snow week

Here are some of my favorite images from our week off of school...for only two inches of snow!

It's just way too cold for me to be outside.  Or inside.  Our house is not liking these frigid temperatures at all...it got down to 58 degrees inside one evening.  Brrrr!

Our gas fireplace keeps us toasty in our big room, but I've been living in fleece jackets and many layers for the rest of the time.

The kids, of course, couldn't wait to get outside.

This picture makes me laugh....Isabela looks like the abominable snowman pulling its next victim.

We had lots of time for winter experiments.  Green food coloring on snow.  Cool.

Borax crystals on pipe cleaners.  Cool, but don't eat it!

(This is Isabela's penguin, if you weren't sure.)

Our first deep freeze, we tried a hanging ice sculpture.

It melted away and the ribbon disappeared, too.

Carmen has watched most of it from the window, along with me.

I read an article the other day about the happiest nation on earth...Denmark.  I'd like to move there.  But I imagine it's cold, so I wonder how they are so happy?  

book and a recipe: Naples, Italy

Let me introduce you to our new obsession:  Giada De Laurentiis's new chapter books, Recipe for Adventure.

If you have a child that likes to cook, or even if you don't, these books are highly enjoyable.  Especially,  the interaction between the brother and sister that get transported to different cities when they eat their aunt's made-from-scratch cooking.  Such a great message in today's world of fake and fast food.

The best part of each book comes at the end: two recipe cards to make a delicious dish so you, too, can be transported to a different country!

Welcome to Naples, Italy.

One bite of a zeppole and you're there.  Isabela literally closed her eyes when she bit into it and was disappointed when she opened her eyes and was still in our kitchen.  But it was still totally worth doing over and over again.

I won't spoil it by including a recipe for zeppole.  Let's just say it's a fried dough...

...that puffs up...

...and is then rolled in cinnamon and sugar.  Can it get much better than that?

Well, the second recipe is for pizza, from the land that invented pizza, so yeah, it probably can get better.

(*If you're looking for these books at our local library, we currently have two more of them checked out.  We'll return them after visiting Paris and Hong Kong.)

What book are you enjoying right now?

i heart faces-best face of 2013

While I normally love the background of photos to help tell the story, this one of Diego and I is one of my favorites from 2013.  It's so hard to capture pictures with me in them, and even luckier that I long-armed it and got this shot of both of us.  A day at the zoo together, mom and son.  You can read the original post here.

Visit I Heart Faces to see more amazing entries!

Happy New Year!...(half way through January)

Our new dry wall leaning up against our old wall...that was the backdrop for our 2014 celebration.  How poetic?

The kids filled the balloons with activities for the night starting at 4pm.


Carmen wouldn't be up for most of it, so we had fun with her while we could.



Silly picture frame photo-op.  Too bad Daddy was at work and we didn't get one of Carmen, either.  I think she kept trying to eat the frame.



First we tried to remember the best of 2013...


...the kids made some wishing stars, which they called 'betwinklers'.  Diego found his on the floor a few days later.  The cat had thrown up on it.  I hope that wish already came true!



This was our resolution wall.  It only took a few minutes to print out.  Single words. Listen. Read. Pray.  Focus.  Friends.  Adventure. etc.  We put one of each in a hat and went around drawing them until there were none left.



Even better, we used our magnetic darts to throw them across the room, letting fate choose our path for the year.





I made sure to put Screen-Free for one of the words.  Daddy got TWO of those.  Yay!



We ended the evening with the typical New Year's Eve crying one minute, hysterically laughing the next, during our amazing light show of glow sticks.





The next day, we hit the trails for First Day Hike.  But instead of a state park, we headed to a nearby neighborhood with bike paths.  We let the big kids ride their bikes around the neighborhood all by themselves.  On the street.  Nothing like the freedom of being a kid on a bike riding off into the horizon.


Carmen wasn't too sure about that.  But they came back in one piece so we'll have to try it more often.



A beautiful rainbow ended right in front of us!  JP said I should dive under there to get the pot of gold.  Nice.



Diego is without a bike right now...he rode his into the dust.  He tried out a scooter but wasn't loving it...looks like we might know a good birthday present for March.



I glanced over and JP had set Carmen on the bike.



She liked it more than she's letting on.



The kids love to explore this ravine.  Someone always falls in.



It was NOT Isabela, although she's the one who has to use the bathroom as soon as we get to this park--every. single. time.



Wishing you a happy new year filled with possibilities and accomplishments!

handmade Christmas 2013

Our tradition of having a handmade Christmas almost didn't happen this year.  I found lots of ideas, but sleep deprivation was keeping me from actually doing any of them.

The week before Christmas, I hadn't made one gift.

But I pulled it off...with a vow that I'm going to work on making things all year...not just the week before Christmas.

A new blanket for Carmen was the first gift I made.  I fell in love with a fleece fabric with sweet birds and blossoms on a remnant rack at Joann's and came across a coordinating red fabric in the same bin.  As a back up, I bought that cute little stuffed doll off of Etsy....handmade, just not by me.



A little closer look.



And here is the blanket even closer.  The fleece side is cozy for winter and the regular fabric side will be nice and cool in summer.


