the kiddies

the kiddies

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Kindergarten!

It happened.
I have a baby in school.
I know he's so happy and excited to be
in school, but this Mama is counting the minutes until
we can pick him up at 2:50.

Where has the time gone?


Sorry for the Cameron overload lately. He's had some pretty
monumental days as of late. But don't worry, I'll be back to blogging
about all my babies very soon! :)

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Interview With A 5 Year Old

As I said in my last post, my oldest baby is 5 years old. 
I can hardly stand the idea that 5 years have already gone by. 
I feel like a couple blinks ago I was just learning the art of diaper changing.
But,  here we are, 5 years into the wild journey of parenting.


Now, I could tell you how big he's gotten, and how tall he's grown...
but I thought it would be much more fun to interview him this year. 
Maybe I'll do this every year. I'm sure these kind of posts will be fun to look back on.
(Just for the record-he's growing at a rate that can't even be explained. 
And it's costing us a fortune!)

CAMERON'S FIVE YEAR INTERVIEW


What's your favorite color?
Green.

What's your favorite food?
Chicken.

What's your favorite sport?
Basketball. (Lord, help me. Don't tell Dad.)

What's your favorite movie?
How to Train Your Dragon 2

What's your favorite animal?
Zebra.

What's your favorite thing to do with Dad?
Build Legos.

What's your favorite thing to do with Mom?
Snuggle. (Awwww!)

What do you want to be when you grow up?
A Police Officer.

What do you like most about having two siblings?
Always having someone to be with. (I swear he actually said that.)

What's your favorite memory?
Playing on the beach with all my cousins (actually his second cousins)
and going to the Zoo for my birthday.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

8.31.14

Today is Cameron's birthday!

His requests for today? Pizza and the Zoo!
Lucky for Mom and Dad, those are two things his siblings were happy to do too.

This morning started with donuts and presents, another Cam request.
Shortly there after, we made our way to Como Zoo.
It was such a nice day! Sure it was warm, but with the breeze, it was almost perfect.
Unfortunately, wrangling 3 kids made it impossible to take as many
pictures as I would have liked to, but I got a few good ones.




Once we had our fill of giraffes and polar bears, we headed to Cosetta's, 
an Italian pizzeria, for pizza and cannolis.



Well there's a birthday cake in the oven, and kids who need naps, so I need to run.
His 5 year update will be up in a couple days!

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

5 Minutes.

5 MINUTES IN MY HEAD


How the hell is it already 3:30?!
Scratch that, why isn't it 9:30?
I'm so tired.
But my to-do list isn't getting any shorter.
Crap. Did I put the laundry in the dryer?
When did I even put it in the wash?
UUUGGGHHH. I better just wash it again.
What's for dinner?
How is it that I'm the one who makes the menus, and does 
the shopping, and yet I can never remember what's for dinner?
I need a hair cut.
And to take this now hideous nail polish off.
Maybe after the kids go to bed.
HHHHAAAAAAAA! Doubt it.
How can kids this little, make a mess this big?
Dumb question, Katie.
There's 3 of them.
You know who really needs a haircut? JP.
I'm not really feeling his Justin-Bieber-circa-2010 look.
And he probably needs his diaper changed.
I'm so over diapers.
What's on Eva's face?
Sparkly lip gloss. Great.
I wonder where else I'm going to find that.
Better find it before Dad does.
Did Jason ever figure out what to grill this weekend?
I couldn't use a night off of dinner duty.
What's for dinner tonight again?
Where's Cameron?
Shit! The laundry!

Saturday, August 16, 2014

DIY Canvas Print

I originally saw this quote on wood being sold in an Etsy shop,
and totally fell in love with it. But I couldn't justify forking over $55.

After giving it some thought, I figured out a way to incorporate this quote 
into my own home... but for less than $10.

All I had to do with buy a canvas!
I had all of the other materials needed.



I'm kicking myself for not taking more pictures of the process!
I wasn't sure it was going to turn out as awesome as it did, so I 
didn't even think to document the steps involved.

