The dog ate WHAT???

I'm so glad that I took a photo of the handprint ornament that we made for Dominic because very shortly after the photo was taken, the ornament disappeared. My first reaction was to question Dominic. He's known to leave things in odd places so I wanted to get it out of him while he still remembered where he may have put it. Not one to know to lie his way out of trouble yet, he told me that he in fact did NOT touch the ornament.

After asking hubby about it's whereabouts and getting the same answer that only leaves one more option: the dog! That dirty ol' dog must have thought it was a tasty treat just sitting out in the open like that and decided to make off with it in the midst of the night! Scoundrel!

Now we have to make another one!

I also had an impromptu photo shoot with the babes the other day. I made my mom a card using the photos:

What do you think???

We are having 5 of Dominic's close friends over Friday night for a special viewing of Elf in anticipation of the holidays! I put together a salt dough ornament mix for each family to take home and will be including an x-mas cookie cutter with it, too. We'll have all kinds of Christmas snacks and we're so excited to see everyone. I'll be sure to post pics of all the fun!

On the first day of Christmas...

Before getting to the meat of my post, I just have to share a rare find: Jillian is SMILING!

My poor girl isn't happy unless she's being held (help!) so I rarely get to take a photo of her while she's smiling. Isn't that a cute smile? And please let's not forget the legwarmers. melt...

I had a friend ask me today if I had any ideas for doing a 12 days of Christmas activity with my kids. Funny enough, I have a few ideas that I have bookmarked and have always wanted to try out, but haven't had the opportunity to do so. Until now...

I got the book out a couple of days ago and looked it over again. These follow along with the carol, "The 12 days of Christmas".

Traditionally the 12 days starts on Christmas and ends on the 12th night, January 6th. La Befana's night.

Anyway, I promised her I would get the list posted so here I am. All through the house not a creature is stirring not even the spouse! (I just made that up! Clever, no?)

1st day: Make an ornament for the tree out of salt dough and paint a bird.
2nd day: Read a story about turtles or make a game of slow/fast (like red light/green light).
3rd day: Learn a few French words and use them throughout the day or cook something French.
4th day: Practice phone etiquette. (Never hurts to start early, right?)
5th day: Go out for donuts. (Get it, golden rings???)
6th day: Dye eggs. (It's not just an Easter activity.)
7th day: Make origami swans.
8th day: Make chocolate milk. (Or hot chocolate)
9th day: Do some new dance moves.
10th day: Pretend to have a knighting ceremony.
11th day: Use a bubble pipe to make TONS of bubbles!
12th day: Make a drum out of an empty Kleenex box and a balloon.

There you have it! Looking back at my list I think I WILL do this. Only thing is, we are packing up to move the first week of January. I might as well give it a go, right?

A lazy day for reflection

Today is a chilly 33* here. Little man is down with a low-grade fever and little lady is napping all bundled up in a cozy warm blanket. It's a lazy day all around. A perfect opportunity to reflect on the upcoming holiday season.

I realized that I've been pretty introverted the last couple of weeks. Not really sure why, but I think it has to do with the fact that we had 30+ guests here for Thanksgiving and I was in full on hostess mode.

I really need to get back in the friendship saddle. Christmas is the perfect excuse to get back in the swing of things. Here's some things I have planned to help me re-focus:

**Attend any and all holiday parties that we are invited to.

**Make and deliver gifts for all of our friends and/or neighbors. Any ideas???

**Offer to help friends with wrapping gifts. Perhaps have a mom's night out where we have a wrapping party?

**Like last year I plan to have some of Dominic's closest friends over for a pre-Christmas party. Last year we exchanged favorite Christmas stories. This year I'm thinking we'll get the outdoors heater out, strike up the chimenea and roast marshmallows while we huddle together under blankets watching Elf on the garage door. (We have a projector that has yet to be used.)

That's all I've thought of so far. Any traditions that you guys do with friends that you'd like to share? Leave me a comment!

