Children’s Museum

Yesterday Austin had a review for a final but then was done for the day, so we (begged) convinced him to go with us to the Children’s Museum.  We had never been before, but I was able to get a Culture Pass from the library to go, so we were really excited.

The following are just some of the fun pictures that we took while there:

Max thought the cones were really fun—just his size:

 

The museum has a special 3 and under room—I think this was Makenna and Max’s favorite room.  There were tons of things that were safe for them to climb on and play with and on.  Perfect for them!:

(I love this picture because Max looks like a BOY, not a BABY!)

This was a “spooky” cave with flashing yellow eyes and noises!  The kids were pros—not a bit scared!

 

Makenna thought it was AWESOME to get a stamp on her hand!

Max loved climbing the steps and stairs like a big boy!

There was a little “vent” that the kids could stand on and a big puff of air would come out.  Makenna loved having her hair and shirt poof up!  Max was super scared by it though!

  

Look at this big boy!

 

I think he was enjoying himself, what do you think? : )

After we left the baby room, Makenna stopped to “smell the roses.”

Next we headed through the “Noodle Forrest.”  Max and I thought it was a bit claustrophobic in there, but Makenna loved running through the noodles.

They had a “grocery store” where kids could shop (including check out stands!) and then the kids could head “home” to cook their dinner! Makenna had a lot of fun cooking in the kitchen:

These textured walls were perfect for Mr. Max!

 

Max loved playing the pipes!

Next we were off to ride motorcycles and drive cars!

There was so much to do at the museum!  From ball runs to racing cars to making crafts in the craft room—what a neat, neat place! Although it only took us 20 minutes to go there, because of traffic it took us an hour to get home!  So by then, the kids were just exhausted!  Mr. Max went down to bed at 5pm and didn’t get up until 8am this morning!  So we just had Miss Makenna to entertain us all evening.  Is this a new style—baseball hat and jewelry?

  

But soon she too needed a nap!  (Her new favorite thing is to pretend to fall asleep!)

Whew!  We wore them out!

Book Review

You guys!  Remember how I’m doing the book review for Tyndale?  Remember—they send me a book for free to review and then I post about it on my blog (click the button on the side if you want to know more!)?  Well, I just got a new book and this one has made me a VERY happy camper!  As most of you know, I am umm… shall we say, slightly OCD about organization and planning.  I subscribe to all of the organization e-mails and newsletters; I buy magazines and e-books that are about organizing my life and being a better mom; I have a menu planner AND I USE IT; I have several binders that I use to keep track of things; my favorite thing to do is make lists—yes I’m slightly obsessed.  So guess what my new book is called???  The Busy Mom’s Guide to a Happy, Organized Home.  How perfect for me is that?  So when I received it I was soooo excited!  And now looking all through it (it’s not really a book you sit down and read cover-to-cover; it’s more of a book that you look at the table of contents or index and then read chapters or sections based on what you need), I am still soooo excited!

Okay so this book is by Kathy Peel—I hadn’t heard of her but the book says she is “America’s Family Manager.”  She breaks the book down into seven sections that she says are the Family Manager’s responsibilities and that they might need help organizing: “Time and Scheduling; Home and Property; Food; Family and Friends; Finances; Special Events; and Self-Management.”  And then within each section she uses examples from her own life and others to explain the principles.  She also gives us nifty “The Most Important Things to Remember” charts,  strategies and solutions, specific steps to follow, “Good to Know” hints, and charts and checklists.  And this is for EACH SECTION people!

There is no way possible for me to really explain everything found in this book.  Already I have found great ideas such as setting the alarm on your phone when it’s time to start dinner (genius!  Seriously, why didn’t I think of that?  No more “It’s 5:00 and I forgot to start the grill!); cleaning the bathroom mirror and counters while your kids are playing in the bathtub (then it will be your kids begging to get out instead of YOU begging them!); and clean windows on cloudy days because “direct sunshine causes them to dry faster and unevenly” (no more streaks!).  I am particularly excited about trying out some of her finance tips and lists for managing special events like Christmas, vacations, and birthday parties!

