Our First Nativity Reenactment

For our Family Home Evening the Monday before Christmas, we joined with some friends of ours at their home to do our first reenactment of the nativity. We've always wanted to play it out, but always fell short on characters. We need Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise men, sheep, an angel... we never had quite as many people as we needed. This was the perfect opportunity for us!

Disney Hedbanz

One of my favorite things to give and get for birthday and Christmas presents is a good game. Since my family does game night every Sunday night, new games are even more welcome in our house. I love having a variety of games to choose from. Some games are more fun than others. But all games give us an excuse to have fun together as a family.

Merry Merry Christmas

Christmas at our house is always a pretty quiet affair. When I say quiet, I just mean that we don't have a lot of official plans. We don't go anywhere, and we don't have people come over. We open gifts, eat some yummy food, enjoy one another's company, and just bask in the grandness of the holiday.

Christmas Eve Traditions

My kids were counting down for Christmas Eve since Thanksgiving. We have a few fun countdowns in our house that they paid very specific attention to. We also have a giant calendar on the wall. They knew down to the day how long they had to wait for the big day to arrive.

Big Reveal!

When it comes to birth, I typically try to go as natural as possible. I opt for minimal intervention. I don't do pain meds or anything like that during birth. I just prefer it that way. All natural! Sometimes, however, I choose a little bit of modern technology to spice things up.

My Kids are So Goofy

I love them so much. 

First Haircut

It's always hard to cut my child's hair for the very first time. I love those soft silky baby locks. I love the loose curls. Kingston went through a few weeks of beautiful baby boy curls. Then, unfortunately, he got into the messy and scraggly hair look. That's when I finally had to take the step and give him his first haircut. Bittersweet indeed.

Holly Berries

Nature is beautiful. There are so many things to appreciate out in it. I don't even have to leave our yard to find innumerable wonders right out my door. My children agree. In fact, I'm sure they know this even better than I do, as they spend much more time outdoors.

DiceAFARI

For Family Game night this week we pulled out a game the kids had never played before: Diceafari. We came into possession of this game a year or so back. Cam and I had played it, and were waiting to introduce the kids. We finally pulled it out this evening, and it was a hit!

Chilly Park Day

Last week I did something I hadn't been able to find the energy to do for awhile. I took my kids to a park. Now, to be honest, I had external motivation. I was supposed to meet some friends from church there. Unfortunately, I was running late. By the time I dropped Cameron off at work I was an hour late for our park date. I was also on the other side of town. I double checked, but my friends were headed home by that time. Instead of giving up and heading home a complete failure, I decided I was going to keep the momentum and just hit a park by my husband's office.

Mayfield Park Nature Preserve

Last week the kids had their first Austin Nature and Science Center Homeschool class of the season. We were out of town for the one that took place in September, so we were extra eager to make it to this one. It wasn't held at the normal location. It took place on site at the Mayfield Park Nature Preserve.

Maddy's Family Home Evening

A few weeks back Maddy had an Activity Day with the girls at our church where they talked about planning lessons for Family Home Evening. As part of that, the girls helped prepare things for a lesson of their own to be given at our next FHE.

Halloween 2013

We bought costumes this year for our Disney World trip, but we weren't able to use them because our Halloween party was rained out. We were all glad that we were still able to use the costumes for Halloween night though!

Gum Chewing Myths

One of our house rules is that we do not chew gum. Period. There are far too many negative consequences, not the least of which is gum EVERYWHERE. Gum is the nastiest thing to try to clean up. So, we nixed the problem as best we could by forbidding it to be chewed. There. Done.

Natural Play

It has been beautiful here in Austin for the past couple of weeks. This week we have had highs in the 60s and 70s. It's been fantastic! The lows have gotten into the 40s at night. I love me some cool weather! It's also been raining here and there. I REALLY love me some rain.

Kingston goes to Nursery

The title of this post reminds me of a Curious George Book. It makes me rethink my one time dream of becoming a children's book author. I mean, look how good I am at coming up with titles! The rest has to be a piece of cake, right?

Be Free Froggy!