So I'm going to give it my best shot at writing out directions.

1. Paint your canvas. This will be the color of the words once you're finished.
 I actually used several shades of gray, by mixing gray and white acrylic paint, 
so it wouldn't seem so uniform.

2. Print your quote on regular paper with whatever size and font you care for.

3. Cut out the letters. This was the worst part. It was very time consuming
to cut out each letter, but it cost me nothing to make my own "stencils"
versus buying them.

4. Map out the quote on the canvas. Obviously, wait until your first coat of paint
is completely dry before doing this part. Once I had it mapped out, I used regular
tape to secure each letter to the canvas. This part was pretty time consuming too.
I rolled small pieces of tape, and stuck them to the back of each letter so they wouldn't
interfere with the quote itself.

5. Paint the entire canvas black (or whatever color you prefer). I used a small sponge
to blot the paint onto the canvas. I also made sure to do this in straight down motions 
to keep the letters as crisp as possible. And by using a thin layer of paint, some of the texture
of the original canvas came through... which I really ended up liking. It also
seemed to give it an overall aged appearance.

6. Once the black paint was about half dry, I used a toothpick to lift the paper letters
enough so that I could pull them off with my fingers. It got a little messy, but I go exactly
what I wanted out of the project.

Happy Painting!

#widn

#whatimdoingnow

Happy Saturday!

My husband is out golfing with a few friends today, and with the shitty humid weather,
the kids and I are spending the day inside. And I have to admit,
after the last several crazy busy weekends, I'm happy to spend a day inside.
It certainly doesn't help that my Norwegian blooded children don't tolerate
heat and humidity very well.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a little of what we've got going on today!

After running a few errands and grabbing some lunch we made our way back home.

First priority of the day? Watch Aladdin.
Maybe that's the clique thing to do this weekend, but after the death of Robin Williams
earlier this week, I don't want to do anything else. This is the first celebrity death
I've lived through that actually feels devastating. That was a heartbreaking headline to read.

An afternoon movie wouldn't be complete with out popcorn. 
But instead of your usual popcorn, we opted for popcorn with a twist.

OREO POPCORN!


It's super easy and totally delicious.
We popped one bag of popcorn, drizzled it with melted white chocolate,
and sprinkled the whole works with crushed oreos. Once the white chocolate
had re-hardened, we broke it all into pieces, and piled it into a bowl.

After the movie, two out of three kids crashed, and I had a few minutes to do 
a couple things for myself. So I threw on a face mask and whitened my teeth.
I even managed to do a full "lip treatment" too.


GlamGlow is a bit more expensive than other masks, but this one is worth
every penny. I really see instant results. I love it!

For a "low key" day, I feel like it's been really productive! And it's only 3 PM!

I love days like this. 

Thursday, August 7, 2014

You're All My Favorites

I know I just did a July favorites post, but I have to talk about this book.

Back Story: JP was baptized almost two months ago, 
and he happened to have been gifted several books (my favorite kind of gift).
Last night I finally got around to incorporating his new books into the kids'
existing collection. I know, best Mom ever. Only took me 8 weeks.

Anyway, in his pile of new books, I saw:

You're All My Favorites
By Sam McBratney
Illustrated By Anita Jeram

It looked very similar to the book Guess How Much I Love You,
which I'm fairly certain every single parent on the planet loves,
so we decided to read it at bed time last night.
Turns out, You're All My Favorites is written and illustrated by
the same people as Guess How Much I Love You.

Oh. My. Goodness.
I could hardly get through it without crying my eyes out.
It's so perfect.


It's a short story about three little bear cubs.
The oldest bear cub is a boy.
Cameron.
The middle bear cub is a girl.
Eva.
And the youngest bear cub is another boy.
JP.

The bear cubs are told every night that they're the most wonderful little
bear cubs in the whole world. But they start to wonder which bear cub is
really their parents' favorite. And so the parents explain how they're ALL
their favorites.

And speaking of favorites, this book just went to the top of the list.