Hats

The girls started off wearing their hats right, but kept turning them to suit their own preferences.

Serious about her milk

Silly hats...Silly girls

Megan likes the new chairs

Sewing project

Mason has joined Tiger Cub Scouts. His first outing is tomorrow morning. We bought the uniform last weekend and I knew I'd have to sew on the patches. So I took everything out of the bag tonight at about 8pm and got to work. By 10:15 I was done. I actually sewed on all 6 patches. Not too shabby. I did have a little trouble with them, but I think it had more to do with the small shirt. So, what do you think? (I did not do the American Flag patch.)

Megan and Morgan singing their ABC's

Goodie Goodie Goodbyn!

I never post deals on here, because frankly I just don't have the time. And as you can see I'm not that good at keeping up to date on this blog. (Gonna try to get better at this.) But a bento-blogging friend has posted this deal and I am basically reposting it.

I don't have a Goodbyn but as I have started collecting bento style lunch boxes for the kids, this one is on the list to get. It's kind of expensive at full price, something like $25, and the reviews are mixed. I do like that you use it in the upright position though and the lay-down-flat kind are a pain in the backpack.

If you join Gilt (a group buy site) through the MTV link, you receive a $20 account credit. It does take a few minutes after registering to have the credit appear in your account.

http://www.gilt.com/account/register?pkey=mtvmen2

Once you have the credit, hop over to the "Children" tab and check out the awesome selection of Goodbyns for $15 each (not a bad deal anyhow, btw). Add one to your cart, go to checkout.

Shipping is just under $8, which means, with your credit, your grand total is about $3 for a Goodbyn! And yes, I ordered two. ;o) Maggie chose purple and Mason chose white.

In case you are curious, I do not receive referral fees, credits, etc, for this link. Just wanted to share the deal. If you've been thinking about starting to bento, you cannot beat this for a pretty cool box!

I'll apologize ahead of time for the lack of quality in these pictures. The iphone takes good pictures, but they're not the best, but what do you expect from a phone.

At Uncle Sid's house, there are a bunch of frogs. They come up on the back porch in the evening to eat all the bugs. The frogs are small and didn't seem to make a whole lot of noise. Uncle Sid caught one and brought it in the house so the kids could see it. Of course Megan was skittish and Maggie and Mason giggled, but Morgan, she was right there. She needed to hold this frog and kept asking for it. I just prayed she didn't try to eat it. Check out how happy Morgan is...

Maggie was a little nervous at first and every time the frog jumped. But as long as the frog sat still, she was good.

Mason was much more willing to capture and hold the frog.

Mason's first day of school

Mason's first day of school was this morning. He started first grade today. FIRST GRADE! Where has my baby gone? He's so big now. :( But lucky for me he still likes to snuggle with me and he's not embarrassed to give me kisses. But I know that time is coming too.

Matt, the girls and I all took Mason to school this morning. Mason got to show Dad his desk (last year he sat at a table, this year he has his own desk) and his new text books: Math and Science.

This is his new teacher, Ms. Lara. She is super sweet and very friendly. We were out of town for Back to School night, but I was able to arrange to meet her yesterday. Mason told her the names of all his sisters, and she remembered them today. So sweet. I love it when people make you feel like you're important and they pay attention to what you say. Of all the students Ms. Lara has, and all the people she met on Back to School night and all the names she has to try to remember, she remembered Mason's and Maggie's. That is important to me. It makes me feel special. Kudos to you Ms. Lara, you jut earned your star in my book! :)

I am looking forward to this year and excited to see what new things Mason will learn. I think he's pretty excited too. I'll report back after school this afternoon with what Mason had to say.

Morgan's crib tent

Morgan, first thing in the morning. She has some serious bed hair going on.