On another note, we made salt dough ornaments yesterday and painted them this morning. It was a super fun activity! We made ornaments for each of the kids, one for each of his cousins and one for his bestie, Andrew.

Here's the recipe for the salt dough:
1/2 cup salt
1 cup flour
1/2 cup water
Mix all ingredients together until it forms a dough. Roll out on floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. Bake in oven for 2 hours at 250*F.

Camp Catch-up

Lagging behind again, I'm afraid. Here's the recap for the last day of our Fall Camp:

We read a short book titled, "The Halloween Play". It was a great easy read that allowed all the kid's to participate! I am quite impressed with how well the kids did all week with listening to the stories. There were the occasional picture hogs who wanted to stand right in front of the page to see the photos and block the book from the others in the audience, but they were so darned cute and interested we couldn't get mad.

I decided in lieu of a craft we would have a coloring page that I assembled prior to the afternoon camp. I had photos of the kids throughout the week and I simply printed out a blank scarecrow page, cut out the face and placed the kid's photo behind the hole. Easy! Each kid got to color themselves as a scarecrow!

I also came up with a really cool rhyme in order that we may do a little skit. This took quite a bit of time to come up with and I was excited about sharing with the group. However, we had two moms sign up to attend the camp at the last minute and for only ONE DAY??? Because I didn't have their kids information to write in the skit, I decided to scrap the whole idea. Sad. :(

We let the kids run around outside in the awesome weather instead and we moms got a little break from the noise.

All in all, another GREAT camp experience!! I plan on hosting another one in February in our new house. (More on THAT later, so stay tuned!!)

Fall Camp: Days 2-4

I had great intentions of getting Day 2 up in a timely manner and then I remembered that I had BUNCO with the church mom's group!

Then we had a rough day yesterday and Dominic ended up napping through camp so we missed yesterdays activities. So this post will have days 2-4.

Day 2:
We read "Fall Mixed Up" and "Five Little Pumpkins". For our craft we painted pumpkins using the kid's fists and thumbs. So cute! We rotated the papers around the table so that each child has all the pumpkins on it! One of the kid's didn't want to get messy (say WHAT??) so there were only 4 little pumpkins on our paper.

Day 3:
Read "Thanksgiving Cats" and "The Great Turkey Race". Cute book!! In lieu of a craft the kids were to participate in our own relay race and contest.

Day 4 (today):
We read "The Night Before Thanksgiving" and "Green Soup". The first book was really cute!! For our craft we traced the kid's hands and foot to make a turkey placemat. I LOVE this!! We added googly eyes to the turkey and if I say so, it just made the turkey's look all the more adorable.

Tomorrow we will have the last day of camp. Bittersweet, as usual. We will take an official group camp photo to take home. We have two stories picked out to read and the craft is still up in the air, although it was originally supposed to be a scarecrow, which we may still do.

As usual, camp has been a lot of fun. The kids did really well with storytime and crafts. I think 2.5-3 years is the PERFECT age for our camp. We're really trying to help them learn to listen and sit attentively.

I'm already thinking about the next camp session to take place possibly in January. Themes are plentiful, but will most likely be international, sports or transportation. Which do you prefer???

Fall Camp: Day One

I was approached by my meetup playgroup about helping to put together a camp session for them. I met with AM and she and I came up with a week that would work for us both and went from there. We had our first day this afternoon and it was a lot of fun!
The theme is FALL.

First, we read "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert and then we made our own leaf man, complete with google eyes. Each day we'll make an animal out of them and hide them somewhere in the house.

Next, we read "Hallo-weiner". It's such a cute story. For our second craft we made a leaf sun catcher out of clear contact paper and tissue paper.

Dominic fell asleep as soon as we got home. Only the second time that he's fallen asleep spontaneously while watching TV. Silly boy...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Showing off our racecar pumpkin. Isn't it cool all lit up???

Happy Halloween from our owl and ghost!!!

So, the Longhorns really mussed it up big time for the OU game. Yuk! We are rebounding from the game and hubby has pretty much written them off for the next two seasons.

