The Cat in the Hat

"The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house All that cold, cold wet day."

It was a very rainy Saturday, but perfect for staying home and decorating a cake for a few hours. This cake actually came together a lot faster than I'm used to. I think it helps that Dr. Suess' style isn't particularly neat, so I just tried not to stress about the mistakes and messes. I did wish that the messiness looked a little more deliberate, but overall, this looks like I was picturing when I was first asked to do this. And this was by far my best-tasting-while-still-looking-good-cake.

And the birthday boy and his family all loved it, and our kids had a great time playing games with Thing One and Thing Two and building wacky creations and eating junk food.

Story Dice

I have been so excited about making a set of these, which I first saw here. I always love new craft ideas and this one really grabbed my attention, both with the aesthetics and the use. The idea is incredibly versatile--all it takes is a couple of wood blocks with images on each side and then some imagination to make up a story about the images. You can use them to tell stories as a family, each person taking a turn rolling one of the dice and then continuing the story (great for the car, or anywhere you have to wait), or for ideas for a bedtime story, or for spurring written stories as well.

For our beginning writer, I made up a word sheet so she can use it for spelling help when writing down her stories. And for pre-writers, they can design a picture using the images that come up on the dice. There are really just so many ways to use them.

This first set is a birthday present for a 5 year old friend. We covered and personalized a journal, that includes the word sheet, to go with the drawstring bag of 3 dice. I love that it would be easy to add to this as well. When I acquire more stamps, I'll probably add in another block or two. Maybe a couple holiday ones--it would be fun to have a Halloween one for some good ghost and goblin stories, or a Christmas one.

We seem to be in a busy birthday time--3 friends in less than a week! Good thing we don't really have too many family birthdays this time of year or I'd be struggling to keep up with it all. One of the other gifts is also finished--a crayon roll with a personalized drawing pad for our 3 year old friend.

And now I'm off to do the cake for the party this afternoon--This is only the second time I've made a cake for someone else, which makes me incredibly nervous, but I hope I'll have some pictures to share tomorrow.

******Few notes based on the comments so far (and for the people who don't like to have to read the comments, but might like to see the answers):
---I used a normal ink pad for the stamps, but do plan to seal them with beeswax as suggested on one of the other sites I saw these. The ones pictured are just naked wood--I haven't picked up the wax yet, but I guess you can find it at natural food stores, at least here in the US.
---The stamp set I found, which included all the pictures except the camera and the "?", came from AC Moore in a 40 stamp set--I loved that they had the boy and girl stamps and then a wide variety of insects, animals, and objects. It's perfect for this type of project. I've also seen smaller sets with various themes, so if you wanted to do a theme set (like a holiday, or season), those would be great. Or buy a couple and mix and match. Even though stamps can be costly, I figure all I have to do is make a few gifts of these and they will pay for themselves. And I bought them with a 40% off coupon.

Hodge Podge Monday

This was my grocery haul today, taking advantage of the triple coupons at Harris Teeter this week, for only $28. I used to be really into coupons when we lived in SD, but I lost interest awhile ago--its a lot of work to keep track of, and after having great double coupon deals all the time, most store policies just don't quite cut it. But a few weeks ago, I found out that some of the stores around here do pretty nice double and triple deals, so I snagged a few coupon inserts from neighbors and decided to try it out.

The jury is still out on whether or not I enjoy this, but it is pretty fun to cut 2/3's of your bill off. I ended up buying some things that I wouldn't normally, but we've been trying to increase our stash, so I need to buy more in the way of packaged, shelf stable items, and the family does appreciate having a few more snack foods around (and I didn't buy anything that I'm totally opposed to having, just a few things that will be saved for a special occasion). It also makes my grocery shopping take way longer--if I stick to Trader Joes, I can finish the weeks shopping in less than 45 minutes. And its mostly all food we'll actually eat in the upcoming week or two. This takes a couple hours, not even counting the time spent cutting out the coupons, and I get home and have a hard time figuring what I can make for dinner. Its not like these type of trips can replace my normal shopping, so its just an extra couple hours at the store. I think I may be done for awhile. There are only so many boxes of PopTarts or muffin mixes that you really need.
Before the grocery trip, the kids and I spent the morning at Ray's Splash Planet. This was our first time going, and the kids had a blast. A couple mornings a month they have a parent/tot time where the kids are only $3 each and parents get in free, so I think we'll be doing this every month. It's a good way for the kids not to forget their swimming skills.

