christmas concert

He kept bringing them up to me saying cheese to get me to take a picture of the sponges in the jug

He was 'getting' his nose and ours :)

Twitter

I am determined to learn how to use Twitter this year. Since there is just over a week left I should really get on it. For some reason I am having a hard time 'getting' what Twitter is all about. I need a kid to come explain it to me ..lol. I have had several people tell me that I should have links from my blog to Twitter but I don't quite get it. I will let you know how my experience goes over the next couple days with learning how to use it. Any tips would be great :) I know I will probably get started then realize how easy it is. My Twitter name (?) is Kimhere2 feel free to stop by and leave a comment or advice :)

Christmas shopping

I am happy to say I am done my Christmas shopping and wrapping. Every year I buy things early then I find the coolest things right before Christmas and end up buying way too much for the kids. My theory is that I should wait until the last minute and buy it all at once so I don't over buy.

I found a new online store that I have been looking through and can't stop ..lol. It is the csn stores. They have everything from toys for the kids, knives for the inlaws, towels for the house and TV stands for flat screens. I wish I would have seen this store before I finished all my shopping. You have to check them out. I am thinking I am going to do a review and giveaway in the new year with them.

Amazon had a huge sale on Melissa and Doug sets so of course I had to pick some of those up after I was already done my shopping. Everywhere seems to be having sales now that I am all done shopping. I MUST stop shopping!!

How do you do your Christmas shopping? Do you start early and pace it out or do you wait until December and do it all at once?

Melissa and Doug's amazing customer service

I had ordered some Melissa and Doug sets a couple weeks ago and we were so excited to receive them to play with. When we opened our package we noticed there was something wrong with 2 of the sets. I was not sure what to do since I am not the type to complain but we pay good money for the quality of Melissa and Doug. I emailed them on Monday morning to make them aware of the issue and to my surprise I received a response this morning (Tuesday). The woman I spoke to was great and totally understood my worries about the toys (she called to talk to me personally instead of just through email). She is replacing both sets! It is so nice to actually speak to a person and such a polite person at that.

I have been a fan of Melissa and Doug for a long time and the service I received today proved to me how great of a company they are!

Thank you Melissa and Doug for your great customer service and great quality toys!

Our Christmas tree

Every year we let Alex pick out the tree and now that he is 8 the tree is looking better (we have had some really interesting trees in the last 5 years). This year we let him decorate the whole thing too, Wyatt helped a bit but mostly he just kept taking the candy canes of to eat.

Because we are waiting for our house to be finished most of our stuff is in storage. We couldn't find our bulb box so we had to go to Walmart and buy a couple packs to decorate. The kids get a new ornament every year and it is always exciting to bring out the ones from years before, I guess next year will be extra special since they didn't get to see them this year.

The kids get a gift bag every year full of goodies for the tree. This year in their bags they had 2 Hallmark ornaments (since we didn't have any ornaments and they had some 50% off), candy canes, chocolate santa/bulbs, some little ornaments from the dollar store and some jingle bells. Wyatt doesn't really get excited for the bags but Alex can't wait on tree decorating day to see what he got in his bag.

Next year we are going to do 2 trees at the new house. One will be a real tree in our living room and the second will be a fake tree in the basement for the kids to decorate with all homemade ornaments. I am so excited to have our own house again! 93 more days until we move in :)

I think Alex did a great job for an 8 yr old and I might just leave it like this :) He is very proud of it!

I'm loving giveaways :)

Thanks to a great blog Family Treasures I have won 2 great products in the last few months.

I won reusies in Novemeber. These bags are great! They are reusable snack bags, they are machine washable and very well made. I used one today for Wyatt's cheerios and they stayed in the bag no problem while in my purse. They were great for snacking on the go. You have to go check them out! I will try to get a picture tomorrow of Wyatt using his :)

I also just won a Kix cereal giveaway and I will let you know what it is like when I get it ;)

Thank you Family Treasures for the great opportunity to try new products!

Laundry, laundry, laundry

Do you ever feel like it is never ending? I had 2 sick kids today so I have now washed all the blankets in my house. I feel like I have been doing laundry all day! Seriously I think it was 8 loads today. I can't wait for summer again to be able to hang stuff on the line.

One load was cloth diapers and as I was filling the machine I was noticing how many different brands and types of diapers I have. I have enjoyed using cloth diapers and I think they are so great for Wyatt (not to mention they are sooo cute!).

Seriously how cute is that bum :)

I have made my switch to natural laundry last year. I use Rockin' Green laundry detergent (sometimes Nellies) and I switched to dryer balls when I can't put clothes on the line. I find I get a lot of static with dryer balls and have been researching some natural ways to avoid all the static in the winter. Any hints would be greatly appreciated!

Well I should get going and put away 8 loads of laundry.

Wyatt's birthday party

We had a blast at Wyatt's farm themed birthday party. He had so much fun with all his friends! I really enjoyed making the treat bags and games for the kids to play with.

