the benefits of an indoor fire place

what a good looking cat!

 So grandma bought kayla and blake sleeping bags, which they LOVE! they both insist on sleeping in them and they like to bring them down for cozy movie nights.

 have you ever seen those mini tents at stores on displays and thought i want one! Well,  canadian tire had a couple on their clearance rack so now kayla and blake have their own mini tent for their toys!

 another cozy movie night!

 a picture of me, blake, kayla and my niece adora was posted in the calgary sun after the mothers day run.  When i showed kayla she grabbed the paper then ran over to her chair to sit and read! she was slightly disappointed that there was actually only 1 picture of her and 'dora' in the paper!

 miss. bling. kayla loves her necklaces and bracelets and can often be found sporting 10+ pieces of jewelry.  This little giraffe outfit is going on summer 3 of wear!

 kayla and blake are becoming very good friends, here they are sharing a chair!

 I made these aprons one christmas for my day home girls and blake.  Nic thought they were too girly for blake but when kayla discovered his in a drawer he wanted to wear his too!

 So we bought a tent trailer recently, and blake can NOT wait to go camping!  So we decided to have a little marshmallow roast in the basement.  What a great rainy night activity!  I actually once tried to roast marshmallows in the oven when i was a bored student...it doesn't really work.  But an indoor fire place! now that is awesome! we will definately do this again!

fun day with my kids!

first off, i seem to get more free coffees from starbucks then i pay for!  I recieved a survey for a free drink from a free drink, so took my kids to redeem it.  They love those kids drinks!  Kayla gets steamed vanilla milk though, she does not do well with chocolate...it stains, and she is the messiest eatter/drinker i have ever come across.  I was sad that i would not have another girl to wear all Kayla's cute hand me downs, but really, there isn't that many because she is SOO hard on her clothes!

 ANYWHO!! After our starbucks date we headed to safety city!  For a great family day activity.  It was threatening to rain all morning so there wasn't a huge turn out, which was perfect for us!

Kayla was very hesitatant about trying the bouncers but once she did i couldn't get her out! and she pretty much had this one to herself for a good 20 mins!

 Blake watering the target...and some people...opps!

 They had a few games, and no line ups!

And of course fire hats, cotton candy and pop! Sugar my kids up for nap time!
After this we headed over to the farmers market for some honey.  I gave blake a $5, and stood by the honey stand while he went to pay for a honey bear.  Blake handed the guy his money and said 'honey bear please!' the guy got a little frantic and asked 'where did this come from!?! where did you get this?!' apparently people don't like it when 4 year olds try to pay for something...anyway! it was a nice morning with my kids!! but we won't talk about the afternoon.....

gardening/flowers-day home

If you are new to my blog, i use this space mostly to display things i have done in my day home.  Themes and activities and such, however i only post pictures with my children.
for a theme in the month of May we did flowers/gardening. here are some of the activities i did with the children!

 after over a year of using a rubbermaid on top of a box, i purchased a water table for inside my house! I've had one outside that i used to bring in but it's spent a little too much time out now... anyway, i'm thrilled with it! i love to put themed items in it for play.  This is filled with flower petals, flowers, shovels, and there was pails too. 

 Of course the obvious activity, paint pots, and plant something!

 I poured the left over soil from the pots into our outdoor water table.  i was surprised at how long ALL the children stayed interested in this, normally just the younger too are busy in the water table.  I purchased the dirt from the dollar store, it is amazing the stuff you can find there!

 Our plants. we will see if they survive! they have been left in the rain a few times, and last year when i planted with the children our cat knocked over every last pot and broke them. so far we have something growing in 3 out of 5!

I also had flower petal colleges, and leis in the dress up.  |A trip to a flower shop would have been a great add on to this theme, however did not get to it this time around.