Bugaboo pretending he's floating.

Squashing down the spray.

And tonight, I tried my hand at making fried green tomatoes. They turned out pretty good, although next time I'll cut the tomatoes thinner so they cook a little more. I used bread crumbs seasoned with parmesan cheese and a grill spice mix that my brother, David, sent us, so I can't offer the recipe here (it had about 20 different spices in it), but the flavor was good. And I felt very southern, and resourceful. We still have a few tomatoes on our plants, but we've been having issues with the bugs getting to them before we do, so I decided to outsmart the bugs and pick them green.

We ended the night with family night, chocolate chip muffins, and the new season of House, so all in all, it was a pretty great day.

My Foam Roller is My New Best Friend and Other Running News

13.1 miles. That is how far I ran today. Or, mostly ran. I get to cross that one off my bucket list. After my painful 11 mile run two weeks ago, I had to give up my goal of 10 minute miles and just pray that I'd be able to finish it, preferably without walking the last 5 miles.

And I did it. At the four mile mark, I told my friend, Flori, that I was feeling good. Of coure, that meant a few minutes later, my stinkin' knee had to start acting up. But the Advil I took right before the race helped take the edge off and I was able to keep going with only 3 or 4 walking breaks throughout the whole thing.

(Here's Flori passing me up in the last couple miles. And notice the "Stop Ahead" sign on the right--I was wishing I could oblige.)

One of those walks was for this monster hill (I think it was worse than it looks--it was longer, too):This course was WAY hillier than I'd realized it would be and in the last 2 miles, there were a couple really brutal ones. From the sounds of it (and the people I saw), hardly anyone managed to run up this thing. Even at the beginning of a run, I would have a hard time, but this was over 11 miles into the race.

And then there was the hill at the finish. We hit the 13 mile mark, and the last tenth of a mile was straight up a hill to the finish. We'd seen it before we started, and my heart had sunk. I just really wanted to finish strong and sprint into the end, but with that hill at the end, I figured I'd be lucky to even be walking across the finish line.

But when I saw the small crowd of people cheering everyone on, and my neighbors, who had just watched their wife/mother finish her first half marathon were still standing there to cheer me on as well, and I realized there was no way I could walk up that hill. So I pushed past. And then I saw the course timers looking down at their papers, and when they looked up and started yelling, "Come on, Kimberly! You can do it! You're right there!", I got so choked up I could barely see the finish line. It is so amazing what having a few people to encourage you can do when you are totally spent, have been in pain for 9 miles, and just didn't think you had anything left in you. I sprinted to that finish--it was probably slower than my running in the beginning, but I felt so powerful!

I didn't make 10 minute miles, but I finished in 2:22:34, which was less than 11 minute miles, and I'm pretty happy with that. I have to say thank you to my awesome running partner, Flori, who has kept me going these last few months even when I would have rather rolled back over and gone back to sleep. And to my equally awesome husband (who would have been there at the finish line if we hadn't had a schedule conflict with Bean) who stayed up until 2 a.m. last night fixing my iPod which at 10 p.m. wouldn't sync with the computer and then got stuck in an unusable state. I was really upset at the idea of not being able to run with my newly organized playlist. There were a few hills out there that I did run up that I owe to Coldplay, U2 and EMF--I really did feel unbelievable!

And now, I just feel like taking a long nap.

Will I ever do this again, I have no idea--the high at the end was close to what I felt after my second, drug-free, childbirth. I can't believe my very human, flawed body is capable of such amazing things and there's a part of me that just likes to keep finding ways to push it and prove to myself that it can do so much more than I'd ever thought.

