July 4 - July 10

Ugh. I'm skipping a week again. Anyway...

July 4th. We always do fireworks in the street in front of my brother's house. It has become a tradition to eat licorice sticks while we do fireworks/watch the town's fireworks. In our family of 5, black is preferred over red... 4 to 1. :) Forgot to get a pic of that part, though.


July 5th. We took our kids and their cousins to play in the park I spent many hours in as a child. Had to get a picture of the slide steps that haven't changed in at least 35 years!


July 6th. My brother's perfect S'more!


July 7th. Today's picture is of Chief after he got home from Webelos Day Camp. He had a great time canoeing for the first time, fishing for the first time, making a terrarium, winning a prize for shooting a bulls eye with a BB gun, and so much more.

July 8th. Trying to figure out the "Color Accent" feature on my camera...


July 9th. Time to retire Chief's Skechers. He wore a hole in the toe of his shoe, which led to a hole in the toe of his sock!

July 10th. Today's picture is of Maxwell Smart and his friend eating pizza Lunchables at the park.

That's it for now!

June 20 - June 26

Wow, I am really having a hard time keeping up this year for some reason. I did just fine last year. I'm not sure what my deal is. Anyway, I'll make sure my album gets caught up/full, but for the blog portion I won't go back and fill in the blanks for the weeks I miss. I need to keep it easy and do-able for me. :) OK...on to the pictures...

June 20th. Father's Day. I will be using a very silly pic of the Skipper and his 3 boys.

June 21st. Rocket launch day at Chief's school. He has been looking forward to this for a while. All the 4th graders made their own rockets -- with a lot of guidance, of course -- and launched them from a park near the school. Chief's rocket is the black one in the middle. He painted the name "ECLIPSE" on it. It soared 528 feet! Pretty cool.

June 22nd. This is what my 3 boys see every morning when they come out of their bedrooms. This picture of Jesus Christ with children was a Christmas gift to Chief (when he was 1 year old) from his uncle. It hangs in the hall across from the boys' bedrooms.

June 23rd. We've been enjoying lots of fresh raspberries and blueberries this week.

June 24th. I was using some fresh blueberries to make pancakes. I flipped a pancake and a blueberry came flying out and landed on my shoe. :( So sad. I quickly Googled "How to Remove Blueberry Stains" and got to work. First I poured white vinegar over the stain and scrubbed it with a toothbrush. I didn't notice any change with that first step. Step 2: Pour boiling water over the stain. It worked wonders and my shoes are as good as new! I forgot to take an "After" picture, but the stain is gone.

June 25th. Just some pool toys that the kids are using these days.

June 26th. Aaahhh...the best day of the week! We surprised our boys and took them to visit their best friends that moved away nearly 2 years ago. We traveled to a meeting spot that was about halfway in between both of our houses. (We live nearly 700 miles apart now.) The plan was to meet at a park. My boys were very interested in feeding some ducks while I kept insisting that they come back to the picnic table to get a doughnut RIGHT NOW. When their friends happened upon us I wanted them to see the boys, not just me and Grandma. We pulled off the surprise and it was a wonderful thing to see! They had a wonderful day just being together.

Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully I will keep up a bit better in the coming months. Still half a year to go!

May 30 - June 5

Happy June Everyone!

May 30th. My husband doing the Crossword Puzzle in the Sunday paper.


May 31st. Memorial Day. One of our traditions is making Oatmeal Brownies in honor of my husband's grandmother who passed away. She used to make these brownies often and keep some on hand in the freezer to share with us when we would go over and play Rummikub. Good memories. I make them without walnuts, though -- my kids aren't fans of walnuts.


June 1st. Just a flowering bush by our driveway. It had more blossoms this year than normal.


June 2nd. This is about half of the mulch we got to refill the beds in the front yard. The boys enjoyed displaying their strength and loading up the car. :)


June 3rd. Today I took our annual picture of the boys sitting by the tree in the front yard, marking the anniversary of moving into our house.

June 4th. I spent some time in Maxwell Smart's class this afternoon. When I walked in the room he excitedly told me that his butterfly had emerged from its chrysalis that morning.

June 5th. I had the kids go through their Hot Wheels/Matchbox bucket and get rid of the broken cars. Sadly they don't play with these very much anymore, but I just don't want to get rid of them.
Thanks for stopping by...

May 23 - May 29

Another week has come and gone! Here we go...

May 23rd. Today's pic is of the 3 boys sitting up to the kitchen counter coloring/drawing. There are 3 stools, but they were sharing 2 stools and I thought it was cute that they were all squished together like that.

May 24th. I didn't have a picture for today, so I used this picture of my keys in the ignition as a filler. Sometimes I take extra pictures specifically to be used as fillers when necessary.


