Captain Awesome

Spencer is a great dad and husband! When Ollie was just little he decided he wanted the kids to call him Papa but I'm trying to change it to Captain Awesome! The kids just adore him and so do I! What would be a better name than Captain Awesome? :)



Lily loves to walk under our legs and pretend she's going under a bridge. She really wanted Captain Awesome (C.A.) to go under HER bridge. I was lucky enough to get a picture. C.A.'s head is all that fit. :)



Captain Awesome does the dishes, almost every night. And he cleans bathrooms like you wouldn't believe! Here is C.A. doing the nightly dishes with both children. You can't see Ollie but he is there.

Thanks Captain Awesome!!

Homemade Ice Cream

Growing up my family made homemade ice cream all the time--- in the winter. I know that most families eat ice cream in the summer (we did that too) but we made the wonderful stuff in the winter. We did this because we had an unlimited supply of SNOW which works better to freeze the ice cream than ice does. We learned from a young age that ice cream is the best dessert, especially when my brother Nate dishes it up into HUGE bowls. YUM!
A few weekends ago we decided it was time to bring out our ice cream maker and make the good homemade kind. The kids were fascinated by the process. We had to use regular ice but it turned out very delicious. We all enjoyed it immensely!! Here's a few pictures of the kids with ice cream mustaches.

My Project

My Mom is very crafty. Growing up I always saw her sewing, painting, scrapbooking, etc.... She had four daughters. For some strange reason, most of her crafty abilities went to one daughter. I am NOT that daughter. (And no offense to my other two sisters who are also not that daughter.)

When I was young my mom had me join 4-H to try to learn to sew. I did learn some things. I had to sew a project to enter in the county fair. My mom really wanted me to make a pair of pants... PINK pants. I did. I won the blue ribbon for them. However, I HATED them. I made them simply because Mom wanted me to. Then the real horror started. She wanted me to wear them to school- in front of my friends. I did not want to wear pink pants but Mom was so proud that I had won a blue ribbon for making them. Finally, after much wearing down, I wore them. Once. Then they sat in the bottom of my drawer. After that, I begged to stop 4-H. Thus ended my short sewing career.

Over the years I will occasionally sew something. I once tried to make something with a zipper. Disaster. So now I know that my sewing needs to be things that have no zippers or buttonholes. (I've never tried a button hole but it looks hard.)

A few weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to make matching Christmas stockings and Christmas tree skirt. But who really has time to do that in December, so I waited until after Christmas. That is also when the fabric went on sale. Here's the finished product...





They turned out beautifully. I debated about using traditional colors or different colors. I even had my dear husband come to the fabric store with me to help me pick out the fabric. (He was a good sport about that.) We picked out less traditional browns and blues. After much sewing and figuring things out we now have five matching stockings and a tree skirt. (Notice, the tree skirt has ties, and NO buttons).

P.S. Dear Mom, No offense about the sewing jokes... The sewing lessons did help. I knew how to thread the bobbin and the machine and all sorts of little things that helped. It would have worked if I hadn't learned to clip the seams on the curves. :)

P.S.S. Five Stockings... not an announcement. Only a dream at this point.

Reading AKA Sleeping

Spencer has been working on reading a Luois L'Amour book for a while now. Every time he starts to read it he falls asleep. I think it's funny so I take pictures. :) He had the one book for so long that he checked it back in and had me get the same book from a different library. One night he even read out on the couch (hoping it would keep him awake) which means that he slept on the couch.

Glasses

Trying to keep a two year old's glasses clean is trying. I clean her glasses at least two times each day. Needless to say, I did clean her classes after this picture. There was one little spot that she could still see out of. :)

TWO Little Ballerina's

So we have one boy and one girl child. But we have TWO little ballerina's. This is definite blackmail someday for poor Ollie. (It was Ollie's idea to both dress up in tutu's.)

Christmas Morning

So our kids slept in until their normal waking time (7:30), which was really good because Santa spent several hours at our house putting together a play kitchen. We all got what we wanted from Santa. The kids were very excited about the play kitchen. Santa had put it all together and left it in front of our tree.



I went into the living room first so I could take a picture of their faces when they saw the kitchen... here's that picture.



The kids played with the kitchen for a while and didn't realize that there were presents behind the kitchen. We moved the kitchen and they continued on.



Ollie got some wonderpet stuffed animals to add to his collection. Lily (no cute pictures of her) got some baby toys/accessories for Ava (her doll).



After the presents were all opened Spencer made us a Christmas Morning Feast. We then spent the rest of the day in our PJ's playing with our new things. All in all a great day!