OurLittleMcFamily.com

kid #1–Daddy, I like two things: naps and hiking.

 kid #2–Mom, we need to sell the Wii so we can buy a baby.

Felt. Felt. Felt. That is what I am up to these days. I don’t have a cool picture of felt like Jaime, but I did buy 28 yards of it. At half off, I walked out of the store only spending $60. Why felt you ask? We are making felt playhouses for Christmas. See Here

I don’t sew, but my girlfriends do. They are determined to teach me. So far, I have kept myself busy with cutting, stuffing, and pinning the pieces. Jaime and Jena have helped me with the sewing. Adam also sews so we borrowed a machine from a wonderfully generous someone. We are excited to finish the project together for the kids.

My kids are a little too big, and our space is a little too small, to make use of our kitchen table. So I came up with the idea of making panels that will hook onto the kids’ bunkbeds. Two for the girls and two for the boys. My panel themes are: Cupcakery, Grocery Store, Stargate, and Buried Treasure. The ninos are great at imaginative play, and playing together in general. So this is the perfect gift. They can pretend to walk through the stargate–ready to conquer another world one day, and then go shopping pastries and tea at the cupcakery the next. So Cool. I am planning a beauty parlor for Nikki’s birthday in February. So many ideas. So little time. I will definitely post pictures of the finished project.

The best part about this project is that I have been super productive while spending wonderfully abnormal amounts of time with my girlfriends the past few weeks. We could quite possibly never stop crafting for that reason alone.

The three oldest are really getting the “hang” of it. Danny and Ezzy can go over the edge and down the wall on their own now. Nikki is just two steps behind. Juan has yet to step over the edge. He pumps himself up, and then chickens out. We are going to a find a place where the edge isn’t so high for him.

Thanks, Unlce Dave, for always being willing to go out and help.

This Halloween was soooooooooo much better than our first. What a difference a year makes! No meltdowns over the food. No confusion over people dressing in strange costumes. The kids knew what I meant when I asked what they would like to be for Halloween. They knew how to say trick-or-treat. They didn’t freak when I took their candy at bedtime. It was AWESOME!!!!

Just for the record, I made both tutus. Ezzy wanted to be a bee and Nikki wanted to be a fairy princess (go figure). I even broke out my scrapbooking glue dots to adhere the antennas to the head band–genius! Thanks, Jena and Jaime, for helping with the tutus and the “bee wing” crisis.

The boys were good sports to go as superheros. Danny wanted to be Harry Potter, but I refused to pay $40 when all said and done to get everything I would need. Wompy wanted to be a chocolate chip cookie–so that people could eat him. But that didn’t work out so well. He became Superman at the last minute. Actually, the costume fit him much better than it did Danny last year. Oh yeah, I also made Danny’s shirt. Well, I bought a plain red t-shirt and sharpied the design.

We trick-or-treated at grandma’s. Took pictures with the Demarco’s. Won first place in our church’s chili cook-off!!! And brought home more great candy than any one family needs for the year. Seriously! It was a great Halloween.

If you live in Vegas, or anywhere similar temperature wise, then you know not to carve your pumpkins until the week of Halloween. We broke the cardinal rule this year since Grandma and Grandpa Penning were here for the baptism. It was worth having to “deep-freeze” the pumpkins so that grandpa could help carve. We also dipped carameled apples and made Squished Witches with Grandma McCracken.

The next Saturday, we had the McCracken clan over to paint pumpkins and decorate Halloween cookies. Yeah, the kids have been celebrating for two weeks now. :) The ninos had a blast with their cousins.

Check out more pictures here and here. The amount of candy that was piled on top of the sugar cookies is totally kid ridiculous. Don’t you think? And yet, they ate the whole cookie. :)