Mayhem and Magic

Snakes?!

Today I was talking to my lovely neighbor and she told me that her husband saw several snakes this weekend.  They were harmless bull snakes, but she just reminded me that it's snake season now and I should be on the lookout, especially when the boys are playing outside.

Well.

If I think about it too much I'll be an anxious wreck.  Snakes?! 

Remember this sign from a while back?

We knew that there are some rattle snakes around our area, but we've always lived among lots of houses and roads until now, and I wasn't too worried.

This year it's a whole new thing since we're living out here.  Perhaps I shall just shut us all in the house all summer long.  That's an option, right?!

Someone else from this area was telling me that bull snakes also make kind of a rattling sound, but it's different than a real rattler and you can tell by ya-da, ya-da, ya-da...  And I totally stopped listening because, dude!  If I see a snake of any kind I will grab my children and run screaming for the house.  I will not be stopping to evaluate what kind of a rattle it really has...

The Boys Playing "Football Guys"

These "guys" are a big hit with the boys.  Gee, the playroom looks pretty well picked up here.  I'll have to see if I have any pictures from later in the day.  I bet it didn't last long.

(Here are a few more pictures of the playroom when it was all picked up!)

(And here's a link to the company that makes the football guys, in case you're interested.)

Still All About the Racecars

I thought that his love of race cars was a phase with Pumpkin.  Then I thought it was a really, really long phase.  Then he started not being quite as insterested in cars as he used to be and I was sad.  (My baby is growing up!)  But now...  He loves race cars with as much passion as he ever has.  He can race these little cars around the playroom for hours, and he makes up dramatic stories about them, which most of the time involve crashing, spinning, vrooming and winning.  Isn't he sweet? 

 

Is It Only December 28?

Christmas feels way, way over...  The tree is still up but the ornaments are all put away.  Even the snow is melting away outside. 

Because some of my family was here it felt like Christmas was already mostly over when they left, and the 25th was still four days away at that point.  We've been "hanging out" here at home a lot.  Beloved and Sparkle have been watching Blue Planet.  We've played games and played outside a lot.

I know Christmas is long over in blog land, but I want to document a few things for my own sake, just to remember.

 

This is the biggest tree we've ever had.  It looked smaller out in the middle of the nowhere under an open sky.

 

See?  You can't even tell which one it was.

 

 

There's Beloved cutting it down.  He had plenty of "help."

 

This is one of their favorite gifts this year.  It's a goalpost!  It was from my sister and her husband, and it was hard to convince Pumpkin that he did need to wear a hat and coat and boots outside to try it out.  He wanted to wear a football jersey.

 

Speaking of football jerseys...  Pumpkin did not take this off for days.  He has it on right this very minute.

They both got plenty of books.  We've been reading a lot the last few days! 

Least favorite gift?  A doll.  I keep trying with the dolls every once in a while, but I think I'm done now...  I thought this one might hold their attention because she says phrases if you push on her hands or belly just right.  She even burps!  Burping is funny, right?  Well they still haven't really played with her at all.

Of course, the best gift is time with family!  Here's my sweet sister Hwang out sledding with Sparkle.  I'm really grateful to my parents and my sister and her husband for coming to celebrate with us!

Christmas with Family

I have a million fun pictures of my wonderful family and not enough time to post them.  Here is a sampling! 

Here we are getting ready to watch Dr. Suess' "Grinch."  Beloved brought home a projector so that over the holidays we can watch a few things on "the big screen."  The boys think it's great.  That's my dad, my sister, Sparkle, my mom, Pumpkin, my brother-in-law, and their dogs.

I got this little cup and saucer for $2 and Pumpkin loves it!  He's having hot chocolate, but it's a little too hot so he put an ice cube in it.  

We have SNOW!!!  There has been lots of sledding going on!  We have a big hill in our yard, thank goodness, so we don't even have to go anywhere to enjoy the sleds!

More pictures to come!  In the meantime, Merry Christmas to all of you!

Meet Viper

He's so cool...   

He's smart and sweet and eager to please. 

I have a dog behavior/care question, but let's just admire the handsome dog for now...

Home Tour: Living Room and Kitchen

Let's resume the Home Tour!

(If you need to catch up, here are the Entry, Office, and Playroom.  Or, you can click on Archives on the left sidebar, then scroll down to Home Tour to see all the posts in this catagory.)

The living room and kitchen are probably the most used spaces in our house.  Unless we're sleeping, I'd say we spend about 70% of our time in these rooms. 

Here's the kitchen, coming from the front of the house through the dining room.

And another view, standing kind of behind the dining area table.  These pictures were taken around Christmas time, and there is slightly more clutter decoration-wise than typical for us.  And generally we don't leave tons of snacks and cookies on the counter, or I would eat them all.  But you!  You look fabulous!  Here, have a cookie.

In this view you can see the pantry door.  I love having a big pantry right in the kitchen, but I don't like that it looks like a closet door.  Like maybe we have all our jackets hanging in the kitchen.  To the left of the pantry you can partially see a giant arial view of the farm where Beloved grew up.  We found this photo hanging in his parent's garage, streaked with grease, and had it restored. 

More of the kitchen, with photo Christmas cards displayed.  Is that Wallace, you ask?  Why, yes, it is Wallace of Poopyhands!  On the greatest Christmas card ever!

