Marshmallow Madness

Building is what we do best! We love us some good building blocks, tinker toys, duplo blocks, and now introducing our new building medium: Marshmallows and toothpicks. An oldie but goodie.

Mom and M built this arch together. M liked sticking an extra toothpick in the side and would add marshmallows to the end of it. Her idea of an automatic marshmallow dispenser :)

And C, well, she REALLY liked this project. She LOVES eating marshmallows with a passion.

This is her lifting up the weight and exclaiming the letter "G" sound. Just like in the Leap Frog Letter Factory video. Cute weight sweet pea!

And M's rendition of roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Seriously cute stuff!

Better blow the fire out, it's hot!

Painting with Marbles and Cars

We had some little friends over for a play date and decided to paint with marbles. Before I told them we were going to paint, I prepped. I some mini-dixie paper cups and put a smidge of paint in each one. They were each given one marble to put in the paint, swish it around....

...and pour out onto paper (in a cookie sheet so that the marble doesn't roll). We love this form of painting and it's great fun to introduce to kids of all ages...and not very messy :)

We liked the lines we were creating so I decided to get some cars out for them to make "tracks." M saw an episode of curious george on animal tracks and since then notices tracks everywhere (in the snow, on the driveway, in our marble painting).

Vroom vroom

Try this out with your kids too, great fun will be had by all!

Email Hacked

My gmail, yahoo and facebook accounts were hacked last night. They changed my facebook password to log me out. Luckily I was able to answer some security questions through facebook to log back in. It also told me that there was unusual account activity and that my last login was in Nigeria. They also changed my password in my yahoo account, which I can't seem to get taken care of...at least this morning :) I still have 3 kiddos that need tending to.

The person emailed many people (mind you, it was within MY gmail account) stating that I was stranded in London and that I needed funds. If you received such an email know that it is untrue. And p.s. I would never send someone an email asking for money!!!!!!!!!!!!

From this point forward I will keep this blog open but I will no longer be putting the names of our family and I'm going to try and show photos of my kids without their faces. Kind of like chasingcheerios.blogspot.com does with her children.

Thanks!

Block People

There is a fantastic artist named Ingela P Arrhenius. She is an artist in Sweden. I love her work.

http://www.ingelaparrhenius.com/archives/category/wood-figures

I recreated some of her work for my own kids. So if you do re-create it please make sure not to sell it.

Here are some of my little block people I made for my oldest daughter for her birthday. She received these along with a large Melissa and Doug block set.

My husband cut blocks of little blocks of wood from scrap wood in our garage. I sanded them down with my sander. I then drew the image onto the block in pencil. I painted them all with non-toxic acrylics and covered it with mod podge to seal it.

In, Out

12mo.

My son is at the age that putting things in and pouring them out are so much fun.

We set out a rug to define his "work space" and to help him begin to understand that what he is playing with needs to stay on the rug (and not drift into every other room in the house).

This Jenga set was perfect. The container is metal and so it make a neat cling sound when he put the blocks into the container.

He also enjoys peek-a-boo, pushing cars around the house, playing "bonk" (he bonks his head against something lightly, we say "bonk" and he laughs hysterically, crawling through our tunnel, wrestle with dad, play in the toilet-no, no!, chasing-we chase him and he loves it, tickling, piggy bank, opening and closing doors on cabinets, toys or room doors, and he likes to busy himself throughout the house and with his sisters.

Wanna do a Dancy Dance?

The girls discovered the Nick Jr. show "Yo Gabba Gabba" in December and we've been doing a lot of dancing since. My husband and I love this show. They learn so many songs that teach great skills like: sharing is fun, when you want to play don't just take it away, making new friends is fun, etc.

Today we did the dancy dance .

We took turns. My oldest would say: "Hey guys you wanna learn my dancy dance?"

Us: Sure

daughter: Okay, this dance is called the boxey box.

And then she proceeded to teach us her moves.

my little girl's dance was a name I can't remember (totally made up). And many of her moves included putting one leg out, stepping up on the couches, jumping and landing in stand up splits, fall on the ground, etc.

We continued this for a good half hour. I love dancing with my silly girls!

Dancing Robot

the dancing robot

Pretend Play: Car Wash

My oldest is definitely the leader of the pack and can come up with fun ideas to do all day long.

You kids certainly don't need me for pretend play but I like to get in on the fun too sometimes.

Yesterday I took you all out on an outing to get the car washed. We were all getty with excitement in the car as water and soap sprayed from the automated car wash onto our car. And the big blowers that dried our car was a fun bonus.

We came home and made a car wash for Lighting McQueen, Doc and all of our other cars. We used a cardboard box. I used an exacto knife to cut out the entrance and exit. We taped a car wash sign and you girls colored the car wash.

We cut a piece of black felt to hang in our car wash. To ensure our cars get nice and soapy :)

We used soap, toothbrushes, and water to give them all a big wash as they drove through