Category Archives: games

April Showers

So much green everywhere is making me so happy!  Which is especially nice on a day that is somewhat somber after the passing of Prince.  I wasn’t a massive fan, but he was a talented artist and driving by his home seeing the flowers and many people there is just sad.

I’m holding off for another weekend or two until we go pick out flowers and stuff, but we’re all excited to get outside and work on the landscaping some more. There are so many things I’d like to get done inside and out of the house including little things like upgrades to flooring in the kitchen and even the faucets. In the meantime, though, we wait for the Spring rains to let up.

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Thankfully we have lots of games to play inside and we’ve been pulling out the board games more often.  Do ignore the fact that this picture was clearly taken in December. We really did play it the other day!

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Phoebe doesn’t usually have the patience to sit through games yet, but Enzo is catching on quick to so many games and is still greatly loving Poopy Head. We like to team up and try and get Josh to end up with all of the poops while he’s distracted by Phoebe.

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Another great find I came across are these awesome window markers that Crayola makes that crystallize on the window as they warm up.  They are so fun to watch as they change, plus they clean up easy and we don’t end up wasting any paper. Considering Enzo reminded me it’s Earth Day today, I felt this was worth noting. 😉

Happy Earth Day everyone and have a wonderful weekend! Do something that brings and spreads joy.

Oh, those imaginations!

With the cold finally settling in, we’re having to get more creative with how we spend our time around the house, and even though we’re guilty of spending a bit more time in front of electronics than I would like, the kiddo’s imaginations are definitely not suffering.  In fact, dare I say it, but their imaginations have actually benefited.

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One game that Phoebe has been enjoying lately started somewhat by her brother, but ultimately was created after watching Paw Patrol. Enzo always insists on watching this one episode with a ghost (which ends up not even being a ghost at all), so we now have a new game that started up one day out of the blue.  The other morning when Phoebe padded out of her room in the with the sleep barely wiped out of her eyes, she looked at me and her eyes went big and she yelled, “Ghost!” I continued with the game and said, “Oh no!  What do we do?”  So she continued with the mock surprise and yelled, “Run! Hurry! Hurry!”  This morning Enzo pretended to be the ghost while chasing Phoebe who was first in my arms and then at one point in Josh’s arms while Enzo and I chased them both.

I wish I could remember all of what Enzo comes up with (because it’s awesome), but there are always a lot of details to keep track of.  It was funny, though, the other day in the car when I realized he was using ideas from Beauty and the Beast, and episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and a Harry Potter game that Josh picked up for the PS3.  See picture below:

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It was a big story with 2 dinosaurs who happened to be brothers and then there was a spell and the big dinosaur was asleep so naturally the spell needed to be broken before the 3rd petal fell and he would be asleep forever.  So, Enzo waved his magic wand and sang Twinkle Twinkle and poof!  The spell was broken. Then unfortunately, another spell was cast and Enzo asked me to use my wand because, “You have the biggest wand I’ve ever seen.” I failed the first time and accidentally put the whole car to sleep, but after waving my wand and singing Itsy Bitsy, all was well.

They seriously just get more and more fun.

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4th of July…

It’s only been more than a month, but better late than never, right?  The 4th of July weekend was a busy one for sure, but it was so much fun to introduce the kids to the joy of carnivals and staying up way past their bedtime to watch fireworks.  We decided to start things off at A Taste of Minnesota and then to meet up with family later on.   Enzo was excited about the rides and wanted to try out several, and Phoebe decided she was okay with a slow moving truck ride.  Enzo was really excited about the giant slide (as always) and this one was pretty fast.  Phoebe watched them go down and insisted she wanted to go as well, but… she was not a fan.  We thought maybe she’d enjoy the pony rides since Enzo did at that age, but once again… not a fan and she immediately wanted off.  Oh well. Enzo was also a trooper after he chipped his tooth on one of my least favorite rides.  Poor guy was in pain off and on throughout the day.

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Date Night… crafting?

One of the many great things about having a specific bedtime for our kiddos is that we are guaranteed time to ourselves every night.  It may not be much, but it’s better than nothing.  More often than not we’ll either do our own thing, or wind up in front of the TV watching something on Hulu/Netflix/Amazon.  Sometimes this routine can get boring, though, so about a month ago we both found ourselves with little projects we could work on and we decided to make a night of it.

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Josh had his Lego Ghostbusters set to put together and I had a little DIY constellation kit thingy that I have literally had since before Enzo was born and it has been sitting and collecting dust.  I can’t even remember where I purchased it from, but thankfully had the good sense to print off the instructions in English at the time.

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Because crafting in silence is boring, we put on a movie in the background.  You can’t go wrong with ‘Tremors,’ am I right?

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Josh’s creation was fairly straight-forward since Lego is awesome and includes really well-written instructions, but mine I definitely struggled with.

ProjectNight6For starters, I was missing pieces and I quickly discovered that the English instructions were also lacking in areas, and one of the big portions of the project was missing something fairly important. To hell with accuracy, I just wanted to complete the freaking thing at that point.

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We have light!  Hooray!  My little project actually ended up being really cool and I meant to get a picture of it all put together, but didn’t.  Basically imagine the night sky stretched across the ceiling, floor and walls.  Enzo was ecstatic when I showed him… and then it stopped working. I tried everything (that I could think of anyway).  Electrical do-dads are not my speciality.  At least Josh’s project doesn’t break. 😉

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Sunday Shenanigans

Just because we don’t really celebrate Easter and are no longer children doesn’t mean we can’t see the potential of those cheap plastic eggs. Sure, kids can go on egg hunts, but we decided to have a scavenger hunt! This weekend seemed like the perfect excuse to run around like kids and take advantage of awesome Easter sales, not that we really need excuses to run around like kids and bestow baskets full of goodies to each other.

 

We agreed on 8 clues each, some of which were easy and some of which were more difficult leading to looks of extreme confusion and contemplation.

Most suprising of all was how similar a couple of our clues were and that both scavenger hunts ended in the master closet. Probably because of how much stuff a basket could hide under. 😉

 

After opening our goodies, we ran an errand and then we pretty much relaxed and watched movies for the rest of the day, taking a break to eat yummy salmon.

 

It was nice to have a day of silliness before heading back to work today and starting on more school work. The last day of school is May 16th, though, so I’ve just got to get through the next couple weeks of craziness.