8 years ago, I married my best friend and the love of my life!
Although it was a VERY stressful day, it was wonderful and we were absolutely giddy.
This year, we decided it would be fun to reenact some of the day! Jeremy put on a suit, stood at the front of the church, played the song we walked in to, and my dad walked me down the aisle. We had even gotten ready at separate houses so it was a surprise.
We tried to recreate some of the photos...
THEN
NOW
THEN
NOW
THEN
NOW
But the best ones we were just being silly and having fun with.
(Amazing how less stressful it is when it's just pretend!)
It was seriously one of the most fun things we've ever done!
Before we left, we said our vows and danced to our wedding song.
When we went to my in-laws to pick up the kids, they had some cake sitting on the counter, so we even got to reenact the cake smooshing! What an amazing anniversary!!! (And best of all, it was fun, romantic, AND didn't cost a dime!)
Happy 8 years of marriage pookie bear! I am the luckiest woman alive!!!
for ridiculously busy mom-guilt-induced activities.
Like ornament making...
I love the look on his face...it's like "Mom...do you really know what you're doing?"
No. No, I don't dear.
And a holiday sensory tub...
Fake fluffy snow, trees, glittery snowflakes, styrofoam "snowballs," some spoons for shoveling, and some clear plastic cups to shovel the snow into (okay, they're shot glasses...judge away, the kids loved it.)
Cookie decorating....
Why yes that is frosting in her hair. Is anyone really surprised by that?
Snowball fights...
Since we don't have real snow yet, he's been using styrofoam balls in a catapult that he made with Daddy to shoot them at the army men. It's kind of awesome. Sometimes....he let's me have a turn. :-)
And craft projects...
She is REALLY into gluing right now. I know this, because I find random objects glued underneath tables, to picture frames, and to various body parts.
Not to mention forced wearing of fancy shirts and festive pajamas....
Should have given him the blue freezie AFTER taking the picture.
I love it when they "love" on each other. I'm pretty sure one of them burst into tears about 7.8 seconds after this was taken.
The list goes on and on.
Somehow, amidst the busyness and all of the "memory making," we've managed to get the meaning of Christmas across to the kids, because they remind us constantly about the gift of God's son and how they can't wait to tell baby Jesus "Happy Birthday."
Hope all of you have a blessed Christmas with you and yours.
This was within the first 30 seconds of walking in...she was ready to climb and play!
Making a light table/box for the kids is on my to-do list for Jeremy.
She could pretend cook all day! Good thing Santa is bringing her an AWESOME wooden kitchen this year!
He kept blowing on the water because he thought it was hot from the steam...even though he felt the water and it wasn't. Instinct, not logic dominated.
Off to market to hawk her goods.
Oh dear sweet Chipotle, how I've missed you!
This was taken right away when the tiny carts were cute and fun...before they started ramming them into people's shins and pillaging the shelves for anything dipped in chocolate.
1. Take Rainbow Rice (or use your sandbox if you don't have a rice tub.)
2. Hide in foam letters from a Dollar Tree puzzle.
3. Send your child on a letter hunt, finding the letters and putting them back into the puzzle.
This easy and cheap activity is not only a great sensory experience, but it also develops letter recognition and spatial sense! Liliana was saying things like, "Micah- I found a M for you!" and "Only 4 more letters left to find." Puzzles are not her strongest activity because she doesn't have the attention span for them, so combining it with a sensory activity kept her focused. She hid/found them all 3 times!!! On a funny note- She found the letter b and told me "I found a 'CK-CK-CK' letter T for Anna!" Hmmm...close sweetheart.
I'm insanely bored and have absolutely nothing better to do with my time.
We're having friends over for Mexican night, and I feel like showing off my mad homemaking skills.
Otherwise I just buy them from the store because I really don't think homemade tortillas are that much better, cheaper, or healthier than store bought.
Until...I started reworking the recipe to create my own flavored tortillas. Holy cow yum!!!!
This is the basic recipe I use:
2 cups all purpose flour 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1 tsp. baking powder 2 tablespoons shortening 1/2 cup water (or so)
Throw the first four ingredients in the mixer until the shortening is crumbled in, then add enough water so it all comes together in a ball. Separate out into 12 pieces and roll into balls. Let rest for 20 minutes and then roll out thin on a floured surface. Cook over medium high heat until brown spots start to appear (don't overcook!!!) Put in between towels to cool slowly so they stay soft.
I experimented and made two different kinds this last time...whole wheat/flax and spinach/herb.