I've had a bit of time to reflect on our activities from last month up to now and it's more than I had thought it was. We've been so sick for so long that it really didn't seem like we'd done much of anything. So, in this post I'll post one photo from each playdate we've had recently. Here we go...

Our back to school neighborhood playdate. I made these stickers and put them on mini M&M packs.

The arboretum has their huge pumpkin patch open. We had a picnic.

My attempt at getting 2 kids in 1 photo.

Getting friendly at a hot air balloon festival.

We went to the international airport to an outdoors plaza to watch the incoming planes. VERY cool!

A make your own ice cream playdate. Yes, another one!

We were invited to a local high school football game. Dominic loved the noise and we stayed for the halftime show.

We checked out the zoo.

Did the Oktoberfest thing...

Visited the state fair.

And started soccer lessons!!!

All of these activities was with friends and/or playgroups. Pretty busy despite pneumonia, huh??

Hook Em' Horns!!!

Today is the big Red River rivalry and we are all sporting our burnt orange while Dad is at the game. Let's hope the horns win, otherwise it's going to be a long night. Dad tends to let the outcome of the game determine his mood.

We've been dealing with some illness this month, hence the long absence from posting. I've been trying to get over pneumonia, then hubby got it and then I got sick again! Now Dominic has a stuffy nose and I'm praying it's just a cold and not anything worse. We can't handle much more!

Needless to say, we haven't been out much due to our lock-down.

Halloween is just a few weeks away and we've got Jillian's owl costume ready to go. I found it at a consignment sale for $10!! Score!
Dominic wants to be a spooky ghost. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out how to make a costume without having to have a sheet draped over his head. Most of the ghost costumes for kids are rather girly in nature.

This is undoubtedly the most boring post I've EVER posted. I apologize. My brain is not quite all the way awake and I just wanted to post while I had Jillian napping.

My little scallywag is THREE!

I have had a three year old living in my house for 8 days now. Dominic had a Labor Day birthday this year and we had two parties for the lucky little guy.

His friend party was a pirate themed fiesta and he chose the guests: all the camp kids. Two of them couldn't make it so we only had 4 kids + Dominic made 5. A perfectly small group of kids. He wanted to invite his newest friend, M, but we had just invited them to J's baptism and didn't want to overload them with our family. Though he really did miss her!

We had a blast! Dominic dressed up to greet his guests and they all had their own pirate hat, eyepatch, sash and tattoo waiting for them to put on before joining the party.
Next we had lunch. PB&J or tortilla rolls for the littles and ham,cheese and pineapple sammy's for the adults. Caprese skewers, fruit and cheese tray. Plenty of beer, water and juice to go around.
We had two games to play. Walk the plank, cannonball toss and the treasure hunt! Everyone LOVED the treasure hunt!! The plank was a fun game, too. It seemed like only Dominic liked the cannonball toss. Oh well...
After the games it was time for cake and then opening presents!

The next morning I asked Dominic what he dreamed about and he replied, "Mine pirate party!!" I'd say he enjoyed himself!

As for Jillian, we've had to readjust her meds again. The doctor wanted us to begin weaning her down to once a day dosage and after 2 weeks I can't take it anymore. She is crying more often than not and it's really making me sad. I decided to go back to twice a day dosage for now. We can try weaning again in another month or so.

Dominic had his 3 year check-up yesterday. He's grown 2 inches and 3.5 pounds since last November. Still a little fry, but growing on his own curve so no need to worry. I just don't make big people. ;)

Helllllloooooooo out there!!!!!

It's only been a couple of weeks since my last post, but MAN has it been busy!!! We had Jillian baptized this past Sunday and I was preparing everything for that, Dominic began swim lessons, and hubby was out of town for most of one week. No time to rest, yet, Dominic's 3rd birthday is right around the corner and we're have TWO parties: one for friends and one for family.

For Jillian's baptism I made a new cake. It's an orange creamsicle cake. It was pretty good, but VERY sweet! Here's the finished product:

And here's the recipe:

Batter:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/3 buttermilk or sour milk (sour milk: 1tbsp. lemon juice or vinegar + enough milk to = 1 cup. Let stand 5 minutes.

