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. :)

April 11 - April 17

I didn't do such a great job in the picture-taking dept. this week. 4 of these pictures were taken this week, and 3 were taken at other times. One thing I love about Project Life...it just doesn't matter that all the pictures weren't taken the same week. They are still a part of our life and that's what matters. The first one (pear tree blossoms) was actually taken 2 years ago! That's what my tree looks like right now, but I didn't go out and take a new picture this week. The 2-year-old photo gets the job done just as well!

April 11th. Blossoms on the ornamental pear tree in the backyard. I love seeing these out the kitchen window every spring.

April 12th. Today's excellent deal... How much do you think I spent on all of this stuff at Walgreens today? 4 jars of Skippy, 1 box of Star Wars fruit snacks, 4 random Easter candies, 1 lg. bag of Easter M&Ms, 1 8x10 pic of Chief doing Jedi Training Academy at Disneyland last fall, and 20 4x6 pictures. Answer: 78 cents! I combined sales, coupons, Walgreens great photo deals, and "store cash" and only had to pay 78 cents when I checked out. Yay!

April 13th. Chief had an assignment over Spring Break to make an Art Portfolio to hold his artwork at school.

April 14th. Listening to Maxwell Smart do his reading homework for the night. (Cropped for the blog -- I'll include the uncropped version in our album.)

April 15th. Buddy's treat choice when we went to the mall today. My plan was to take a picture of him on the escalators. He loves to just ride up and down. The picture didn't turn out well so I'll try another time.

April 16th. What the inside of the fridge looked like on this day. When I see this picture I will be reminded of something the Skipper and I are eating a lot of these days...vegetables with cottage cheese dip (just add 1 envelope of Ranch dressing powder mix to 1 16 oz. container of cottage cheese). I will also be reminded that strawberries are Maxwell Smart's favorite food at this time of his life, that Chief always requests "Double Twist" string cheese when I go grocery shopping, and that Buddy only likes Trix yogurt.

April 17th. Random Bionicle creations filler picture. This one was taken last month, but still very much a part of life.

April 4 - April 10

April 4th. Easter Sunday. Easter began with our traditional Easter breakfast -- Eggs a la Goldenrod. Toasted English muffins smothered in a white sauce made with the whites of our Easter eggs, and then the yolks of the Easter eggs crumbled and sprinkled on top. It's always served with pineapple juice. This tradition has been around in my husband's family for many years. After breakfast we watched the broadcast of our church's worldwide General Conference. It takes place the first weekend of every April and every October. It's always nice when it falls on Easter. While we watch General Conference on TV our family eats food from our 72-hour kits that we keep on hand in case of an emergency. It's a good way to rotate the food regularly so it doesn't get too old, and we also learn what the kids will/won't eat. The kids' favorite seems to be beef jerky (didn't get a picture). None of them care for Chex Mix bars so we took those out of the kits. And finally, the kids have little "conference packets" that they work on during the meeting to help them pay attention. One of the games is a Bingo game, using words such as "prayer" -- "faith" -- "Jesus Christ" -- etc. Whenever they hear one of the speakers use one of the words on the Bingo card they get to cover it up with a little candy. Today we used sour jelly eggs. (Hmm. Looks like there is a different activity pictured.)


April 5th. Home from Grandma's. Lots of unpacking to do, but Buddy (the child formerly known as Larabee) and I decided to play Candy Land instead. I think it's funny that he's combing his hair while we play! (By the way, as far as Larabee goes...it was sounding a little too girly to me, even though it is a male character from the old 60s TV series Get Smart where the kids' got their nicknames for this blog. I gave former Larabee a few options for choosing a new name and he chose Buddy. As in Buddy the dinosaur from the PBS Kids show "Dinosaur Train.")



April 6th. A sign that "Buddy was here." When confronted about his artwork on the wall, he denied that it was his. This led to a discussion about lying and telling the truth. :)


April 7th. Chief bringing some groceries in from the car. He's quite attached to his soccer ball these days.


April 8th. Today's picture is a close-up of Chief eating his first orange pepper. I served 8 different vegetables at dinner (definitely a first) and the kids were asked to try at least 2 new ones. He was definitely not a fan!


April 9th. After watching "Kung Fu Panda" the kids were in the mood to demonstrate their new kung fu moves. My husband -- I mean... The Skipper... (I keep forgetting he has a code name) -- put a rolled up sleeping bag over each arm and let the kids go at it. Here's a blurry one of Maxwell Smart showing us what he's got. It was quite entertaining to watch. The Skipper was quite worn out afterward.



April 10th. We did a bit of spring clean-up in the yard today. The kids were excited to find a single ladybug. Later, they were beyond excited to find a ladybug for each of them to play with!
Thanks for visiting...have a great week!

March 28 - April 3

March 28th. Today the kids asked Dad to "challenge" them -- tell them what to build with their Legos. The kids loved this game, and Dad loved not having to get off the couch to play. He would give them an assignment, they would run upstairs and build, then report back with their creation. These are all Chief's creations. Maxwell Smart didn't want a picture taken of his.


March 29th. The kids are very excited to leave for Grandma's house in a couple of days. They started packing Sunday afternoon. I couldn't resist taking a picture of Piggy peaking out of Chief's backpack. Piggy is Chief's stuffed rabbit he got for Easter from my sister 6 years ago, when he was 4. He attempted to give him to his littlest brother a couple of years ago, as he was starting to feel too old to have a stuffed animal. A couple of days later he asked me if he could have it back. I told him he could, and if he ever felt too old to have him around we'd put him in the top of his closet so he could still be close but not too close. :) He liked that idea. I'm glad we haven't reached that point yet...

March 30th. This is a favorite late night snack for me and my husband. We like to have milk and cookies after the kids go to bed! It's not an every night ritual, though.

March 31st. I took this picture last week. It's not every year we can capture this!


April 1st. We arrived at Grandma's Wednesday night. This is what we woke up to on Thursday morning. It looked more like Christmas-time than Easter-time! It was funny seeing those almost-ready-to-bloom-blossoms under a layer of snow.


I need to fit this picture in somewhere too. We started a new April Fool's tradition last year. A dessert is served as Dinner, and dinner food is served as Dessert! The kids loved having things switched around like that. (By the way, that's an Easter egg cake that I picked up at the bakery. The whole thing didn't fit into the collage.)


April 2nd. Grandma and I took the kids to an aquarium. For some reason I thought of my 3 boys when I saw these 3 toads sitting together. :)

April 3rd. We had our annual Easter egg hunt in Grandma's backyard today. I got a lot of good pictures, so I'll probably stick a pocket page protector (We R Memory Keepers) in my Project Life album filled with our Easter pictures. I just can't narrow it down to 1. I don't think a collage will cut it this time, either.
See you next week!