And then there is another part of me that would still like to have these same knees when I'm 40.

Kids Crafts

There is just something so aesthetically pleasing about monochromatic piles of crayons.

We had a friend over and were ready to do something besides chasing each other around the house as T Rex and Allosaurus and as Buggy calls them, Tall Necks.

The kids appreciated being encouraged to peel the wrappers off, and I love that we used up most of our little crayon chunks. And now we have crayon cupcakes. Which, I've had to remind Bugaboo several times already, are not actually food. Even though they got cooked in the oven, they are still just the same crayon wax they started out as.

On Monday, after playing with money and then Yahtzee for awhile, we decided we'd had enough with the left side of our brain and were ready for some random, messy fun. I'd seen directions to make these yarn bowls earlier in the summer (I think it came from Family Fun, but I can't seem to find it on their site). All you need is a ball of yarn, a bowl of glue, and some type of ball (we used two sizes of bouncy kids balls--you know, the ones that are just a couple dollars and stored in those big wire bins at the end of the aisle where your kids can pull them from the bottom until they have 15 of them bouncing all over the place and you can't get them back in fast enough to stop the chaos?) Neither of the kids were too excited about dipping the yarn in the glue, so I was the one who ended up getting messy, but they both helped me drape the yarn over the ball.

I think we may have used too big of a ball for Buggy's--his flattened out a lot after we took it off. Or maybe not enough glue. I need to try to fix it. But Bean's works pretty well as a basket.

Fun at the Fair

Since the kids have seen Charlotte's Web twice this summer, they have really wanted to go to a fair of their own, so we decided to hit up one of the local county fairs on Saturday.

We took them on their first Ferris Wheel (and mine, too! I've always been terrified of any ride that can be put up and down on a weekly basis all summer, but Daddy-o and I started talking about it and maybe those rides are actually safer since they are maintained on a weekly schedule, so I've been going about it all wrong.)

They loved it!

We ate cotton candy,

and loved that, too.

We saw swimming pigs,

stinky animals,

a donkey!,

and an incredibly ugly (unmarked, and therefore unidentifiable by us,) bird.

Bugaboo seems to finally be over his animal fears.

They got to practice their mean tractor driving skills. . .

"Mean" being the operative word. . .

I don't have any idea where he learned to drive like that. Nope, no road rage here, or even mild annoyance at the multitude of really stupid drivers, who seriously don't know how to take turns at a 4-way stop, or pay attention to the "Keep Moving" signs when there isn't a stop sign, or stay out of the way of people who would really like to make a right turn at the red light where there is almost zero traffic every single day. Nope, the mad rush of getting Daddy-o to the bus stop on time is always a very calm, happy experience.

And then there was the firefighter show. Bugaboo heard them announce that they would be calling for volunteers and he got so serious, "I want to do that."

So when they guy told them to raise their hands, Bugaboo got his hand up high, and then he asked for two hands, so Buggy got both his hands up and stood on Daddy-o's lap, and then he told them to wave their hands back and forth, so Buggy waved as hard as he could.

And then the firefighter picked a bunch of 7 or 8 year olds.

The look on my little man's face almost broke my heart. He was so sure he was doing everything right and was going to be helping the man fight some fires that night. But he got over it and enjoyed the show. And there isn't any way he could have done what they had the kids do, so we told him maybe in a couple years.

At least he got a fire hat.

Primary Principles

Today was the Primary Program at church. That means that the main service is put on by the kids ages 3-11 and their teachers and leaders--so a lot of cute singing and mumbled lines that only the parents who have been rehersing with their kids have a chance of understanding. But its really fun to see them up there, and Bean gets so excited for it all. She managed to say her line in her normal voice this year and sang the songs, and even made an effort to move out from behind other kids so we could actually see her.

