My Little Pan

My conversation with Eli tonight:

Eli: “Mommy, you don’t want me to grow up do you??”

Me: “No, Elijah!! I want you to stay my little boy forever!” (I tell him this all the time)

Eli: “Well….I guess I need to go to Neverland then, huh?”

Crafty Tot Tuesday

Today, Noah made a cute little fishbowl. This is actually the craft that I sent on the camping trip this weekend for the campers. Not sure how they turned out, I haven’t seen pictures yet. But we decided to try it ourselves at home. Cute and easy!

What you will need:

1- Blue paper cut into a fishbowl shape

2- any color paper for the handprint

3- Bag of beans

4- white beads

5- Glue and sissors

 

Step 1: Have your baby put the beans on the bottom of the bowl to resemble rocks.

Step 2: Trace and cut out your child’s hand. This will be the fish. Make sure the ‘wrist part’ is rounded.

Step 3: Glue little fishy onto the paper and then have your little one glue the white beads onto the paper above the fishy. These are the cute little air bubbles. I also cut out a little triangle as a fin for the fishy.

And there you go! Your own little aquarium. Of course, you can dress it up however you like….maybe a little star fish, or little fish friends, or blue glitter, etc…endless ideas!!

Wonderful Caglewood Weekend!!!!

AMAZING weather!!!!! That is all I have to say about that. I only have pictures from when the boys and I visited because our male counselor, Jeremy, used his camera the rest of the time. So a lot of activities are not pictured =(  but our fun Freeman ones are. My camera had a ‘little finger smudge’ on it the entire aquarium trip (hmmmm I wonder how that happened?) so a lot of my pictures are foggy. But good analogy for the weekend: By then end of all of our Caglewood weekends, everyone is so tired that all the memories are foggy!

Aquarium was rough. If any of you plan to take your little ones on a weekend day – go first thing in the morning. Otherwise, you will be fighting crowds all day and it is hard to see any of the exibits =( Week days are amazing!!!

The Georgia Aquarium:

The boys with their buddies:

   

Watching the sea lions:

 

Elachee Nature Center (Sunday):

Eating Lunch:

 

Our awesome hike!!

Eli, Noah, Jennifer, and Danielle singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Stephen who was soooo very excited that he couldn’t hold still:

Noah teaching Dwight about Monster Trucks. I am still not sure if Dwight was enjoying himself – but there was no kicking on Dwight’s part, so that is a good sign (sometimes we have kicking problems):

 

Great Weekend!!! Can’t wait for the next!

I Just Love….

Days that just scream ‘what a GREAT day!’  Of course, all of my days are wonderful because I have been blessed with being healthy, beautiful and healthy boys, an amazing husband and friends, a wonderful home that keeps me warm and dry, and I live in the best country in the world. What else could I ask for?? NOTHING!!! And that is not what this post is about.

Tonight we went to karate…and lo’ and behold, Elijah graduated to advanced orange!! Yippeee!!  We did not know it was time for him to graduate because graduation was last weekend. But his instructor surprised us! Eli was so giddy and had a GREAT class (which is not always the case) We were leaving and he said “Mommy, I am one step closer to my black belt!!!”

To celebrate, we went to Sonic for dinner. We have only been there once before….last August. The same waitress that we had then was our waitress tonight. She remembered Elijah and gave the boys 2 FREE icecreams because she enjoys his company so much (he gives her a lot of compliments, especially about her skates, and she just eats it up!!)

We then went to Hobby Lobby for a last minute errand. 20 minutes away from our house and Elijah saw his best friend, Samuel in the isle next to us (he could actually hear him talking). This is very funny because they live 20 minutes away from there, too. Hobby Lobby on a Friday night?? What are the odds?  They went CRAZY and had a little party in Hobby Lobby for about 30 minutes. I finally got to meet his mother and grandmother.

What could be better??!!! A great evening…and beautiful weather to go with it!!!! Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Catch-Up Tuesday

Not ‘crafty tot-tuesday’ today =( We are just crazy, crazy trying to recover from the weekend, getting our week started, getting all furry members back in one place, and trying to get prepared for the camping trip this weekend. Sorry Noah…no crafty time for you!

1- What a wonderful Valentine weekend in the North Georgia Mountains with my entire family (mom and dad, Brother’s family, sister’s family, and us four). Crazy, Snowy, emotional, tiring, fun, relaxing, wild, did I say crazy?? Of course it had to end early because of snow, but it was still a great weekend.

