Transform!

This morning, we pulled out one of our 'Liken the Scriptures' videos (silly (but fun) musicals about scripture stories - this one is about Nephi and Laban and imagines Lehi's four sons as sort of a boy-band). This afternoon, Go-go put a striped blanket on his head and said, "Look mom! I'm Lehi because he wears a hat just like this." I felt all warm and fuzzy - the good mom whose son wants to play scripture stories. And then reality descended upon us once more, " Lehi transforms into a big truck! Look mom, I'm Lehi the transformer!" Sigh.

Smart Mom, Dumb Mom

Saying that my kids kind of love blueberries is like saying that I kind of like chocolate. But, they're pretty messy, so they don't get them as often as they would like. Never fear - Smart Mom is here! Smart Mom thought, "No problem - Go-go is already in a blue shirt and blue pants (plus he's old enough to eat with relatively little mess) and I'll just strip Mui-mui down to her diaper. Afterwards, I'll plop them both in the tub and we're good to go!" So, for lunch today, we had blueberry pomegranate applesauce and frozen blueberries with our quesadillas. And Smart Mom was right! They loved it, they got clean, and I dressed them in nice clean clothes. Mui-mui was even wearing a darling new shirt - cream with pink and brown writing that says, "I love to Twirl." All was good with the world. And then Dumb Mom struck.

Dumb Mom forgot three crucial things: 1)Although I cleaned up the high chair, I neglected to remove Go-go's leftovers from the kitchen table; 2)Mui-mui loves to climb up on the kitchen table; and 3)If it's too quiet, bad things are happening! Blue face, blue legs, blue feet, blue hair, and saddest of all, blue shirt. Deep, dark, purplish, splotchy, impossible to ever clean, blue shirt. Sigh.

Fun stuff

We've been having a fun couple of weeks. At the end of February, they had a 'beach' set up at the mall. We had a great time playing in the sand:




And on Friday night, we had a 'campout' in our basement. We had a tent set up and we ate hot dogs and s'mores in the tent, told fun stories, and sang all of the songs I could remember from girls' camp:




Go-go is obsessed with transformers. Sadly, he only owns one real transformer. Happily, he doesn't need a real transformer to play transformers. His new favorite activity is to build a robot out of blocks, tell me he's going to transform it (or tell me that I have to transform it), move some blocks around, and then tell me what it has transformed into. Usually he does this with his Mega Bloks (kind of like giant legos), but today he built robot families with his wooden blocks:




Mui-mui is obsessed with her shoes and her coat. She is constantly bringing them to me to put on her - probably because she thinks it will mean we'll go somewhere fun. Today she chose a vest instead of a coat and added a hat from our dress-up collection to complete the look. I thought she was quite dashing:



Another new favorite Mui-mui discovery is the bouncy horse that used to belong to Erik and his siblings. She loves to climb up on it and bounce her heart out. She's not quite as good at climbing down, but she loves the horse:

Hide and Seek - plus random pictures

Mui-mui loves opening doors and emptying out my cupboards. A few weeks ago, she decided to replace the pitchers/bowls with something a lot more fun - herself!





And Go-go likes to hide with his friends:



He likes to play with human friends too - especially Becca (this is the two of them at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester):







And last, but not least, we have some bonus pictures of Mui-mui dressed for Chinese New Year.

Purse mania! Plus, a non-purse-related giveaway!

Last fall, Ruth was her ward's enrichment leader and was in charge of Super Saturday crafts. One thing they did was to make purses out of placemats. So easy (just google placemat purses for tons of sites with instructions)! Fabric placemats are cheap, already finished and lined for you, a great shape (they make the perfect size to carry a standard size quad), and come in fancy patterns. Problematically, something about this idea really caught my fancy and I began buying placemats with abandon. They seemed to be on clearance everywhere - Target, Kohls, Walmart, Big Lots, the grocery store! I ended up with a lot of very cute, very cheap placemats. On top of that, Ruth was buying them too. We took them all to Walmart, bought great trims, and went to town. Here are some of our creations:




Speaking of getting carried away with homemade stuff, I foolishly committed myself to promising three people that I would send them a homemade gift this year. Guess what, one of those people could be you - just be one of the first three people to comment on this post (In return for posting this, I get something from Edith and I'm really excited to see what I get). Here's the kicker though - you have to pay it forward. If you don't blog, post a note on your facebook page. If you don't have a facebook page, email a bunch of people you know with the offer. Who knows what you'll get (it won't be a purse) or when in the next 365 days you'll get it - it's all part of the suspense.

I'm on TV!

OK, I admit it, the post title is a big lie. I haven't actually been on TV since high school (that I know of). But, Little Lit, the company that Ruth and I run, was featured on TV - KSL Studio5. They did a segment on stuff to keep your kids entertained while they need to be quiet (church, restaurant, doctor's office, etc.), and they featured our products. You are welcome to watch the whole segment if you want, but the interesting part (to us anyway) is about 9 minutes in where they stop telling you how to make stuff and start telling you where to buy stuff. They feature our Seek & Find toys and have our 'My Book of Mormon Quiet Book' displayed as well. I promise not to let the fame go to my head.

"Crash!"

Mui-mui has a great new favorite word - 'Crash!' (or, as she says it, 'Ash!'). This word is applicable to falling block towers, colliding toy cars, herself falling down (or into a piece of furniture), ring around the rosie, throwing food on the floor, throwing diapers in the garbage can, and even projectile vomit landing on the floor. Since it's one of only four or five words in her vocabulary (Ma, Da, Dis, and Dat being the other common ones with a very occasional 'nigh-nigh' thrown in now and then), it's a good thing it's the perfect word for so many situations.

Valentine's Day

After being gone for almost two weeks, the kids and I finally got back home on Friday night. I had a fabulous time at Michelle's wedding in Alaska (post and pictures coming soon) and the kids had fun at Ruth's house. But, I missed my Erik and it was great to get back just in time for Valentine's day.

During the day, we had lots of fun mixing up pink cookie dough, rolling it out ("It's just like Play Dough!") and cutting out heart-shaped cookies. And Go-go and Mui-mui looked perfect in the special Valentine's shirts that Grandma P. sent for them.

But the real fun happened after the kids went to bed. Erik put on his good suit (he looks SO good in it, but he almost never wears it), and I put on my red dress and we had a delicious candlelight supper. Erik made Chicken Cordon Bleu, fancy veggies, potatoes, and even homemade bread - YUM! He's such a sweetheart. Then he gave me a box of personalized M&M's ('Erik lvs Margaret'). Then I, being the mushy romantic that I am, gave him his very own pair of warm socks with Moose on them. Luckily, he loves me despite my Valentine-impairment, and we had a terrific time together on our 'date'.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Merry Christmas!

Well, it's February 1st, and we just got our tree down this week, so that must mean that it's time for a Christmas post. I got the cool Flip video camera for Christmas, so I took some footage of Christmas morning and put together this little movie. It's only 3 minutes long, but I won't be upset if you skip it - just forward to the end for the cutest shot ever of Mui-mui blowing kisses. Happy Christmas to all and to all a good Groundhog day!