Birds

I'm sitting here trying not to scratch myself to death. I just finished my triathlon class and the pool always makes me itchy. I'm going to need to bathe in lotion before bed. I am feeling much better than I did last week after class, so I guess that's improvement! When I got home, I ate everything in the house that wasn't glued down.

Recently I bought a IA bird identification book, so we have been watching the birds in the back yard quite a bit. We decided to make some of the birds we've seen. The first two birds are the Cardinal and the American GoldFinch (IA state bird).
I found the pattern on DLTK's website and traced them on a cereal box.

Alice painted the cardinal and then added the red feathers while the paint was wet.


We didn't have any bright yellow paint, so she glued yellow tissue paper on the GoldFinch and then added the feathers.



Our sitter, Stephanie, took this picture of the kids today and I just love it!

Muffin Tin Tuesday? and Bird Sandwiches

I was a little late getting to Muffin Tin Monday. We had muffin tin tacos last night for dinner. Alice enjoyed putting her own toppings on her tacos. It was a huge mess, but lots of fun! Head on over to Her Cup Overfloweth to see what other moms served for lunch yesterday!

Yesterday we made food for the birds. As Alice was making them she said, "these are bird sandwiches", so that's what we'll call them. First she spread peanut butter on both sides of old bagels. Then she poured bird seed on top. Mainly, she also ate a lot of peanut butter! I tied string through the holes so we could hang them.




This is Will while we went outside to hang them without him. He was so sad that he didn't get to go. He is such a little person now. He wants to do everything that Alice does! He is so talkative now. He is constantly babbling and trying to say words. So far this week he has learned to say help, up, ball,and go, but blueberries and cracker continue to be his favorites. This morning at music he got a stamp on his hand. When I told him it was a bunny, he said, hop!

What We've Been Up To This Week

What a week! I've been trying to get into a schedule at the gym and I'm totally exhausted. I went to the gym 5 times this week. I also went to my second week of my triathlon class which consisted of spin class for 1 hour followed by an hour of swimming. It took me 2 days to recover. We were also very busy with Valentine's activities.
Alice wrote out one Valentine and I color copied it for each of the kids in her class. It took long enough to get her to write out one. There was no way she could do 16, so copying was a good solution. We also made heart shaped crayons by melting crayons in a heart shaped muffin pan. Alice really enjoyed tearing the wrappers off the crayons.



I made cake pops for her teachers and put them in jars with conversation hearts and m&ms.


Alice had her friend Ellie over on Wednesday. They both brought home enormous bags of candy from their classmates. I took the bags and put them on the counter until after lunch and then ran upstairs to change Will's diaper. When I came downstairs everything was very quiet. Quiet is never good. In the kitchen their was a chair pulled up to the counter and one bag was missing. I found Alice and Ellie behind the couch chowing down on the candy. I took it away and then found them again later under the dining room table eating candy again. This is kind of how the whole week went me vs. candy. Candy usually won.


Stephanie, our babysitter, made Alice a special Valentine's float with pink lemonade, raspberry sherbert, and 7-up. She even bought her cute ice cream glasses and we found a heart shaped straw. It was such a thoughtful thing to do, and Alice loved it.





I made these crayons for Alice's playgroup on Friday. I got the idea from the Gourmet Mom on the Go blog. I downloaded the wrappers from her site. So cute!


At playgroup, they decorated heart-shaped sugar cookies. I think most of the kids ate more sugar and sprinkles than cookies.




Will had his first sugar cookie-and his second!.

We made a graham house cracker house. We used icing as the glue to hold it together and all the extra candy we had sitting around to decorate it.




On Saturday, we went to Alice's friend Sophie's house for a Valetine's Party. They deorated cookies and there were tons of heart-shaped treats.








Alice decided to wear her ballerina outfit to the party. Who am I to get in the way of fashion!



This afternoon, we saw Brad's new office for the first time. The kids had a great time going through the boxes. They don't really have furniture yet, but I loved the design, very modern. I can't wait to see it when everything is done.

Heart Button Pins

Alice made Valentines' Pins for her grandmas and our next door neighbor. I found wooden hearts shapes in assorted colors at Michaels. She used a paintbrush to apply glue and attached buttons to the heart.




After the glue dried, I added a clasp to the back.

Alice is very excited to walk over to our neighbor's house to give her the gift. She's probably so excited because our neighbor always has large chocolate bars!