Quick Takes 7-26-2013

Linking up with Jen and the gang...

I promised more on the house and travels last post so that's what I'll do:

1. My parents, sister, J, B and I all went to the Children's Museum on July 4th.  We had a blast even with only one kid in tow.  We were there from 11-5... no joke.  We went from basement to 4th floor and even had lunch there.  Serious fun...

Dinosaur exhibit, hands on part

looking up at the blown glass sculpture

And of course my camera battery died shortly after this moment, at the beginning of our visit.  Hmm, perhaps my sis has some pics I could have...

2. B was up all day on the 4th and still did fireworks, I don't know how he pulled that off but he was great throughout.  The rest of the week was spent with my family...

sudden rainshower = puddle splashing 

"well for starters, you have to understand that..."

Dancing after chocolate ice cream?  Why yes, don't mind if we groove.  One of my fav pics evah.

BTW, B's dancing reminded me of this scene from Psych, one of my favorite shows, if you haven't seen it, you should:

3.  My grandmother turned 80 and I really enjoyed seeing all of my extended family.  Every time I get some time with family I realize just how utterly blessed I am to have these wonderful people in my life.

One of the highlights was my uncle "interviewing" Grandma about her life.  She told us about finding work at 11 years old to help out financially, living with rations during WWII, walking to Church, her first experience of Adoration as a young girl and, of course, the love story of her and my grandfather.  The interview was videotaped.  I'm tearing up again just thinking about how much I was able to learn about this amazing woman that I wouldn't have learned without that opportunity.  Everyone should hear from their grandparents like this.

Listening intently

She even pulled out some things... this is her high school cheerleading sweater!
She was in the class of 1941 :)

4. Summer at home has been full of house projects, gardening and such.  I lost all my romaine lettuce because I didn't know when to harvest and it bolted.  Chalk that one up to a learning experience.  I have more tomato plants than I thought I would because so many volunteers came up from tomatoes that dropped last year.  I have 2 little icebox watermelons out there that I'm curious to watch grow.

5. Stripping dining room/playroom wallpaper and washing walls... teeeeeedious!
Before:

B photobombing the before pic :)

Pulling off the paper... thinking, "oh my, this is pretty easy for once!!!"

Something's not right here... that's not some kind of design...

And as I realized that there was a wallpaper mural under the glue and a coat of primer
I may or may not have cussed in German... ok, I did.  B was in bed.

I played with the filters on the last picture in hopes you would see what I was seeing... THIS MURAL UNDER A COAT OF PAINT... AAAAAACK!!!  (yes, I searched for it online because I was that mad that the least they could have done is not painted over it so that I could see the mural in all it's 1950's glory before I tediously scraped it off of the plaster walls... grr.)

Yup, it's under there alright.

 A week and a half later we finally finished scraping and steaming and scraping some more.  Now we're washing, washing and washing the walls.  Wallpaper is my nemesis and it has now been completely erradicated from my home.  WAHOO!

6. Speaking of stubbornness (wallpaper), a little boy is really exercising his independence lately :)  But we're learning to adapt to a big boy bed, drinking from real cups, doing things all by ourselves...

"I'm a big kid now" 

7.  B and I joined some friends for Mass and bagels this morning, great way to start a Friday!

Sorry so long, but thanks for stickin with me :)

The Triduum with a toddler

He's my little buddy and he's growing up!  We took a chance taking a toddler to Holy Thursday Mass and Good Friday service.  He seemed to just soak everything up.  We had conversations about what would happen at Church and then later a recap or acting it out on his own.


Some gems from B:

Holy Thursday Mass was constant whispering.
"See wots of Fadders?" (Lots of Fathers)

"B go up wass feet?  Take shoe off?"

Me: "Look at the servers, they're getting the altar ready"
B: "For me?"  :)

"I kiss Desus too?" whispered approx. 831 times as we waited to go up and venerate the cross on Good Friday.

When he did kiss the crucifix he gave it a good "mwah" causing the deacon to smile.

Me: "What are you doing?"
B: "I wassing der feet!  Wike fadder!"

Washing of the feet ala toddler style

B: "Wike Fadder? I way down" (prostrates himself in the play room which ends up looking more like he's "planking" :)

From a couple weeks ago: "Diss my chawice." (this my chalice) He didn't know why we thought it was picture worthy.

This morning: "Dad get you cwoss, we cawwy wike sewvoos." (we carry like servers) Also, the crosses were made of duplos.

This kid picks up alot just watching what's going on.  These are the good ones.  For example, I'm not including his, "Owr you kidding me" repeated after me while I was driving.  Oops.

