Count Explore Blessings: Adventures of Little, Middle, and Mom

It's Thanksgiving week and we host dinner at our house for family. Middle and I have a ton planned for the week to get ready for the festivities and make the house adorable.  First up, fall themed windsock. I liked the idea of the tree with fall leaves, but Middle is not to a point that he's using scissors, so there's little for him to do on his own. So we decided to fingerpaint our tree instead. We started with light blue construction paper and cut it down to a size that will cover our toilet paper roll. Next, momma drew on our tree trunk with a brown marker. Then it was time for Middle to make our tree beautiful. We used green, red, orange, and yellow fingerpaint to blot on leaves and some grass below the tree.  While we let his artwork was dry, Middle helped unroll and measure out our paper streamers. We cut two strips each of red, yellow, and green. Then we attached them to the bottom of our tube. With the streamers attached, we rolled Middle's painting around the t...

Cold temperatures and early sunsets are creeping in around here. That means spending a lot more time inside. That also means I tend to get into a nesting state and start projects around the house. With two little ones already keeping me busy, starting and competing big projects has been tricky. I have, however, managed to tackle a few over the past week, during those two daily glorious hours of naptime. For my first project, I dug out an old piece I've been saving. Back when Papa R and I first moved into our current house, we were showing some visitors around and one of them happened to notice something peculiar nailed into the rafters of the basement ceiling. Upon further inspection we found a wooden key holder (it's wood and says "keys"). It was in rough shape, but it was an odd find so I tucked it away in a box for another day.  In the midst of moving and reorganizing for my second project, I stumbled upon the key holder that I'd forgotten about 3 years ago. We...

 I haven't posted in awhile, but I've been busy with some more involved projects. Posts on those should be coming soon. But Middle and I have still been crafting too.  I've mentioned before, Papa R loves the Christmas tree truck. We have decor around the house for every season that includes the truck. Whether it be hauling trees, pumpkins, flowers, or the good ole American flag, we've got it. So when I found a pin for the truck made out of craft sticks, we had to do it. The pin called for both the large size craft sticks and the minis. We only had the large ones, so I took the time to cut down a couple big ones into the shapes we needed. I had some extra pieces so I set those aside to be used elsewhere.  In the pin's instructions it said to just use regular glue and showed pictures of a glue stick. I tried and tried, but I could not get our trucks to hold together using a glue stick. Lucky for Middle, momma carries the big guns, we used Gorilla Glue. Once our basic ...

 So it was supposed to be a big day in our house. Back in June, Papa R and I took Big, Middle, and Little to a dinosaur event at the National Air Force Museum just up the road. At the time, Middle was deep in his Dinosaur Train obsession so he loved anything and everything dinos. It was a free event, so we decided to see how he'd do meeting some very life-like "rawrs." Middle is definitely my sensitive soul, so we usually have to test new waters slowly with him. The day was a hit. He was in love with it all. Being that he enjoyed it so much, when I saw an ad the next month for an event called Dino Stroll, we quickly bought tickets. The event wasn't for months, so we thought it'd be a nice surprise. Fast forward to today, when the big event had finally arrived. I got the boys ready to go in their finest dino attire. We made the nearly hour long drive to downtown Cincinnati, waited in a long line to enter, and expected the same level of excitement as before. Middle,...

 It was finally that magical day of all days.... Halloween! I love Halloween. It's my favorite holiday. I start decorating the day after Labor Day and planning costumes is an all year affair. I even torture include the dog. Big, Middle, and Little are either going to grow to love it just as much, or they're going to hate how crazy Momma gets... It's a 50/50 shot. We had a big day planned: pumpkin carving and trick or treating! Big wanted to keep with his theme and carve a Luigi pumpkin while I opted for a haunted house. Middle was more than happy to help us remove all the seeds and pumpkin guts. Little was happy to supervise and generally look cute in his pumpkin PJs. I had already stenciled on our patterns the night before, so after the insides were cleared it was time to get carving. Big ran into some issues with the finer details of Luigi's face, but improvised. I struggled with some of the tiny windows and smaller decorative details so they didn't show up quite...