Art Projects

Well, as most of you know Natalie is in Ear Head Start. She has a Family Consultant who comes out to the house each week for one on one time w/her but includes all children so Corbin gets to make his own art projects also. So I am now up to my ears in art projects. I thought I would share.

So the first project we did recently was with leaves. They took some wax paper put a few leaves on it, grated some crayons on and around them put another piece of wax paper on top and iron them all together. They  both had a lot of fun and wanted to make more.

Then they took the rest of the crayons and made coloring discs. We all (including her famil consultant) removed the labels off of the crayons broke them, placed them in a small cupcake pan, and stuck them in the oven. I loved this idea becuase it consolidated all the little broken pieces of crayons into small discs...so much easier to pick up and Corbin really likes to play with them.

Ok so art project #3 was the Thanksgiving center pieces. This was done at the Early Head Start Center in Coeur d'Alene. They took pieces of play dough squashed it down so it was flat and had feathers, pine cones, shiny pieces of confetti (or as Natalie calls them "Sparklies") that they could decorate with. I tried to help her decorate it and everything I did was quickly undone. So Corbin's is more me than him he just chose what to put on it. They both turned out very cute.

Then finally we (her family consultant and I) took their hand prints put them on a piece of paper with a cute Thanksgiving poem and decorated them with glitter. It was messy but they LOVED it. Natalie as you can see made 4 different pictures. Corbin was a little too independent and I couldn't handle that much of a mess to clean up so I stopped him at 3. Funny how their imaginations run wild.

This one is Natalie's. notice the 4 different pieces of paper.

This one is Corbin's

Well..that is it for now. I am sure this is not the end. They both have painted pictures at the Center but those are hanging up on the walls at the center.

Halloween 2010

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. We decorated pumpkins for the first time this year. We went to a local farm called Carver Farms. The kids picked found two mini pumpkins plus they found 3 big ones for us to carve. Daniel enjoyed carving his first pumpkin. Natalie and Corbin painted their little pumpkins then while those were drying Daniel & I carved the pumpkins and had the kids help dig out the seeds. Natalie didn't like the idea of getting her hands all gooey but Corbin dug right in. 

I don't know what is this look is. He has a somewhat smile but....I don't know.

Coldwater Creek had a Halloween party so the two kids dressed up Friday and had professional pictures taken. Corbin wasn't too sure about it especially when Daniel & I walked off to the side so the photographer got I beleive one photo of the two of them together but Natalie stayed put so the photographer had her jump a couple of times. I can't wait to see them.

Saturday the two Lakeland wards did a trunk or treat followed by a Halloween family dance. We had SOOO much fun. Natalie was so fun to watch. The way she was dancing was absolutely adorable. Ok, so Daniel had some scrubs from a a previous Halloween so of course he was a doctor, I couldn't decide what wanted to do so I went the short road went and bought some scrubs and was a Nurse, or as Natalie called me a Nervous (sounds like Nurse right? I think there was one time she actually got it right.), Natalie was Tinker bell (she was so excited), and Corbin was Spiderman (who was also very excited not nearly as much as Natalie was though but he was so stinkin' cute).

Sunday, since I am involved in a weight loss challenge and didn't feel like the kids needed anymore candy, we chose not to go out on Sunday so we stayed home and just pass out candy. So Natalie took over that job. She insisted on handing ALL the trick-or-treats candy. If she missed any of them because she was away or something she got REALLY mad. When it got later she was ok with someone else doing it because she was watching Dora. She kept asking when more trick-or-treats were going to come for a few days after I told her we are out of candy and she would tell me she would go get some. Sooo cute. Corbin was a little afraid of all the costumes so he stayed away.

Overall it was a really fun weekend.

