Summer Memories

When the boys look back I hope they remember all the fun we have as a family.  I hope they remember how much we laughed and just enjoyed each other's company.  I hope they remember the little things that turned out to be soooo much fun.....like late evening swims right before the sun sets!  I know I sure will!

Heaven for little boys.....medieval times

The boys have acquired a fascination for dragons, castles, knights etc within the last year.  Last year for their birthday their pepere bought them a large wooden castle and santa brought them tonnes to knights to go in it.  We were trying to come up with some neat ideas for vacations for the summer and we decided on taking the boys to medieval times.  They absolutely loved it.  You get to sit and eat an entire meal with your hands while you watch knights on horses put on a show for you that includes games and of course jousting.  The boys sat in awe during the entire 2ish hour show and Mathew ate more then I have ever seen him eat in his life.  They cheered for our yellow knight to win and boo'd for the "stinky blue knight".  It's a great outing for adults but man was it neat to see it with the boys!  We have had to have to have the conversation since about jousting in the house though....the new rule at our house is you are not allowed to joust until you are at least 20 and you are riding a horse hahaha!  They seem to agreed with that hahaha!

Superheroes

Sometimes you just need to embrace the craziness and say "hop into the batmobile boys, we need to run out for a minute"

Our New Summer Home

Jason and I have been searching for a new house for almost a year now.  We have the plans for our dream house but we have not been able to find a lot here in town that is suitable..  We have toured soooo many houses looking for the one that is perfect for us but have been unable to find it.  Don't get me wrong, we love our current house.....great neighborhood...good space...perfect family room with toy room beside for the boys but we were just looking for more space.  The hard part is that our current house is very well set up for having kids so when we are out looking for a new house it has to be almost perfect in order to be able to convince me to move from our current house.   Well the search continued forever it felt like and we never found "the one".  We were both getting frustrated with spending so much time looking at houses and not finding what we wanted so we went totally out in left field.........we decided that perhaps we should just wait until that perfect house comes along and stop searching....we will look again soon but we didn't want to waste all of our summer at open houses so we decided that we were going to buy a trailer and do a few family camping trips.  We went out that weekend to the dealerships and started looking at trailers.......and we decided to go for a bigger trailer that we can just leave in one spot and go to it whenever we want.  We are now the proud owners of a 40ft trailer that has two bedrooms, a full fridge, an outside kitchen, TV and built in DVD, full stove and of course air conditioning.....it's definitely not roughing it but we have discovered that it was the perfect decision for our family.  We have already been out to it quite a bit and it has been absolutely fantastic family time.  Sometimes it's easy to get caught up with everything in our lives and forget to just sit down and share quality time as a family with little distraction.  I will definitely write up some more about our amazing adventures.  So we have not found our dream home yet but we still love our current home and the decision to buy a summer "home" has been fantastic for our family.  Sometimes the road takes you somewhere that you least expected and you realize this is perhaps the road you should have been on in the first place :)

I'm back

Wow life has been a whirlwind lately.  I have had so much to blog about and yet no time to actually sit down and do  it.  I have a list of about 20 blogs that I have been writing just never getting a chance to attach the pictures and finish them up.  I can actually say I miss it.  My friends and family from afar have been asking for more updates and I can honestly say that I miss writing about the new things in our family life.  So I'm back at it.  Just last week I was reviewing my old posts from last year and realized how much stuff from the boys life I have not been recording lately so I have made it a goal to be more diligent.  I'll attach just one picture right now to summarize our summer so far...

Just plain happiness and lot's of time with family!

Quick, Simple Craft

The boys enjoy doing crafts.  I love thinking crafts up, getting them ready and participating in them.....the only thing is sometimes, I just don’t have the time to prep it all.  This weekend we did a quick easy craft that the boys really enjoyed so I thought I would share.  I let them each choose one wooden thing from the dollar store.  They both chose a treasure chest that is just like Jakes from the Show Jake and the Neverland pirates (their favorite right now). 

This craft was really so quick and simple for me!  I pulled out our craft tablecloth and their craft aprons and that was almost all the prep that I needed.  Having a craft tablecloth is one of the only ways that we are able to do so many crafts.  It’s just a plastic tablecloth that is used only for crafts.  The secret is....I don’t scrub it or wash it in between craft activities.  This saves me sooo much time.  It used to take me forever to get everything set up before we could even start the craft.  If there are brush strokes from the paint on the table cloth I just let it dry with the craft and put it away.  If there happens to be a big spill I clean it of course but by having it on hand I find that I say yes to a lot more crafts then I would have before. 

The aprons are the same type of idea.  I made them for the boys well over a year ago now.   I made them extra big at the time so they could just grow into them.  I just pull them out and put them over their clothes every time we do crafts.  Now I have minimal (if any) table clean up and minimal (if any) clothes clean up....and that means Mommy says yes to way more crafts!! 

The boys decided that they wanted to paint each side of their treasure chests a different color.  They chose their colors and which side got painted which color.  Really all I did was talk to them while they painted....I cleaned the dishes actually!  I decided to incorporate a little reading into the craft by writing the names of each of the colour on each side.  The boys are continually asking me how to spell things so they particularly loved this part.  The treasure chests dried and the boys now use them to store their coveted bey blades.

Quick, simple and they enjoyed it!

Easter Prep

This year Easter seemed to sneak up on us!  Usually I spend weeks preparing decorations but this year I pulled it all together the week before.  We did our standard patio door sticker decorations and hung some Easter signs outside.  I absolutely loved our Easter tree last year but didn't want to do the same thing again so I switched it up a little.  I just bought decorations from Walmart and the dollar store and glued them on to some branches that Jason cut for me.  I placed them in the foam for artificial flower arrangements to hold it firm.  It was quick and simple and I loved how it turned out again!

We decorated our eggs again.  People keep asking me about our egg decorating.  To be honest the boys do 99% of it.  I prepare the colours and I let them do the rest.  I supervise and make sure they take turns and don't go silly around the dye but this is the third year it has worked out great.  I don't blow out the egg yolks and I don't hard boil the eggs.  We just take them right out of the carton and die them and use them only as decorations.  They have lasted 1-2 weeks out in our house without smelling at all.  I don't want to jinx myself but we haven't even brocken any while decorating.  This year we added some animal themed stickers from a egg decorating package to them.

We hosted Easter breakfast at our house this year and it turned out great!  We prepared a special "Easter breakfast" ( a casserole type thing with the eggs, onions, peppers, bacon hash browns, cheese etc) all together.  I also made Maple Cinnamon roles.  We had Easter cookies, carrot muffins and of course devilled eggs to serve as well.  I don't use pinterest often but when I do I always find neat things that I try right away.  This year was the chick shaped devilled eggs.  The turned out great and tasted delicious!

I love setting the table for a special gathering.  This year I found a youtube video on how to make napkins look like bunnies.  I have no idea who has time to make youtube video's of this stuff but to the person who made that one.... I am thankful!

 
Hmm after writing this post I'm a little excited to host another gathering......off I go to research some more neat ideas!!