Leaves. And Other Miscellaneous.

We cleaned up leaves this weekend and the kids had a ball.  Normally we just mow over and mulch them into the grass, but this year since the leaves were pretty much dry, we opted to rake them up so the kids could jump in them (then afterwards we drug them over to the garden and mowed over them there so the "worms would have something to eat").

I'd rake the pile about 3 feet high and then the kids would start from the house and run and JUMP all through the pile and then collapse in a fit of laughter.  It was so so so worth all the raking and re-raking for that 30 minutes of non-stop giggling.  

We also discovered that Lily can swing herself now.  No clue how long she's been able to do this, but even she acted kind of surprised that I didn't need to push her and was super proud of herself so this might be a relatively new thing?

We put up the Christmas tree today.  The kiddos really helped!  I only had to move a few ornaments around when all was said and done (Lily had a tendency to hang about 4 ornaments on one branch).

My child that wakes up at 5am tends to get pretty sleepy by lunch time.  Saturday, Joel, Lily and I were in the back of the house tending to laundry and we came back up front to find that Tyler had covered himself in princess stickers and then promptly passed out.

Here's my princess, sporting the Elsa hat I made her.  She was pretty annoyed that I wanted to take her picture - as you can plainly see by the look on her face.

Hiding behind mountains of pillows on the couch is one of the favorite activities these days.  Today, I came in the room and the kiddos were sitting on the couch, one right behind the other among a pile of pillows, and they informed me that they were driving to the store.  Tyler was in front so he was driving.  That's what he told me.  Lily backed up his story.

This picture kinda stinks, but Lily wanted Minnie Mouse hair - whatever that means - so I made her hair into a bow like Minnie Mouse Bowtique!  I sent her to school this way...it probably lasted 5 minutes before it fell down, but it was pretty cute while it lasted.

Speaking of hair....Tyler got his first paid for haircut this weekend.  About two weeks ago, I trimmed around his ears and across his forehead and neckline.  But that was definitely just a band-aid.  His hair was getting so long, I could get the back in a pony tail.  Yeah, time for a trim. 

These are the moments.  I'd like to go ahead and put in an order for about 437 more of these moments.  Please and thank you.

Tyler found Joel's husky dog hat.  He looks pretty stinkin' cute.  Lily is such a ham.

Lots and lots and lots of basketball going on in our house lately.  And dancing.  Lots and lots and lots of dancing.

 

The evidence that my kiddos are growing up just keeps mounting.  Here they are at the inside playground working their way up the Lucky Climber - by themselves.  

Lily is loving her dance class.  And I feel SO GUILTY for not enrolling Tyler.  Check out the pic on the left.  The class is stretching (or something) and reaching up to the sky and Tyler is standing in the door way doing it too.  I really thought he was too young for the dance class.  I think I was wrong.  

And, in closing, Tyler's potty training at daycare is going smashingly.  At home, we are hit or miss - making progress but still have a long way to go.

Tyler's Bunk Beds and a Glimpse of Dan Fonner.

We put Tyler in his big boy bed several months ago, but never really did a "makeover" on his room to upgrade it from nursery to little boy decor.  I finally got around to that.

But first, we assembled the bunk beds.  Since we don't have a guest bedroom, I came up with the brilliant idea to use the bunk beds from my childhood in Tyler's room.  That way, when we have guests, Lily can sleep in Tyler's top bunk and the guests can have Lily's room.  Jenny let us use her part of the bunk beds my Dad built eons ago.  I was talking to Mom and we were trying to figure out when they were built and best we can guess is, I was probably about 6 years old.  For anyone who's counting, that makes these beds about 28 years old. 

With a homemade bed of that age, a few years ago, we had to modify my bunk because the screws holding the brackets for the side rails were all stripped out.  So we had to make the same modifications to Jenny's bed since we were stacking them on top of each other.  Joel finished up that part of the project and then the bed just hung out in the play room until we could find a spare 20 minutes to assemble it all together.

Joel and I decided to tackle the 20 minute bed assembly after we got home from a very full weekend in Cincinnati.  I'm setting the stage for you here people.

1. We expected it to take 20 minutes max to just put it all together.
2. We had just spent the day at the zoo.  And then drove 2 hours home.  We (and the kids) were tired.  
3. It's about 6:00 at night, the kids are ready for dinner and need they baths.