This was Chocolate pudding and the spoon was dipped in pink merkins chocolate and I used a pink smartie for the nose.

The cupcakes I made for the party. We had pigs, chicks, and sheep. For the pig I dyed vanilla icing pink with red food colouring, pink mini marshmallows for the nose, fruit to go bars cut into triangles for ears and mini chocolate chips for the eyes. For the chicks I used coconut dyed with yellow food colouring, an orange jelly bean for the beak and mini chocolate chips for the eyes. For the sheep I used white marshmallows for the wool, a mini m&m for the mouth and mini chocolate chips for the eyes. They were vanilla cake with french vanilla icing.

Wyatt with a cup of chips playing with his balloon farm animals. We drew pig, cow and sheep faces on them and the kids had to herd them into a pen we made out of cardboard.

Wyatt getting some tickles from mommy :)

The kids goodie bags. They were in a brown paper bag for the kids to decorate with crayons, a juice box, the piggy muck and spoon, animal crackers, a noise maker, a sucker, and little farm animals.

I can't wait to be in the new house and host more parties. We had a craft table set up and the older kids spent most of the time there playing with crafts and stickers.

Wyatt is 2!!!

Today is Wyatt's second birthday. I can't believe how fast time flies! He is such an amazing little boy and I love watching him grow and learn. I checked in on him this morning as he was still sleeping and my heart just over flows with love for him. I am so proud of the little man he is becoming and excited to watch him explore and change in the coming year. His party is on Sunday and I am sure I will have lots of photos for Sunday's post :)

Mike also comes home today (which I think is the best birthday gift for Wyatt). He will be home for 4 weeks for the holidays and we are so excited to have him with us for so long.

Wordless Wednesday

Winter car seat safety

I think too many people think that if their kid is in a car seat then they are safe. You see children with straps so loose that they would not do a thing for the child in an accident or car seats that rock side to side when the car turns a corner. I have had to bite my tongue so many times when I see children in car seats. One of the biggest things that bother me is when children are in car seats with winter coats on. The coat will compress and those straps will no longer be holding your child in.

Wyatt wears a fleece coat under his winter coat on the way to our car, I then remove his winter coat and he sits in the car seat with just his fleece coat on (and usually a hat). He is still warm and he is SAFE!! When we get where we are going his coat goes back on before he goes outside. It really only takes an extra minute for his safety. He is great at getting the coat off and on and I think he would be uncomfortable being in a bulky coat in the straps anyway.

These are pictures I took to show how loose the straps would be if the coat was compressed down. When I put him in with his jacket on I put them as tight as I could. you can see how much extra space there is with the coat off. These pictures were all taken in a car seat on my kitchen floor. It was too cold to do all this outside so I used our spare seat. It needed to be cleaned anyway so it wasn't a bad thing to bring it in the house.

 Wyatt in his car seat with just a long sleeve shirt on

This is something Wyatt would wear in the car. When I put him in the settings were still the same as above. It is a bit tighter but I didn't have to change the settings of the straps.

Wyatt in his winter coat. We had to loosen the straps a lot! I pulled the strap as tight as I could.

  

When we took the coat off.

Wyatt stuck his cups in between himself and the straps

I asked him if he could get out of the strap

Still doing it

He got his arms out and only took him a minute

This was just him posing and I thought it was cute so I added it :)

The end to another week

So I am a little behind on Wyatt's stuff this week because we have been so busy doing crafts and I have been sewing like crazy! I am just finishing up some more beanbags for Christmas gifts and I finally finished the rest of the spinny spellers. So tonight while I was cleaning up Wyatt's toy room I decided to switch his books since we have been on the letter S for a week now. I think we will do some extra time working with the letter S because we have not taken the time on it much. We are doing J for Christmas week so I think we will just continue with S until then.



Wyatt got a package in the mail from his Grampy today for his birthday and got a ball tent. He loves it!! (I would have loved it better if it had come with an air compressor) We are going to get him some more balls for it and use it at his birthday party. He loves putting the balls through the holes on the side. We have been using this as a great opportunity to work on colours with him, he knows all the names but doesn't point to the right colour :)

My little man is getting so big! He has been stumped on puzzles for awhile and I just keep introducing them to him. On Friday he picked this one up and got them all in by himself out of the blue :) Now he is hooked so I brought out a couple more for him and he is loving them. Again another opportunity for working on colours.

Wyatt has been playing with his baby doll a lot lately. He likes being a little daddy and feeds his "baby Joe", tickles him, reads to him and plays with him. While I was getting a diaper to change Wyatt's bum he had to have one for baby joe too. He had to pick the diaper himself and has chose a new one everyday since then. I have so many small cloth diapers in storage and I wish I knew where they were so I could get some for Wyatt to play with. These ones are larges and too big for baby Joe. Wyatt has been learning how to undo the snaps which is great until he starts undoing his own diapers :) I had to switch him to snap diapers a couple months ago because he figured out how to undo the velcro ones and every time I got him out of bed he had no diaper on.