To all of my family, I am putting what pictures I have on the www.ourlittlestinker.com site today if you would like to check them out.

2- Walt Disney World is ONLY 3 weeks away for the Freemans!!! Oh my goodness…I don’t even know where to begin with the planning. We have a place to stay and the dogs have a place to vacation (thanks Mom and Dad =) so I guess that is all that matters right?? A friend of mine has given me some great websites to go to for helpful planning information…it is time to begin the research and start the schedule. Happy 5th birthday Elijah!!! Can’t wait…

3- First Caglewood Camping Trip of 2010 is this weekend!!! We will be staying in a cabin on Lake Lanier and heading to the Georgia Aquarium for all of the day Saturday. The little boys and I will be joining the group downtown on Saturday so I am so very excited! I will definitely post pictures this weekend. Elijah’s favorite camper and friend, Michael is going this weekend. Michael is a teenager and also obsessed with Star Wars. He ‘knows his stuff’ and loves to run around and play just like Elijah, so Elijah is just beside himself now that he knows that Michael is going to be there. 7 campers and 4 counselors – Big group…fun times ahead!!

4- Just had my first workout of the year (trying to get ready for Disney) Holy Moly!!! I am sooo out of shape but it felt so good. Hard to believe that I used to do this for 3 or more hours every day in my younger years.  Thanks to  Michael Jackson and  Billie Jean, One night in Bangkok, and Hey Mickey your so fine I was pumped up and got through it just fine!! Amazing how great music can truly change your mood and determination. Especially when I pretended it was saying ‘Hey JJ your so fine’! Woohoo, go treadmill! I will be sore tomorrow… =(

Royal Crafty Tot-Tuesday

Today for our Tuesday Tot Craft we made fun and easy homemade crowns. Not the normal ‘cutting out paper and wrapping it around your head’ crowns. But these are very sticky, toddler friendly crowns.

What you need:

Cut up construction paper in strips, glitter, and clear packing tape. Of course, you can use anything you would like to make the crown ‘pretty’ – I just chose things that we had in our craft closet and that were boy friendly.

 

Put strips of packing tape, sticky side up, on a table for your little ones to decorate.

 

Let your little ones decorate away. Help may be needed to make sure the tape does not stick to their little hands. Noah had a great time working on his colors during this project. I would ask him to put an orange strip on, and he would do so, a blue one, and so on. He did well with his little colors =)  And then glitter away!!!! Fun, Fun.

   

After they are finished with the decorating, put another piece of tape sticky side down on top on of all of the decorations. This will close off all the stickiness. Then tape the two ends together and there is your cute and shiny crown! Elijah was the ‘X-King’. You can also make bracelets, necklaces, little rings, etc…

 

New Styles….

A few new styles being added to www.freebranch.com this week. I started working with Jasper stone this week, so pretty! More to come…

Crafty Tot Tuesday….Wednesday…HA!

This week we have made some very ‘tot friendly’ wind chimes =) This week’s project was constructed with my not-so-toddler tot, Elijah. This is a GREAT project for hand-eye coordination, perfect for toddlers and children both. Noah started the project with us but he would find animal beads and line them up and then have them all talk to each other, play, tackle each other, and so on and so forth…needless to say, he lost interest very quickly because it was bedtime. 

I found things that I had in my craft closet, but anyone can get creative with this -

1- Beads:  Any beads will do. I actually think it would be fun (with older kids) to find some neat metal beads. They would sound cute when all is done.

2- Sticks:  Sticks from outside, or a plastic top (like a top to a butter container, poke holes in it and string your strings through), or you can use chop sticks like it did because I had some just laying around. =)

3- String:  Any string will do, but make sure it is small enough to bead with. I used hemp because, of course I just love hemp, but also it is thin and strong and does very well with smaller fingers.

First step is to let the little hands string the beads:

Try to do it with uncrossed eyes though….makes the stringing easier…

 

Second step: tie the sticks together right smack in the middle

Third step: Tie the beaded strings onto your sticks in different areas. Make sure you tie them based on length and weight so that you don’t have a sideways wind chime in the end =)

  

Yay!! We had so much fun!!

Positive Thoughts…

Elijah said to Noah while playing…

“Now Noah…variety is the spice of life”