New Trailer!

Our new trailer arrived earlier this week so today they pulled it inside so we could take a good look at it. It is AWESOME and will be perfect for our little family! Now if spring could just arrive soon we could use it! Warning: A bit of picture overload below. . . .

Looking in the door

Kitchen (Matthew is playing by the couch that sits perpendicular to the kitchen)

Dinette with storage drawers under the seats.

Dinette

Our bed

The boy's bunks (You can just see Matthew's shoes as he was exploring his bunk).

Bathroom vanity (outside of bathroom and across from bunks).

Bathroom

Joshua trying out the tub.

Trying Something New

What's pictured here is not a new decoration for our house (although that would be something new if we actually tried decorating our house, but that's a whole other post). It's actually a tool to help Joshua visualize when he makes good choices and poor choices. Reality is Joshua's been a royal pain since he turned 4 and Matthew arrived 10 months ago. He doesn't listen, he doesn't cooperate and our usual forms of discipline aren't as affective as they once were. Over the looooong winter days when we've been stuck inside I've noticed that I am tending to focus more on the negative behaviors instead of encouraging the positives which isn't helping a thing. After racking my brain I figured that maybe if he could visualize making good and bad choices that it would help him make better choices and help me focus on both the positives and negatives of his behavior. So I pulled out an old vase and bought him some colored stones and now every time he makes a good choice or does something positive he gets to put a stone in the vase, but every time he makes a poor choice with his words or behavior a stone will be taken out. The plan is to count the stones daily just to see how he's done for the day and at the end of the week we will count them to see if he has made enough good choices to earn a treat (amount of stones needed and treats to be earned are yet to be determined). Joshua is excited to try this so hopefully we will begin to see some improvements in his behavior. Give me a classroom full of 20 preschoolers any day and it would be a breeze compared to dealing with my own kids 24/7!

Magnetic Attraction

Gotta love that odd attraction of older infants and unrolling toilet paper! Anytime Matthew is close to a bathroom he makes a beeline for the toilet paper. Usually the little munchkin gets taken away from this fun, but since there wasn't much on the roll this time I let him have at it. Caught again!

This is the silly face we see every time he knows he is doing something he shouldn't. Love the squinty eyes and wrinkled up nose!

Poor Daddy . . .

Cory was at work at 6:15 am for a meeting so he was a bit tired when he got home today. All he wanted to do was to take a short nap before dinner. Ah, I guess someone should have told the poor man that he needed to lock himself in the bedroom if he wanted even a few minutes of peace and quiet!

Joshua couldn't resist creating a "tent" around daddy while he napped.

Matthew had to get in on the action.

Proud of their work!

Yummmmm!

It's amazing to me just how much Matthew can eat and how much enjoys his food! Yesterday for lunch he ate a container of sweet potatoes with cereal mixed in it, 1/2 a hot dog and 10 blueberries! Oh, and the child has NO teeth, not even one peeking through yet! He literally shovels the food in his mouth barely giving himself enough time to chew between bites. Last night he ate his chicken and grapes and was reaching for Cory's mashed potatoes so Cory gave him some. The stinker grabbed the spoon of potatoes and fed it to himself! He couldn't get enough of the potatoes and he only wanted to do it by himself. We recorded it because we thought it was too cute and it's the first time we've experienced a good eater! Those of you who know Joshua know that he has been a finicky little eater since day one and it remains the same almost 5 years later. So Matthew's excitement about eating and wanting to feed himself is something new for us. Just click on the link under the picture to view the video.

Click to Play

Matthew feeding himself mashed taters and loving it!

Sleepy munchkin

Today I checked on him during his morning nap because he was sleeping longer than normal and this is what I found. Matthew's been a tummy sleeper ever since he has been able to roll himself over, but when I saw him like this today I just had to chuckle; he looks very uncomfortable, yet is sound asleep! Just love the butt in the air!

