My great helper

This happened a little while ago, but I just found the pictures on my phone and this is a day I definitely want to remember. 

Saige and I were watching TV one day and she says "I'm bored, I'm going to clean"  I was shocked and figured it would be short lived, but boy did she get busy.  She vacuumed the living room, dusted, and cleaned the windows.  THEN she did the dishes and spot cleaned the floor and mopped.  I can't tell you how happy she made me :)  Saige is such a sweet young lady and I am very lucky to be her mom!

Road trip binders

 We are going to Arizona in a few weeks and we are SOOOOO excited!  Jason is driving down with us and then he has to be back on Sunday night, but the kids and I are staying till at least Friday.  That leaves me to make the 13 hour drive with the kids alone.  I got searching on Pinterest and found some great road trip ideas.  I just love that site!!  Here are the travel binders that I made for the kids.  This would not have been possible without my wonderful mother's laminating machine.  THANKS MOM!!  And I do have some extra prints if any of my wonderful family want to come visit me and make one of these :)  hint...hint!!

 

Saige picked out a cute puppy binder, and I got Daniel just a plain one.  He chose exactly what to put on it and this is how his turned out.  Love the "Bob Ross!" 

Inside their binders I put some activity books, and 2 pencil pouches which hold the magnets, dry erase markers, dice for the games, colored pencils, crayons, pencils and pens.

 All of the pages are laminated and can be used with the dry erase markers over and over again. This is tic tac toe and the other side has connect the dots game.

Sorry!  I just googled it and printed a copy of the game board.  They will have little magnets for pieces.  And then I did a chutes and ladders game.

         A few mazes

 Road trip bingo cards - there are 5 different ones. 

Then I bought these cookie sheets from the dollar store to hold on their laps and play the games.  We had the big bulky lap trays and they took up so much space, these will be perfect.  They have a lip on them so nothing will roll of the tray and magnets hold their papers in place.  They can even use these when we stop and get something to eat on the go.

 Battleship game - They have the directions on the back (which I just noticed I put in upside down, oh well)

 Connect 4 game - they each have magnets of their color or can use the markers.

 Alphabet search game - first one to find all the letters as we drive wins.

 And instead of buying a white board, I made my own with just white paper.  That way they can make up their own games or whatever as we go.  I also included just plain paper in the binder.

 

 I am so pleased with them, and they WILL use them.  Even if I have to force them :)  Thanks Pinterest!!  Only 18 more days :)

I got a letter from Grandma (GGMA) today and she always sends me lots of funny comics.  She is known for her comics in letters :)  This is the very top one.  So fitting, considering my last post. 

 "I saw a snowflake! Where's my sled?" 

Sledding

This is pretty much our life in Colorado right now.  The kids can't get enough of the snow :)  This is them in the back yard with their sleds going down the little hill.  They get along so good when they are outside together, and don't even mind that it was 25 degrees and windy. 

 

 

Daniel actually asked for me to take his picture laying in the snow. 

 

I know, shocker! I'm posting :)

Alot has happened since I last posted and I am going to be doing back posting, but here are a few pictures of the snow in Colorado since we moved from nice warm Arizona.  The kids are loving the snow, but we all miss home.  We have been here for about 5 months and are adjusting okay.  Jason is loving his new position running the campus here in Denver.  I have gotten a job working in the school district the kids are in.  I am working in the cafeteria and I enjoy it.  The kids have made many friends and Daniel is loving the basement.  He has his own space down there and plays his XBOX often.  Well, more pics to come later.

 

 

This was TOO good not to post!

Swim rack

I got tired of having swim suits and towels all over the patio, so I made this out of PVC pipe. 

 It works great!!  I just need to add another bar at the very bottom and one in the middle of the legs on each side to stabalize it more.  I ran out of pipe and had already been to Lowe's twice that day.  One of the workers at Lowe's told Jason "You are in here more than I am and I work here.  I should be asking you where things are."  In the last two weekends we have been to Lowe's I believe 6 or 7 times.  We did manage to get a few projects completed though.

