LAS VEGAS BABY!

This year we planned a surprise Christmas trip to Las Vegas (my hometown) to visit family. We haven't been in a very long time and I never want to go. (Not because I don't want to see my family, my family is awesome, it's just totally exhausting to haul a million kids to Vegas and juggle 15 places to go in 4-5 days! And we have a ton of animals at home, and we are total homebodies!)

Since we wanted it to be a Christmas surprise we had to keep it a secret for a while and only reveal it as close to Christmas as possible! We kept it from tons of people, even friends and some family!

Ricky and I decided last week that last night was our Christmas Eve here.We wrapped the presents the other day and this morning we surprised the kids by having Santa come a week early. The kids didn't know what was going on this morning when they woke up. Penelope was running around excitedly saying there were presents under the tree. First we gave the kids a wrapped suitcase to open. It was a 3 piece suitcase set nested into each other.

Inside the suitcase was an envelope that

said "vacation 1" on it.

This is what they found :

I hate the cold! So this was a bizarre trip to tell the kids we were going on. Plus who wants to sleep in the snow?!!!! Charlotte said, "ARE YOU CRAZY!?" They decided the open the next suitcase.

This is what they found in

vacation envelope #2

This was hilarious. The kids were flabbergasted, wanted to know if it was safe, wanted to know how it would happen. (Would we be in a tank?) One kid asked if we would be in a cage. Hahaha. They decided to trade this vacation in for whatever suitcase # 3 had in it. Sage later said, "I almost picked sharks, would we really have gone?" LOL!

They open the 3rd and last vacation envelope:

They were very surprised and happy we get to go see our family for Christmas. They don't know we have more surprises that await in Las Vegas! They do know it will be a fabulous time though! yayyyyyy!

She's Crafty!

We love making things!



Old Suitcase

 

Helping put on travel stickers



I used mod podge over the whole surface so they won't peel off

  It is now a decoration and storage for the circle hallway room I've been working on decorating. I want to paint the floor and put in a new light fixture this winter. The light fixture that is hanging on a chain is this gold thing from the 80's with glass and an etched flower on it. BARF.



Charlotte Painting
I plan on framing a bunch of art work made by my kid's and hanging in the upstairs hallway. I love this piece!

Sooooo we decided we were going to do this dryer lint project I saw online. You mix dryer lint with water, flour and a dab of oil to make a modeling compound. I've been saying for at least 10 years dryer lint had to be good for something. Turns out our dryer lint is DISGUSTING.

It's hairy, dirty, crumby...
We have 4 dogs, a ton of cats, and I shed like a dog so we have lots of hair. I sweep the house EVERY DAY (no kidding) and still somehow we have hair go through the wash and apparently dryer. Our lint was more disgusting than we thought. Charlotte and I mixed this stuff up and wanted to barf. It was not working out and so we added more flour. Then we added even more flour so that we couldn't see the yucky dirt and hair as much.


When we had a nice paste that could easily make very realistic owl pellets (we thought about making some lol) we started sculpting on cardboard canvas. (We used the back of a puzzle board that had lost it's pieces.) Charlotte doubted we could make anything out of this gunk, and really so did I, but we had just made a disgusting soup of matted lint and hair we had to do something with it. We had dirtied a pot and wasted 15 minutes of our life. I wanted something to show for our hard work. "It's art!" I shouted. "One can create anything and make it art!" So we began. I made a bird and a nest, we worked on the tree together and Charlotte's faith was restored in ART!

Gross bird we call an Eagle.

When our masterpiece dries, I estimate in 2 years because of how thick it is, we'll paint it and see how it really turned out. For now we wait. We do look forward to painting you, you gross art project!

Boxes Rule

Cardboard boxes are a blank canvas. No toy can compare to a nice sturdy brown box to crawl into. Since I order almost every Christmas gift for the kids from Amazon we accumulate loads of boxes. Today we put all those boxes to great use!


Airplane ready for take off!




                                                                 I love this airplane! I love their faces!





 We glued lids from various things as controls. I made a strip of buttons from construction paper that say on, off, eject and uh-oh.