Anyway, I could go on for days, but I won’t… basically, this book has got me more excited than any other in a long time.  I HIGHLY recommend it, especially for other OCD list maker, organizing mamas like myself! : )

What We’ve Been Up to This Week

This week was a big week for Ms. Makenna—we started potty training!  (For those of you who think this sort of thing is TMI, skip ahead!) Last Sunday Makenna ran to the potty and went twice by herself.  So I said, “Okay, okay, I guess we will have to potty train!” (Basically, I had been too lazy and worried about messes to do it before—I know, I know, ridiculous on my part.)  So we started.  On Monday, Makenna had ELEVEN accidents!  I was soooo stressed out!  I was constantly cleaning up disgusting messes and once I walked in the bathroom to find this:

Yes, that is a WHOLE roll of toilet paper!  And yes, it did clog the toilet!  And yes I did have to unclog it PLUS clean up overflow!  I said that’s it!  No more potty training!  I can’t handle it!  Then I talked to my mom and she said, “No way jose!  You can’t quit!  Keep going!” So we did.  Tuesday we had only one accident and Wednesday we had a #2 accident, but other than that we are potty trained (except for bed times and we are still having that “don’t want to go #2 in the potty” fight).  I am so, so proud of my big girl and how well she is doing!  Even today at church she stayed totally dry and came to get me when she had to go!  Another milestone- check!

Monday we also started back to having school for Makenna.  We had stopped for a while because the weather was just so beautiful that we wanted to spend all of our time outdoors, but now that it’s getting hot I decided to start back up again.  We started a new program that is catered for 2 and 3 year olds.  This program focuses on a theme, shapes and colors, nursery rhymes, and recognizing your numbers and letters (but not necessarily knowing sounds yet).  This is MUCH better for Makenna because it is more age appropriate.  She is just 2 after all!  It’s also a much shorter school time—just 45 minutes to an hour.  That way we can still have plenty of time for regular play and play dates.

Our theme for this week was farm animals.  We read a book called Pigsty and then we made mud!  I filled up an old pan with dirt and Makenna used a medicine dropper to add water.

After we had created the mud, I told Makenna to put her hands in it and play with it.  She was NOT impressed and did not like having her hands muddy.  But after I showed her it would wash off, she was excited to play for a while!

I think she was most excited to get to wash her hands afterwards though!  Makenna is definitely pretty OCD like her mom!

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to do any more school this week because goofy Mommy threw her back out!  I’m not sure really how it happened—my back was pretty stiff when I woke up on Wednesday, but then I was changing Max’s diaper (well, fighting with Max is more like it because he HATES to have his diaper changed) and all of a sudden I was having this horrible pain in my back.  I laid down on the floor in my bathroom and it felt like a ton of bricks was on my chest.  I couldn’t breathe and I was hurting so, so much and couldn’t get back up.  I called Austin (who was out golfing) and said, “Get home now!”  He rushed home to find me on the floor crying with kids crawling all over me.  He quickly got the kids in the car and got me up (which hurt more than anything!) and took me to the ER.  (This was first thing in the morning so I still had on pjs, hair not brushed, teeth not brushed—pretty horrible!)  I had to go back by myself because kids under 12 aren’t allowed.  The doctor looked at my back and said, “Oh yeah, it hurts right here, huh?”  My muscle was spasming so much he could see exactly where it hurt!  They did some x-rays, and just said I had a pretty bad pulled muscle that caused the spasms.  They gave me a muscle relaxing shot and loads of pain killers and finally I was on my way.  However, the pain killers were the type that knocked me out instantly, so all week I’ve been in the bed, sore and loopy!  Thank goodness for friends who watched my kids so Austin could come back at the hospital, brought us food, helped clean my house, came over to watch the kids while I slept off my medicine, and called or texted or sent me messages to see how I was doing!  I’m also grateful for a husband who has been patient with my huge mood swings while on my medicine and in pain and who has taken care of things for me.  He even took off of some school—now that’s love! : )  Makenna has also turned out to be the best little helper—unloading and loading the dishwasher, washing the laundry, moving the laundry over to the dryer, cleaning up after Max, and getting things when I couldn’t lean over to reach them or couldn’t get up to get them.  (Max:  he was mostly still a troublemaker!) I’m definitely a lucky lady!