1/2 cup shortening or butter
1 tsp. vanilla
4 egg whites

And the secret ingredient:
1 pkg. (0.15 oz) unsweetened orange Kool-aid

Pre-heat oven to 350*
In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and 1/8 tsp. salt. Add buttermilk, shortening (or butter) and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds, scraping bowl. Beat on medium to high speed for 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Add egg whites and Kool-aid (dry) and beat for 2 minutes more, scraping bowl. Don't overbeat the batter. If the Kool-aid isn't thoroughly incorporated, use a spoon or spatula to gently mix in the Kool-aid. Do not overbeat!
Pour into greased and floured cake pans.
Bake for 18-23 minutes. (mine took exactly 18 minutes) or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes.

Vanilla Cream Filling:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup shortening
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 pinch salt
3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Make filling: In a large bowl, beat butter and shortening together until smooth. Blend in confectioners' sugar and pinch of salt. Gradually beat in 3 tablespoons milk and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy.

Orange Buttercream Frosting:
1/3 cup butter
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
Orange zest from one large orange

In a bowl beat butter until fluffy. Gradually add 2 cups of the powdered sugar, beating well. Slowly beat in the 1/4 cup orange juice and vanilla.
Slowly beat in remaining sugar. Beat in additional orange juice if needed. If you're going to spread it, you might need to add more liquid to get it to the right consistency. Gently mix in grated orange zest.

Assembly: After cupcakes are completely cool, fill with cream filling using your preferred method. Frost as desired.

I also had candle favors for guests to take home. I found a nice scripture containing the word "light" and incorporated it into the candle idea. What do you think?

Cute, huh?

For Dominic's swim teacher I made her a little gift of thanks and appreciation for teaching him how to swim. Those who know me know how paranoid I was of him going underwater and she was so calm and awesome that he did it on the very first day! He cried, but he did it! Now we have a bona fide swimmer!! YAY!! Check him out:



Anyway, for the gift. I noticed that she always had a cool drink of some sort with her on the side of the pool since it's been record breaking heat this summer. I found a neat cool-keeping cup at Starbucks and filled it with Hershey Nuggets. What gal doesn't like chocolate, right? As expected, she loves chocolate and raved about the cup. Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of the completed gift. I had it wrapped up all pretty.

Here's the card that I made for her:

I took photos of them secretly and made a little photo booth looking slideshow on photoshop. Cute!

A Day in the Life: After Meds...

I was looking back through my old posts and was struck by how different life is since Jillian has been taking prevacid for her reflux. I wasn't sure that life would ever be sane again and I am so happy to report that it really is!!

So, in honor of our ladybug's new (and almost cry-free) existence I decided to do another day in the life as a sort of then v. now.

Thank heavens for medicine!

Next weekend we are having Jillian baptized and the week following is D's 3rd birthday! Such important events coming up.

For D's birthday party I made air-dry clay pirates for each of his guests. Here they are in the early stages of production:

Dominic is the captain and Jillian is a mermaid. <3

I am excited to see them atop the pirate ship cake!

St.Dominic's Feast Day Celebration

St.Dominic was a passionate follower of Christ. He dedicated his life to God and not only lived as an example of Christ, but was a passionate speaker of Christ's love. So much so that an entire order of priests is dedicated to him.

St.Dominic's feast day was originally August 4th, but due to Vatican2 was moved to August 8th. This is good for us because we missed the 4th and were still able to "catch" it yesterday.

St.Dominic is rumored to have brought the first oranges to Rome and so he is often depicted with an orange in his hand. Also good for us! I made an orange cake for Dominic and we sang "Happy Saints Day to you!" before digging in. I rudimentally explained who St.Dominic was to Dominic. He smiled but I'm sure he had no idea what I was talking about. He just knows they have the same name- and that's enough for him. I mean, that's a great reason to have cake, right?