Brave

The kids and I went to the movies today and saw Brave.  It was a very cute movie and we all enjoyed it.  Colin even went with us.  I got to thinking after the movie how when I was little there were only a few princesses.  Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty were the only princesses then. 

Now there are 11 of them.  I just wonder how many there will be when Saige has kids.  Just something to ponder...  Why can't life be more like the happy fairy tales?  My life is very seldom perfect, chances are no rich prince is going to come along and save me, if I sang it sure wouldn't sound like that, and if I had done what some of these girls did I would have been grounded. 

 Looking at the below picture, Merida from Brave just looks different from the others and it wasn't a "typical" princess film.   Maybe that is what got me thinking.  

 And why don't we see these ladies like this ever?  I had to laugh when I saw this one.  It's the first one I had ever seen where they are all not standing with their beautiful dresses and flowing hair and smiling.  I think this group looks a lot more like true life   :) 

Suckers

These 2 children are always saying "I'm bored" as I am sure most of the kids say occasionally during the summer.  I was looking at a wonderful blog  http://sassysites.blogspot.com/ and there was a link to making suckers.  We have lots of hard candy in the house because we use it in our cotton candy maker, so I decided to give them something to do.  Daniel loves mashing up the candy, but wanted nothing to do with creating the suckers.  Saige and I had fun.  :)  We just mashed the candy up and then spooned the candy onto the baking mat.  Then placed it in the oven at 350 for about 6 minutes. They turned out pretty cute and had very different flavors. 

 It was neat to watch the candy melt.  After it was done, we just rolled a stick in the candy and then it cool.

Of course we had to make cotton candy while we were waiting for the suckers to cool.  Talk about a sugar high!

This one we just placed a whole hard candy in the middle.  Cool effect.

 Saige put some candy hearts in hers and it turned out so cute!

Yummy!

Rock pets

Tonight Saige wanted to do one of our summer projects.  She chose to make a rock pet.  She made a ladybug and I made a frog.  (Notice I did not put a close up picture of mine...I am SOOOO not an artist!)

Our rock pets are in the left corner under the bright flag.  The big plant is a jalapeno plant.  We use a lot of jalapenos and they make SUPER salsa.

Girl scouts

Saige has been in Girl Scouts this past year.  She has really enjoyed it and she has wonderful troop leaders.  Ms. Leah and Ms. Tammy are the best!!  Saige had a bridging ceremony this week.  She is going from Brownies to Juniors, still in the same troop.  She loves the girls that are in her troop also.  I love to watch them all, they are so polite and nice to eachother.  Troop 506 ROCKS!!  :) 

At the beginning of each meeting they do the pledge and the girl scout motto. 

Ms. Leah told each one of the girls what was special about them.  Saige's was that she is sweet.  She is always so kind to all the girls and makes sure that everyone is happy.  If someone wants the last pink poster, Saige would take the purple one.  I love that girl!

After the girls each got their balloons and were told what their special gift was, they let the balloons go, so they could share their gift with the world. 

 They don't have meetings until school starts again, but their troop is doing a "hydrating the homeless" project in July.  We are taking cases of water to the homeless shelter.  Saige is so excited about helping the homeless people. 

The many faces of Jason

Jason applied for a job within his company and decided that it would probably be best to cut his hair.  We were really hoping that he would get this position, and while interviewing him, he was asked if he would be interested in interviewing for a higher position in Colorado.  I was so proud of him, but scared for myself and our family.  It turns out that he didn't get the one in Colorado (I was secretly cheering when he told me) and he was told that the position here would not let him grow like he wants within the company.   I know it will all work out, I just hope it's soon!  (and in Arizona) :)

Just a little bit of a different look.  He cleans up pretty good and makes a handsom Biker to Businessman  :)