An itch to refinish...

After painting that desk for Cameron, I got an itch to fix up another piece of furniture. Inspired by a post from my friend Jen, who transformed glass doors on her entertainment center by applying pretty wrapping paper to the inside, I tried my hand at putting fabric inside the doors and painted the wood white. This cabinet has been sitting in our garage for over a year, begging for some attention and I really think it turned out well! We'll have to see what I get my hands on next...

BeforeAfter

A place to call his own

Many of you will remember when Gavin was old enough to be moved out of his crib into a big boy bed. We decided to put the boys in the same room in bunk beds. I felt sad for Cameron because Gavin would be taking over his space. I felt even worse when sleeping in the same room didn't work and Cameron ended up being moved into the guest room at night, at least until they were both asleep. He didn't really know where he belonged. Well, after school started we didn't really have a good spot to do homework, he did it at the kitchen table and always left a big mess of paperwork behind. Soooooo, we pulled my old desk out of the basement and fixed it up as good as new. A few coats of paint, some new hardware, and some storage boxes made it beautiful, and all Cameron's. It's pretty neat to see my desk up and running again with new life and 12 years of homework ahead. And finally Cameron has a place to call his own.

Love Letters

Nooooo, not from Jeremy or me, these love letters come in a different package:

Goldfish Kisses and Gorilla Hugs

Valentine's day was really all week long for this family. Gavin had a little preschool party with lots of friends at the mega-Burger King in Centreville. He didn't want anything to do with giving out his valentines, he just wanted to play and eat treats. Cameron had his school party on Friday, combined with the hundredth day of school, so he had to bring in 100 treats (see previous post), 100 mystery items (beans), and wear 100 things (Fruit Loops necklace). He came home on a sugar high that has lasted all weekend. On Friday night I gave the kids a heart-attack in their bedroom, Gavin woke up while I was doing it and groggily muttered, "Oh! I love my valentines!" They got new "love" books the title of this post is the title of one of the books and it is a big hit with the kids and gigantic marshmallow lolly pops from Jeremy and I. We had heart shaped pancakes for breakfast, heart shaped sandwiches for lunch, and chocolate fondue with strawberries and bananas and marshmallows for dessert. It was a love filled day for these lucky fellers. As for Jeremy and I? Our tradition has become cooking a quiet, romantic dinner at home. I'm a lucky gal as well.

It's not easy being green-ish

I do not consider myself an enviromentalist. I should be, and I admire people who are, but in all honesty, I am just too lazy to take the time and energy to be green. Shame on me, I feel badly about it, but apparently not bad enough to change. We do not recycle. We have the green bin and it has been sitting in our garage since we moved in filled with a bunch of junk. Well, dear Cameron first learned about recycling in preschool and I can remember him coming home asking why we don't do it. I didn't really have an answer, and I kind of brushed him off and he forgot about it. Now that he is in kindergarten, he is again learning about the importance of recycling and the class has been collecting milk jugs to use to build some kind of igloo. He has been excited about taking them into school and again has raised the question about why we don't recycle. This time my excuses didn't work, that kid is persistent and I told him that we would start. Actually, I have told him several times in the last two weeks that we would start, I just have to clean all the junk out of the bin in the garage. He has asked me "Have you done it yet?" about every day and finally this morning he must've gotten tired of my "I'll get to it" responses. He came into the kitchen with a box and an empty shampoo bottle and said "We can use this box to put the recycling stuff in until you can empty out the bin, ok?" Sweet boy. He is definitely committed to his cause and I am proud to tell you that today I cleaned out the bin, it was mostly trash anyway and because of our darling Cameron we are going green-ish. We have an environmental advocate living in our house that is bound and determined to make us better at taking care of our earth. I love him for it.

Gimme some Love!

I get a lot more excited for Valentine's day now than I ever used to. Maybe it has something to do with the four men in my life... Needless to say, it's a big deal in our house and we have been anticipating the holiday for weeks. I made these adorable and yummy treats for Cameron's class party on Friday. I was pretty impressed with my creativity, I've made these before at Christmas using those square waffle pretzels, and realized that if I use regular tiny pretzels, they look like hearts when you melt the hershey kiss on top. And they are super yummy using rasberry flavored kisses! The older boys have been doing some other crafty projects with me like making homemade valentines:

And spreading some love to our feathered friends in the form of heart shaped bird feeders:

We've got spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit, how 'bout you???