I found this quote from St.Dominic and thought it was perfect for my little pirate: "I kept on digging the hole deeper and deeper looking for the treasure chest until I finally lifted my head, looked up and realized that I had dug my own grave."


I also designed Jillian's baptism invitations. I am VERY proud of the outcome.

I must admit, I copied the idea from tinyprints. I hope I didn't just violate any copyrights by admitting that. I won't link to the exact one, but if you are curious feel free to check the baptism cards on their site and I know you'll recognize it! I think I'm okay since I'm not selling them. Had I ordered them online I wouldn't have gotten them in time to allow for anyone to rsvp!

My mommy friend, K, is having her son, A, baptized the same day at the same Mass as us. It'll be special to have both of our babes baptized together! We were going to have a dual reception following the Mass, but she had to change plans since she has many family members who will be flying out of town that afternoon. Bummer.

We are inviting a few of our church friends to attend the reception, too. I know of 2 who will definitely come and the other 2 are maybe's (in my assumption).

I plan on making a creamsicle cake. Sounds good, right? If it turns out good, I'll be sure and post the recipe.

Now, back to the birthday planning!!

Avast me hearties!

Since Dominic is totally obsessed with pirates lately I have been doing some research to have a perfect pirate party for his 3rd birthday next month. I can't believe it's already birthday time again!!

I've come up with some fun stuff for this fun theme. The invites are out and I must say, they are simply adorable!

I bought a four pack of Sutter Home mini-wine at the grocery store. In case you are wondering, the four mini bottles make one full wine bottle. Good for the hubster, no?

I took the labels off and added my own, complete with a personalized pirate name for each guest.

I used construction paper to make the treasure map insert. I charted each guest's course on their invite and included a cute pirate code for the details. I rolled them up, tied with raffia and dropped them in the bottle for delivery. All in all, I am very pleased.

Next craft: favor bags. I used the crayola studio website to create a personalized pirate coloring book. I'll include a small pack of crayons, too.

I have been wanting to make the next craft for about a month now and was so happy to be able to adapt it to my pirate theme.

What is it, you may ask? It's a spyglass, edu-ma-cational style! I bought a bottle (plastic) of dragees and emptied it into a ziploc bag for future use and filled the bottle with rice about halfway up. I bought some alphabet beads (in the jewelry making section at Mike's) and put all 26 letters in and then added more rice. I superglued the top on and wrote the alphabet along the rim of the lid.

This will be a great quiet game for the kids to play with whenever the need presents itself. Think long car rides, waiting room trips, church, you name it! The kids have to rotate the bottle this way and that to find all 26 letters. I will also be making some bingo-type cards that they can use to find certain letters. Cute idea, huh? I figure they can be presented as a pirate spyglass.

I know I'll have more posts about our pirate party the closer and closer we get to the party, so stay tuned!

It's no Blue Bell, but it'll do...

This past week we were BUSY!!

Since Dominic enjoyed camp so much, we decided to pony up and enroll him in another two week session, which started last Tuesday. This time around there were 12 kids in his group! I am assuming they have combined two groups since there are 2 counselors in there.

When we weren't at camp, we were at playgroups. Monday we hosted a playgroup at our house. Kids were invited to make homemade ice cream, which actually turned out to be quite delicious!

Fattening, but delicious! While we waited for the ice cream to freeze we moved out front and ran through the sprinkler!

Our new church friends joined us for this one. She is due with baby girl #3 anyday now. Note to self: I should check in on her since I didn't see them at church yesterday.

The next day we had AM and M over for some ice cream and playtime.

The next two days I was saddled down with creating the neighborhood playgroup's newsletter. Big doings!! This took approximately 3 days to get all together but the third day was simply copy-paste'ing.

Friday we had a full day all to ourselves. Until I remembered that I had to buy my hubby a birthday present! So it was off to the golf store to pick up a fashionable golfing outfit, complete with golfing belt. I never knew such a thing existed, but trust me it does.

Friday afternoon we were invited over to H and E's house for indoor play. It was just nice to get out of the house after the whole newsletter stress. I even managed to get a photo of myself with BOTH babies!! As I've said in previous posts, photos of me with the kids is rare as I'm usually the one taking the photo. I just love this one, too!!

