Search for the Bishop Museum

Last Saturday was Healthy Kids Day put on by the YMCA at the Bishop Museum, which meant it was free for kama'aina (locals). Couldn't miss it... glad we didn't. But it took some effort. We searched around downtown by the palace thinking we were supposed to find it, for about an hour, and finally found out from someone that we were in the totally wrong place. oops. We're local, yeah, we are.


We finally got to the museum, luckily we had packed heavy on the snacks. We actually did not see hardly any of the museum, so we'll have to go back. But we were totally into all the little health booths and games and activities going on. It was pretty hot, but such a fun family thing. Jeremy is even laughing at me because of course I managed to come home with a prize- I won a T-shirt and Crayola marker set from the EMCEE at the very end for being the first to find a tube of sunblock. It was awesome! ;)

You know how girls are...

You know how girls are with their brothers too! I think Lucy convinced Dad to do up these fancy dresses. Then, the music began...

Easter Recap

There are a lot of pictures in this post- I guess you could say Easter was pretty fun! We had to dye eggs... princess style of course- poor Willie, everything's princess style.





We did something a little different; I've never done it before at least. We dyed empty egg shells this year. I really like how cool it looks to see the inside and outside of the egg dyed. This idea all started with Freecycle back in November or so. A spanish teacher had posted wanting a few people who could help her save their eggshells for her class. For Easter, she wanted to do a spanish tradition (which I can't remember the name of this tradition, or where it's done, or even the link that she shared about it) where people crack a confetti-filled egg over another person's head for good luck (or some reason?) for the Easter holiday. Neat, I thought and offered to save my eggshells for her, I thought it was the least I could do for the freecycle community. So for a couple months I learned how to perfectly crack egg shells just on the top, rinse them out, and save them. Then, the teacher sends me an email that she's decided not to do the activity with her class. So, what was I going to do with dozens of eggshells? Well, I didn't know exactly. But I kept on saving them and thought, maybe I'll do the activity...



I had acrued quite a lot of eggs, so I had to do something with a group. The best group to use them on was our playgroup. But, I didn't know how smashing eggs on the heads of 2 year olds would fly with the mamas. I wanted to do at least an egg hunt, so I still prepared the eggs. Our playgroup the week of Easter was a park playdate, so I thought, hmm, I can do an egg hunt outside and I'll make the eggs completely biodegradeable so we won't worry to much about clean up. Hence, the eggs filled with Fruity Pebbles, not confetti (stroke of genius if you ask me). Except, again with 2 year olds it's a little diferent story, as some of them were confused and actually bit into the egg shell to try and eat it. (yikes!) I also decided that we wouldn't encourage the kids to smash them over each other's heads, but just smash them open to find the prize. So I had prepared about 72 eggs with a little sticker inside and filled them with fruity pebbles. The park playdate was canned on account of bad weather, so we ended up having the egg hunt at the TAB and also had time to have the kids make little easter baskets to hunt with. Here's the TAB egg hunt:




That weekend, there was an egg hunt at the park next to us, hosted by the community library and a local church group. We took the kids to that and although the hunt was probably finished in under 2 minutes, it was fun.






Happy Easter!

Precious (Random) Moments

A moment before church... I curled Lucy's hair with an iron and she of course knowing she looks like Sleeping beauty, said she needed to hold the sleeping beauty rose. Willie's just chillin' GQ style.
A common scene in our house, too determined not to sit at the table for their snack but mom not wanting them roaming the house with food, so here is the compromise. I love it.
Lucy feeding Willie. She thinks it's so fun. She turning into a little mother hen- copying what mommy does, what mommy says... ah me.
One of Lucy's talked-about friends, Sunny. Talked about means a friend that she randomly will just talk about and of course always asks when we're going to see her next. She is a cute girl. This is the first kid that I've ever babysat (besides my neighbors) and I actually was so excited that someone had asked me to babysit! It's funny, but I guess because I'm home all the time I feel like, why aren't more people asking for my help? And babysitting is a chance to help someone. Hmm, should I have said that out loud?! ;)
A friend had a "Princess and Pirate" party at a park. It was so fun! And I loved the opportunity to use Lucy's Halloween costume one more time! I quite liked Willie's pirate costume too. I fished it out just a couple days beforehand with whatever on hand kind of thing, but it was quite cute. My favorite part is the little booty sack with a skull and crossbones on it (made from the bottom of a cut up onesie.)

Vote For Me

Because I know you're just thinking this is the most adorable picture you've ever seen...!! Then, you need to go vote for me!! :)

Some of our playgroup friends will remember this little stoplight I made for our transportation playschool. Being I made it without even having to go to the store, I decided it definetly falls under the "recycled craft" category; and I entered it in this Disney familyfun.com Amazing Recycled Craft Contest! So, do me a favor when you have a minute and go vote for me!!
You do have to create a login in order to vote. Go here to register as a new user. Or, if you happen to already have a login, you can go here.
Go here to vote for my craft!
PS- I've noticed this site does tend to be down quite a lot...it'll say page doesn't exist or has been removed. Which isn't true, but they must be updating it alot because sometimes I'll have to revisit it.

My "Ss" Day

S is for sick... which is what my kids are today, so I hopefully will get a few posts up. Here is a sum up from preschool last week at our house.

We started with singing songs about the sun and stars.
We found out whose shoe was smallest.

Last week the kids learned about taste and touch, so this week I decided to add the other senses. We explored the 3 senses that started with s: Smell, Sight, and Sound. There's no picture with sound- we just listened to different sounds off my computer. It was generally a little difficult for the kids. If you're looking for sound effects, this is a great sound effects website, the easiest to use that I found.
Here's Lucy smelling peanut butter. We also smelled: an orange, lotion (flowery scent, I tried to get real flowers, but...), alcohol dipped cotton balls (the kids were close on this one actually!), Irish spring soap, & there was one more....

We played "I Spy" to use our sense of sight. I spy with my little eye, something that starts with the letter s...


We had a special snack...we visited Scotland to have Scottish Scones. Since the mid1800s, scones are traditionally served during tea time in Scotland. We listened to some traditional Scottish music while we ate. Along with the scones, we also had skewered strawberries.

We made seven silly sandwiches... this was quite a big project for the kids to undertake. A few had trouble making it to the end of all seven sandwiches. This is a cardstock cut out backed on cardboard (cereal boxes), then the kids glued different items into the shape of an "S": star stickers, sandpaper, sponges, seashells & sand, spaghetti, straws, and various seeds. We made it into a sandwich book.



I don't know if this will work very well, but if anyone is interested here is a template I used, hopefully you could copy and paste it:

We decided to go on a trip and sail to Scotland in a ship. We converted our papasan chair into the ship and had someone pretending to be the sailor, the sea, the storm, and the shark. It was pretty fun, we "drew sticks" to see who was what part. The sailor got to wear a cool hat.


Four funny sailors making silly faces!

Homemade Gift Challenge

OK! So this is how this works...The first 5 people to respond to this post will receive something made by me for you. My choice made especially for you. Of course there are some restrictions and limitations:~

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3 It will be done sometime this year.
4. You have no clue what it will be... it may be a story. It may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may draw or paint something. I may bake something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure. ;-)
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
6. I will send it anywhere! It doesn't matter where you live!

The catch? The catch is that you must repost this on your own blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on their blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did will win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!!

Oh! And be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it.

*Saw this on an old OR friend's blog- and I love it! I echo for emphasis: you may not like what I send you, and it may be something totally weird-- but I think it's fun and can't wait to send it to you!