Pierced Ears

We always told Princess Sparkley that she had to be twelve to get her ears pierced.  Then I started rethinking that.  With a baby that is supposed to be born this week, her birthday celebrations were limited to just family.  And this year is her Golden Birthday (turning ten on the 10th) so we wanted to make it sort of special for her.  Then my siser-in-law mentioned moving the ear piercing thing up to ten years old for her daughter (5 month PS's junior).  There had been sort of an unspoken agreement among all the aunts that ear piercing happened at twelve.  Since there are only four girl cousins on the M side (two on the L side, but they are both already over 12) and one of the M cousins is only two while the others are closer in age, we rediscussed and agreed that we'd move ear piercing up to ten.  Thursday, two days before her birthday, Princess Sparkley and I made a trip to the mall and she got them pierced.  She looked terrified as it happened, but was very brave and said it barely hurt at all.

Above: before earrings
Below: after earrings

Close-ups of each ear.  She chose a purple titanium ball earring.

Buddy

I put Buddy in charge of loading the dishwasher the other night.
It's a little messy.  And one cup is on its side.

Buddy and Little Guy playing their version of Risk.

Buddy made this bridge for Lego vehicles out of Duplo blocks and Little Golden Books.

Reading Buddies

Baby Rag Quilt

I finally got around to making and finishing a baby blanket for the Mystery Baby.  I made a strip rag quilt.  And he has a Ty Pluffies monkey (Dangles) who I'll take his picture with each week/month like I did Little Guy and his alligator.

front

back

Olympics

We love the Olympics.  For our Family Home Evening treat this week, Little Guy wanted cake or cupcakes.  I knew Princess Sparkley had already discussed getting to decorate cupcakes to look like the Olympic rings and we hadn't gotten around to it yet so I talked Little Guy into that.  Here's what we ended up with.

Pioneer Day Picnic

A family in our ward does a Memorial Day picnic at their home each year.  This year, we did it in July and called it a Pioneer Day picnic.  They set up a slip and slide each year that the kids love.  And this year, Buddy got to try out his new badminton skills he learned at Cub Scout day camp.  He seriously loves badminton and keeps making us watch it in the Olympics.

38 weeks

July 26, 2012

Alligator

Remember all these alligator pictures I took of Little Guy as a baby?  Well, he never really cared about alligator, until maybe the last 6 months.  He loves that thing now.  We actually see Alligator around the house and out of his bed more than we see his doggy Bubble these days.

Lego Creations

A couple weeks ago we brought all the Legos down from the boys' bedroom, documented their creations (see below) and spent some time each day rebuilding Lego creations from their instructions and organizing the Legos so that Buddy will be able to keep them organized and nice.

36 weeks

Things you should say to a pregnant lady:
My doctor - You don't look nearly big enough to be 36 weeks.  (Measures me.) But you measure 36 weeks perfectly.

Things you should not say to a pregnant lady (especially when her due date is still far off):
Random lady at church - You look like you're finally ready to pop. 

Darth Vader golfs in Scotland

The bottom of Little Guy's heel is peeling.  It's bugging him so I told him last night he could go put on socks and then it wouldn't bother him.  He came back (naked except underpants and these black and red argyle socks) asking me to help him put on his Darth Vader costume (which was already borderline too small for him last Halloween).  The result:

In this picture, he informed me, he's pretending he just got his arm cut off.

Cub Scout Bird House

A few weekends ago, we made a trek to the Boy Scout store and Buddy picked out this bird house to build to complete one of his Wolf requirements.  Little did we know, in volved zero hammering and nailing and all gluing.  He picked out the paint colors and together, he and B sanded, painted and glued.  Then they came up with a system to bracket it to some wood pieces (Buddy got to use a drill) so that it will be easy to remove when we move so we can take it with us.

Belated Build-A-Bear post

In early June, Princess Sparkley's Girl Scout troop went to Build-A-Bear to get the 100th Anniversary Girl Scout bear.  Her troop leader just sent out the pics.

Cupcakes

 The girls made and decorated these cupcakes completely on their own.



4th of July

The cousins invited us down for the Fourth of July so we headed down Tuesday the 3rd, watched their swim meet, stayed up too late and woke up bright and early (sort of) for their neighborhood's parade, followed by swim party.

(flipped the picture so the tattoo was correct)

We all got super sunburned after close to 5 or 6 hours at the pool.

We came home, showered, ate dinner and headed to Ray's for custards and shaved ices.

 Guess who got a shaved ice - blue raspberry.

Then a minor league baseball game where we watched the Flying Squirrels play the Mets.

It was SUPER hot and we were all tired and sunburned.

But it was worth it for the fireworks after the game.

34 weeks

6/28

I think this shirt makes me look smaller than I am.

Fourth of July Wreath by Princess Sparkley

6/27

Using this as our guide, Princess Sparkley (with some touch up work by me) created a Fourth of July wreath today for our front door.  Instead of using a foam wreath, we used a quilting hoop I got off Freecycle awhile ago.  And all the fabric was stuff I had from abandoned or leftover projects. 

Pet Groundhog

We recently discovered two groundhogs that crawl under the fence from our neighbor's yard (where we believe their burrow is) into our yard (one at a time) to munch on our "lawn." 

I had to look the up online to see what they were. They must not have ground hogs out west because these creatures are totally foreign to me so when we looked out the window and saw this enormous rodent, we were hesitant to know what to call it but I was pretty sure it had to be a ground hog, and it is.

I like watching the bigger one chomp the dandelions.  We were excited to have these "pets" but after our big derecho storm last week, we haven't seen them.  We're not sure if they have retreated from the heat, or if the neighbors have done something to get rid of them. 

Mad Birds

Little Guy is obsessed with Angry Birds.  A little over a year ago, he called them Mad Birds, I sort of miss that.  The downside of his Angry Birds obsession is we don't have smartphones or Ipads* so the kids used to only get to play when we were visiting relatives who did own said devices.  Not anymore.  For his birthday in January, Little Guy got this physical (picture below), build up blocks and launch a bird at them, board game version of Angry Birds.  He loves it.  And just recently he decided to save up his money for a different version.  (I've seen both at Target.)  Plus, we recently discovered this website where we can play online.  (And this one where you can play my favorite, Cut the Rope.)

Decorating for a pretend, Angry Birds-themed, birthday party.

I've spent all week printing out Angry Bird coloring pages for Little Guy who then colors them and insists I cut out all the birds and pigs.  We have dozens of Angry Bird bits of paper floating around our house.  So it was an awesome discovery at A.C. Moore (our local craft store) when we found Angry Birds coloring books for $1 each yesterday.  We got two.  I might need to go back for more since he's already colored a bunch of the pages.

*We're a little slow on these types of technological advancements.  It wasn't until earlier this week that Little Guy informed me the birds are angry because the piggies stole their eggs.  I seriously had no idea. 

Firehouse Tour

6/21

Our ward has a park day group and over the summer, they planned a field trip to the downtown fire station of a nearby town.  We tagged along for the fun.  Little Guy didn't want to squirt the fire hose but the two big kids did.