For the whole wheat/flax, I did half all purpose flour and half whole wheat flour. Then I sprinkled in some milled flax seed (totally didn't measure, so use your judgment). Easy peasy. I cooked these at 300 on our griddle because I was told if you cook flax at over 325, it loses some of the nutritional goodness.
For the spinach/herb, I used entirely all purpose flour and then added in half a pack of frozen spinach (thawed and squeezed of all liquid), fresh chopped basil and chives.
AMAZING!!! Especially the spinach/herb ones! I can hardly wait to try some other combos. I love anything chipotle flavored, so I'm going to try that next...and maybe a tomato/basil one. Endless possibilities!!! It's safe to say we'll be eating a lot of wraps in the Johnson household over the next few weeks until the thrill wears off.
Where was Pinterest when I was doing daycare?!?! There are so many awesome ideas for fun projects, and we've been working our way through the Christmas ones.
Our first craft project would have been a success, if some of us had a little more self control.
This was the concept:
Cute, right? They had a blast gluing the marshmallows!
Sometimes I'm just in awe of their adorableness!
After the marshmallows were glued, I set them on the counter to dry. Now, before I state what obviously went wrong, let me tell you that I let them eat marshmallows while they were doing the project. We talked about how the ones with glue were icky, but how they could have all the clean marshmallows they wanted. They were not deprived of any sugary goodness...and yet...still....Liliana felt the need to climb onto the counter and eat the glued on marshmallows off of the paper. That girl. I tell ya. So with that project down the drain, we moved onto less tempting artwork.
Hand print wreaths:
And hand print reindeer:
I'm a sucker for hand print projects! They're just so cute and make me smile every time I see them!!! And I love looking back and seeing how their tiny hands have grown. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Johnson house!
Off topic mild rant about craft projects with kids: So there are those in the child development field who think that it's never ever okay to tell a kid how to do their art. It's their art. If they want to have an orange wreath and put it in the shape of a triangle, by all means, that's their option. I agree with that to a point. My kids have plenty of free play time to create whatever they would like to, in any fashion they would like to, without any input from me whatsoever. But, in this world, there are times we need to conform. There are times we HAVE to follow directions and do things a certain way and kids need to learn how to do that too. In my opinion, I think it's perfectly okay to have outcome based projects occasionally, as long as you have plenty of process focused projects too.
Curtain rod + Clothespins = Dry, matching, easy to find hats/mittens and one happy mama!
Full disclosure: Jeremy thinks this "solution" is a pain in the butt. He much prefers the stuff-it-in-the-sleeve method of mitten storage. I hate that method because the kids never remember they have something stuffed in their sleeves and then freak out when they can't get their arm through. Plus, then the mittens are always wet and if it isn't the exact pair you felt like wearing then you throw them on the floor and have to search for 5 minutes for the ones you did want. Well worth it to me to spend 30 seconds rehanging our mittens. In the never ending saga of marital negotiations...I won this one.
Not every project I do with the kids is a success and some are disasters! I was going to post today about making gingerbread houses from scratch, but that project failed. Miserably. The gingerbread itself turned out fine, but the icing was way runny and I realized that I had tossed out all the candy laying around our house, so we were going to have to decorate with dried fruit. We gave up.
But we did have fun doing the part we did!
So instead, we worked on our pouring skills today. Liliana loves to help herself to milk and juice, but she could use a little practice with it. Our kitchen has carpet in it and she once poured an entire gallon of orange juice on the floor and then sweetly said "Oops! I missed."
We had the kiddy pool in our house already from the rainbow rice, but you could easily do this in the bathtub. I grabbed a bunch of stuff from our kitchen and recycling bin.
I put water in the pitcher, and she set right to work.
She did GREAT!!! So well that I was thinking to myself maybe we should let her pour her own drinks more often!
Then she did not so great.
A good half of that missed. And then....well....I saw this coming, which is why she was in her swimsuit.
She ended up splashing around for awhile until she got cold, and then her barbies took a turn going for a swim. I will definitely be doing this again with her though because it kept her thoroughly entertained, was really great practice, and actually wasn't too difficult to clean up.
I have no idea where she gets this from! I swear! :-P
It's probably not worth watching in it's entirety...but you should definitely check out her facial expressions. She's so dramatic...it's hilarious! I have no idea where she gets that from either. ;-)
Apparently, I listen to too much Taylor Swift...because she also knows a lot of words to "Picture to Burn." She runs around the house singing/screaming, "I hate that stupid old pickup truck you never let me drive. JUST LET ME DRIVE IT ALREADY!!!!!" Could be worse, considering I also listen to Lady Gaga. :-D
Oh and side note...she just had a bath which is why her hair looks all funky in the video. I really do comb it. Promise.
