Not Mom of the Year

This week E, Myself, and I didn't do her usual Midweek Confessions link up, but I have too many confessions this week to skip out so I will link to her post from last week.

 

And here, in no particular order, is why I will not be nominated for Mom of the Year, EVER.

• We let Trey dress himself in the mornings.  It makes our lives much easier than fighting a battle every morning with a 3 year old over what he is going to wear.  Especially since the only people seeing him are his parents, sister and grandparents most days and we all appreciate his unique style. 

• Conversation in the car last weekend when I took the kids to Wal-Mart solo to pick up some school stuff. Wal-mart is a good 30 minute drive so I packed crackers to keep them occupied and happy.


• Trey (after eating one cracker I packed for him): Mommy, I need a paper towel. 
• Me: Trey, I am driving right now I don't have a paper towel for you. 
• Trey: I need a napkin. 
• Me: Trey I don't have a napkin.  Can you just wipe your hands on your pants? (It was just a few crumbs!) 
• Trey: No Mommy, then my pants will be dirty! 
• So I sigh and pull over off the road to reach down into the floorboard to get the tissues and I end up handing him one after every. single. cracker. he ate on that trip because his hands were dirty. 
• Today I slipped on my brown ballet flat style crocs to put some stuff in the car.  When I got to school I looked down and realized I was still in my crocs and hadn't changed into shoes to match my white floral skirt. 
• I weigh exactly 4 lbs lighter than when I got pregnant with Trey 4 years ago, but I am up one size.  How does that work? 
• Jay and I have been setting our alarm to get up at 5 am to work out for the past 3 days.  Today was the only day we actually got up and worked out.  1 out 3 isn't too bad :) 
• I downloaded the 30 Day Shred workout video by Jillian Micheals back in June and I have started it three different times.  I get to about day 8 and then something in life happens and I stop.  Today I started day 1 again.  
• I make both kids carry their plates from the dining room to the kitchen sink after every meal.  Trey is not a fan of this activity, but nothing makes Charlotte prouder than carrying her plate to the sink and chucking it in.  

August Photo Dump

I have a collection of pictures on my camera from random things the kids have done this month, but there is nothing cohesive about them to write a post.  So, amidst requests from the grandparents, here are some new pictures of the kids.

Trey and Charlotte trying out Cooper's new dog house, which he refuses to go into no matter how hard it is raining outside.

Trey is enjoying the last of the hot summer evenings outside.

Trey "helping" with the laundry.  He is telling me to take a picture of him, thus his hands are up pretending to hold a camera.

We found the musical instruments one evening together. 

More cymbals!

Everybody all together now :)

Trey is very proud of his new puzzle we got on our vacation trip.  Now he can put it all together by himself.

I brought this toy up from the basement thinking Charlotte would enjoy it.  She is obsessed with walking her doggy everywhere she goes and she carries it from upstairs to downstairs and back. 

"Come on doggy."

Another one of Charlotte's favorite things to do, talk on the phone.  When she starts to talk to someone on our cell phones, she runs away from you while talking so she doesn't have to give the phone back!

Charlotte feeding her baby.  This is really sweet, except she is holding the baby's head up by her hairbow. 

Frame Project

One of my friends and a fellow blogger does a "Make It Monday" post every week on her blog, The Pollock Potluck, to make herself follow through with all the great ideas she pins on pinterest.  I decided to join her and post my own "Make It Monday"  about the frame project we did over the summer.  I say over the summer because we started my first week out of school and finished it up at the end of July.  In our defense we were making steady progress until the Great Power Outage of 2012 came and changed all our summer plans (or at least it felt that way!).

Here is what I pinned on my dining room board back in the early spring.  I liked using the frames together as a piece of art and originally thought it might work on a wall on our dining room. 

 

http://livingwithlindsay.com/2012/01/how-to-layered-frame-gallery-wall.html

We had been going back and forth about what to do with all this empty space on the wall above the sofa, because I wanted something there and my husband liked it blank.   

I had thought about doing a photo gallery wall, but my husband wasn't too pleased with that idea and after showing him pins and pins of ideas that he rejected, we decided the frame idea was one we both liked.  So I spent the first week of summer break dragging my kids from thrift store to thrift store purchasing random sized frames.  Most of the frames were between 25 cents and a dollar so I was very happy with my purchases.  I also searched the basement to find frames we already had that we were no longer using and would fit for this project.

Once all the frames were selected we took one naptime to lay them out and arrange them. 

Then we took all the spray paint cans we had picked up at Lowes (various shades of yellow, blues, and gray) and labeled each frame the color we wanted to paint it.  

Thankfully the kids took an extra long nap because we even had time to pick out what pictures we wanted to put in each frame.  

 Then Jay spray painted all the frames out in the driveway during another naptime, which also happens to coincide with the hottest time of the day.  You have to look really close in the first picture to see all the newspapers and frames laid on the driveway. 

At the end of the week, we went over to Roanoke and got copies of the pictures we wanted to use in the correct size. 

Except for our wedding photo because for a week our wedding photo cd was missing in action.  Then came The Great Power Outage and the frame project was moved to the corner of the basement and put on hold for a couple of weeks. 

One glorious day we found the wedding photo cd after looking in every box in the basement and every drawer/cabinet/bag in our house.  First Jay made a couple of copies of the cd to insure this misplacement never happens again. Then he cropped the picture and we drove over to town to print out a blown up size of the photo. 