I am a bit of a naturalist. I feel like, in a lot of cases, the world is better when we don't mess around with it. I am not a huge fan of zoos and the like because I feel like the animals are happier in their natural homes. Obviously there are exceptions to this, but I just use this as a general rule to illustrate my point and to lead into my story.

Campfire Cookies

So, I thought I would be funny and make my next post based on a recipe from Pinterest. Hey, I never said Pinterest was bad, just that we need to use it for ideas and not base our standards on it.

Non Pinterest Worthy Halloween Decor

There are so many standards in our lives that we are forced to try to live up to. We're told what we should look like. What our family size should be. What we should do for a living (or NOT do). What our homes should look like. Trying to live up to society's expectations can be exhausting! There are things in social media that, while they can be fun, can also make the situation far worse.

King Bananana

Kingston learns new things all the time. Some of those things I'm happy he learned, and some of those things I wish he would learn when he gets a bit older and I don't have to worry about him hurting himself.

Best Friends

I love my kids. I love that they spend so much time together. They do almost everything together. They are definitely best friends.

The other day we went on a walk together. We were out for probably over half an hour. They had a ball, and held hands nearly the entire time.

Delicious and Nutritious

For me, the most difficult part of early pregnancy is food. It is a huge challenge to figure out what sounds good to eat. It's also a very important thing. If you eat the wrong thing there may be dire consequences. I spend a lot of time listening to my body and trying to determine what I can safely eat, and make, for every meal.

Squirrel!

I'm blaming it on pregnancy, but I seem to be even more distractible as of late. Cameron tries to keep me in check, but when he's not around sometimes I feel hopelessly distracted.

Surprise Ending

So, what story would be complete without a surprise ending?

Final Day at Magic Kingdom

Our last full day in Disney World and we had big plans! We were heading back to Magic Kingdom. The forecast did not call for rain, so we were very hopeful we would have the chance to enjoy the park in a way we weren't able to on Monday. The park was closing early that night (at 7pm) because of the Halloween Party (that we decided NOT to attend), but we still had hope that we could do everything we wanted before we were kicked out.

Disney's Epcot Center

By Thursday we had learned our lesson! The crowd levels were supposed to be low at Epcot for this day, but we didn't want to take any chances. We were going to start first thing! We arrived at the park just before it opened. This was the only park that we actually had to wait to pass through the gate with our tickets after having our bags all looked through (a daily occurrence). Usually there were no lines and we just walked right through, having our tickets quickly verified before entering the park. We actually had to wait through quite a long line.

Disney's Hollywood Studios

Wednesday morning we woke up ready to go! It was pretty cloudy outside, so we packed up ready for rain. I had purchased one and two gallon ziploc bags to keep things dry inside. They worked like a charm. I put anything that would get damaged in the rain inside a bag. I also used them to keep things organized. Nothing was getting wet today!

Downtown Disney

When we woke up Tuesday morning Cameron and I had a mission. We would be prepared for whatever nature threw at us, and we would still do what we wanted while at Disney World. In our minds the first step to this was finding good rain gear, and a quality stroller cover.

Magic Kingdom in the Rain

We woke up early Monday morning. We ate breakfast and did our morning routine. Then we were ready to head out to start our day at Magic Kingdom!

Sunday is a Day of Rest

Never have I been more grateful that we honor the Sabbath day then while on our hectic, exhausting, fun filled Disney Vacation. I know a lot of people would balk at the thought of "losing" one of their vacation days. To us, it was a day very very well spent resting and recharging.

Disney's Animal Kingdom

When we went to sleep at 2 o'clock in the morning, we weren't exactly sure how the next day was going to go for us. Our original plans had us spending the day at Animal Kingdom. That sounded great, but we knew there was no way we could show up to the park when it first opened and still have the energy we needed to finish out our day -- or even enjoy our time there at all. So, we decided we would sleep until we woke up, and then take it from there. Lesson learned: Not having a firm plan is like having no plan at all.

