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.

Kids playing at the park

Baby update

The twins are 2! Holy cow, time flies by so quick these days. I looked at my last blog post, May. Yes it has been almost 2 months since a post, shame on me. Well, I'm going to try to get better. I said try.

I took the babies for their 2 year well check and the doctor says they are getting so big and they are doing great! I'll have to add pictures later, since I don't seem to have any clear ones right now.

Megan is a little mini Maggie. I know we've said this before, but Megan really is Maggie ALL OVER AGAIN! I surely hope I've learned something over the last 4 years with Maggie to make things a little easier with Megan. Megan and Maggie are both strong willed, stubborn very emotional and like to test me. Basically they are ALL GIRL!

Morgan is my little peanut. She is so sweet and such a good little girl. She makes me laugh every day with the things she does. Morgan is still going to physical and speech therapy. She continues to make progress with both, but will continue to go until they tell me otherwise. It's a little strange to hear Megan speak in complete sentences these days and then hear Morgan say only one word or two word phrases, but I constantly tell myself that "just because they are twins, doesn't mean they are the same person." Each baby/child develops in their own time and mine are no different.

I wanted to get pictures done for their 2 year birthday, but have decided that we will just wait until the fall and redo family pictures at that time and just order some individuals of the girls. (I think I might order individuals of the big kids too and not order school pictures.)

So here are the babies' stats:

Megan:
35 1/4" tall (50-75%)
29.0 pounds (75%)

Morgan:
34 1/2" tall (50%)
24.0 pounds (10-25%)

Both girls are growing good and have kept to their growth curves. They are, and the big kids too, healthy children for the most part so we don't see the doctor very often, but both babies did so well. They even had to get shots this time and neither cried.

Look for pictures to follow soon!