Megan's crib tent

I have had a bunch of people ask me about the crib tents; what are they, what do they look like, what are they used for. So here goes:

I was not familiar with crib tents for anything except keeping cats out of the crib. It turns out, that's not all they're used for. Crib tents are wonderful tools for keeping your kids IN the crib. It is a mesh tent that is placed in the crib and the crib mattress is placed inside the tent. The tent is secured to the actual crib to prevent any injuries. Once the child is in the tent, and the tent is zipped up (zipper is on the outside), she cannot get out, nor can she throw out any of her things: binkies, blankets, pillows, lovies, etc. (Not that you are supposed to have any of that stuff in a child's crib to begin with. But hey, I don't always follow the rules.)

Crib tents are a huge topic amongst the multiples community and the only reason I can think of why is just the simple fact that there are multiple children going through the same milestones at the same time and frankly, we as parents cannot do everything at the same time. (We don't really have super human powers.)

So, Megan was jumping in her crib. So much so that she was just about bouncing herself out. Matt and I were concerned enough for her safety, that we decided to convert her crib to a toddler bed, (removed both sides and the top half of both ends of her crib.) Now she could get in and out as she pleased and there was no serious fall threat. (We also put a baby gate in her doorway to prevent her from leaving her bedroom in the middle of the night.) However, Megan was not comfortable with this arrangement. She was up and down, up and down, in and out of her bed.

She slept on the floor, she cried, she even took Morgan's blanket out of her crib and threw it over the baby gate outside of the room. Not a good thing. After several attempts to get Megan to sleep in her toddler bed, we opted to put her in a pack 'n play until we could order the crib tent. We chose to order both babies one so that Megan wouldn't feel like she was being punished by being in the tent and not Morgan. And the plus side is that both babies can now stay in their cribs longer without risking climbing, jumping or falling out.

Both babies took to the crib tents very well and have been sleeping in them just fine.

The McMillan Clan meet St. Francis

Some good friends of ours, Kiai and Laura, just received a very special shipment they had been waiting for. A statue of St. Francis that had been living in Kiai's mom's front yard. Kiai's mom was moving and said the statue needed to stay in the family. (The statue has a very interesting and funny story behind how it came to the family and whenever Kiai gets around to sharing that story publicly, I'll link to it, but for now you'll just have to use your imagination.) Anyway, St. Francis is pretty big and heavy so we had to go visit him.



I think Matt was the most excited of all to see St. Francis.




Maggie was a little hesitant to have her picture taken. She wasn't sure whether or not the statue was alive.








Megan was blowing a whistle and didn't seem to care one way or another.







(Morgan wasn't interested at all, Mason wasn't having his picture taken and me, well, I was behind the camera.)

Mailbox Walk

The kids and I like walking to our mailbox, which is about a quarter mile there and back. If I push the babies in the stroller and the big kids either walk or ride bikes, we can make it to the mailbox and back in about 20 minutes. Yesterday however, the babies wanted to ride their bikes too. I figured it was a nice day, little breeze, we can handle it, right? NOT!

This picture was taken after 20 minutes into the walk. That's my van in the background, parked in our driveway. That means we've walked...ONE house. Not to the mailbox and back. (Remember that I can push babies in the stroller to and from the mailbox in 20 minutes.) Yes, folks, we got NEXT DOOR in 20 minutes riding bikes. Guess the girls need a lot more practice. Maybe Daddy can make us a bike path around the perimeter or our back yard. Then I can watch the bike riding practice from the shaded porch while sipping something cool, keep the kids all contained within our back yard and not have to worry about someone riding into the street. Just an idea. Hint hint to Matt. :)

By the way, we did end up getting the mail, after turning around and getting the stroller. :)

Not safe

I asked the big kids what they thought of this. Mason piped up saying
he taught her how to climb up there and Maggie said she helps Megan
get down. My comment, "This is not safe. Do not teach the babies how
to do things like this." Then all the kids just laughed. What to...
What to do?

Another hair tangle mess

Megan tried brushing her own hair.

Sunday afternoon at Lake Travis

Food Blog

My friend Vanessa writes this blog. It's a great resource for me when I need some new ideas on what to feed my clan. Since we play with her boys at least once a week, I have been privileged to taste a lot of her creations too. Check it out if you get a minute and let me know what you think.