Saturday Daddy turned "4-4" and Jillian turned 2 months old!

Instant birthday in a bucket

What do you get a teenage girl who has everything for her birthday? For this year's birthday I delved deep into my teacher's bag of tricks and thought like a 15 year old girl for a moment.
From my experience as a teacher and being around pre-teens, I know that although they like to think of themselves as adults, they still have that little kid side that enjoys goofing off and having an excuse to be silly.

I saw this idea a few months ago and was just hoping I would get to use it. The opportunity came yesterday. My neice and 2 nephews are visiting the IL's and my neice has a birthday coming up in a couple of weeks. I put together what I call

"Instant Birthday in a Bucket!!"

The idea was to give her a birthday party that any 6 year old would love. Inside was the following:
1. birthday girl ribbon to wear
2. cupcake printed plates, napkins and cups
3. crazy straws
4. crazy candles
5. water balloons
6. a pin the tail on the donkey game

Surprisingly, my 2 nephews said they'd never played the game before, so we broke it out and let them all take a turn!

Guess who won???

That's right! My boy got the tail right on the star!!!

What party is complete without a cake, right? We had that too!!

We bought the new game, Headbanz, for the birthday girl. I specifically chose a game that my little man could play with the big kids. We had to adapt the rules for him, but he did pretty good. And he looked pretty cute playing, too!

Parental observations from a former teacher...

As a former teacher with 10 years under my belt I have the unique opportunity to see my child through two sets of glasses: the rose-tinted mommy glasses and the eagle-eyed teacher glasses. While this can be great, it can also lead to stress that other moms are spared.

This month we branched out and enrolled D in a 4-day parent optional summer camp. Actually, we enrolled him back in April knowing that he'd probably want to get out of the house and have some "D-time" away from his sister. Since we've never left him under any else's care, except for the Grands, I stayed Tuesday with him just to see how he'd do (FANTASTIC!) and to see what activities they'd do. I am happy to say that I was very pleased with both.

The following day I let him go on his own, but Jillian and I stayed in the commons area. There, I was able to see and hear many observations I otherwise would have missed. Here's what was rambling inside my head:

1. I can teach my child to follow instructions but not all parents do. The result? My child ends up waiting for his turn while other kids take multiple turns.

2. I am my child's greatest advocate. This means I will be present for all his activities. In his group of 7 at camp I was the only parent who stayed and sadly, I ended up feeling like the crazy "that mom". (So what if I happened to be snapping pictures of my son eating a snack?)

3. Parents are VERY particular about their children. As a teacher I know that parents can certainly be a thorn in the side. Being a parent in that common area I overheard a mother planning a birthday party on the premises and was amazed at the extravagance of the event. Face painter? Multiple cakes? Extra staff on site? Personalized favors? All of these cost extra money and the mommy was more than happy to oblige. Then she said a key sentence and it all suddenly made sense: "All the other parties we go to have face painters."
We had D's party here at home and I assure you it was just as appreciated at much less cost. (My hubby may beg to differ about the cost.)

I also came to the realization that I will be the mom who is in the front row at concerts, recitals and awards assemblies with camera in hand, hollering out my child's name so that I can get a shot of him/her in the moment. And you know what?? I'm okay with that!
I mean, look at these faces:

Can you blame me??

Fourth Fun

Today being the Fourth of July, I thought I'd start with a festive photo and then do a catch up post.

Here we are this morning:

Jillian is really feeling in the spirit, no? Hee Hee!

This week we actually had it together enough to make it out of the house on a few occasions. We made it to a local rec center and met K and B for some running and bouncehouse bouncing. Fun!

I've made contact with a few ladies from church via email. We have been playing "tag" for a while now, trying to synchronize our calendars. So far we have tentative plans to meet next week with one family and the following week with the other. I'll be sure to post how it goes once we meet up.

Jillian is ready to eat now so I'll sign off for now!!