This was not for the flower theme, just a science experiment i did with the children.  I came accross a book at the library that had some awesome water science experiments that were very simple and easy to do with young children.  I loved the book so much i ordered it and another one from the same line off amazon, and am going to try and do every experiment in the book.

my best car trip idea!

i should copy right this! or just share it with my one blog follower...here's a great idea for you sheena!!

so when blake was a baby and we drove a little tiny cavialier (i can't spell..) on long car rides i would fill 3 or 4 baskets full of random toys and books put them in the front seat then hand one back to him.  When it was emptied i would hand him another. this worked great in the cavialier because i could easily reach almost everything he dropped, and refill the baskets.  So anyway, this evolved to lunch boxes.  I started filling lunchboxes and keeping them under the seat in the van, then one long drive pull them out.  I've had to start being more selective about what i put in them as the kids get older and because these toys often fall out of the van.  With one baby in a car everything stayed contained but 2 in a van, things roll around and fall out. SO anyway! this is a great thing to do with random packs of 4 crayons, mcdonalds toys, all that werid little crap that you don't want in your house! i don't do this for every trip, my kids can handle 2 hours without these.  Trips to calgary i usually plan for nap time just let them use the dvd player or i pad. but longer then 2 hours they get crazy! so here's my lasted lunch boxes for our next trip!

 this is blakes, there's a flashlight, stickers, a dino, a robot, stamps, a car, sunglasses, pictures, keys, crayons, activity book and the red heart diplo which keeps blake very occupied! and we got it for free from a free lego build at toys r us.

 kayla's is very similar, she has a necklace, pictures, flashlight, glasses, stickers, stamps, crayons, note pad, diplo, finger puppet.

 here is the 4 i packed. there's mini robert munsch books in the smaller ones, bandaids, pipecleaners, a sucker, seashells, a mini ball shooter game, crayons, a fruit snack in the egg, i don't remember what else is in those!

They are all packed and ready to go!  i would like to pack 2 more so that there is 2 for the way there and 2 different ones for the way back. i packed them pretty early...we are not going until the middle of july but these are the things i do to avoid homework and house work! and yet i still feel 'productive'.

all about me! -day home

 first off, how cool is this FREE playground we got for the kids! pays to go on those swap and buy sites at the right time!

 So for a week we did an 'all about me' theme.  Here is Blake decorating his body outline.  I still have yet to send these home, maybe a picture would be prefered by my day home families!

 We did some measuring. I had the children weigh themselves and i took their heights. we made little books with all this info in them.  Then i let them measure things in the playroom with the tape measures that i got from ikea!

 those ikea tape measures were a hit! they can record all their heights on them, and the boys were very excited to take them home!

 how cute is she?!

 we did hand prints, which as you can imagine got VERY messy!

and foot prints, talked about favorite things, and had some great about me books.

Spring Cleaning! Day home

For a day home theme one week we had spring cleaning!  The children did some window washing (that generally results in the windows needs to be washed!)

I really fell down on the photos for this theme.  They also washed dishes in the water table (above), and hung and 'folded' laundry, did some fabric colleges, and had brooms, dusters, dust-pans in the playroom.

Blake!

 so i was one of those crazy people who got up ridiculously early on boxing day and got myself to old navy to get a free camera! it's a small video camera that takes pictures too. after spending several months using it as a picture camera i finally printed some pictures and realized it sucks. the videos are ok but the pictures, not so much. ANYWAY! for mother's day Blake's preschool had a mother's day tea. all the children performed a few songs then served us tea and cookies. and BLAKE SANG!!! for the christmas concert Blake was the ONLY kid who did not want to participate and sat on the stage while all the other kids performed the most adorable songs. it was rather embarrassing. he was partly mad about the sweater we made him wear, but also just was not into school yet. so glad to report he has finally warmed up to the idea of school! he tells us about what hes done at school and attempts to teach us songs he learns there. anyway, on mother's day i was BEAMING proud of him!!

 Here he is with the cookies he decorated.

 Blake and mommy! he made the crown :)

and some random Blake pictures, this is from one of Blake's FAVORITE places, the dino park at the zoo!

 Blake the ham.

Anyway, just a little bit about the boy i love! He is wonderful! although he could use a hair cut...we love him!