May 25th. Chief can regularly be found outside in the backyard shooting hoops before school, after school and after dinner. (This shot doesn't look like it's going in, but it did!) We found this hoop for $10 on Craigslist.


May 26th. Buddy helped me organize some of the cans of food that were recently delivered by the FedEx man. When we were done he kept saying, "Can we get some more boxes of food from the man in the truck?" He loved organizing them into like piles and then counting all the cans to make sure everything was delivered. (We like to have a supply of essentials on hand for long term storage. A lot of the freeze dried stuff I bought is good for 25 years if stored properly!)

May 27th. When Buddy was taking a bath he called me in to see something. He asked, "Mom, did I just spell nest?" I looked on the side of the tub and he did! I asked him how he knew how to spell nest. He said, "I sounded out the 'words' -- nnnn e ssss t." Chief and Maxwell Smart had fun with him at dinner that night, asking him to spell simple 3 letter words that he could sound out.


May 28th. A flower pot that sits outside the front door. It has all 3 kids' hand prints on it.


May 29th. Saturday morning chore time. Buddy enjoyed vacuuming underneath the couch cushions with the Dust Buster. From the looks of things when the cushions were first removed, this chore doesn't get done nearly as often as it should!


Until next time... Thanks for stopping by!

May 16 - May 22

May 16th. One of Buddy's favorite games to play is "The Hiding the M&Ms Game." He leaves the room while I hide 10 M&Ms for him. I give him a little cup to collect his findings. After he finds them all, he likes to take a turn to hide them for me. One of his favorite spots to find an M&M has been in the red berries. He thought I was so clever!


May 17th. Buddy likes to build a house on the couch with pillows and watch his PBS Kids shows. He tells his brothers, "Don't break mine house!"


May 18th. Today I took a picture of a letter that Maxwell Smart wrote to his friend that moved far far away nearly 2 years ago. I love that they are still friends.

May 19th. Today was "Muffins For Moms" in Chief's class at school. Each child wrote a poem for their mother and read it out loud in front of the class and all the other moms. The teacher warned us that we might learn things about ourselves that we didn't know before. :) A lot of the poems were "name poems," where the child used each letter of their mom's name to write the poem. That's what Chief did. He used all the letters in my first, middle and maiden names. Not sure why he skipped my married name. Anyway, the picture for today is of him in his classroom holding up the poem. For an "S" he wrote, "S is for Scrapbook...is this the picture of the day?" It was really cute. After the poems the kids served their moms muffins and juice. Next month they'll do "Donuts For Dads." (Oh yeah...one of the funniest moments was when a girl read her mom's name poem and said, "H is for Hot. Cuz Dad says that about you a lot." Lots of laughing during that one!)

May 20th. Maxwell Smart painted this portrait of our family. It is hanging outside of his classroom.


May 21st. The coveted book of the Scholastic Book Fair...it's getting a lot of mileage at our house.


May 22nd. Every year the kids sell these Cookie Pops at our neighborhood yard sale. They are always a big hit!

See you next week!

May 2 - May 8

Trying to get back into the groove of Project Life here...

May 2. {Filler picture} Lilacs are my absolute favorite. They are simple and pretty and smell wonderful! I wish I could say these were from my yard, but they aren't. When I pick up the kids from school I park in a neighborhood next to the school. These are in one of the yards I park next to.



May 3. One of our go-to dinners...grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.


May 4. For weeks Buddy has been wanting to check the mail as soon as he wakes up. Finally...the long-awaited day arrives. The delivery of Lego Mail! My kids each have a Brickmaster membership from Lego.com. For $40 they get a new Lego set in the mail every other month. On the off months they get a Lego magazine/comic book/catalog. The main reason we got these memberships was to get the free ticket to Legoland that comes with each membership. (Legoland tickets last year were $55 for one child, so this was definitely the way to go.)

May 5. Today's picture is a great one of Buddy's ice cream-covered face!


May 6. Making chocolate cupcakes with Buddy.


May 7. Today Maxwell Smart had a program at school. The entire first grade sang songs and recited poems about spring. I loved the backdrop of Eric Carle-inspired artwork created by the students.

Here's Maxwell's contribution to the backdrop.


May 8. I put Chief in charge of this one. Collecting food out of our pantry for the mail person to pick up for their Stamp Out Hunger food drive.

April 25 - May 1

I was at Disneyland last week, so I missed Project Life Tuesday. I'm going to have to do some sort of major fill in for the week of April 18 - 24. I didn't take enough pictures to fill up that week. But I have MORE than enough pictures from our time at Disneyland last week, so somehow I will have to narrow down what I actually put in the album. Here are "a few" that are in the running. :)