Reported missing this morning at 9:20am – one small bottom tooth. Former place of residence: Aiden’s mouth. Tooth was originally logged as “loose” on 9/7/2011. Repeated attempts to loosen tooth were made on the following dates: 9/8, 9/9, 9/10, 9/11, 9/12, 9/13 etc etc. Methods to loosen tooth included, but were not limited to, the following: pushing, pressing, eating crunchy foods, wiggling and waggling. Tooth will be relocated to an sub-pillow location this evening. Further details to follow.

 

report log 9/29/11, 9:34am, mom.

 

I was doing some laundry tonight and I needed to gather the last few items that were worn today. I decided to sneak into the boy’s room around 8:45 to grab anything in their hamper plus, bonus, give them kisses as they slept. The first thing I noticed was Brady’s bed:

 

Here we have…no Brady! Just an abandoned giant Sha-sha pillow, a water bottle and assorted small animals!!

Then I checked Aiden’s bed: ahhh… a mother’s worries calmed. I left them there.

This all reminds me that I snapped shots of the boys sleeping last week because…well…because they are so beautiful and…um….still (quite frankly) when they are sleeping. I kiss them lots!!!

Aiden:

Brady: (doesn’t like shirts)

Logan:

 

We just got back last night from our 7th neighborhood, and our 4th annual Halloween, camping trip. We had a new family join us this year – so fun…added 3 MORE boys to the mix!! Love it! Sadly, one of the “usual suspects” had a conflict so…this time it was 11 kids and 8 adults for 2 nights of camping fun. The forecast called for rain and guess what…not a drop fell on the camping site! The weather was cool, but comfortable, sunny and perfect! There is nothing left to say except for…..PICTURES!!!

OH…the costume theme this year was “killer bees”…we also had 1 queen bee. I made the bee wings with bent electrical wire (that I found in our basement), covered with black panty hose, secured with yellow duct tape and decorated with yellow fabric paint. The shirts were just black tee shirts with strips of yellow duct tape. The army helmets were from the party store – I hot glued on black pipe cleaners for the antennas and all the guns were made from paper towel & toilet paper rolls covered in silver duct tape. Our queen bee sported a pageant ribbon I made using stencils and black fabric paint.

 

Watch out! The forest is filled with a swarm of killer bees!!!!

 

Not a big fan of pictures spotlighting my rear end, but me and 2 of my sons is far too cute not to post.

AJ and Aiden being totally bored during the costume contest. They did it way different this year….they decided the “winners” of each category by having the audience yell. The categories were: cutest, scariest, funniest and most original. AJ got pulled down to represent the group (since there was no group contest this year) for “most original” and he lost to a little boy wearing a store-bought Thomas the Train costume because “Thomas’s” family was sitting closer and screamed louder than us. Aiden cried when they lost. I had to explain to him that it was sort of a fake contest and that the little boy wearing Thomas was almost crying because his family was screaming at him so they decided to make him the winner (all true).

The only problem with this year’s costume is that it was hard to keep track of your particular children as there are groups of them who look similar in height and build. For example: Dustin, Brady and Matt. These three were “peeps”. In this picture, Brady and Matt have suckers that they stole from Ella and AJ’s bags (Ella and AJ had to leave trick or treating early to go to hockey practice in the area…they came back right before bed time).

Just a fun picture

So….there are no other pictures from camping. Brian took out the camera during the costume portion of the weekend, snapped over 150 shots and then put it back in the car. Obviously we know who’s most important  - the kids!! But before we go…here’s a creepy picture of me:

and a not creep picture of me:

I have been saving a bunch of birthday cards, bags and teacher gifts I’ve made over the past 6 months and now I need to show Denna how I did some circus-type flags so I’m posting them real quick. Without further ado – stuff I made:

These are gift bags I made for Aiden’s teachers last year. They have pinwheels on them made from paper and then attached to the bag with colored brads.

Aiden’s good buddy Alli had a birthday party just yesterday. When asked about the party theme, her mom said her family party was rainbow unicorns. I couldn’t find rainbow paper so I went pink and bling!

Decorations on Alli’s gift bag – more bling!

The two-layer unicorn on the outside of the bag done in a fun paper with raised dots on it. The letters in Alli’s name on the bag were all done in this paper with a different color per letter.

