Valentine Craft/Cards

 We've been crafting our Valentines for our home school co-op party this Thursday.  Here's what we accomplished today...even with a couple sick boys.  I love, love this holiday because I love all the things you can make with hearts and candy, and pink and red!!

 This caterpillar was DJ's original creation!  The only thing we had to purchase for these crafts was gum and Hershey's kisses.  The rest of the supplies were hanging out around our house.

This is a more grown-up valentine for one of my girls. :)

Christmas Memories

I like dressing my babies up in strange little outfits, especially on Christmas Day!  These pictures have been waiting to be posted for quite some time.  Our month of company, celebration, girls home from college was lots of fun, but too busy for blogging.  And now it's February.  How can it be?

This was Daddy and DJ's surprise for Levi and Kade on Christmas morning...their very own semi-truck.

Grandpa Wayne and Grandma Betty arrived Christmas evening.  I thought this picture was priceless!

Cousins Kylee and Zane came, along with their daddy and mommy!

We made a gingerbread train together and this is Zane carefully rolling out the dough.

Cody Joel - 5 months

We had our 2nd annual tea party.

The weather was nice enough to play outside for hours!

Kylee and DJ had fun sliding down our sled track and into this tunnel!

Zane and Kade took the tea party quite seriously!

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Merry Christmas!

Making Chocolate Letters

I was looking for a simple way to include the baby's name on some cheesecakes for a baby shower recently.  I didn't want to have to make fancy icing and get out all the tools for that so I tried something that worked pretty well.  Using chocolate chips, wax paper, letter cookie cutters, and cooking spray I made chocolate initials of the little guy we were celebrating.  One plus of using chocolate is that if you mess up, you can always melt it again and start over. 


Melt about 1/2(?) cup chocolate chips in a bowl.  Lay a piece of greased wax paper on a plate and spread the chocolate onto the wax paper, making sure it's thick enough for your letters.  Place your letters in the chocolate and put in the refrigerator for 15 minutes or so.  (I didn't time this but kept checking it.)  Remove from fridge when chocolate has hardened a little bit, enough so that you can remove the letters and stencils from the chocolate and remove from the wax paper.  Let the letters, with the slightly hardened chocolate, cool even longer in the fridge still in the cookie cutters.  When chocolate is nearly hard, gently remove the chocolate letters from the stencils.  If one breaks, you can do it again or cover the break with a tiny bow like I did! :)

Turkey Fun

Grandpa Stacy and Grandma Carol have a tradition of coming to our house before our camp auction each year.  Grandma Carol always brings a food project for the children to put together and add to the tables of auction items.  This year it was these adorable turkeys made from oreos, whoppers, reeses, chocolate frosting, and candy corn.  The picture I have is without the eyes that they added later, using a dab of red icing and a chocolate sprinkle.

Ready for snow

 Last weekend we woke up to a beautiful snowy morning.  My boys were utterly thrilled.  Before breakfast, Kade came to me like this...all ready to go play outside.  Got to love their enthusiasm.

 Here's the first snowman of the year.

Waiting and watching.

Cody's three and a half months

Our Cody is smiling ever so much, and we're finding that he's very social.  He loves watching the action of those around him and can hardly keep from wriggling with smiles when someone talks to him. 

He weighs 15 lbs. 8 oz. and wears 3-6 month clothing...but not much longer!

He likes taking baths, lying under his hanging toys, sleeping with mommy, waking up late in the morning, classical music in the van (at least he gets quiet when it's playing), laughing at DJ's antics, and taking long naps in the car seat.

He's loving his new bumbo seat.  The other boys didn't have one, but when our bouncy seat broke, I decided to try this out.  I'd heard so many good things about them, but they're very expensive.  I found one at Once Upon A Child and so far, it has been wonderful!  He watched the boys getting their baths the other night with not a single complaint.  He watches me cook while sitting up on the counter (the warning on the seat says not to place on elevated surfaces so I am always nearby and will have to be cautious as he gets bigger and moves around more).  It's portable and just what we needed!