Yesterday...

Busy, busy. :) So, yesterday Asher had to have two more teeth pulled...this time to make room for the permanent teeth already coming through, so at least he won't have this gap for as long as the other two he currently has (for teeth pulled on account of decay and infection). Unfortunately, though the tooth fairy did remember to get everything ready and have cash on hand, the tooth fairy got very tired last night and forgot to make the exchange. Drat. Poor Asher was so sad this morning, but he and Noah have decided that perhaps the tooth fairy was confused because Asher, unable to find his own little tooth box last night, borrowed Noah's. But they found Asher's box this morning and will set things straight tonight. And hopefully the tooth fairy will manage to make things right. ;)

Getting up early yesterday to go to the dentist did at least get us off to an early start to a productive day. I had this grand plan to make terrariums on Earth Day last week, but the week got too full. I don't think the Earth will mind that we celebrated a week late. :) The boys and I picked out little plants at a local greenhouse and had a blast making little terrariums...about 19 of them. Here's what we did:

After various researching online, this is the route I opted to go...

- layer of gravel/rocks for drainage,
- layer of activated charcoal to keep things smelling okay (prevent rot) (got this at a local pet store with the aquarium stuff),
- layer of sphagnum moss to prevent the soil from getting into the drainage area,
- layer of soil because plants like that, and, finally...
- little plants, preferably slow growing, moisture-loving plants (we ended up with some Baby Tears and a variety of stepables designed for walkway crevices).

I found a great deal on the glass jars online (complete with lids) since we wanted to do so many (if you're one of the boys' teachers, don't look). Here's a sample of our finished product:

Aren't they pretty? The boys and I are debating adding a few little things to them still but are pretty happy with how things turned out. Oh, and while we were doing all this, we also picked up a couple of "sensitive plants" that the boys fell in love with at the greenhouse...just for fun. It's been years since we've had live plants in the house...looking forward to it! (Once upon a time, I had many plants. Then I had children who liked to put things in their mouths and a shortage of shelf space. Now they finally know not to put things in their mouths. Course, I'm still wary since they've not quite learned the "don't throw balls or other things in the house" rule, LOL!)

Btw, that lovely burned edge action is FREE from the Pioneer Woman. I think hers might be my new favorite blog to read. She's awesome!

After all of that, the boys had music class as usual, where Micah's starting to learn pre-piano stuff and was so proud of himself and the music alphabet worksheet he filled out during class (writing the letters A-G a few times and coloring them). It's amazing to me how easily young kids grasp this stuff!

And speaking of Micah, my little sweetie has said some very quotable stuff lately. My two favorites were when, for reasons unknown, his big brothers were talking about who each of them was going to marry...Micah rejected their recommendations for him and declared "Mommy, you're my favorite girl!" and then was devastated to learn that I was already married. What a kid. :)

The other heart-wrenching line came yesterday at Arby's. Totally out of the blue Micah got all sad and looked at me in the middle of drinking his Jamocha shake. "(sniff) I don't want you to get old!" he said. "Because then you'll die." Obviously, I assured him that he was still stuck with me for a good while...but, man, this kid is growing up too fast for me. Sigh.

Okay, this has gotten long enough for now...how's your week going?

A full weekend...

Is it summer yet? Pretty please. :) Not only would I LOVE to be done with this *snow* (yes, woke up to snow on the ground this morning) but I'm really ready for a slower schedule, lol! Well, just one more month now, right? Right. ;)

As I impatiently await summer, here's what we did over the weekend...

Started out with freezing cold weather for soccer games that actually got played. Both Noah and Asher's games were at the same time so we had to split up...I was wishing I'd taken Micah by the end of the first quarter...could have used his body heat! :) If it hadn't been for the wind and spitting drizzle, it might have been okay. Maybe. ;) In any case, here's a pic I caught of Noah doing some fancy footwork:

If he's going to stick with soccer, I'm going to need a better lens for sports shots...getting hard with the bigger field now. ;)

After that, we insanely headed across the park where Noah's game was for a local kite festival. (Incidentally, the kite festival was playing really loud music so Noah's soccer game had that in the background the entire time. Odd, though, to watch boys' soccer while listening to "Under the Sea" from the Little Mermaid, LOL!) If it had been warmer with less threat of thunderstorms, I'm sure they'd have had a better turnout. As it was, it was still pretty cool. The boys each got to decorate their own kite and they actually did fly:

In this last picture, you can get an idea of the number of people out braving the cold to fly kites. Yes, that's Nathan wrapped in our red stadium blanket that we use to sit on at soccer games. It was *that* cold. Which would explain why the boys quickly tired of kites and started requesting hot cocoa and home. ;) Before we left, though, the boys enjoyed seeing the bigger kites:

(And for those of you at the crop giving me a hard time about what I'd use that kite patterned paper for, ha!)

After all that, we gathered our coin jars and headed to the grocery store to make the exchange...then treated ourselves to dinner out followed by naps (on our part, not the boys) and finishing up our prep for the Science Fair.

Which brings us to Sunday. Our first annual Science Fair for our homeschool group was a blast! We had 39 kids participating, and it was just awesome to see what everyone had come up with. I made little feedback notebooks for each project and folks left notes in them as they went around the room...very fun. Noah was a bit distraught initially (he didn't think enough people were leaving him notes) but ended up having a terrific time talking with people about his project. Asher made it his own little mission to write in everyone else's notebook so memorized how to spell "cool" and "really cool" and made the rounds. ;) Here is Asher standing with their projects:

Yes, that tube thing is part of it. The boys each tested 3 different things to see if they'd make diet Coke go higher than Mentos. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check this out. (This explains it, too.) In the end, Noah found that epsom salt created a taller geyser, and Asher found that Tums and Sour Patch Kids went higher (though not as high as epsom salt). They created this tube set up so we'd be able to measure (and contain) the geysers. Remarkably, this enabled us to do this indoors, too. :) (So, yes, we ran a few experiments at the fair, itself.) You can't see their handwriting and write-ups from this picture, but everyone was suitably impressed with their penmanship...really very good despite Noah's complaining that it was too much to write, lol.

And, in the end, it was all worth it as the kids each received a trophy:

(Micah, though, was rather more than a little put out with me for not ordering him one as well. Poor kiddo. He's already talking about how he'll get a trophy in the fall when he plays soccer, lol.)

After the Science Fair (and Noah's already talking about the experiments/projects he now wants to try at home), Noah had soccer practice (not his team practice...this is just him and another boy for some semi-private lessons...mostly just because they love soccer so much and can't seem to get enough of it). Asher, Micah and I didn't go to that, though, opting to go home and get warm (Nathan froze while watching).

And that was pretty much our weekend. :) This morning we woke up to the aforementioned snow...which, I suppose, means the week has nowhere to go but up?

You know you want to...

...be a guest designer, that is! Check out this post over at the Prism blog and be sure to watch for more details! Prism is a fabulous company to work with and their products are awesome...trust me!

ETA: The details are now up! Click here for the scoop and then hurry up and submit already! :)

Quick sneak...

Just wanted to share a little peek at the project I did for the Prism Papers blog this week...

It'll be posted to the Prism blog tomorrow (Thursday), so be sure to check it out! :)

Six on Tuesday...

And here are six of the layouts I finished for the boys...(again, fairly simple but happy to have them done!). These are all from 2007, btw...

So. Ta da. :) Personally, I love how these demonstrate how versatile simple cardstock can be. What do you think?