Socks

Brisbane is at the age where he is getting into everything.  Actually, he has been at that age for a while now.  You leave him in a room and you never know what it is going to look like when you get back.  On this particular day,  I left the laundry basket in his reach.

 And he decided that he might try on Daddy's socks.

Wow, I think they almost fit.

F is for Finger Painting

Didn't I tell you F Week was totally and radically awesome?  Here we are doing some finger painting.

 Reese is my child who is least afraid of making a mess. 

 Brisbane apparantly has issues with paint on his hands (or paper) but is fine with it on his feet.  Or is that a, "Mom, get this paint off of me!"  look?

 Jessenia is our most creative child is almost every way, but she is a bit timid in the art department.  It is easy to tell which art project is hers at school because it always has the least amount of paint on it.  We call it minimalistic.

Let's take a moment and discuss form.  Here is Reese showing the "squat".  Jessenia is demonstrating the "sit".  Zippy is standing to supervise her minions.

And Brisbane.  Well we aren't really sure.  But you notice the little amount of paint he has used and we are voting his method least effective.  Maybe he just needs a few more sessions to perfect it.

Aunt Melanie Comes to Town

For her Spring Break, Aunt Melanie decided to come and visit us again.  That would be two years in a row.  I hope everyone is taking notes.  That means she came back a second time to visit us.  We are a good time, people.  And more of you should come and visit.  Thanks Melanie, for being our biggest fan (aside from Grandparents....they are tough to beat).

So in the spirit of having the best time possible in order to entice Melanie to return for a third year, we set out to see some new sites.  After much contemplation, we selected the Challenger Space Center Museum.  It isn't too far from our house and the kids are into all things airplanes/spaceships so we thought they would like it.



 Maybe we have kind of a high standard, but not really a fave.  It wasn't for kids...at all.  But at least they each got to touch the above moon rock.
When we pulled in, the kid at the front desk informed us there was a kid's room downstairs.  We should have just made a beeline for that, but tried to give the rest of the museum its due diligence.  Boring.  And shockingly not that much about the Challenger Space Shuttle.  Dissapointing.

 But when we finally wised up and made it to the kid's area, we found all these blue building materials.

 They were a little too bulky for the kids and they weren't sure what to do with them.  Except for Brisbane, who sat in them so that the other kids couldn't roll balls along them.

 As a follow up to our awesome fort building from Melanie's last visit, she and I dug right in in hopes of making something equally as amazing.  We came up with this chair.

 That each child took a turn sitting in.

 And yes, the adult in the picture is necessary since our chair wasn't super secure.

 After another family left, we confiscated all of the larger blocks and made a house.  Which the kids loved.  But was also not structurally sound, and Brisbane was able to topple it easily and often.

 Melanie was also present for part of F week, and so she helped us pick out some flowers at Home Depot and plant them.

The kids did a great job.  They probably wish their mother would do as great of a job at keeping the flowers alive as they did of planting them.  I am not good at keeping things alive.  Except my children, of course.
And that is where the pictures of Melanie's visit end.  Oh yes, she was here four more days.  But she fell horribly and miserably sick.  She and I spent a lot of time playing Nertz and ignoring the kids.  It was sad because she couldn't even read to them because her throat hurt so badly. 
We finally decided that she needed to go to Urgent Care so that she could go back to work when she got home.  After several hours in a waiting room, a pretty incompetant PA, and another wait at CVS (which was accompanied by snacks) she was ready to fly home.  As we were driving home that night Melanie declared the whole experience "Blog Worthy".  And she was right.  I mean, come on.  As we were waiting at the Urgent Care a lady brought in three children in nothing but diapers and said that the television had fallen on top of all three of them.  One of the kids was screaming his head off.  What they were doing at Urgent Care and not the ER is still beyond either of our comprehension.  Poor tykes.
Sadly Melanie's horror did not end there because she woke up the next morning with pink eye.  My kids had been taking turns getting it and as much as we tried to squelch it, Melanie fell victim as well.  As any loyal and loving sister would, I gave her one of our bottles of antibacterial eyedrops and sent her on her way home.  To my horror, I found out that she was allergic to the eye drops I gave her and had a majorly horrible reaction.  How was I to know!?  My whole family had used them without a problem.  I felt awful.
Melanie assures me that she will come back again.  This experience of being deathly ill at my house and then my ineptitude with medication dispensal has not spoiled her amazing memories from her first visit.  Hear that people?  Even being sick at my house is more fun than other places.  If you don't whine too much, I will go buy you a Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

F is for Feather

When doing a letter a week, some letters just are naturally more fun than others.  F was a naturally fun letter, in my professional opinion.  I decided to have the kiddos glue feathers to a giant F.  Reese did a capital F and Jessenia did a lower case f.  I was right to think this was an outside activity because feathers are MESSY!  I was wrong to think feathers were an outside activity because even with the absence of wind, they blow EVERYWHERE.  You win some.  You lose some.