Awful, rotten, no good, very bad day...

Cameron came home from school on Friday horribly sad. It had been one of those days when nothing went right, his first one of those since school started.

First, Cameron got a yellow on Friday. For those of you unfamiliar with the green, yellow, red system, if you behave all day at school you get a green smiley face for the day and recieve a penguin card- get 10 penguin cards and you get a trip to the treasure box. A yellow means you did something wrong and don't get a penguin card, but you can still go back to green before the end of the day if you behave. A red is very bad, it means you have been in trouble twice and you don't get a penguin card and a note gets sent home to your parents. This whole year Cameron has gotten a green every day except for maybe one day that first week of school when he was still learning the rules. So his yellow was devastatingly bad for this little boy. I guess during lunch he was horsing around with the boy next to him, shaking his arm or something, and the two of them hit heads- boom, instant yellow. Not only that, but he wasn't able to finish his lunch because he was so upset, and he "accidentally" ate the treat in his lunch before his sandwich and fruit. He was afraid I would be mad at him about the lunch because at the beginning of the year he was coming home every day without eating- he is the s l o w e s t eater on the planet, so I threatened him to get him to eat faster and it worked.

Second, on the first Friday of the month they have Popcorn Friday, a day when the kids can buy a bag of popcorn for 25 cents. Jeremy had given Cameron a quarter on the way to the bus stop in the morning and told him to put it in his backpack. Instead he said he would just hold on to it and not to worry, he wouldn't lose it. Of course, he lost it somewhere and even though they still gave him some popcorn, he was so nervous to tell Jeremy about losing the money.

Third, Cameron's bus was really late on Friday, about 15 minutes. I started to get a bit worried when I saw all of the other busses come and go in the neighborhood and some of the other parents were getting worried too. When the bus finally did arrive, the bus driver motions me to come talk to her and a very forlorn looking Cameron is standing next to her. Then I see the kids getting off the bus and our next door neighbor Julia, another kindergartener is holding a bloody tissue to her nose. Apparently, Cameron had accidentally collided with her nose and the bus driver had to pull over to help poor Julia. It was just one of those days...

By the time we got back to the house, Cameron was sobbing, telling me all about what happened that day. Every time I thought he was done he would come back to tell me something else that had happened and would start crying all over again. I tried my best to reassure him that we all have those kind of days and that I wasn't mad at him in the least! My little perfectionist ought to get more yellows if you ask me, it would be good for him! All night he kept coming to me for hugs, and I gladly obliged. The only good thing about the day was that it was Friday and he didn't have to go back to school for two more days! I hope this is the first of only a handful of rotten school days for our number one. His sensitive heart can't take it and neither can his mother!

Lemons into lemonade

Today was beautiful weather here. It snowed last week and today it was in the sixties. It's supposed to be like this all week. I'd love some more snow, but I'm not complaining! We took the boys west to this place called Woodstock tower- it was a place my friend Shelese had mentioned to me a while back. The directions I got from online were a bit sketchy- they didn't tell you how long you would be on a particular road before you had to turn, so we thought it would be a much shorter trip than it actually was. After being in the car for about an hour, we finally made the last turn on the directions and guess what? The road was closed! It was lunch time and the kids were starving and Mason had a stinky diaper, so we just pulled over to eat our picnic lunch. Talk about disappointing. However, we remembered a spot along our route with one of those hiking signs, so we went to find it. We stopped at a place called Elizabeth's Furnace where there was a loooong, scary suspension bridge that jiggled when you walked on it and made me very nervous, and several hiking trails to choose from. We hiked pretty far and stopped at a stream for a while just taking in the beauty of the outdoors. I love the soung of a babbling brook and the wind through the trees- the weather was absolutely perfect and the kids were awesome troopers. So it didn't end up being the flop we thought it would and we were grateful to be able to be outside on such a marvelous day. The end.