Japan Trip Collage!

Our friends, Eric and Gail, went with us on a trip to Japan in 2006.  Gail kept receipts, business cards, bags, and other small paper items and made us an awesome collage for our Christmas present!  She also sketched the man in pretty traditional garb talking on a cell phone because Japan can be a contradiction to itself, very traditional and ultra modern at the same time!  We love it, thanks! If you want to see more of Gail's art, check out her blog: http://www.nightengailart.com/

Reduce, REUSE, recycle!

In this case I reused an old address book I had from my high school and early college days.  I figure that most people don't live with their parents anymore and all of my friends have returned from their church missions, so probably none of the addresses are correct, unless perhaps I wanted to get in touch with people via their parents, but I think I am probably Facebook friends with a lot of them anyway.  I have always thought Anne Geddes pictures were cute, so I decided to make an alphabet book from it for my kids! I cut the stitching in the binding and used a razor blade to cut the pages as neatly as I could from the binding.  Then I used my paper cutter to trim the edges.  Next I used a glue stick to paste the pages back to back--so that those old addresses weren't showing!  I used the title page as a cover and on the last page I used my paper cutter and some colored card stock to back since they didn't come out even.  Then I laminated them, punched holes in them, and used rings to bind them together.  I think it turned out pretty well!

 I am not going to take a picture of all of the pages, but here are a couple to give you an idea: 

Most of the pages are pretty obvious what they represent.  Above is E for egg and F for fairy and below is J for jack-in-the-box, but what is I for?  Individual?  If you have any ideas, let me know so I can use it as what to tell my kids when I am reading it to them.  Thanks!

Happy New Year!

We went to our friends' house for New Year's Eve.  There was good food, good company, and good games!  We decided to let the kids stay up as late as they wanted, but Colin asked for bed at his bedtime at 8:00 pm. I guess he wasn't ready to party the night away yet!  

Here is Colin on the way to their house about 45 minutes away.  You can't tell in this picture, but he was doing baby head bangs to the music!  Watch the video below and turn up the volume if you want to hear the music Philip turned it to...

 Gavin, however, WAS ready to party the night away, probably in part because we let him do what he wanted, which was play games on the iPhone!

  Here is is watching them play "letters"-- actually a fast scrabble-esque game called Banana Grahams.  

Here is how Colin partied the night away!

The iPhone kept Gavin occupied and happy until after midnight!  We had expected him to drop, but since he hadn't we decided to head on home.  By the time we got out of the house and on the road it was after 12:30.  When Gavin finally held still long enough, he passed out-- I think by the time we reached the freeway entrance.  Colin, on the other hand, woke up when I picked him up out of the pack and play-- and was awake for the whole 45 minute or so car ride. Thanks for having us again, Eric and Gail!

Colin's First Haircut!!!

Here is our curly-q boy!  

He sat in a boat for the cut!

He was extremely good--no crying!

She even used the clippers!

Colin got a certificate and the orange envelope has a few of his curls!

Afterward, we went to the park where they ate their lollipop treats!

Here is Gavin's new look!

Making music!

Climbing high!

Spider baby!

Spider man and spider boy!

Look how high they are!

Going down!

I think they had a good time!!!

More PT!!!

Colin is within his last month of physical therapy with Ms. Karsti.  He's going to try group physical therapy starting in February; we aren't sure how it is going to go because we will have to change Colin's schedule in order to be able to squeeze it in.  I have been told it's at 1:30 pm which I think is a horrible time for toddlers, but we aren't locked in, so we will give it a try.  We can always go to private pt again.  

Ikea trip!

Philip was off the week between Christmas and New Year's and we tried to actually get some things done.  We put away the Christmas tree and most of the decorations already!  I cleaned out a bit in our room, but the biggest thing for me was that I now have four bags and two boxes of baby clothes to give away!  I am sick of having them stacked up in the boys' room!  We are also giving away a few more toys as well.  Philip also gave away two large speakers that we never used which made room for a couple of larger items to be purchased.  

So Philip and I decided to take a trip to Ikea to check some things off our list and we also wanted to check out bunk beds, which we are considering for the boys.  The boys loved this one, but we are not sure if it's because of the bed, or the fact that it had green sheets because afterward Gavin said something along the lines of "I want that green bunk bed." I still need to do a bit more research into the Ikea beds because I need to know if they can fit a standard twin mattress pretty well.  Hopefully they can; we have a queen sized bed from Ikea that fits our regular mattress, so it's probably okay.

Here we are going through the self serve section.  The large items we picked up here were a slender and tall bookshelf, and a small $20 no frills desk.  

Here is Colin "pushing" the cart.  I am loving having a good camera on my phone where the pictures are easy to put on the computer!

This is the next day when Philip began to put the desk together.  

Here is the finished desk, this is where I am sitting as I type.  It's nice to have an actual spot where I can leave the laptop.  Eventually this will be where we let the boys play games as well, but I don't think that will be any time especially soon...

Here is our bookshelf!  We moved most of the movies and games here that were stored on the large bookshelf, but also a few toys and kids' books.  

I think we are happy at how things are turning out.  Now I need to figure out what to do with all those clothes... The largest portions of clothes are 12 months and 18 months.  Let me know if you or someone you know can use them.  I also might give the clothes to a woman's shelter a friend was talking about.