Mid-Month Randoms

 

We celebrated Sophia's birthday with family and friends early, so on her actual birthday (February 26th), I set up a little table and decorated with pink and purple; her two favorite colors.  The gifts were from Steve/me/her siblings and she was beaming when she came home from school that day and saw the display.  The sparkled purple frame made me smile because it was a Dollar Store purchase that I spray-painted 6 years ago for one of Sam's birthday parties and it is still going strong!

The one item that Sophia asked for this year was these Adidas shoes and she was tickled to get them.

She loves gummy bears and Jimmy wrapped a big bag of them up for her.

A very cool wooden calendar for her room.  And the necklace that she is wearing is a shark tooth that Grandpa brought home for her from Florida when he visited there earlier in the month.

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Samantha and Sophia surprised Steve and me with a special birthday dinner!  They schemed together one of the neighbor families (where Sam babysits) and we had a quiet spaghetti dinner at home -- with champagne! -- while the kids went across the street to eat and watch a movie.  We had no idea that they were planning this and it was a wonderful surprise for us.

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I never miss an opportunity to get out watercolors and let the kids paint.  With the Easter holiday coming up soon, I cut out a bunch of egg shapes and let the kids decorate them however they wanted.

As the kids get older, it isn't always easy to find something that they can all do together, but this definitely worked.

The older girls spent more time on the details and less time blending, while the boys worked a little faster on their designs.

I think that they decorated at least 20 eggs in total and I plan to put them up around the house once I pull out my Easter decorations.

I also introduced Jimmy to the idea of using a white wax crayon to then paint over and reveal designs.  It worked really well and he ended up decorating quite  a few eggs that way.

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Jack inherited a Zero-Turn mower from one of the neighbors (it had been rescued from a home fire and was still in pretty good shape).  It required a few things including an oil change, clean-up, some new front lights, some new traction tape and a replaced arm rest, but Jack was in heaven.

In no time, it will be all spiffed up and ready to mow lawns.  A couple of neighbors have already asked about his services!

A wire brush and a little elbow grease and he set to work. 

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Sophia is running for 4th Grade Class President so we made some special posters for her to hang up in her classroom.  She tends to be more introverted than her older sister and both her teacher and I are excited to see her come out of her shell during the campaign!

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One day, the girls asked me if they could paint on canvases.  I have a lot of small ones left over from various birthday parties, so I got those out -- along with my tote of acrylic paint and various brushes.  

Collectively, they decided to paint Spongebob (Sam) and Patrick (Sophia) using a picture from online as a guide.

This kept them busy for quite some time on a day that was gloomy and rainy outside ...

The final products!  They turned out so cute!

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St. Patrick's Day 2021

Last St. Patrick's Day was the start of COVID-19.  Schools and businesses had shut down; people began living in quarantine and ordering supplies/groceries online; we were social distancing from families and neighbors.  We had no idea how long it would last, and here we are, one year later, and things are finally beginning to turn around.  Even though the numbers of infections are still running higher than we would like, there have been steps taken to begin getting "back to normal."

Jimmy worked hard the day before decorating a 'leprechaun trap,' made with a deep box, gold wrapping paper and lots of St. Patrick's Day stickers.

There was a long ramp for a leprechaun to walk up -- attempting to steal the fake gold coin at the end of the plank.  Once he tried to take the coin, he was going to flip down into the deep box and be trapped.

  

But, he was a clever one!  He just happened to have a trowel hook with him and used it to climb up and over the box so that he could escape to safety.  

 

Not to fear ... he DID leave a nice letter behind for the kids and directions for a really fun scavenger hunt!

Samantha read the note aloud to the kids and they began with the first clue that was stuck to the plank where Lucky Leprechaun made his wild escape.

This was tricky and it took them a few tries to figure out that the next clue was in Jimmy's toy box in his room.  (Jimmy was completely miffed to think that the leprechaun was 'in his room' while he was sleeping!).

The kids took turns reading the clues out loud once they found them and then took off together to find the next one.

Eventually, with all of the clues gathered, they were led to the hall closet where their very own treasure could be found.

Gold chocolate coins, sour rainbow candy and skittles:

At that point, Jimmy wasn't too upset that he wasn't able to catch a leprechaun!

Afterwards, everyone headed to the dining room for a special breakfast consisting of shamrock cinnamon rolls and a fruit rainbow.

There may have been a few starbursts thrown in there for an afterschool reward later in the day!