 This box was a tunnel for cars and trucks, but Everett and Layla found a second use for it






  Everett popped out and said, "Raaaaw!" He is cute when he tries to hide and then scare or surprise you. I say, "Ahh!" and he laughs and laughs.

Toy kitchen made from cardboard boxes



Penelope LOVES toy food, tea sets and toy kitchens. Doesn't matter how many tea sets or pretend food she owns, she LOVES all of it. She adores this toy kitchen. She has a "real" toy kitchen in her room but she loves this one more. She asked me if she could keep it for "eighty-four-fourty-days." I told her of course she could.

 


Christmas Fun and Tradition... and some crafts for the day

We had a late start to the Christmas season. Our tree went up the day after Thanksgiving, but little else happened around our house. Smith-wick just now finally appeared yesterday. You never know when he will arrive.

Smith-wick is our elf. Our elf on a shelf. We received him five years ago from my Grandma Smith. If you are lucky enough to receive your own personal elf from the North Pole then you read the story he comes with and give your own personal elf a name. Your elf reports on good and bad behaviors (naughty or nice!) to Santa every night and returns the next day at your house in a new spot. (We don't do 'good or bad' children thing, but it goes along with the Santa Christmas lore.) Children can also talk to him and tell him their Christmas wishes, which is how we use him. This part is reallly super cute: they do go up to him and talk. It's adorable.

The children delight in looking for Smith-wick each morning. Sometimes he forgets to leave and in that case the children come running to me exasperated about Smith-wick not leaving for the North Pole. I tell them the reasons he might not have left yet... North Pole is on a different time zone, there is a snow storm, he's tired, his alarm clock didn't go off...

My favorite is when I say, "Are you sure he's not there? Wait a second kids, there's dog barf in the living room...hang on...just a..."

I go clean up the "dog barf" and by the time I'm done Smith-wick has moved into a new spot. Then it's show time; "Ok it's cleaned up now! Hey what do you mean Smith-wick hasn't moved? Hey where is he, I don't see him."

Heheh. It actually works.They all find him in a new spot marveling over the fact that he just forgot to move to a different spot...or whatever. I'm not sure what they think. But they are happy and not bummed anymore.

Believing is believing. It doesn't have to make sense. It's part of the fun.

When our elf arrived I wanted the kids to name him something very special that honored my Grandma Smith since she sent it to them. I have lots of very creative, fun, fulfilling, Christmas-magic memories of my Grandma Smith. Sage came up with Smith-wick's name, which to me sounded like a REAL elf name for sure. Everyone loved it and so it was, Smith-wick joined our family. He disappears just like he arrives, unexpected and all at once.


Advent Calendars are another beloved Christmas tradition My cousin Michelle sends the children all their own chocolate Advent calendars. When a new baby is one year old she starts sending them a calendar, too. I always really appreciated this. It's really awesome because the babies really do watch and want to do what their siblings do. They totally get in on the action! As can be told by this picture.

Baby Everett gets a real treat having his first Advent chocolate with the other kids

The first snowfall of the season we have snowman pancakes and hot cocoa. I was low on milk so I talked the kids out of hot cocoa yesterday. Actually they forgot about it after I said, 'We'll do it later on.' Their idea of the first snow is often different than mine. Snow flurries stuck to the car and real snow on the ground are two different things. However, they'll start flailing about the house shouting, "hot cocoa!" at the sight of sawdust on a cold day. Regardless, another nice tradition we typically do is hot cocoa on the first snow, and snowman pancakes around the same time. And just LOOK at these faces, they just love 'em.

whipped cream for snowflakes falling

As I write this my littlest children are complaining, fighting, and need some help from their mother. One day they'll read back at this blog of our life with joy. For now I'm met with a lot of crying over me being at the computer on a cold, boring December morning. 


Lucky for them I have some crafts planned for today. Homemade snow globes,  paper doll elves, paper chains, and stringing cranberries just like I did when I was a kid. I am also making a Christmas wreath. Wait until I tell you where I got the base for the wreath. You'll never guess... 