Neat ponies

I thought I'd try something out of Aunt TiTi's book. Tiff does fancy
things to her girls' hair (or at least she used to) all the time. This
was my first attempt. Morgan wouldn't sit still so she ended up with a
plain ole pony tail. But Maggie and Megan were willing participants.

Girls just wanna have fun

While Mason is at robot camp this week, I thought the girls should get
to do something a little fun too. We stopped at a park that's close to
the place Mason's camp is at. We had some fun, just us girls.

Maggie's puzzle

After looking at a couple of different stores, the choice has been made. Maggie said she'd like a flower puzzle for me to glue and then hang in her room. Her and I looked a couple of places before we found the perfect puzzle.



It's a sunflower and it's shaped. It has 500 pieces but most of them are yellow. This one is going to be a challenge.







Maggie wanted to help, so we did the layout first. Pull all the pieces out of the box, lay them face up and sort by color, pulling out any flat edges. Since this puzzle is shaped, there are not a whole lot of flat edged pieces. But here we are all sorted and ready to go.





Fast forward 3 days and here is my progress.


I decided to start from the middle and work my way out since the middle is where there are different colors. It is super challenging because all the pieces look the same; pegs on top and bottom and holes on right and left. And all these pieces are the same size...TINY! Each piece is about 1/2" sq.



















So now comes the hard part, the yellow petals. I am excited to see the end result and I think Maggie is too. She keeps coming to check in with me. After I showed her the completion of the center, she said, "oh, I thought you'd be all done by now." Funny! I told her that I'm not in a hurry to finish the puzzle, that I enjoy the process and when it's done, she'll be able to enjoy it all the time. She seems okay with that. Hopefully the next picture will be that of a completed sunflower.

So proud

Morgan was very proud of herself.

Hobby Time

One of my hobbies, and major stress reliever, is doing jigsaw puzzles. I used to do them all the time, however since having children I have not done any. Small pieces and small children do not go hand in hand. How are you supposed to know if any small children lose/eat/throw away any pieces until the puzzle is finished and there are missing pieces? Yeah, that would really make me angry and therefore add to any stress I would be trying to rid myself of, so I have just not done any. Until now.


I decided our dining room table was a good place since we hardly ever use it and I could bock off the area with pieces of our Superyard. I had a couple of puzzles in the closet that I have been meaning to do (I purchased them before Mason was born...almost 7 years ago). So I grabbed one that Matt, Mason and I had a discussion about a while back, fractal images. I couldn't tell you what a fractal image is, but they are super neat and the pictures are beautiful. Click on the link above or here to learn more about fractal images.

The puzzle was a 500 piece puzzle and the picture on the box was only about 1" square. I expected it to take me a few weeks but I was done within one week. I was very excited to complete it so fast and I remembered the anticipation feeling of getting so close to the end. I was pretty relaxed this week and whenever I needed a moment, I just had to step into the dining room.

The big kids tried to help me a few times, but the pieces are smaller than what they are used to and the colors were very similar to the other pieces. Maggie tried to watch me a few times too, but said it was "boring" because all I did was sit there and look at the table. :)

The babies do get a little upset with me while I'm at the table because they can't get in. They can still come over to the gate and see me though, it's not like I'm closed off in another room completely.

So the project is all finished now. (I wish I would have taken a before picture but I didn't think of it. I won't forget next time.) Mason really likes the completed puzzle. I am going to glue the puzzle and have it framed for him to hang in his room.





Here are pictures of the other puzzles I have glued and framed in the past. I glued them using Mod Podge, and then had them matted and framed at Michaels.

The dragon took me a very long time to do - a couple of months if I remember correctly, and cost me a lot to have framed because of the size. Both these puzzles are shaped puzzles.











The money and the cards are fun because they are so realistic.











I do like doing puzzles that are shaped, or not square, because there is more of a challenge to them. After Maggie saw the completed fractal puzzle and heard Mason claim it, she said she wanted one too. She wants a flower puzzle so the search is on. I'll let her pick it out, but I may need to steer her a little.