Real School!!

There it is!!!!!

In black and white. 

Aiden's been accepted into the full day kindergarten program. 

How am I feeling right now? Excited!!! Ask me this again in another 6months. We'll see what I say then.

Bath Paints

I had given the kids soap bath paints for Christmas and they already blew through those bottle so I was looking on line to see if there was any way of making paints on the cheap. I came across a bunch of ideas and decided to go with the shaving cream one. I'll try others down the line. Its pretty simple a squirt of shaving cream and a few drops of food coloring and boom...paint. Of course the smell of shaving cream does get to you after a while and once they are done you pretty much have to drain the water and refill the tub to actually clean the kids, but they had fun nonetheless.

 Q-Tips for paint brushes

Finger paints

washes off with water.

Fun in the Snow

In addition to last weeks blizzard that dropped about 25" of snow on us (half of which had melted over the week). We got about another 3-4" last night. So I took Aiden out in the snow while Rebecca napped and Seth cleared the driveway. I will say that it was pretty cold out (about 20*) so we didn't stay out for too long, but he had a blast.

 Helping clear the driveway.

  Not much grass to mow there little man...

 Making snow angels

 Sand toys work just as well in the snow.

Burying Daddy in the snow.

Learning to Give

An email was sent out at my office that a toy drive was going to be held and also that if you donated then your name would be put in for a raffle of a free vacation day. Heck I’ll take a free vacation day, especially since our vacation policy is pretty redonkulous I even won’t have enough vacation day next year to cover all the shut down time we have next year, nevermind all the days off that my kids have from daycare being closed for holidays I don’t get off. But that is besides the point.

So the toy drive is for needy children. There was a list of items that were requested the most. So this past weekend I decided to take the kids to the store. Now before we left I explained to him that the toys that we were going to buy were not for us. We were not keeping them; that they were going to kids that did not have a lot of money and could not afford to buy toys. He seemed to understand it. We headed over to the dollar store. I grabbed a cart and Aiden loved the fact that he was able to help pick out what we should give. We picked up coloring books, crayons, makers, books, puzzles(Aiden picked out the images), cars and generic Barbie dolls (Aiden picked those). He had fun putting all the stuff in the cart. Honestly, I think he was more excited about picking out toys in general, but it’s a start though.

 Later that day when Seth asked us what we did earlier in the day Aiden said,

 “Daddy we went to the store to buy toys.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah! We bought toys because they can’t buy toys because they waste all their money.”

::facepalm:: 

Maybe next year little man. Maybe next year.

 (the back half of the cart was filled with the diaper bag and coats.)

 Rebecca checking out the dolls.

My One Consignment Purchase

Last fall at my first sale I bought a bunch of winter clothing for the kids. They needed it and in the need I just broke even with what I sold. The spring I found a few more sales in my area and proceeded to try to get rid of as much of the summer stuff I had from when Aiden was a baby and the previous summer  season of Rebecca's. It was a lot of clothing. I did manage to sell about 70% of the stuff. About 10% was not what I deemed sell-able, but from what I have seen of the racks it would be perfectly fine to some people. So not too bad. This Fall sale season I was tempted to go just to see what was there as far as toys went because the kids were all set in the clothing department, but I resisted the urge. I volunteer one shift at the sale that is most local to me and was my first sale because I like to. I get to talk with the different moms and its nice. Plus I earn a little extra percentage. I get a chance at a drawing to earn 100% of my sales and also because as a seller I can also buy anything that is unsold during the regular sale. During the sorting of the items that were being donated, I happen to come across this beauty.

 

 Its Techno Gears Marble Mania. Aiden has had some interest in marble runs because they have one in one of his old classrooms. I did have it down on his birthday list, but never got around to getting it for him.  So when I happen to see this I snagged it up and for a lovely price of $8.00. And the box looks brand new to boot. You never know what you are going to find at one of these sales.

Apple Picking 2012

Saturday we finally went apple picking. I was excited to go because I love going every year. Yes I may whine a little in this post like a little kid, and yes I know that you can’t get everything you want in life, but you can come damn close if you try hard enough.  Either way, the weather was great. I still don’t envision apple picking in shorts and a tee shirt, but I’ll take it. Of course we get about 10mins into picking and my battery dies on my camera. That was my own fault for not making sure that it was charged beforehand. The one thing that I did like was that there were different apples to pick because we ended up coming later in the season. However since we thought that most of the apples we normally pick were gone we didn’t walk down the main aisle and I missed all the Cortland apples that I love to eat and cook with. They still had loads of those on the trees. Seth did get a bunch of honey crisp. I was able to pick my favorite- Granny Smith.  And we did get a few called Golden Russett. I guess it’s a very old variety of apple and they are supposed to be really good for cooking because they start out really firm.

There was a little fall festival going on so we stopped over to the other side of the orchard and Aiden was all excited to go on some of the bouncy house. We sent Rebecca into one of them and she did stay in for a little bit, but in the end she came out half way through her time because there were just too many kids in there for her and they don’t pay attention. They just jump around. We picked our pumpkins and called it a day. Next year I may just get smaller bags and go twice that season to get different types of apples.

 These apple looking little little golden nuggets and are kind of fuzzy as well. They taste pretty good.

 

 So many to pick from.

 

She was NOT a fan of sitting on the pumpkin.

Sand Play

Probably one of the last few times that we will be able to play in the sand. I think we have about a month left of decent weather that we’ll be able to use the sand box, which looks pretty small when you add two kids into it. And yes while Rebecca loves to play in the sand she can stand the stuff touching her feet so she threw a nutty until we put her socks back on.

 Peek a boo!!

 "NO SAND ON MY FEET!!!"

 Dumping sand on each other.

Play time was over as soon as they started to dump sand over teach other heads. We need a bigger turtle.