 The best part was watching how much glue the kids thought they needed to glue the fragile little feathers to their paper.  I'll give you a hint, it was WAY too much.

 And then the glue made the feathers stick to their fingers.  Which was hilarious to watch them try to get it off. 

Reese glued three feathers on and declared his done.  Too bad he has an OCD mother who made him cover the entire inside of the feathers.  Come on man, if I am going to drag Brisbane to the craft store to buy a bag of feathers, we are going to get our money's worth. 

Jog-A-Thon

Reese and Jessenia's preschool had a Jog-A-Thon fundraiser.  It was pretty cute.  I made them call their Grandma and beg her for money.  Then my mother and I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out how many laps a three and four year old could possibly do around a 400 yard course.  It was comical.  I am pretty sure we involved my mathematically inclined father at some point.  But really, who could predict?  How fast will they run?

Brisbane and I went to volunteer the day of the event.  We had to put tally marks on papers taped to the kids' backs each time they completed a lap.  Let's just say it wasn't rocket science.  Some kids missed getting a mark and some kids got double marked from two adults.  But it was for a good cause, so who cares?

 Here they are getting ready to start.  Jessenia looks terrified, but I assure you she is not.

 Reese was a really great runner.  He definately was one of the fastest and it helped that his mother was there to motivate him.

 Jessenia is more of a social runner.  She is just there for the good time, and the coordinating running outfit.

 I mean, I don't think the tongue out of the mouth is considered great running form, but it worked for her.  She actually ended up with only 5 laps less than Reese.  But based on the non-scientific nature of the tally system, who knows how close that really is to aaccurate.

 After the run, all of the kids got a little medal.

 Reese wore his medal that said, "Winner", all over the place for the next few weeks.  He showed it off when we went to our friend's house.  He was very proud of his accomplishment.  Although dissappointed that he had to give the money to preschool and it didn't go in the Disneyland jar.

 Jessenia also earned a medal. 

She was just as excited about her medal as Reese, she just had a harder time keeping her hands on it.  I am pretty sure I found it on the floor one night after clean-up time was over and the kids were in bed and promptly chucked it in the garbage.
I was declared super star mother of the event.  One of the other moms turned to me and said, "You are like the cool Mom at school".  I was pretty much never cool when I was in school, so if I can obtain cool status now, that would be great.  I hated to let her in on my secret, that you just need to learn all of the kid's names and cheer for them.  Than they will want you to write their tally mark for them.  Can we all say cool, or what?

Brisbane and Glue

Most of my art project attempts with Brisbane fail due to his desire for clean hands at all times.  But I keep trying.  This day I poured glue all over a piece of paper, gave him some beads and confetti and a paint brush.

 Initially, I wasn't sure the glue was necessary, since he just liked playing with the beads and confetti.

 But then he started sticking the objects to the glue, making the paintbrush obsolete.

 Then he got into it a little more....

Even getting some on his adorable face.  How can you not love this little charmer!?

D is for Dropper

Ah, my love hate relationship with all things kid art.  I feel that art and creativity are important--LOVE.  But the mess is less than desirable--HATE.  Add to that the expense and collection of materials.  The putting together and taking down.  The fights that insue over totally obsolete parts of the project.  The inability to follow the simplest instructions.  It demotivates me from all of the grand plans I have for the week when I think of all the things I hate about art projects.  Particularly since they get thrown away as soon as they dry.

But I conquered all of my hates on this particular week and went with a little Drop Art.

 Mix water with paint (washable probably isn't the best for this since it doesn't mix well with water, but under no circumstances am I allowing my kids near non-washable paint), give kids eye droppers and a piece of paper, and let them go to town. 

 Voila!  We have art.  The kids had a good time, even if it was a little hard for them to suck up the paint in the beginning.

And look, we only made one tiny little mess.  I can handle that.