Valentine's Day

I'm not one for Hallmark holidays. I'd rather celebrate the love I have for those around me everyday than have that focus on just one day. I've hated Valentine's Day for as long as I can remember - I still vaguely remember a diary entry from my middle school years that reflected these same sentiments. My mom always tried to make it fun so we would have colored milk or food and we even got a small little gift. I fail to keep the tradition of coloring the food per the holiday color, but we did buy the boys a little something. Matthew liked his new cars and Joshua was thrilled with his new Lego set. No big celebrations for us regarding this "holiday" (and I use that term loosely) rather the highlight of the day was celebrating the baptism of Aiden with Shawn and Erin and Owen! (Excuse the picture quality on the baptism photo, but I was in charge of video so I had to take a snapshot of that.) The boys also got special treats from Grandma and Grandpa H as well as from Grandma Marcia (Erin's mom) and the cousins all exchanged valentines which was fun!

Snow fun

What could be better than spending an afternoon playing outside and making a snow tunnel with neighborhood friends?!?! Not much if you ask Joshua!

SNOW DAY!

I still love a good snow day now and then, even though I'm not teaching. It's a great excuse to have a lazy day together! Joshua was very excited to find out he had a snow day today! He decided that a snow day called for wearing his cozy pajamas all day. We played and watched a movie and enjoyed the general slow goings of the day. When I was checking Facebook one of Cory's cousins had mentioned making snow ice cream which I have done many times in preschool, but oddly haven't remembered to do it with my own kid! As you can probably guess our afternoon snack was snow ice cream! Joshua loved it! There are a few different recipes, but today I just used some clean, fresh snow from our deck, milk, vanilla and sugar - there were no exact measurements. It's even more delicious if you use heavy cream instead of milk, but I used what was on hand since it was easy.

Mixing up the snow, milk, vanilla and sugar.

Snow ice cream got Joshua's approval!

Fun and learning all in one

Lately Matthew has been enjoying playing with the little kitchen set and all the pretend food and dishes. Joshua really wanted to get in on the action, but isn't much into pretending to cook food any more. So, he had the idea of pretending he was going to go grocery shopping. First he told me he needed to make a list so he found his notebook and a pen to get started on the task. Then he asked me if I would help him with his list. He would tell me what he wanted to write and together we would sound it out and figure out the letters that made up each word so he could write them. It's so neat to see how far Joshua's come in being able to recognize letter sounds in words! Great idea Joshua, you not only had fun, but were learning too!

The finished Valentines

Let it be a lesson to me that crafty little Valentine's are a good idea, but the reality is that they are usually time consuming.

Last year's Valentine's were easy, this year's not so much. This morning we put the finishing touches on Joshua's rocket Valentines for school. I was about ready to chuck them in the trash after having to glue them back together for the THIRD time (can you sense my frustration)! However, Joshua is too excited about them so we hot glued them back together and he signed them all and packed them up to take to school. At least they turned out pretty cool for all the work that went into them.

Growing up too fast

Today this was the scene in our kitchen while I was making lunch. Matthew doesn't look like much of a baby when he stands at the little kitchen playing with the food and dishes, he looks like a little boy! Seriously, the last 9 1/2 months have flown by!

Valentine creating begins

Joshua and I started on making his Valentines to hand out at school in a couple weeks. I looked on the internet for ideas and thanks to www.familyfun.com came across one I thought Joshua would like - we are creating rockets out of candy and paper. The first stage of making Joshua's Valentines began yesterday with us rolling some paper around the candy that will be the main body of the rocket and then adding chocolate kisses for the tops of the rockets. Next we need to do the writing and signing of his name and add the flames out the bottom of each rocket.

Funny

I was washing up some dishes in the kitchen sink after preparing some food and I turned around to see this . . .

The silly cat was sitting on a barstool with his paws up on the island staring at me! What an obedient cat who politely sits rather than roams the counters!

Winter Blahs

Sick of being cooped up inside we went outside to play in the freshly fallen snow. Joshua loved every minute of it. Matthew on the other hand went from this . . .
to this . . .

all in about 1 minute. Maybe he's sick of winter and all this white stuff. I share your sentiments about winter my child!