Oh, and there's this that I printed out from Catholic Icing (awesome site!)  It's a Resurrection Set.  We came down Easter morning and the first thing we did was check to see if the stone was still there and Jesus body was in the tomb where we put it on Friday evening.  He was surprised to see it empty and Jesus standing on the mantel.  He kept repeating "Desus awive!"  (Jesus alive!) whenever he looked up there.  Then he went and found his Easter basket :)

I found that this little resurrection set and B helped ME take to heart just how amazing Easter is and how wonderful a thing to celebrate.  Sometimes kids help us see things with fresh eyes and in a simpler and deeper way.  It filled our desire as parents to focus on Jesus first and then celebrate like we mean it!  I mean, why have only one morning where you run down to see what amazing thing happened in the night (Christmas) when you can have two!  We SHOULD race down the stairs and be excited about what happens Easter morning! 

I hope that your celebration of Easter continues to be great!  God Bless!

St. Valentine's Day

Yup, reaching backward in time now that I'm back to blogging.  My goal is a post a day Sun through Friday.  So far I'm 2/2!

Start the day with some pink heart shaped pancakes

 

Making the Flourless Chocolate Cake courtesy of Dr. Weil 

Some chocolate to melt down... no big deal

   

Pshew... lots of work and clean up but...

 WORTH IT!!!  SO good!  It's so rich you actually NEED the fruit for the sweetness.

My flowers :)

I finally made this heart garland based on this tutorial.  Super simple, but I've thought of making it for a couple years now.  It's just different colored felt sewn together.  I might have to make something for more holidays in the future :) B was good to model for me in front of our mantel...

it is just me or does he look a whole lot like my bro Eric in this pic!?
Mom, can you scan a photo to me and I'll put them side by side?

Finishing up some Fall Fun

We headed to an Orchard after our Atlanta trip.  We bought some good food, fed some goats and played on the playground.  We took the camera in hopes of some good pics of B... here's some of what we got.

Warm and candied

B ran over to the bulldozer yelling "Cat Machine! UP! UP!"

Last year I had to walk him up this ramp
holding both of his hands, and now...

If only you could hear him say llama... hilarious

Bond, James Bond.

Trying valiantly to get Ben to smile at the camera with me

Credit goes to Joe for this great pic

They gave him a little apple on the way home which he promptly ate... yay!

Meeska, Mooska, Mickey...

MOUSE!

B needed a costume he would enjoy and want to put on so it had to be someone or something he likes right now.  That was clearly Mickey Mouse.  

Also his same aged cousin that we were going to be visiting could be Minnie! 

Grammy teaching about the value of chocolate :)

THE HOW-TO 

I made or tailored every piece of this costume and loved just about every minute of it:

- The leggings were from the Old Navy girls section, don't tell. (sewed the lace under on the bottoms of the legs to be sure it didn't show).

- The black shirt is a 3T from Target.  A size bigger to get the longer arms and torso but then I used this tutorial to make it tight.  I refer to it as his toddler underarmor :)  I used the same technique on my costume, but more on that later.

- Red shorts were made from scratch and lined with black satin to keep them from riding up on the leggings.  I used this tutorial (great website!) for the kid shorts and lining them. Then I hand sewed on white felt "buttons" on the front and a little velvet black trim as a tail.

- The ears are plastic mickey ears that I hot glued onto an old headband of mine.

- The gloves are homemade... traced B's hand, sewed around it, clipped the same allowances and turned it inside out.  Then added the black marks on the back.  I found some websites that were helpful, but I ended up winging it my own way in the end.  I found some thin white knit at Joann's and then doubled it on both the front and back of each glove.

- The yellow shoe covers I made with this tutorial.  Then I added the roll around the ankle just like the gloves.  

Just in case somebody needs an explanation (or I need to come back to these notes later :) ) The roll technique is one I'll be coming back to again I'm sure but I can't find the site I used to figure it out.  Basically you sew around the thumb and fingers but where the roll starts you leave it unsewn on the sides and long (as if it was going halfway up to his elbow.)  After you pull it inside out then you sew the sides of the long section so when you roll it up to the wrist your seam allowances are getting rolled up.  Then I hand sewed the roll so it would stay in place.

I didn't get too many pics of B to post because he's 2 and never stops moving... especially when he sees a camera!  Thanks to my dad for getting him to stay still for 2 seconds.

How can you not love this little tail!?  I think we have video of him trying to get it to wag by saying "wiggle wiggle" and shaking his hips side to side.

  

It was awesome to see so much family in our week long road trip both immediate and in-law.  We drove home feeling so blessed!