my family

Ezra Said…

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Ezra last night in the tub: “Why does Aunt Teri talk funny?”
Me: “What do you mean ‘talk funny’? Can you talk like Aunt Teri so I can hear what you mean?”
Ezra: “No, I can’t get my voice so crumbly.”
Really, it could have been anything from her surfer lingo to her surfer accent. She’s an awesome surfer chick (not at all like Gidget) and has a blog somewhere… here it is!

Me to Ezra this morning at the front door: “What’s the weather like outside? Is it cold or warm?”
Ezra: “It’s kind of cold and smells like meat.”
Me: “Meat?! What kind of meat?”
Ezra: “Umm, Tom and Jerry meat.”
Whaa??!!
Still unsure what “Tom and Jerry” meat is.

This is us at the HB pier. Teri took a few of the kids and I together. She got a few decent ones that I will share shortly.

Sick

This is a sick house. The kids are dropping like flies. I’m really the only hold out. We’ll see how long it takes for me to fall victim to this cold. Hopefully never, I’ve suffered enough already.
I took these because I was trying to figure out why my camera kept taking one raw and one jpg. Some little hands must have found the menu button on the back of my camera.

This is really telling of how life has been in the Smith house lately. Zed hasn’t let me put him down for more than 10 minutes in the past day and a half. He also refused to nurse yesterday. Can you believe he actually took a bottle? I can’t. I wonder if that will stick, then I could have babysitters care for him longer. Oh the possibilities!
Ok, some good may come from all this suffering after all.

Homemade Christmas

Back in November I searched for different homemade gift ideas for India’s school Holiday Gift Fair. I ended up with a ton of cool ideas for the school (some of which were used) and some major inspiration to have a homemade Christmas this year. Basically that meant we gave handmade gifts to our extended family. Some year we’ll only give handmade in our home too.
India decided we should make a doll. I was pretty skeptical but after a Google image search we found this tutorial. It actually looked do-able. I asked her to draw up a design and I would get the materials. I think she turned out beautifully.
doll

We also made a few scarves using the old freezer paper technique. I read the tutorial later and realized they suggested using contact paper on the fleece. Ya, the freezer paper didn’t stay on once the kids began painting. Oh well.
India again came up with the patterns, which were inspired by the lollipop tree song. Ezra painted the green one (his very favorite color) and India painted the red scarf. These were given to a cousin and the kids’ teachers.
scarves

I had found this really cool necklace on this very cool blog, Pretty Ditty. I thought these would be perfect for a few of the girls.
necklace

There are a couple of other gifts that still need to make it out into the mail. I blame Lulu and their slow Christmas service. But I am still slacking and have a few more stitches to get through before I package everything up. Once they are received, I’ll share them here!

Story Dice

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This year I found a really cool game, story dice, online here on etsy and here at The Small Object site. This was perfect for my second grader.
dice_blog
A thin Micron pen (what I used on these) will bleed a little but not as much as a thin Sharpie.
The Small Object set has a page to write the story down. I thought this was a great idea. They also put each picture on the top of the page with the word below to help with spelling. We can all use help with spelling.
page_blog

Christmas Eve Pagent

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Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope this time of year has brought a minute or two of peace. I had some Christmas tub time. Just me and Calgon… oh, and a little baby throwing toys into the tub. We can’t have everything and baby was not having any long naps.
The night before Christmas was great. We have adopted the tradition of eating breakfast for dinner on Christmas Eve. Thanks to our dear friends the K’s. Oh and we had to have a little live Nativity too. India and I had been reading about Christmas in France. We read how many people purchase a new figure each year for their Christmas Creche. I am still on the search for one. We saw how to make a few figures in a book from the library. I think we’ll have to start with a homemade one, since I can’t seem to find one I like… or can afford.
So with the Nativity tradition fresh on our minds this is what our Christmas Eve looked like. We are lucky enough to actually have some family living nearby. One of Zach’s cousins and her family live about 40 minutes away. They came and shared the evening’s traditions with us:
pagent