Oh, and one other thing.  That Max has been walking around like CRAZY!  I think he forgets he can do it most of the time, but when he actually walks he is such a big boy!  Hopefully we will get video of it soon (I’ve been having to just do pictures on my phone lately because some little girl got dirty fingerprints all over the lens of our camera!).  He is also jabbering more (although we can only make out a few words-- “Night, night” “All done”) and trying to use his spoon to eat!  My babies are growing up! That’s both a : ) and a : (

Fancy Pants

So the older Makenna gets, the more she turns into a girlie girl.  Now she loves spending her days playing with babies and Barbies (dressing them, feeding them, getting them to go to sleep), playing with her kitchen (“Cooking dinner, Mom!”), watching movies like “High School Musical,” and playing dress up.  I found these pictures on my phone in which Makenna decided we all needed to get a little “fancy pants.”

She LOVES wearing her tutu—she says it makes her a princess!  She was also practicing her “cheesy smile” in this picture! : )

Makenna thought it was great fun to have Max dressed in a purple cape and yellow heels!  Poor little Max…  Luckily it didn’t seem to bother him at all.  Who knows what scars he will carry on into his adult years though…And of course Makenna thought mommy should be in on the act!  What do you think of my fairy slippers?

Oh the joy of having a girl…

As Makenna says, “Exercise, Exercise!”

I have been such a blogging slacker lately!  It’s just that we have been doing the same ole same ole every week—playing with friends, going to the library, playing in the backyard, etc. so I haven’t really taken a lot of pictures!  There have probably been several photo ops that I missed though… I will try to be better!  Last week we went to Oasis Gym for playgroup with our ward and then again with some friends.  They have something called Preschool Power Hour for the under 4 crowd where kids can attend Open Gym for only $5.  Makenna and Max both LOVED it!  They would seriously go every day I think!  Makenna had a blast jumping and running and climbing and Max loved playing with balls and climbing the stairs and playing with other babies…  A couple of times Max even took off walking across the gym floor—for some reason he thinks it’s easier to walk on that floor than our carpet at home! It was such a fun time! (Excuse the quality of the pictures—I just had my cell phone on me to take pictures with!)  

I think this summer, especially as it starts getting super hot, we will be spending a lot of time at the gym!

Book Review

So I was lucky enough to find Tyndale House Publishing.  They will send you a book (for free!) that you can review and post about on your blog.  As I love reading, I thought this would be a great way to get some free books and also share my experiences with others!

I just received my very first book to read and review.  It's called Inspirational Zingers Jumble by Christopher Hudson with Megan Chrans.  This is a puzzle book full of "Jumbles and Zingers." 

I actually had never heard of these puzzles before.  This is how they work:  There are letters mixed up that forms a word (this is called a jumble).  There is also a clue.  Figure out what the word is, unscramble it.  Then some letters from that word are put together to answer a mystery question (called a zinger).  Okay, okay, so that was a little confusing.  Let me clarify-- basically, we are using clues to unscramble words.  : )  That might be an easier way to put it, ha ha!  The book has basic jumbles, double jumbles, mystery person jumbles, word search jumbles, super jumbles, AND criss-cross jumbles!

I started trying the puzzles last night.  I have to admit, I am not the best at figuring out words from clues OR unscrambling scrambled words.  But the first few puzzles were easy enough even I could do it!  I also feel smarter for figuring them out : ).  But the thing I really like is the Zingers are actually scripture verses or inspirational quotes!  So I am doing puzzles AND getting a "thought for the day."  Love it!  Perfect for right before bed time!  I saw online that Tyndale also has these jumble puzzle books for kids!  A great activity for family night!