Daniels 36th Birthday

Well, Daniel celebrated his 36th birthday on September 13th. We celebrated with just the four of us. I made Daniel's favorite dinner, Shepard's Pie, and his favorite dessert is cheesecake so we he decided on an Oreo Cheesecake. I offered to make him a cheesecake but he chose the store bought Oreo Cheesecake. (says a lot about my cooking huh!) He also thought it would be fun to blow out 36 individual candles instead of blowing out the number candles. Needless to say we were eating wax with out birthday cake. It was a fun evening though. Daniel got his Apple IPad for his birthday/Christmas present.

Corbin's Birthday

Well, Corbin is 2. I can't beleive my baby boy is two. We now have two 2 year olds. That is scary. We had two parties. The first party was on Saturday, September 18 and the 2nd party was on Sunday the 19th (Corbin's birthday). Saturday was just to celebrate Corbin's birthday with his friends. The only problem was that everyone we invited was sick so we celebrated with just the four of us. The theme was spiderman. So we had a spiderman cupcake cake, spiderman party favors, the whole nine yards. I even had a friend help me make some bean bags for one of the games. Needless to say we were overloaded in spiderman party favors and cupcakes.

 So then Sunday...we had another birthday party this time for Daniel and Corbin. Daniel's birthday was September 13 so we did a jungle theme for this party. However since we were few in numbers for Corbin's party on Saturday we had a spiderman/jungle themed party. It wasn't much of a party for Daniel though. We invited a few families but just the wives and kids showed up. The husbands were on business or sick so Daniel made himself scarce. Overall it was a fun weekend for Corbin.

Weekend Getaway to Washington

We took a trip to Lakewood, WA over Labor Day Weekend. We left Friday evening and arrived around 11:30pm at Daniel's parents home. The kids somehow thought that because they had been sitting in a car for more than 5 hours (of course a few stops here and there to stretch their legs) they needed to use all that energy as soon as they got out of the car. Needless to say we didn't get to bed until 1:00am.

Daniel's parents have a covered front porch and every morning Grandpa Johnson goes out to feed the birds and squirrels. So Saturday & Sunday morning he let the kids help. Corbin would run onto the lawn and run after the birds and squirrels which would then of course scare them all away. Grandpa Johnson just sat there and watched the show. Natalie even tried to tell Corbin he needed to stay back but then she gave up joined in the fun.

Saturday Daniel's family all met together at his sister's house for a bbq and s'mores. We had a lot of fun. Then Sunday we met up with my side of the family. We went and visited with Danny Hjelm (my uncle, he only lives a mile or two from the in-laws). He showed us around his home and all the reconstruction he has done. He has done a really great job. It is amazing what you can do with your home when you pay for very little of the reconstruction. We then went back to Hjelms and had a brunch (breakfast for lunch) and visited for a while. Then we met up with some of my other family had yummy brownies and ice cream and let the kids play while we visited. 

 

All in all a great weekend. I wish we lived closer. We really had a lot of fun visiting with both sides of the family. We have discovered one thing though...we need to plan more time for our getaway's when there is more than one side of the family we want to see. We really did have a lot of fun. Always nice though to be back home.

Early Head Start

Natalie is in Early Head Start (not sure why she is so smart). So for those of you who don't know what Early Head Start is...when your child is enrolled they are assigned a family consultant who on a weekly basis comes out to our home as a "teacher" to help Natalie with some thing she may be behind in. Natalie is very smart so she is working on preschool things like writing her name, recognizing the letters in the alphabet w/their names, working w/scissors, etc. Then in conjunction w/your family consultant they have a facility or as Natalie calls it "her school", where on a quarterly basis or every other month they have a family night where you can meet other families or other consultants, etc. They usually have a dinner, and this last time they had little activities set up for the kids like your treasure bottle. Fill a bottle about 1/4 of the way w/treasures like feathers, beads, shiny things and then fill it 1/2 way w/sand and roll it around so you see your "treasures". Corbin and Natalie really enjoyed this. They also had the book mobile (an RV that has been turned into a traveling library where you can check out books) where they got to choose a free book. They also have "Playgroups" where every two months they let oyu choose a time that they get to play at the school for two hours, eat lunch, and play w/other kids who are also part of the school. We got for 4 weeks then on the 5th week we get to make a portfolio from the pictures that I have taken or some of the ladies from the school have taken and it goes in hr binder and when she turns 3 all the pictures her teacher has taken and the portfolio pictures become ours. It is such a great program and Natalie LOVES the fact that she has her own school and her own teacher. Here are some photo's I took while she was at one of her play dates. All kids in the family or friends are welcome to come to the playgroups or the family nights.