I will post Wyatt's books of the week tomorrow :)

Messy Church

wow I am blogging a lot today!

Tonight I attended a program called Messy Church. It was great and Wyatt loved it! This is the description my friend wrote up so I am just stealing it from her:

Messy Church is a fun, interactive, CHILD-GEARED event that celebrates the family unit as a whole and recognizes that the typical "Sunday morning structure" isn't always accommodating to families. It's a chance to get out and enjoy church in an a-typical setting where the children can interact and be free of the standard structure of church school and a typical worship service. Best of all, it's a chance for them to get to know other children and families in their area!

A typical Messy Church evening includes:

A warm welcome, snacks, etc.
Crafts & Activities (geared for all ages)
Dinner
Presentation of a Gospel Story
Small, Child-Geared Interactive Worship Service
Fellowship

It was a great experience and everyone was so nice and inviting which was great since I didn't know anybody. Wyatt did lots of crafts and he loved the singing! He was being the little social bug he usually is and talking with everybody. If you here of something like this in your area I highly recommend attending. The best thing was that is was all different churches in the community that got together.

 Check it out at www.messychurch.org.uk!!

I think every community should do something like this to bring families together.

Spinny Spellers

One day while I was looking through the different blogs I follow I found this spinny speller on counting coconuts. I loved it and knew I could make one too. My brother cut some 1 1/2" blocks out of oak for me, sanded the corners smooth and drilled a hole through them, then cut me some 1/4" dowel and I bought the wooden knobs for the end, my brother just had to drill the hole a bit bigger in the end for the dowel to fit in. (you can buy the blocks at Michael's but my brother wanted to cut them out of one piece of wood to save me money) I painted them and stencilled the letters on. They were so simple to make (for me, since my brother did all the wood work for me .. lol) and I am sure the kids are going to love them!

These spinny spellers are so great for pre readers. Some of the words they make are just nonsense and some are actual words but they are great for teaching how sounds go together and how not all sounds will make a word. I think it is great for a little bit older (4-6) to show them how if you change one letter you change the sound of the word.

The "cvc" (consonant-vowel-consonant) words are great because they are simple words that are easy to pronounce.

I used the same letters that counting coconuts did since they make quite a few real words.

Block 1 - B,C,H,M
Block 2 - A,E,O,U
Block 3 - D,G,P,T


Thank you counting coconuts for such a great idea!

Pine cone ornaments

When I was young we used to make these pine cone ornaments for the tree. You can decorate them any way you like (with fake snow, googly eyes and antlers, glitter). They are just pine cones picked up in the backyard and baked so they are not sticky then decorated. They make a great handmade craft to give as Christmas gifts.

All you have to do is:
- Go outside and find some pine cones (this is a great activity for the kids to do)
- shake out any dirt loose dirt that is on them
- put them in the sink in warm water and let them soak for about 1/2 hour
- place on a foil lined cookie sheet and bake them at 200F for about 1/2-2 hours. You will see when the ends open and they get shiny. They will not be sticky anymore and ready to decorate after they cool.

These cones will last for years prepped this way.

Wyatt helped make this one. I will post the other ones as I make them

When to decorate for Christmas??

When to decorate for Christmas?? I am the type of person that puts my tree up days before Christmas. I start making Christmas ornaments and preparing for the holiday around December 1st but I do not put any decorations up until around the 12-15th and no tree up until the 20th at the earliest. Wyatt's birthday is in the beginning of December so it is great to not focus on the holidays too much before his birthday so he still gets his own special time. Growing up we always decorated our tree on Christmas eve and we loved it! This year I think we will start decorations on the 14th and the tree is going up on the 21st.

When do you start decorating for the holidays and put your tree up? Is there a reason you do it when you do?

Snowman crafts

This morning we woke up and it started snowing so we decided to do a snowman craft. We have started the letter S this week so it is really neat that it started snowing :)

Wyatt's snowman today :)

We used a piece of printer paper and drew on 3 circles for the snowman so Wyatt knew where to glue the cotton balls, glue, cotton balls, some scrap material for the scarf and hat (you could also use construction paper, I just happen to have some scraps on the table), googly eyes and gems ( I wanted to use little black pom poms but Wyatt wanted the gems so I let him. I wanted to do a mouth and nose but Wyatt didn't want to put anything else on it.

He is working hard and concentrating on gluing the cotton balls.

This is the start of our winter theme in the front room. I made the snow man and Wyatt helped me stick it to the wall.

First snowfall!!

Today is an exciting day!! We got our first snowfall. Wyatt kept looking outside saying rain so I took him outside to show him that is was snow. He loves it!! He is not a fan of wearing mittens and the snow kept sticking to them so he was getting upset. He learned how to try to catch snow on his tongue and was shovelling snow with a fly swatter ( we need to get him a shovel).