Here's the table.  My parents had a picnic table as a dining table when I was growing up, and I love it.  It takes up less space than a bunch of chairs, and it's simple looking. 

Here we're standing in the kitchen looking toward the family room.  The tree is taking up a lot of room.  We don't have a lot of furniture, though, and it generally feels like there's plenty of space.

On the wall are pictures of Sparkle and Pumpkin, and cross stitch pieces my mom made for each of them.

Standing in front of the fireplace and looking through the living room and kitchen.  The dresser holds our stereo and most of our CDs are in the drawers.  Way over to the right, you can kind of see the hallway that leads from the front to the back of the house, and the doors to the closet where we actually do keep our coats.

And finally, the happy family! 

Another Cool Toy

I took this photo last weekend in our playroom.  The boys got more train track for Christmas, mostly because they need to be able to make a train track big enough that they can both play and not run into one another with their trains! 

What I wanted to show you are the blue and orange thing-a-ma-bobs.  They are called Bilibos, and the boys each got one from my parents.  (Check out the website and watch the little video-- makes we want to be a preschooler again!)

Oh my gosh!  Coolest toy ever! 

We were careful not to tell the boys what they were "supposed" to do with them (though they did ask!).  Within the first day or so, they had been used as helmets, turtle shells, and chairs.  They spun each other around in them.  They turned them upside down to use as "rocks" to hop over a "river."  Sparkle experimented with dropping marbles through the holes and swirling them around, one at a time, adding more and more marbles.  (He did this for about 30 minutes, which was worth whatever my mom paid for them right there.)

In this picture, the Bilibos were being used as tunnels for the trains.  Pretty neat, huh?

Home Tour: Playroom

Come down the hall to the playroom. 

(Anyone still catching up?  Here are the Entry and the Office.)

Here we're coming through the doorway.

From across the room, you can see the door and the wall with most of the toys.  Tucked in that corner are two folding chairs, an easel, and a tent made from canvas and PVC pipes.  Usually either the tent or the easel is out on rotation, but for some reason they were both put away when I took the pictures.

Here's a close-up of the shelves.  Did you know that big sturdy shelves are really, really expensive?  Like many hundreds of dollars!  These, however, were about $75 each at Lowes, which is way more our speed.  The things on the two lower shelves are "in rotation" right now.  The boys are not allowed to take things down from the higher shelves (for safety reasons), but if they specifically ask for something we do bring it down.  (Though as I'm looking at the picture, I see that one of the bathroom stools is in front of the shelf...  Hmmm...)  The balls and blocks are always available.  The big grey bin is full of dress up clothes. The map wasn't supposed to be hidden, but we moved the shelves a while ago, and never moved the map.

The mini trampoline has seen a lot of use.  The horse is not my favorite toy because it takes up a lot of space for the amount of time the boys play with it.  My sibs and I had a similar horse when we were kids, and we loved it.

And moving on...  There's the TV, the dollhouse (link is about buying a dollhouse for my sons), and a shelf with some DVDs, books, and a few random toys.

The back wall used to have a big quilt hanging there, but we took it down recently because it seemed like the sunlight was fading it a bit.  There also used to be two small armchairs in here, but I hated how much space they took up.  I like the openness of the playroom without them, but Beloved and I miss having someplace comfy to sit when we watch TV.  Any suggestions?

Here's a better view of the reading area.  I love that little table and chairs.  It gets used for reading sometimes, and for crafting sometimes, but honestly it gets used more for climbing and making "forts."  When they want to read, it's more common for the boys to grab their books and then sit on one of the big pillows (which I think you can see in the previous picture).  We recently put away most of our board books, and now our book collection looks so much smaller to me!  I rotate the books that are out on the table, usually three or four at a time, and that really seems to draw them into reading more.  I'd like to have a shelf that makes the fronts of the books visible for easier selection by preschoolers.

Well, that's it for the playroom.  More than you ever wanted to know, right?  Next up is the kids' bedroom.

Home Tour: Office

Okay, so I said I was going to show you the living room next, but my pictures of the living room didn't really turn out.  So why don't you just come on upstairs, and I'll show you the office.  Yep, right up the stairs.  Then turn to the right, and there's the office doorway.  This is the fourth bedroom of the house, but with Beloved's job, we really needed a home office.  This room was the only one where we could set up the computer when we moved here (before wireless!), so this room was it.

Come on in!

Let's see...  The desk is one I've had since middle school!  It's a piece of formica countertop on plywood.  The chair we bought used from WSU about eight years ago.  Those need to be replaced, but they're not high on the priority list.  Next to the desk is a shelf that holds the printer.  There are pictures of our familys all over in here.  Above the desk is a group of pictures of Beloved's grandfather, who was a pilot in World War II.  The chair was my grandmother's and I love it.  It's called a breakfast chair, apparently, but I don't know why.  The plant stand beside the chair is a great spot to set your drink while you're reading.  Go on, try it out.  Comfy, isn't it?

Oh wait, before we move on, I'm going to make you admire this closet because I just got it cleaned out and organized last month.  Why, yes, those are the complete series of Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation on DVD.  You see how they are all together and lined up on the shelves?  Lovely, isn't it? 

Well, now that we're upstairs, why don't we just go on down the hall and I'll show you the playroom...