Boys and girls are very different. This isn't a new realization to me by any means. :-P But it was sooooo evidenced by today's activity. Micah and I made a batch of rainbow rice last night (instructions below). So I put out the rice in a tub for him to play with while I showered (Liliana was at preschool)....I come downstairs and he's using the kid sized pots and pans I had given him as "jails" for the "bad guy rice." And the toy whisk was a "super spinner that sucked everyone into the vortex." He went on for 15 minutes about the purpose of the toy spatula in the fight against evil but it all went totally over my head. Silly me! I thought he would have used the pans to bake pretend cupcakes.
(Update- Oh way too funny! Liliana just got home from preschool and went straight to the rainbow rice for the first time and was playing really nice, and I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I'm making a cake!" Called it.)
So, Rainbow Rice.
It's super easy to dye rice and pasta and then way fun to use it for art projects and sensory tables!
Get the BIG bag of rice from Sam's. We got the 25 lb. one for $10 and dyed about half of it. It seemed like a ton when we were doing it, but I'm going to go ahead and do the other half now because once it's poured into a tub, it really isn't much.
Micah was so totally pumped about digging his hands into the rice!
Scoop into ziplock bags. Add food coloring (maybe like 7-10 drops) and a splash of rubbing alcohol.
Shake.
Lay out to dry.
Done!
The rubbing alcohol evaporates making the rice/pasta safe to play with...but while drying, your house will smell like your alcoholic Uncle Herb is visiting and on a bender. Just a warning, so you don't decide to do this on the day your church Bible study is meeting in your home or anything. ;-) The scent goes away really quickly.
A note about sensory tubs- You can use ANYTHING for a sensory table. It doesn't have to be elaborate. Put some water/rice/sand/playdough/beans....not all at the same time :-)....in any sort of container and you've got a sensory tub. Our rule is that the kids have to sit in the kiddy pool while they play, so that helps contain the mess. I also try to start out with just the plain filler (rainbow rice in this case)...then after they get bored running their hands through it, etc. I add in something new (pots and pans). Later, I'll switch out the pots and pans for sand toy scoops, etc. to keep them interested as long as possible before switching to a different filler.
There is a ton of research about how important sensory activities are for kids! Sometime I'll do a post about it because Liliana is a total "sensory-seeker" and I've been doing a lot of reading on sensory disorders and activities....but in the meantime, get creative and have fun!!!
Every year around this time, I start freaking out about winter. The idea of being trapped inside my house for five months (nine when we lived in Duluth :-P) makes me start frantically coming up with plans to keep the kids and myself occupied. Thank goodness for Pinterest! If you haven't checked it out yet, you totally should! Zillions of amazing ideas. I spent most of the day today gathering up and shopping for supplies for various craft projects/sensory tubs/fine motor activities.
Speaking of fine motor activities...I've been putting together trays for Liliana to work on. The challenge with Liliana is that she is so busy and so constant that I don't have time to clean up the first mess she made before she makes three additional messes. My solution for this lately has been to turn on Barney, but there are so many better ways to keep her occupied and since I'm trying to be the best I can be (backstory here), I've started putting together trays for her.
I prep the activities ahead of time, so I can quickly pull it out at a moment's notice. I make sure they are things that will:
1. require her full concentration and/or teach/refine a skill
2. be easy enough for her to do on her own or with minimal assistance
3. keep her occupied long enough to make it worth the effort to put together
4. be fun and exciting!
I keep the trays hidden away in the office, so they are new and interesting when brought out. The rule is that everything needs to stay on the tray while she plays. I brought out this one this morning and it kept her busy for almost a full hour!
Orange is her new favorite color.
She figured out what to do on her own and started making necklaces and bracelets for us.
Check out her concentration!
Here are a couple other trays I had prepped for this morning. I ended up not needing them since we decided to go shopping instead (mother/daughter shopping...LOVE IT!)
Old strawberry container with a hole cut in the top (masking taped to be safe), cotton balls and a chopstick to push them through the hole.
Bingo dabbers and paper with different lines drawn on them for her to put the dots on (great pre-writing activity).
Just knowing that I have fun and educational activities all ready to go, makes me more patient when she starts getting "busy."