We get all the pieces into Tyler's room.  My bed was a top bunk and Jenny's was a bottom bunk (which make no sense to me because she should have had a top bunk too but whatever) so that should have meant that all the right holes were drilled in each bed to stack them up.

We had to cut dowel pins for use in stacking the beds so I measured the depth of one of the holes.  Then for giggles, I measured a second one.  Totally different - like 50% difference in depth.  So I measured all the rest of the holes and every single one of them was completely different.  And then I discovered that my headboard was drilled out and ready for the dowels but the foot board wasn't.  I do not understand this.  So, Joel drilled out all the holes to the same depth and cut the dowels all the same length.

Then we moved in to stacking the beds.  Nothing was square.  Bottoms were not lining up to tops. Side rails were not sliding into place.  We couldn't get the box springs to fit down in the frame.  We broke one of the side rails trying to make it fit and then had to repair again.  We'd go to tighten up screws and find that some were Flathead and some where Phillips so we were constantly switching tools.  We couldn't figure out how in the world the ladder was attached.  

Tyler's 10x10 room was a total wreck of two twin size beds partially assembled, wood chips and sawdust, tools, 2 children excited about climbing into the "treehouse bed," a frustrated husband and an exhausted, bawling me.

I said, "Babe, (sob, sob, gulp) I'd like to introduce you to my Dad."

I don't know that I could have planned out a better way for Joel to see a side of my Dad and his ad hoc, slap-it-together, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants approach to things like woodworking.  I seriously have no idea how in the world these beds originally went together.  I have no idea how there was never a collapse when we were growing up.  We still don't know how the ladder was installed.  I'm beginning to think it was with double sided tape.  In my Dad's defense, one of the problems we encountered was self inflicted.  These beds didn't have box springs when we were kids but I didn't remember that at first.  That's why we had such a hard time putting them in.  It wasn't supposed to be there.  But the rest of the issues....that's all my Daddy.

So that 20 minute, put it together exercise, ended up being more like 2 hours.  But we finally got it done.  Whew.

Now on to decorating.  Basically, I narrowed my scope to decor that would match the green paint on the walls because I was not in the mood to repaint.  I found a few different bedding options at Target that I thought would work and Joel settled on a sports related theme.

I think it all came together pretty good.  I'm still on the lookout for some items to hang on the wall.  I reckon there's a good chance I'll get around to that some time before Tyler turns 7 and wants decorate his room like Minecraft or whatever equivalent thing is popular then.

 

Big Bad Wolf.

We have a serious fascination with the big bad wolf in our house. I have absolutely no clue why but for the last several months both kiddos talk about the big bad wolf all the time.  ALL.  THE.  TIME.

Tyler will randomly gasp and put his hands up to his face. When you ask him what's wrong, he says "big bad wolf!"  I'll say, "Oh no! Where's that big bad wolf?" Tyler will whisper , "hiding" and giggle like crazy.  Sometimes though he really acts scared.  He'll just get upset out of nowhere and start fussing and crying that the big bad wolf is coming.  Like tonight at bed time.  He whined and whined about the big bad wolf.  I told him that Daddy scared the big bad wolf and he ran far, far away and is never coming back.  Tyler seemed satisfied with that, for now.

Lily gets in to it too.  "Where's the forest?  Cause I don't want to go there, cause the big bad wolf is there!!" She never says it in an "afraid" manner - it's almost always with a smile or laugh.  But sometimes, the look on her face is a bit skeptical.  Like she's laughing it off as a way of convincing herself that the big bad wolf really isn't going to come and get her.

Crazy kiddos.

On a completely unrelated topic, I found some photos on Joel's phone so thought I'd share that.

We had our last pseudo warm-ish day of 55 degrees early last week so we decided to take advantage and have a campfire in the back yard.

Tyler helped collect sticks for the fire.  Cub Scout in training, maybe?

The kiddos were pretty excited about the whole thing, and insisted on eating supper outside.  This is Lily's absolute favorite thing and she was pretty bummed when summer was over and we couldn't eat supper outside anymore.

They both got in to roasting marshmallows but we still couldn't get them to try any s'mores.  Lily wouldn't even eat a marshmallow.  Tyler ate it all, but just separately.  I had no trouble eating a couple s'mores - I had mine "open face style" in order to maximize the amount of chocolate and gooey, melty marshmallow I could eat.

I am so excited about the day we get to take these kiddos camping!!  Maybe next summer.  Maybe.