Finally the day arrived to put the project together.  We wore the kids out really good all morning and put them down to nap at 12.   We had 2-3 hours to complete the project so we headed down to the basement and set out all the frames. Yes, we are using Trey's flattened cardboard playhouse from this post to cushion the frames from the concrete floor.

Jay used a nail gun to nail the frames together.  We want to be able to change out the pictures, so we nailed wood pieces onto the backs of the frames that were going to hold pictures and then connect the wood pieces to the other frames.  That way we can take off the frames by undoing the prongs on the back and change out the photos.  The frameback is what is attached to all the other frames.  I am not sure if that makes sense, but essentially we can change out the photos because my husband is a genius. 

The backside where the frames are connected through the wood pieces and framebacks to the pictures so they can be changed out.  

The front side. 

We carried the completed project upstairs in two pieces and then attached it to the wall.  I can't remember how it attached to the wall, only that there was a lot of measuring, drilling and kids wanting to be brought downstairs from their nap during this time. 

All up on the wall! The wedding picture is really big because at first we thought that frame wouldn't be able to come off to change the picture, so we wanted a picture that would fit our family for many years to come.  We also don't have a large wedding photo anywhere in the house and we like the symbolism how our family has grown from our marriage. 

A closer view.  Sorry about the crookedness and glare, I really don't know how to work my camera. 

We had a lot of fun working on the project and I really like the way it came together and brought some color to the wall.  Now onto our next house project....

18 Months Old & Some Videos

I wanted to do Charlotte's 18 month post a little differently.  We did a video to show her personality and her sweet voice.  Charlotte is now 19 months old, but at the time of filming she was 18 months old. 

This video is taken right after her nap (before Trey was up) in an attempt to be uninterrupted.  She isn't too interested in "performing" for the camera.  You can see her bruise above her eye where she fell in the corner of the upstairs hallways the day before.

We tried again later that evening to she if she would corporate more.  This time she wanted to sit in the chair all by herself, kinda like how she wants to do everything these days.

Then Trey wanted his own video.. which made Charlotte come up behind her daddy and hit a button to cut off the recording.  Apparently she didn't want to be upstaged :)

Please ignore my singing in this last video, but the kids are adorable.

A Family Trip Continued

Wednesday we swam at the pool in the morning.  The older ladies in the community had a water aerobics class going on in the big pool and Charlotte loved watching them.  She kept climbing out of the pool to wave at them through the fence.  They would say hi and wave back to her and then almost all of them stopped by to say good bye after the class. Notice Trey has on a sun hat and floatie and Charlotte has on none of those things.  We couldn't get her to put on her float or a hat, despite multiple tries.

Thursday was a repeat of Monday with the playground in the morning (where they played with another little boy that was 2!) and then the pool in the afternoon.  After dinner we drove down to Brevard and got some ice cream at a local shop.

Friday we loaded up the car and headed back home.  Trey was very sad to leave "out vacation home" as he liked to call it.  We stopped before we left Brevard to get some pastries at a local bakery for a mid morning snack before the drive and then drove all the way home with only one stop at the Welcome to VA Center near Bristol for a picnic lunch.  The ride home was a little bit easier than the ride down, even though our kids do not sleep in the car! We are happy to be home, even though we know that means summer is almost over!

A Family Trip

We had a great time on our family trip to Brevard, NC.  We stayed at my Grandfather's house in a development outside of Brevard.  The house brought back lots of childhood memories for me, as did the nearby park and pool.  It was so nice to have a chance to get away from to do lists at home and just focus on playing with the kids and relaxing during their nap and bedtimes.  The goal each morning and afternoon was to wear out the kids so they slept really good!

On Sunday we loaded up the car tightly and headed off for the drive.  It was supposed to be a 6 hour trip, but we stopped for lunch at Cracker Barrel with Uncle Mark in Christiansburg and took a couple of other bathroom/ play breaks along the way, so it ended up being about 8 hours.

On Monday I forgot to pull out the camera, but we walked down to the park in the morning and the kids had so much fun playing with different playground equipment.  The walk to the park is mostly downhill and the walk back to the house was a pretty steep climb, but Trey walked the whole thing! After their naps we went to the pool.  They have only swum in the creek this summer but they both loved the pool.

Tuesday we woke up to pouring down rain.  We drove about an hour over to Greenville, SC to go to their 3 story children's museum.  Despite the fact that we were soaked by the time we walked from the car to the museum, the kids had fun.   I think every other parent in the area decided that the museum was a good rainy day activity too because it was quite crowded. 

There are more pictures of Charlotte because I had the camera and I chased her around.  Jay stayed with Trey.  With the size of the museum and the number of kids there, we were glad we had a 1:1 kid to adult ratio.  They both loved the grocery area, but Trey was most excited about decorating the cakes with letters.  Charlotte mainly liked ramming the cart into things/kids and taking other people's carts that looked more full than hers.  We had to have a talk about grocery shopping etiquette.

They also loved the balloon area with balloon and foam paddles to hit the balls.  Charlotte couldn't figure out how to hula hoop and it was so funny to watch her try like the big kids!

There was a farm and construction area.  Trey enjoyed the tools at the construction place and Charlotte was so exciting to see the animals at the farm.  She kept hugging and kissing the pigs and cow. 

After lunch we went to the bottom floor and the kids got drenched with water play area.  They ended the day in the art room playing with sparkly play-doh and playing the drums in the music room.  It was the perfect day trip for an extremely rainy day!