A challenge...

Yo. It's February already! Did you know that? ;) Since January's over now, it's time for me to pester you about finishing your January ALBUM IN A YEAR layout. And, as luck would have it, I've got a couple "official" challenges going about this right now. One's through CK and you have until next Saturday morning. One's going on right now in the Two Peas Pub CHA in Spirit Day festivities (for those who don't know, CHA is a scrapbooking and paper crafts tradeshow that happens twice a year and is a big deal...I'd love to be there (it's in Anaheim right now and I'd go just for the warmer weather at this point, LOL)...for those of us who aren't, though, we're celebrating in spirit). Here are the links:

CK message board Weekend Challenge

2Ps CHA in Spirit Day predictions challenge

Hope you'll participate in one or both! 

The boys' Valentines...

So. With less than a week to go to Valentine's Day, the boys and I settled in to make their cards...all 150 of them. Yes. One. Hundred. Fifty.

(If you want an official breakdown, Noah's making 60, Asher's got 50 and Micah has 40 (though I think I'm going to need to make another dozen or so for him). They're for our homeschool group party, the boys' music classes, Noah's religious ed class/Asher's Sunday School class and cousins/friends.)

Asher (after the torture of having him sign his own name to store-bought ones last year) opted to direct me...he picked the stamps and colors and words and I just printed and cut and stamped stuff. Micah followed suit. Okay, I picked the words for his also but he really did pick the colors and stamp. (By the way, I couldn't bring myself to use my good Prism cardstock on these and am regretting it because Prism cardstock really does stamp better, but I was trying to use up this older cardstock I keep on hand for boys' projects and I'd bet good money that the kids receiving these won't give a hoot and will simply rip off the sucker.)

Noah, of course, was more, um, selective. He came up with the entire design (this is actually pared down from his original grand plans)...drew the robot for inside, picked the punch (seriously, after hitting four local stores looking at punches I ended up ordering this one online because it *had* to be this one...guess that's what one gets for having so many scrapbook goodies that your boys know manufacturers and styles/designs), punched all the hearts (great math lesson by the way...how many hearts needed and how many you could punch from a sheet of paper and, thus, how many pieces of paper you'd need to punch...), folded all the printed white cards, rounded the corners of the red rectangles (only two, mind you, and they had to be lined up just so) and adhered everything together. I just scanned and printed the robot (and added the text that he had to okay...went through a number of fonts before he was happy). Now that we've gotten this far, though, he's talking about adding more since he still has a few days.  Oy.

So. Here they are:

 

 
 

Amazingly enough, I'm actually a little ahead of the game this year and have my Valentine's mostly done as well. I'll wait to post them, though, until next week since certain people may be watching... ;) (It's killing me to wait, though! So proud of myself for doing some this year and think they're pretty original.) Also need to finish up the little mailboxes I'm making for the boys, which I'll post next week also. Did you make any Valentine's yet?

A monumental day and a night time routine...

A break-through! To date, despite his parroting of many, many other words, we've been unable to get Micah to say his own name. He's insisted on calling himself "Baby" when asked his name. (Before that, it was "Gob Gob" if you recall.) Tonight, totally out of the blue and with no prompting, he declared to me that he was not "Baby"...he was "Mike" and said so with gusto. Sigh. It's so adorable to hear, but also a little sad...he just keeps on growing up.

One other quick Micah story for the night...every night for the past couple weeks, he's delighted in going through this little routine before he sleeps. He must tell Nathan and I that "Asher's crazy" and "Noah's crazy" and "Mommy's crazy" and "Daddy's crazy" and "me, crazy"...though tonight, of course, it was "Mike's crazy."

Crazy kid. 

 

Bowling...

We took the boys bowling for their first time ever yesterday (and our first time in ages). Good times. A few things:

1. Why didn't they have these when I was a kid? (Or maybe they did and we just never bowled anywhere that had them?)

 

This handy ramp device is what made it all work for us. The boys were able to simply line it up (Noah was a bit particular about getting things just so) and push the ball down the lane. Micah, in particular, thought this was awesome (not that he bothered lining it up or even waiting for us to get the ball all the way set) and was so excited when the pins all went down (shouting "woohoo!" and raising his arms as if to indicate a touchdown).

2. Perhaps I should have used the ramp. The boys all handily beat me in both games we played. I won't go into details but let's just say that Micah had 3 strikes and 4 spares to my one. We could even say that his score in the second game was more than double mine in the first, and the other two boys were close behind Micah. In my defense, I was distracted by taking pictures and watching boys and wearing a skirt (yes, I should have changed, I know). 

3. Bowling alleys are *not* easy places to get decent pictures in. Don't you just hate that when you really want good pictures and the lighting conditions are just not working for you? Yes, I could have used the flash, but I don't think the people all around us would have appreciated that. ;)

All in all, a wonderful Saturday. Hope you're all enjoying your weekend also! 

Hilarious.

Okay, this is one of those blog entries that might be considered questionable, but I'm rolling on the floor laughing here (literally) and simply must share.

Micah, ever continuing on his quest for knowledge, learned a new word today. He was sitting in his chair unbuttoning his shirt (for lack of anything better to do apparently) when suddenly he became very concerned. "OWWEEEE!" he yelled. I, of course, went running (I was just in the next room giving Noah a spelling test)...only to discover that the kid was not in any way injured. Here is a re-enactment of what I saw:

 

Guess he'd never really had cause to examine that particular area before. :) He thought he'd cut himself and had a scab or something, or maybe a weird bruise. Yup, new word for the day... NIPPLES. Seriously funny stuff.

(Incidentally, I'm realizing that the other two never did this...probably because they both always saw me nursing a younger brother so had had the various talks about body parts.)