(I got the wreath in the cemetery across the street. It was in the trash. I dug it out. Free wreath, I say.)

Thanksgiving crafts: thankful for crafty down time with kids

We made Thanksgiving napkin holders and placemats today! Glad there were so many of us working on them or it would have taken even longer than the several hours it did! Working together as a family is so much fun. The big kids made all the napkin holders and created an assembly line to get them done, Sage made the eyes and cut beaks, Charlotte assembled hats, Ethan helped cut and glue and make the gobbler thingy. It was great seeing them work together. When they were done I glued them around the napkins.

We all hate the cloth napkins that don't absorb anything so we bought these cheap fall colored wash cloths from Walmart. (That's what we normally use day to day but I felt a little weird giving guests wash cloths but with the napkin holder it dresses them up a bit!)

Place mats made by everyone, covered in clear contact paper

Everett eating grapes as we load tons of Thanksgiving groceries

Overnight Trips Away ~~ PACKING



Why do these people have so much stuff and only 1 kid, does this make any sense?

My friend told me I should be helping her big family of six kids pack for a weekend away because I should be good at it by now, as we go away on 2-3 night visits more often than she does. Here's what I told her to do :) (Number 7 cracks me up! It's so true!)

1. Wash all clothes, or at least enough to pack. Make sure 1 load is drying right before you leave and stand around waiting for it.


2. Line up kids clothes on the couch in sets with socks and underwear. Older kids bring their own to you and you tell them which ones you approve of and then explain for the 1000th time what play clothes vs nice clothes are.

3. Use 3 laundry baskets instead of suitcases and start packing kids clothes in them. Don't forget extra blankets if needed and a sling (usually only need this for babies), bring a zip lock baggy of  Motrin and other care items for kids. ~~If you have a baby or two pack up the cloth diapers! (Or wuss out and decide to buy throw away diapers on the way there which I have done lol!)

4. Start packing the grown up clothing stuff in one of the baskets, top it off with personal care items: make up bag, toiletry bag, hair dryer, curlers or whatever.

5. Intend on having this all loaded up and ready to go the night before you leave but fail at that thought, I always do. LOL!

6. Get that last load of laundry out of the dryer but forget what you really need out of it because the baskets are already packed. So just pack a couple more clothes just for good measure.

7. Forget to pack your own pajamas.

8. Leave 4 hours later than you thought you would and now every kid is starving to death. At least one kid can't find their shoes. But more likely it's two kids.

9. Have fun :D

My Knight In Shining Armor

The other day A CRAZY guy was driving up and down the parking lot rows at Walmart in a mini van, we didn't see why but a man loading groceries with his wife near where we parked told crazy guy to F-off. I thought to myself that I wouldn't do that because this guy looked crazy (like for real mentally ill kinda crazy). He was really big and heavy and he looked a lot like a crazy wild eyed Juggernaut from the X-men. 

I got worried when I saw the crazy guy stop his van in the middle of the road and get out. He tensed up and looked like he was metamorphosing into the Hulk. I had just gotten the baby out of the car when I headed for shelter in front of my truck. The guy who had said 'F-you' was in his 50's and I knew my husband wasn't going to stand around and let this older-ish guy get beat up by Juggernaut. I tried to coax my husband into hiding too, but he told me to wait a second. Luckily Juggernaut had some crazy conversation under his breath to himself (with clenched fists!) and then peeled out screeching and squealing his tires in the parking lot. The people there then asked us what that guys problem was, I felt like saying, I have no idea, we just got here and we aren't the ones that just told him to F-off! LOL! We finally started heading for the doors of Walmart and crazy man finally parked somewhere. My husband kept an eye on his van while we walked in the store. Just before we got inside my hubby spotted Juggernaut talking to himself as he was coming in a different door. I said, "Should we be here? What if he starts shooting up the place or something!?" My husband calmly just said, "Well then if that happens get behind me."

What else does a lady need to hear than that?

Me at Walmart:

Virtues of chivalry include such things as mercy, courage, valor, fairness, protection of the weak and the poor.