Humpty Dumpty Day

It’s working! Sorry for the short, choppy posts. I guess maybe my original post was too lengthy, too many big picture files, it just bogged the publishing down. So instead of a nice cohesive update, I will continue to post my original post in small sections. Wouldn’t want you to miss anything. :)

Without fail, the days that I think we have the fewest activities and the least fun in store, are the days the boys love the most. For instance, Humpty Dumpty Day. I guess you can’t go wrong when you’re letting your kids drop raw eggs of a mega block tower they built.

Poor Humpty. It got worse for him too…

It also got worse for me…Thatcher’s Humpty dropping aim is not great.

But I saw that one coming from a mile away…hence the towel. Mama didn’t raise no fool.

Thad’s favorite part of the day was Humpty Dumpty repair. He drew and cut out a Humpty, and we put him up on the fireplace mantle (a “wall”). When they were distracted elsewhere, I cut Humpty up into big pieces and told them Humpty had fallen. Thad’s job was then to re-assemble him with bandaids. He thought this was so funny and awesome that we had to make more, and use up about 30 bandaids.

Thad’s Bedroom Update

I’m having major difficulties getting my blogs to publish. I don’t know why, or how to fix it. We’ll see if this one works.

This last summer, we updated the boys’ rooms with new carpet (thankfully…the original carpet was GROSS), new paint, new baseboards, and for Thaddeus, big boy furniture.

Prior to the update, Thad’s furniture was really sparse. A toddler bed, a small bookshelf…I can’t even remember what else. Toys piled everywhere, I’m sure. Somehow I don’t have a “before” picture. But, here’s the “after”:

The bookshelves actually came from our bedroom, as did the desk, which my grandparents bought me as a child from a garage sale. I refinished when I was in highschool. The bed frame is also a hand-me-down from my child-hood, also from a garage sale. Nothing but the best for my kids!

The bed frame actually looked quite different when we got it from my parent’s garage, and Justin spent HOURS sanding and restaining, and now it really looks beautiful.

 

Some of my favorite things in his room are:

The world map showing animals from each continent (bought by my parents from Costco).

The Jesus Loves Me print that I duplicated from an idea I saw on Etsy. (My niece and nephew also have a copy, in their room colors)

The dino-fabric-covered window cornice (fancypants!) that Justin and I made together (instructions are similar to what is in this post, I can’t find out the original, but holy cow, check out the playroom in this post!)

The magnetic white board we bought from Amazon for his 3rd birthday maybe? Mostly we have used it for magnets (not all white boards are magnetic…do your research!) because Thatcher is not to be trusted with markers of any time in a room with carpet.

His super cute safari sheets that my super-shopper sister found at Target (2 out of the 3 of his favorite animal trifecta! Hippos and Rhinos…just missing Buffalos!)

Speaking of super shoppers, I also love the train bookend my mom found garage-saling. Going to garage sales is her ‘thing’, so I supply her with a list of garage sale items that I am looking for. Since, you know, I’m too lazy to go to garage sales, I’ll make my mother do the work for me. Nice.

Still to be done:

We snagged some beautiful big pieces of oak boards from my parents garage that I’m convincing Justin should be made into shelves above Thad’s desk. That may be a summertime project. 

Justin’s mom is in the process of making Thad a dinosaur quilt for his bed. This has been in the plans for a while, but knowing what the quilting process is like personally (i.e. it can take longer than planned!) I went ahead and bought Thad a bedspread from TJ Maxx. (20 bucks for a cute quilt-looking bedspread in the right colors!)

Hat Day

Okay, I’m trying this differently. I’m reposting my original post I wrote earlier this week into small sections. We’ll see if it works.

Today is Tuesday. On Friday, we woke up to over 6 inches of snow, and it hasn’t been above freezing since. I keep going back and forth in my head thinking “Oh my gosh, my kids haven’t left the house in 5 days, I am stunting their social development” to “This doesn’t seem that much different than when the roads aren’t covered in ice”. Perhaps what I need to get out of that, is that my kids need more outside activities under normal circumstances.

Anyway. I sat down this morning to do a quick update with the snow pictures and our Snowflake Day yesterday, and quickly realized that I am much more behind than that. (Do you like how I capitalize the name of our day? I am either quite conceited, or quite cookoo…I am also questioning how to spell cookoo).

