Valentine's

We finished the valentines for the kids class this weekend. Golden boy wanted to give the kids in his class Pokemon figurines.

I placed an order on Wednesday for the figurines. (so thankful for Amazon Prime)

I made some card stock cards that said "I choose you Valentine"

and then he wrote the kids names in the to section and signed them from him. 

after he got to decide who he would give each character to and we hot glued them to the cards.

I love the way that they came out

i saw these bracelets in Michael's craft store and asked Little girl if that would be something that she would want to give to the girls in her class. she has 9 of them in her class. so after making sure they would fit a kids arm, i went to the store and purchased 9 bracelets that all said something different. they said things like: love, blessed, peace, free spirit, happy, imagine.

The card stock says: Valentine: You're a Gem.

I got the idea for the wording from the blog Positively Splendid

I didn't have a colored printer so just created the same wording in a word document and printed them on card stock.

after she addressed them and signed them we chose which one she would give to each girl and used washi tape to attach them to the cards.

 my daughter likes the Pokemon cards too so for the 11 boys in her class we bought a pack of Pokemon cards and attached washi tape to the back of them. she picked out which one she wanted to give each of the boys and then signed the tape on the back.

a few years ago i got a picture of the valentines before we addressed them but i forgot to take that picture this year. so that is why there are little hearts all over the picture.

We didn't get together as a group to to decorate the cards

we just decorated them at home and then met up on Sunday to deliver them.

 

Decorating valentines 2016

Decorating valentines 2015

this year we just got a picture of the kids that were there.

Two babies were missing from this picture and one little sweetie that didn't want her picture taken

2017

this is all of us last year that went to deliver valentines.

2016

This year we met up with another small group to deliver the valentines. it was the last year that both of our groups met together to do this.

2015

we had met in 2014 to deliver them but i don't think we got a picture of all of us

2013

Decor

My kids love to decorate for any holiday.

It is so sweet.

They will make banners and decor out of any type of paper they can find.

A few years ago we decorated the front door to look like a monster.

This year I was going to do that same thing but after needing and new scare crow, my husband and son came home with a door hanging sign as well as a scare crow.

I've had this pin pinned for a few years now but have never done it before.

when they came home with the sign for the door i knew i needed to do the bats to add to the brick on the front porch

I came across this pin yesterday and there was a template on how to make the bats.

I printed out the template and went home to cut out bats.

We hung the ones outside and had more to put some inside as well. 

i loved that there was a bat on the sign for the door too.

glad to add some Halloween decor around the house and do something simple to make the kids happy.

Our new scare crow doesn't look to bad either. 

Hopefully it can last as long as our last one.

What I learned May

That i can paint: my friend Kelly invited me to a paint party. I have only ever been to one other of these. it was strange going but overall i think we both did pretty good and now we can say we are painters.

here is the before. the instructor sketched a bit of a layout so we knew where and when we were painting

here are the two of us in different stages of our painting

here is another stage of my picture

trees added

i didn't like my swirls. they looked weird to me

the finished product

and both of us with our finished paintings

WE ARE ARTISTS!

that i could be a farm girl: I went on a field trip with my daughters class to a local farm. fully functioning farm and I love every single but of it. I even got to milk a cow.

that we can have chickens (we will see if that happens): In keeping with the above farm theme I found out that we can indeed have chickens. I am hoping that works out.

that camping continues to be my favorite: this was the second year that we went camping with my parents and had a lot of fun. we added another day to the trip so that made it nice too. we ate some great food and went on a nice hike. and of course when Bear and Golden boy are together there is going to be fishing.

I am still in love with steel city pops: last year when i found our we were getting a steel city pops i wrote this post about all of the flavors that I wanted to try. (really i just want to try them all) but this month i had my first Popsicle of the summer, Avocado. it was amazing and reminded me oh how i love Steel City Pops. my other post lists some that i still have not tried but to add to the list here are a few more:

Cherry Sour Cream

Blood Orange

Champagne White Tea

Lavender Lemonade

Mango

Raspberry Lemon

Strawberry Balsamic

this is the last month that I will have a five year old: how did we get to this point. I mean wasn't is just yesterday that she was born.

Adventure 50

on Saturday we participated in a sweet potato drop with the Society of St Andrew and lots of other people who came out to bag 40,000 pounds of sweet potatoes

here is the first crate that we started on

we (the kids and I) have participated in veggie drops during VBS before but this was my Hubby's first time participating in a veggie drop and he just really enjoyed it

Golden boy was so sweet to help the little one.