But my favorite part of the whole thing happened yesterday when we were on our way to the church for the rehersal. I asked Bean if she remembered her line and she rattled off, "Heavenly Father loves me and has a plan for me." Then, after a short pause she added her own part, "Me, me, me!" Reminded me of the the Jan and Marcia Brady line, "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" only if Marcia was the one saying it. I know we believe that God loves us and that we're important to Him, but I feel like she might be taking that teaching it a little far. Luckily, she left it out during the real thing.

Handy Daddy

Before (although even this is after the initial clean up and moving around): All the work in the garage and we finally have something to show for it:

The building of the shelves and the workbench were each their own weekend project--everything seems to take longer with the kids in and out (and I wasn't being terribly helpful since I decided that while we were all out there, I should paint all the little things I'd been meaning to do for the last few months). But it is so awesome now being able to organize our things out there. We still want to add drawers to the workbench, and we're hoping to build a little garden counter/shelves on a different wall, but this is a good start. And we still have empty shelves which always feels good!

One more project down, about 99 left to go ;) What is it about owning a home that just makes us want to keep fixing/changing things?

Ballerina

(sorry for the poor picture quality--I need to take some pictures in better light, these turned out so grainy!)

We started ballet last week and Bean already loves it. I was a little worried that the class would be a lot more structured and specific than the creative dance class she did 2 years ago. They have required outfits, down to the brand, and hairstyles (which thank goodness Bean let me put her hair in a bun--she doesn't usually like how she looks with her hair pulled back.) But this is just pre-ballet, and I think it is a good transition. And she was so excited that they did some moves that she remembered from her other class.

Our Labors

These kids worked hard. All that jumping. You would think they would have slept good that night. And I guess if you ignore the 10 minutes Bugaboo was up screaming, "Mommy won't give me a cookie!" at 3 a.m., they did sleep okay.

We were invited to a last minute BBQ Saturday evening with a bunch of friends and neighbors.

We counted up at one time and think there were 25 kids there--brave, brave friends. . . with a trampoline, which did keep those monkeys busy most of the night.

The rest of our weekend is pictureless. Saturday started with my 11 mile run, which I finished, and ran the whole way, but after a great start, my knee started acting up and the last 5 miles were pretty painful. I'm hoping I didn't actually injure anything, but right now I have a lot of random little aches and pains. We spent the afternoon working in the garage--its almost all cleaned out!

But we did get it right this year and rested from our labors today. We spent the morning at a park at a church breakfast and 5K fun run. Neither of us ran this year--Daddy-o had a little too much fun with the kids on the trampoline, and I want to give myself a few days to heal, but I walked it with a friend and cheered on my running partner who was the first woman to finish. And her husband was the first person in--they are turning into the running duo! The rest of the day was spent napping, swimming one last time before the pool closes for the season, and eating pizza and fresh peach/strawberry/banana smoothie.

And I guess that is our unofficial goodbye to summer. It's been a great one!

Homeschool Math & Science

Home schooling definitely tastes better than traditional schooling. We made chocolate chip cookies for our math lesson on Friday. A little work with fractions, measurements, and counting, along with trying to read the recipe as well. And the results tasted great!

Just ask Bugaboo.

On Thursday, we took a field trip to the Charlotte Nature Museum with our friends. They have a butterfly garden, which these two little guys loved.

a hands on habitat exhibit, which is where we spend most of our time--lots of good role play experience there.

And I didn't get any pictures, but they have this new fun show where Grandpa Tree tells them about a few forest animals while they sit around a pretend campfire. The kids really liked it, especially when the tree fell asleep and started to snore.

Someone at the pool was asking me about homeschooling the other evening. As soon as she heard Bean wasn't in traditional school, she asked if the pool counted as PE. I just told her, "Sure". One of the things that I love about schooling this way is that I don't have to seperate our life into subjects. When we make cookies, it can be math, reading, home ec/baking, science. When Bean gets going on her stories she likes to write, we cover spelling, writing, geology, art, history. We've done spelling and rhyming and patterns in the car while we're running errands, as well as lots of logic and deduction games. I just love that we can learn while we go, and I feel like we do cover the tradtional subjects each week, but not always in a formal way.

And really, getting to eat cookies in "school" is pretty great.