Since my last post was about Halloween, I suppose it makes sense to start with November here, which of course included “H” week:

Books were read, hats were worn, Thad’s favorite: the bunny hat. Not MY favorite…gives me flashbacks of my most despised Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. Hate the whiny kids, hate the narrator’s voice, hate the jerk dad, hate the whiny mom…hate the whole thing. Fortunately, it’s a Crossland family staple during the holidays. At which time I go find something else to do.

Technical Difficulties

When I was working on my Halloween post, I had major problems getting it to post from Windows Live Writer onto my blog itself. Justin helped me trouble shoot, and in the end, it seems to fix the problem when I downloaded a different version of Writer, and re-posted everything. I spent DAYS trying to figure it out, and had put a lot of time into writing the post itself, so I was really relieved when it finally worked and happy the problem was solved. It isn’t. The exact same thing happened with my most recent post. So frustrating. I’m keeping that one saved and starting something new in hopes that it will magically start working again, and I will be able to post this as well as go back and post my last update. We shall see.

Halloween 2013

Since Thanksgiving is creeping up RIGHT around the corner, I figured I’d better get with it and post something about Halloween. Cause, you know, if you don’t post something on the internet about it, it’s like it never happened. And now that I’m really thinking about it, there really isn’t that much to say about Halloween, so the bulk of this will be pictures of 2 cute kids.

We were supposed to go Trick or Treating with our good friends and their little girls. But at the time we were all infected with the Black Plague (seriously, I am STILL coughing), so we had to cancel and keep the germs to ourselves. Instead, we just meandered down our road and to Justin’s Aunt and Uncles house a few blocks away. It has become the tradition to stop there on Halloween. Justin’s aunt always has a special treat for the kids, and who doesn’t get a kick out of seeing small people in costumes.

Ah, I know what will be fun. Let’s do a little Throwback Thursday. Even though it’s Friday. Roll with me here people, and enjoy a couple of Justin’s well executed costumes, circa 2006 and 2007:

And here we have a synopsis of Thad’s costumes over his lifespan:

Thatcher’s lifespan is, of course, a bit shorter:

What you can’t see is this picture is Thatcher’s feet sticking out of the little froggy feet, which I had to cut open so my giant baby (6 months old at the time) could fit into the 12 month costume.

Which brings us to Halloween of 2013. We did some fun days of Preschool the week of Halloween: Bats, Pumpkins, Spiders, Skeletons and Scarecrows.

Here’s Thad making some skeletons using black playdoh (saved from day ONE of preschool….Ant Day), Q-tips and animal shaped cookie cutters. And him with a preschooler-sized printable skeleton that he pieced together. I’m still finding most of my ideas from preschoolalphabet.blogspot.com, but have also found a TON of free printable stuff from teacherspayteachers.org. Any printable stuff that we use I am keeping for next year, and hopefully setting myself up for an even easier process next time around.

The night before Halloween I brought home some pumpkins after work and BARELY convinced Thad to stick his hand inside and clean out the pumpkin. That kid does not enjoy grossness.

Thatcher, on the other hand, was slinging pumpkin goo all over the kitchen

And here are the hoodlums in their get-ups. I’ll post these in sequence so you can appreciate the fact that Thatcher’s smile and posture gets cheesier with every photo that I take.

Could you please have a larger smile and lean closer to the camera, sir.

Their costumes cost a grand total of 3.99, the only thing I bought was a Pocahontas costume from St.Vinnies that I cut up to be Thatcher’s Daniel Boone shirt. My mom had gotten the cowboy chaps, vest and hat at a garage sale earlier this summer, and I hid it away so Thad would be excited for it.

And clearly, he was:

Halloween night was a little drizzly and cold, but since we were close to home the whole time and really not out long, it was just fine. Since when is Halloween NOT drizzly and cold anyway…get used to it kids.

Thatcher most definitely did not understand what was going on. Thad got it, but is shy enough that he wasn’t running crazily from door to do. Mostly we had to shove him up steps and tell him what to say. He was quite happy to see his loot spread out on the counter, but since that night has totally forgotten about it, so it’s all sitting in the cabinet getting slowly picked away by me and Justin.

Thatcher’s really never eaten candy before, so I don’t think he realized the value of what was in those bright little packages. All except the SUCKERS.

Those he recognized.

testing