Card and bag together complete with rainbow paper.

Our buddy Sam is having a party tomorrow…nerf theme. Much to Logan’s dismay, I couldn’t find and cut an image of an actual Nerf dart….so I did a regular one instead. This is the card.

Bag and card together. Aiden helped me decide which colors were best for “Nerf” by bringing me several of our guns as samples.

Den: here is the shape I used to make the circus flags on Alli’s bag….

Connor, lover of football and son of ex-Iowa-football-player dad (Iowa: black and gold), turned 7 last April.

Logan’s friend from Kindergarten last year had a tropical-themed bday. The palm trees on the bag sort of fold off the bag at the leaves and have bling instead of coconuts. I did my standard “can’t think of anything better” cupcake card and decorated the “frosting” with cut outs of little Hawaiian flowers.

Baby shower bag and card….loved this one!!!

For the back of the cards, I used the birds that were left on my cutting board after I cut out the front of the card.

These are the end-of-the-year gifts I made for all the teachers last year: small magnetic boards. I bought oval canvases, painted them with 2 coats of magnetic paint and then put paper over that. For the magnets, I cut out flowers, but the green brads in them, modge-podged them to make them stiff and hot-glued each to a super strong magnet I bought at the craft store. The card had a corresponding flower and paper in the middle over the word “thank you”. The other flowers are the magnets holding the card to the board. This example was for Logan’s teacher and came with a wallet of his infamous “I’m gonna wear a fedora in my school picture” picture.

All three of the boards I did: 1 for Logan’s teacher and 2 for Aiden’s preschool teachers.

Another of Logan’s classmates from last year. Didn’t know much about her, except she’s a girl so I went flowers.

Our friend Ashley had a Barbie Bday last March. This is her card (just the blue). Bling a bling bling on this one too – fun!

The bag. Barbie has more bling in her hair as a pony-tail holder. So fun to do girl stuff sometimes!!!

Last Tuesday, a week ago today (slacker mom!), Brady and Aiden started preschool for the year. Brady is in 3’s preschool and Aiden is in Pre-K. They are both attending our church’s preschool which has been, thus far, so wonderful! Both of them are having a great time. Brady goes T/Th and Aiden goes M-Th…which means they are there, in the building together, 2 days a week. It’s awesome because the first thing they do is go outside for playtime, all classes combined. I think it’s wonderful for them to start their day together. Their teachers are AWESOME! Brady’s teacher is super duper sweet, gets down to his level, talks in a very kind voice (totally what he needs) and is fun and creative. For their first day, she was dressed as a cowboy. They made these ride-on horses out of wrapping paper tubes and horse heads and then stamped bandanas – so fun! Long story, but Brady’s class time wasn’t published on the website like the other class times. I only found out that they have his class in the PM via a call to the church. I guess there weren’t many other families who called because he has only 2 other kids…both boys, in his class. They decided to combine his class and a 4-year-old class (not Aiden’s because he’s pre-kindergarten….4’s and 5’s) for some activities and then split them for others. They call the three little 3-year-olds “the cowboys” because they travel from room to room. Ahhhhhh – too stinkin cute!!!!!!

Daddy worked from the area the first day of preschool and was able to take pictures and help drive them to drop off. I HAVE to video tape Aiden’s recount of his first day. They learned about when God created the world. He told me that, “on the first day…God created the dark and the light. But, he didn’t create lizards until like the 5th day. After he created all the stuff on the first day, he looked around and said….that’s goooooood!!!” Oh my…the way he said “good” was HYSTERICAL!! Later in the week, he told me that after God had created everything he was tired and needed a little rest…that was on the 7th day. I’m impressed at his memory, but totally enjoy his re-telling because he cracks me up!

Here are pics of the first day!

 

Had to do the same “candles in the pancakes” that we did for Logan. Happy first day of preschool!!!

Ready to go!

 

I love these kid-sized backpacks!!

The boys were so excited, they crawled around the car while we waited in line at drop off.

That’s Brady’s teacher – dressed as a cowboy!

 

Here are the cards I made for their first day. Each one said something about standing out in a crowd….school…fish…school of fish….you get the picture