Helping hands......

 I don't think I have mentioned the salvage pile on here yet...... there is a wood salvage pile at our recycling center here that I have found all kinds of projects in..... The kids are helping me paint some beadboard picture frames. The beadboard came from the pile. Free stuff is so much fun to play with :) I was proud of myself for letting them help me paint..... it wasn't long before I started to regret it.

They got out their paints because 1. the white I was having them use was boring and 2. they wanted to make their own projects. I showed them how to put two different paints, one in each hand, then rub their hands together to make a new color. Apparently that alone is not exciting enough. Much more than their hands started to get painted.....

Just so you know - Human Torch is a superhero that turns into a flaming ball of fire as he flies around.

Caleb

So little and so big at the same time. This guy is growing up so fast. He still loves superhero costumes and active, wild play but every once in awhile now you can find him building with legos or looking at books quietly. The batman make-up mask is courtesy of Maggie, I think :)

Play-dough

Wow. I really have some catching up to do. I still haven't figured out my posting from Picasa problems which makes blogging slightly less convenient. 

A good dose of homemade play-dough usually puts the arguing to rest for a little while :) We had a pretty good stash of fun play-dough stuff that seems to have been lost in the move..... I've started to restock a little with cookie cutters. It's a quick and fun activity that we don't do often enough.

Colored snow

We put colored water in squirt bottles one day for them to use on the snow. It kept them busy for a very long time. The neon food coloring seemed to work really well. It made nice bright colors. It's so much fun to watch them when they really get in the zone learning, exploring and creating things. Imagination is a beautiful thing! :)

Christmas in Washington

At the last minute we decided to go up to Washington to spend Christmas with my family. I don't think we have been there for Christmas since I was pregnant with Jackson......  wow. It was a lot of fun and brought back a lot of memories :) We did a lot of sledding, movies and playing. Aunt Jamie made minion hats for each of them. They thought that was great. We also had a visit from the awesome Santa. That was a huge hit too.
We watched the weather and did the drive on the days that looked best. Our first two hours on the road were pretty bad but other than that it was almost clear the whole way.

Happy New Year

On New Year's Eve the kids really wanted to have a party with their friends - they started asking at about 8 or so that night....... I told them we would have to try to plan that for another year. So we did our own little family party. We played a game, had a snack, made party hats and watched the ball drop. They LOVED having a plan like that - it was funny and cute at the same time :) We did put Hailey and Caleb to bed around 10  (it's great to be back West so we can watch the ball drop at 10)

Christmas Lights

For some reason I have had a really hard time posting from Picasa - that means it's not quite as easy so I slacked off. Guess I shouldn't be so lazy :)

We went to a Christmas light show over the holidays. It's the same one we used to go to when we lived here before. Jackson remembered it. It was really foggy - so foggy that we almost turned around and went home because it was so hard to see when driving. It cleared off around the freeway though so we kept going but it settled back in once we are the lights. It was also really cold. Everyone was in their snow gear so we could go on the wagon ride. It was a lot of fun. Caleb threw a major fit about not getting to warm his hands by the fire. It took us awhile to figure out the problem since he was too upset to do anything but cry....... he never did get to do it since we were in the car and leaving by then.