Britax stroller giveaway

Take a few minutes and sign up to win this amazing stroller (I did).

Momspotted Britax stroller giveaway

Britax website

"Manasseh"

Ready to work on name recognition!

Our Herb Garden

I'm a few hours late on yesterday's post. Our big activity for the day was planting herbs for the start of an indoor herb garden. We repurposed some soup cans and filled them with dirt and seeds - dill and cilantro - then watered the heck out of them (thanks Manasseh). Manasseh enjoyed this activity - mostly... he does not like to get his hands dirty!

Let it snow!

Today we had a surprise play date with Israel. We pulled out the flour and the sand and water table and had a great time "driving in the snow". What a fun mess. We even practiced writing in the snow (with fingers, not urine)! The boys discovered that flour flies nicely in the breeze when we took it outside. A fun time for all!

Totally cheating

So, I was talking to my sister this afternoon and she asked what I had done that was photo/blog worthy with my boys today.. uhh... okay, I just took this challenge.. but oh I was so busy today. I told her I would have to come up with something soon. THEN we heard sirens and saw that there was a firetruck down the street, Manasseh and I sat on the porch and watched the firetruck and ambulance a couple doors down. She thought I should take pictures and go with that. I did take pictures (but my camera is in the van right now).. and I feel like that's totally cheating.

We also went to the garden today and dug up our herbs, in hopes that we can keep them going and use them again in the spring. Manasseh had a great time romping through the garden and helping mama pick burs off of her pants. That was what we did today that was educational and worthy of blogging.

Also Manasseh used the potty at Menards and at the McConnehey house, and tried at Walmart. He seems to be doing pretty well.. when he feels like it!

Good morning

Ah, the smell of coffee, bacon, and eggs in the morning... who can beat that? I didn't wake to that this morning, but it sounds nice. I woke up to Cassius crying. We had driven Randy to work and he was asleep when we got home, so I left him in the carseat in the kitchen.

On my way to get Cassius, I noticed that Manasseh was not in his bed. He's really quiet sometimes when he gets up. I found Manasseh in the kitchen, trying to rock the carseat and comfort Cash. Sweet? Well.. it gets sweeter...

Manasseh was also holding a mostly empty jar of Nutella. Never had it? you should try it, good stuff! He had obviously removed the lid (which I have yet to find). He had Nutella all over both hands, his face, his shirt, the kitchen floor, and yes.. his brother.

Isn't it nice when brothers share?

The Challenge

Okay, so my sister, Elizabeth, does in-home daycare. I would like to do that also, eventually - we're working on how that will work with Randy's schedule and our 1 vehicle.

I do have 2 young and eager boys that are sponges and want to learn. I love little kids, because they still crave learning. In the future I want to be able to home-school my boys, but really - I need to start like a year ago.

So here it is, I was talking to Elizabeth today and she said she wants to do something with the kids every day that is "worthy of taking a picture of" and use it as a base for a blog about preschool curriculum. I decided to challenge her to do just that, and said that I want to step up to the plate to do the same.

So there it is - the challenge, is to do something every day with my kids that is worthy of sharing. It doesn't have to be anything complex, and it probably won't be, they're little!

Keep your eyes open for Crum's creativity!

In Stitches!

Manasseh got his first stitches this week. Amazingly it had nothing to do with his climbing. The story (as told by 3 year old cousin, Isaac) is that Manasseh pushed Isaac, so Isaac "accidentally threw" a toy at him. Manasseh wasn't too distraught about the event, he told me "That mad!" and went back to playing. We only took him to the ER after the gash hadn't stopped bleeding a couple hours later. Manasseh was exhausted and fell asleep while they stitched him up.

Xtrema

I just entered in a giveaway for Xtrema Ceramic Cookware on
http://www.babygeartoday.com/green-cooking-with-xtrema-ceramic-cookware-review-and-giveaway.html#comment-80904

Anniversary camping

What a year it's been. As we look back, it's amazing to think about all of the things our family has done and been through together over the past year. Wednesday of this week is our anniversary, so on Randy's days off this weekend, we packed our van and headed to Hoosier National Forest for some time of "relaxation" and refreshment, along hashing over memories from the last year and general fun!

We decided on Thursday evening that we would head down for the weekend. On Friday morning we loaded the van and headed south. In an attempt to avoid packing extra stuff that we really didn't need, I told Randy that we shouldn't bother to pack the propane stove, we could just cook on the fire, that would be fine. Did you notice it's been pretty dry this year? Yeah - no fires in the forest.. seems they don't want anyone to burn it down.

We got to HNF after a couple of stops to drop things off and pick things up for our trip. Drove around for what felt like an hour, in order to find a sufficient camp sight. We found the perfect site finally and set up camp. The boys loved running/crawling around on the leaves, riding the "bike" and hiking to find wood (we didn't know yet that we shouldn't have a fire). We made a very small campfire to cook our potatoes and sausages, and enjoyed relaxing with the boys around the fire. Okay, so mama wasn't entirely relaxed with her babies next to the fire, but it was a good time anyhow.

When dinner was done we bundled the babies inside the tent.. I mean bundled.. poor Cassius had 3 layers of clothes, a snowsuit, a very heavy blanket, and 2 thinner blankets, Mannasseh wasn't far from that. Nasa didn't want to fall asleep, we finally turned out the lantern and talked while he worked on dozing. The night was warm... until we fell asleep.. it got really cold on Friday night, something like 39 degrees, YIKES.

Saturday morning it was really too cold to reasonably hike with our boys, so we decided to head to Brown County State Park where we could enjoy the nature center - indoors! Then go to our favorite pizzeria and walk to the coffee shop. It was a beautiful weekend and Nashville, IN is VERY Busy at this time of year. There was no parking and I was hungry, we left and ate at some little diner out in the country. *By the way, wait staff in little diners in the country seem to be kind of annoyed when you ask about eggs and peanut oil before you order things. The first item we asked about got a frustrating response "It comes in a box frozen, I don't know if there's egg in it"... Can't they look?

We drove back to the forest and climbed the fire tower.. well, I climbed 2 flights of stairs, Randy and Manasseh climbed the rest of the way.. Manasseh climbed by himself. Then a short - very short hike. THEN we saw the no fires sign. After much deliberation we determined it would be a good idea to break camp, throw our kids in the van and head home... well, to Nana and Poppy's house, it's closer.

A fun time camping and hiking nonetheless!