2010 Family Vacation

Ok, I am SOO behind in blogging so bear with me as I catch up. I have posted a few pictures but to see the most hilarious ones from the water slide and Tautphaus Park Zoo go to my facebook page.

So we started our trip by driving through Boise. We left our house about 11:30pm and drove through the night. The kids did pretty well. Corbin got upset a few times but I found that by rubbing is feet it calmed him down and he went back to sleep. We had to stop and gas up once along the way so we would let the kids get out and walk around for a minute, grab something to help keep us awake and continued onward. We chose to go through Boise so we could take the kids to the Boise Zoo, then to the State Capital. We sat on the grounds across from the Capital and watched the 4th of July parade then onto the zoo. When we were walking back from the parade to our hotel we passed a water feature that the kids loved so we stopped. The kids enjoyed the parade (I am sure because of all the candy) and really liked the monkeys. Natalie's most favorite part was the big Giraffe slide. She went up and down that thing so many times.

Then Sunday morning we headed for Blackfoot (my parents house) but on the way we stopped at the Twin Falls temple so natalie could see Angel Moroni and a Temple then we went to a park and arrived at my parents that evening.

Aaron and Kass put on a firework show for us and gave us dessert (ice cream) afterwards. During the fireworks Molly (my Dad's dog a chocolate lab; labs hate fire) tried to put them out until she was stopped and put in the shop. She wasn't very happy but now every time Natalie sees a picture of Molly or fireworks are mentioned she tells everyone that Molly got into the fireworks. Monday morning we helped my parents get their back yard ready for the reunion and that evening went into Idaho Falls to feed the ducks and let the kids play on the green belt. They had so much fun and it was fun to watch them feed the ducks. Corbin would just run after them. Then Tuesday morning we got up and headed to Yellowstone National Park where we spent the day. The kids seemed to have a lot of fun and Natalie kept seeing the steam come out of the pots and asked if the water was hot. We saw TONS of Buffalo, a slight sighting of a black bear, and a few deer. The kids were fascinated w/the deer and the buffalo as I was the only one that saw the bear. You always knew there was something to see when you drove past and there were cars parked along the side of the road. We were headed out of the park when we saw herds of buffalo on both sides of the road just grazing then we got stuck in traffic while a ranger tried to heard the buffalo off the road and get the people getting out of their cars to take pictures to PLEASE stay in their cars (which was causing even more of a traffic jam). My Dad ended up havening to work one evening so we took dinner into the fire station and ate dunner with him then he took all the grand kids out into the garage where all the fire trucks and ambulances were. My kids along w/all the other grand kids had a blast. Climbing inside all the fire trucks and the ambulance...what more could a kid ask for. Friday we had all planned to go to a water park but decided to bring the water park to us. So my brother-in-law and brothers took a huge sheet of commercial plastic, a few hoses, dishwashing soap, and made a homemade water slide. All the guys were w/out shirts and needless to say the sun got the best of them. They were all crispy crittered the next morning. The grand kids even took turns going down the huge plus playing in their kiddie swimming pool w/their own slide. Then Saturday morning was the Sealing day. We all came home and had a relaxing evening afterwards. Then Sunday we headed home to get home by about 11pm-12am. We had so much fun but we were so happy to be back home.

Waiting for Old Faithful

Soo cute. Both kids asleep both

w/one shoe on and one shoe off!