Wednesday, February 22, 2012

A Few of our Valentine's Activities

I wasn't able to capture pictures of all our Valentine's activities, but here are a few things we did to celebrate and learn. (I know, these pictures are kind of late...)

We started by giving H several boxes of Valentine's and let him write notes on them. He loved this and made several Valentine's.

We had some friends over, and they cuddled on the couch and read some Valentine's and Valentine's-related books!

Hudson helped me make a heart-shaped brownie complete with pink icing and sprinkles!

He used the bingo blotter (found at the Dollar store, fyi) to trace the lines from the heart to the box of candy.

We used leftover Christmas M&M's for this activity. First, he sorted all of the red and green M&M's (he LOVED this activity!!) Then, he placed all the red M&M's in the little circles. (We're saving the green ones for a St. Patrick's Day activity).

Organizing the hearts from smallest to biggest...and he did it!

Reese-Girl hanging out with GaGa (her Great-Grandma)

The printable activities shown in the pictures are from the following AMAZING mommy blogs:

Monday, February 20, 2012

Be Kool Product Review

Be Kool Soft Gels Sheets are one of our new favorite products! Unfortunately, my kids had to get sick in order for us to try them. My Grandma found a recent sale on them and sent the box home with me this morning. It couldn't have been more perfect timing because H started running a fever earlier this evening. 

The strips are easy to use. You just peel the clear film of the gel sheet and stick it to your child's forehead. In case it's not obvious, you have to move their hair out of the way so it stays in place (and doesn't pull their hair!!) I thought the actual strip would feel similar to a band-aid but it actually has a fabric feel to it. It also has Mickey Mouse Clubhouse characters on it, which is enticing to a little one. The gel side is a little cool but not nearly like holding an ice pack on your kid's head!

Now, he was fine with it on his head for a little while but then, wasn't too sure about keeping it on his head. We encouraged him, and he forgot about it...and fell asleep. It stayed in place and cooled him right down! AMAZING...especially when fevers can sometimes be hard to break, especially without dosing out some Tylenol! He's had it on for several hours now and still does not have a fever. They are supposed to work for 8 hours and come in a box of 4.
The part I'm not looking forward to...peeling it off. I'll keep you posted on how it works out!
Edit: They peel off super easily!


These are my own opinions, and I was not paid to write this review. I just found a great product and wanted to share!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Sick Babies

I was away from the computer for a few days because my poor little babies have been sick. 2012 has been horrible health-wise for our family. It's one thing after another, and it gets passed around and around. :( Yuck! Here are my little sicklies:

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Let's see those pearly whites!

So...we took the kids to the dentist.  Our insurance encourages you to take kids early (and pays for it!) so we did.  Hudson LOVES to brush his teeth anyway. He would do it every 5 minutes if we let him! Seriously, he just may grow up to be a dentist. Anyway, to say he was excited about going would be an understatement! It was H's second time going and R's first...and they both did great! 
Since they are little, they have you to hold your child on your lap, facing you, then rest your child's head on their knees so they can look right into the child's mouth without them being too nervous sitting in a big chair. It works so great! And both kids have great teeth and are right on track! Here are a few pictures of us waiting for the dentist to come in...

Monday, February 13, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day!!

We're spending the day visiting my parents and grandparents while J works. Then, we're all going to have a fun family night at home! During the day, I've also put together several Valentine's related activities for Hudson. Pictures to come!

(Don't you love trying to get two babies to cooperate for a nice picture? In the top one, R was blowing kisses and H was bored. In the bottom one, H was forcing R to sit next to him for the picture. They're too much!)
Valentine's Day 2012

Fall Art Project Night 2011

Valentine's Day 2011

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Saturday, February 11, 2012

CAKE SMASH!

My friend Nicki came into town for the night and took some sweet 1st Birthday Cake Smash pictures! THIS is what we used the fun streamer background for! We had fun...Reese wasn't as crazy about it since she doesn't like cake or getting messy! :) Nicki even brought Reese a beautiful, little dress for her balloon pictures!


Achieving the streamer background: We have a kitchen that opens up to our family room so we hung the bright pink, light pink and white streamers (pretty thickly - 3 rolls!!!) over that opening. Since we could still see through a little bit, we hung a white tablecloth behind the streamers to get a cleaner look. When hanging the streamers, we started just using scotch tape and taping up each individual streamer. Okay...that was going to take FOREVER. So, we used a long piece of masking tape and two little pieces of masking tape. We taped the masking tape sticky side OUT to the wall. That way, we could just push the streamer up against the tape exactly where we wanted it...SO much faster! Nicki came up with it...where was she when I did the entire first roll on my own?!


After the cake smash, we did something a little different...coming soon.



Friday, February 10, 2012

R's 1st Birthday Bash - Mickey Mouse Style!

Because of my kid's crazy love obsession with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and because H informed me that R NEEDED a Minnie Mouse party, we decided to go with it! I thought it would be cute and fun! I started thinking about what I wanted to do (and of course got some ideas from pinterest), but had to quickly throw the party together a few days beforehand once I realized my side of the family was going to be out of town for a few weeks (and the Sunday they would be back would be Superbowl Sunday...and we didn't want to compete with that!) So I got online and found the invitation I wanted to recreate...and then, came across this AMAZING, super generous, kind lady who had a free template and free Disney font: FREE Minnie Mouse Invite Template & Disney Font

The finished invite! The ribbons are smaller than I would have liked but it's what I had on hand (so free!) I know it's hard to see but the Disney font is adorable! And we went with "pink Minnie" to make Mickey Mouse Clubhouse a little more girly! :) These invites were almost all hand-delivered because really, how DO you mail stuff like this?!

The birthday outfit!

Mickey and Minnie cupcakes! Pink icing for Minnies and white icing for the Mickeys.
Tip: do NOT put the Oreos on the cupcakes the night before or they will be soggy the next day.

Decorations: Each table had a different theme. There was a coloring table (with a bucket of crayons and MMC-themed pages), a dress-up/ Minnie's Bowtique table (with my sister painting nails, plastic jewelry and boas), and a play-dough table (with homemade pink sparkly play-dough and a ton of cookie cutters)!


My brother made a giant Mickey Mouse head cutout to play "Pin the bow on Minnie"! We printed out a bunch of bows, let each kid color and decorate their bow, and then, played! We let the little ones walk up and put it on, but the older kids had to use a blindfold!