For Diego, I just KNEW he would love a treasure map.  Wrong.  He loved opening it, but hasn't played with it much since.  I basically copied the idea from here, with a few extra touches I thought he might like...a whale, a crab, a sea monster, and a giant squid.  I sewed a brown fabric on the back to make it a little sturdier when you hold it up in the air to find where you are...not really necessary, since it stays rolled up on his bookshelf.



Here's a quick picture of the treasure chest he got and that's the map beside it.  Maybe I'll hide the chest and have him go search the house for it.



Isabela usually gets something sewn so I wanted to try something different this year.  She always wanted one of those light up moons that glow on your wall...I thought this was the next best thing...a moon clock.  I should probably paint the hands like they did on the original one, but I ran out of time so I just gave it to her like this.



She does like to guess what time it is, since there's no numbers, but said this was her least favorite gift this year.  Actually, Santa's gift was, but she said she didn't want to hurt his feelings (what? and risk getting nothing next year??)



Joaquin's gift wasn't really handmade...more like repurposed.  He collects these little things called Trashpacks, and on the bottom of each is a little hole.  He usually stores them in a trashcan that came with them, but I thought it would be fun for him to display them in his room.  I was going to have JP make a display case with little dowel rods to put them on.....BUT, I ran across this cool thing in Michael's and thought it would do the trick without us having to make it.  It's a holder for spools of thread.



Don't touch them.  He has them organized a special way from favorite to least somehow.



This was in my 'to sew' pile for awhile and probably took thirty seconds to make.  An old giraffe shirt of Isabela's that she always liked--I turned it into a pillow.



And this one was technically from Joaquin, but he only helped step on the foot of the sewing machine...it's a soft cover for her iPod, made with the same fabric of Carmen's blanket.  It's good if she's swinging that thing around on her wrist...maybe one more level of protection so it won't break.



Isabela gave Joaquin a little book of worksheet pages from Diary of a Wimpy Kid...things like create your own cover and write a little comic strip.  He hasn't done them yet, but I think he will.



Pillowcases again this year.  Joaquin chose out this cool flannel fabric with tiki heads on it.  I like the orange stripe of fabric on the edge.  I think Kitty approves.  Pillowcases are so fun and simple to make.  Here's the tutorial I always use from MADE.



But I was most impressed with Joaquin's handmade gifts.  He had wanted to give Carmen a Jack-In-the-Box.  On Christmas Eve no less, he realized he never got one and wanted to go buy one.  No way.  I tell him, "Just make her one."  And I couldn't believe it!  He did it!  He came and showed it to me, singing the familiar weasel song and then...


POP!



And the last one is a beautiful Christmas coloring sheet.  Give Joaquin a Sharpie and he does wonders.



So the tradition continues.  I'm impressed we pulled it off this year.  But also so proud that maybe the tradition is being passed on to the next generation already!

and to all a good night

This was a quiet Christmas for us this year.  (And by quiet, I don't mean noise level.)

Lots of family time with just us.

We went no where special.  And did nothing around town.

I'm sure the kids won't be able to remember a thing from the last two weeks.  But what I remember is that most evenings, I found myself hysterically laughing.  Laughing so hard, I cried.... and it's been awhile since I've done that.  I'm hoping this year brings lots of laughter.

JP had to work Christmas Eve, so the kids and I just finished up handmade gifts that we waited to make until the last minute.  When he got home, it was 'open the Christmas pjs' time.  Carmen got one that I found in the attic in a small bag of clothes I had saved from when Diego was a baby!  And Joaquin got underwear, instead of pjs, since he never wears pjs.




The stockings were hung by the window with care...since our fireplace was no longer there.



Joaquin told me he woke up around 4am and came out to see if Santa had come.  His stocking had nothing poking out of it, so he felt it in the dark to see if there was coal in it.  He was  relieved to feel toys, then headed back to his bed.

He actually had the happiest Christmas of all of the kids.  There is something extra special about getting presents when you were expecting nothing! (He's really not that bad at all, he does a lot of good to make up for it.)



How about that expression over a new soccer ball!



Or a book?  (Wreck This Journal has a been a super fun book for him to mess up!)



Carmen got a baby doll and a ball ramp.  Santa brought her a lollipop drum...a huge drum that looks like a lollipop on a stick.  She loves it.



Isabela got some new cooking gadgets that we definitely put to good use over the holidays.  Cheesecake, anyone?  She now has the recipe memorized.



Diego had a nautical theme to his Christmas...a pirate treasure chest, a pet octopus, and here he's holding up a shark's tooth that was in his stocking.



Even though we said we'd go easy on the gifts this year, they still snuck under the tree somehow.  Did you know in the old days, they used to NOT give gifts on Christmas, but on New Year's Day?   It was special to start the new year out with a new toy.  That sounds like a good idea.  Or maybe next year we'll go on a trip instead of give presents.  The kids were okay with that one, too.

I don't know.  Gifts are cool, too.  The best ones are the ones that make you spend time together.  (Thanks, Robyn, for that Spot It Game.  We have played it non-stop about thirty times a day.  There's been tears.  There's been laughter.  It's one of the best family games ever!)

We'll see what next Christmas brings.