Little girl and one of her friends working together to bag those sweet potatoes

this is just one section of crates that were loaded down with sweet potatoes

our first crate almost empty

we put the kids in to help grab those sweet potatoes off of the bottom and bag them

Little girl and one of her very best friends. she loves spending time with Jasper. she is my little social butterfly so she was very interested in talking and socializing with everyone there

the sweet potatoes went to many different families who are in need of food all over the norther part of our state. there were a number of organizations that came by and collected bags of potatoes to take to many families.

our very first empty crate

this was another whole section of of crates with more sweet potatoes in them

some of the boxes were completely lifted up and placed on flat bed trucks to be delivered to different places.

if we didn't have this organization to help bag these veggies then the farmers would just have dump these sweet potatoes in the forest to rot. it still blows my mind that we have starving people in America. i loved that my family could help participate in this and seeing that every single truck that came to get sweet potatoes was prayed over, for the families getting them, the hands that bagged them and the drivers and people who where delivering them, just made this experience even more special.

the kids even rounded up and prayed with the drivers after helping load their trucks with bags and bags of sweet potatoes.

this is Little girl holding the hand of an older gentleman that come to pick up some of the potatoes.

and here is Framer Mary Lynn and quite a few of the kids that were there participating in the veggie drop. it was so wonderful to all come together to help.

the Body of Christ, His Hand and Feet.

Adventure 48

Adventures in planning thanksgiving

Since Golden Boy was born we have never spent thanksgiving at our house. we are always traveling to my home town or to my parents lake house. this year my parents weren't going to be home or at the lake house so we decided to stay home. I wanted to have thanksgiving at home. my hubby asked me if i was going to cook a turkey, i thought that i would just get a boneless butter ball turkey and put it in the crock pot. Golden boy wanted to a turkey leg though so my sweet mother in law said she would handle the turkey and i said great, i will do all of the sides. it was fun. i started with my granny's home made macaroni and cheese. a few years ago i asked her for the recipe in her own handwriting. i love that i have this from her, even though i couldn't be with her at thanksgiving this year. i had the added fun of Little girl helping me out too.

we made other sides too, as well as set the table and had loads of dishes to clean. it was a fun day.

 i would have had a picture of the table with all of the food on it, (or at least some of it, all of the food wouldn't fit) but right as it we were making plates and sitting down to eat little girl spilled her whole glass of sparkling grape juice. it was mess. i am glad that we at least got this one before we started piling everything on. she is so me. apparently she i was little i spilled drink ALL-THE-TIME. she comes by it honestly, i guess. poor thing. it was a good day though.

Adventure 44

So we took the kids camping this weekend but this adventure is not going to be about the camping trip, it is more going to be about a specific event on our camping trip.

while camping we made a trip into Gatlinburg. we were going there to trick or treat with the kids. we went trick or treating 6 years ago. I blogged about that trip here

we went trick or treating on the strip (we didn't even know that they did trick or treating there, and we had so much fun) my hubby has been saying that when Halloween fell on a Saturday again he wanted to make a trip there. this was the year. again that isn't the adventure that I want to blog about, but hopefully I will get around to blogging those pictures.

the adventure that I want to post is out adventure on the ski lift.

we honeymooned in Gatlinburg, we have been to Gatlinburg many, many times since we have been married, but I can never remember riding this ski lift. I texted with my mom asking her if we had and she thought that we had but my dad couldn't remember ever going on it so my mom said that maybe it was there when she was a girl and she remembers going on it from when she was little.

the kids wanted to go on it do badly. we were not going to go because the price was insane. $55 for all four of us to go.

granny and papa had given them $10 each so we told them that if they really wanted to go that they could put the $10 up for the ride.

there was no hesitation, they were ready to ride it.

we paid the money and got on. Little girl rode with me and Golden boy rode with Michael.

it wasn't until I got on and there was no getting off the I was a little freaked. to be honest going up wasn't all that bad but I had my arm wrapped around Little girl and she was gripping on to me as well.

we went over the river

and then after paying the $55 to ride it when we got to the top they wanted us to buy a photo that they took of us as we were coming up the mountain.

um, no thanks

but the view on top was beautiful

I put the camera round little girls neck and had her snap this picture of us

then it was time to go down. if I thought going up was bad this was worse

my hubby asked me if I could turn around and snap a picture of he and Golden boy.

UM, NO WAY!!!! not happenin'

I told him that when we got lower I would try and snap one.

this was my attempt to hold up the camera and try to get a picture of the two of them.

FAIL!

I had a death grip on the side pole

little girl decided that she didn't want my arm around her and that she didn't want to hold onto me either.

WHAT!?!?!

I was crazy scared, it would have been a comfort to have my arm around her, but I let her sit untouched.

she did occasionally reach up and hold on to the bar.

here we were pretty close to the bottom and I turned around and got his picture of the two of them

here are the ones from my phone