Traveling is part of the Vacation

We are back from our trip to Disney World! So much went wrong, but even more when right. It was a crazy fun and exhausting week. Today marks the first of a series of posts documenting some of our experiences on our trip. I hope you can enjoy the continued Disney theme, if not, I promise it will eventually fade into the archives.

6 Random Disney Things

Instead of going through and giving a description of the remaining fun Disney Themed crafts and treats I made for our trip, I'm just going to show you some pictures! Tomorrow I finally start posting about our actual trip! I hope you're not all burnt out on Disney already! There is so much more fun to be had!

ID tags to hook on belt loops.
My cell phone number is on the back.

Label for our stroller -- it will hang with some ribbons.

Signs for the bedroom doors at the resort.

See you real soon!

Disney Shirt #3: Mickey colored Mickeys

Three Disney shirts seemed like a good round number for our trip. I had a hard time settling on the final design I would use. When the time came though, I decided that for the last of our shirts it was worth the effort to do another sewing project. I found a really fun design on Pinterest that I knew I could do a simple variation of, again using the velour that I already had on hand. Even though it's still a Mickey Mouse shape, the colors made it different enough that it didn't just feel like a repeat.

There really weren't any instructions online for this particular design, so I had to make it up as I went along. I made my own pattern for the giant Mickey head with the help of my Cricut Mini, and then cut out the different shapes for the different parts from that. It was a ton of cutting and sewing! I was lucky enough to have Cameron help me for a little while. He thought of the brilliant idea to use quarters as the pattern to cut the buttons on the front of the Mickey. What would I do without his genius? Then the baby woke up from his nap and that was the end of that. He did leave his phone in the sewing room so I could listen to Psych while I sewed. Though I'm not sure he did it intentionally...

The original description I found for these shirts used a solid white T-shirt. I liked how that looked, but I didn't have a solid white shirt for each of us. I was grateful then to discover that the pattern still looked great on the different colors I already had.

Strangely enough, the sewing required for the more complicated Mickey design for this shirt actually went a lot smoother than did the sewing on just the plain Mickey shape for the last shirts. Perhaps it was because I sewed on each color separately and therefore there was less surface area to mess up and have pucker. Once sewn on, the appliques all laid pretty flat and looked super fun!

I was really pleased with how the shirts looked when they were all complete. It was actually a coincidence that we ended up with two of each color. Ha! I love happy coincidences. I have to admit, when I finished these shirts -- the last of 18 homemade shirts for our trip -- I was pretty glad to be done. There were only a couple of days left before we were scheduled to leave for Disney World. I was ready to feel prepared. No more big projects! Now it was time for the real fun to begin!

Making Our Own Mouse Ears

One of the classic souvenirs at any Disney Park is Mouse Ears. There are tons of different kinds sold. Some of them are quality. Lots of them are not. All of them are a bit spendy for what you get. One tip I found online was to make your own mouse ears to wear while perusing the parks. I was all for it.

Crafty FAIL

The kids and I decided to make a craft of our own. We wanted to make a candle that was colored like Mickey. You know, yellow/orange bottom, red middle, black top. Simple right? Yeah... I figured I'd post about this one just so you don't get the impression that all of our Disney crafts turned out wonderfully and exactly as we'd envisioned.

Disney Shirt #2: Personalized Velour Mickey

The second shirts I made for my family needed to be a bit different than the first. I hmmmed and hahed for quite a while deciding on exactly what I wanted. Finally I settled on something I was excited about: Mickey.

Little Things that Keep Us Organized

Sometimes when we are planning trips away from our normal daily lives we are so focused on getting a break from the day to day mundane things, that we forget the little things in our average day that make life easier. Not everything we have at home is only useful while we are there. There are certain things that would make being away from home that much easier -- especially when it comes to being away from home with kids.

Mickey Mouse Luggage Tags

A trip to Disney is really enhanced with the little extras. Because of that I did a bunch of poking around trying to find a handful of fun crafty extras to make our trip a bit more special. One thing I found was a cute Mickey Luggage tag idea. It is simple, and yet super cute!

Disney Shirt #1: Freezer Paper Stencil Shirts

One of the most obvious things we needed for our trip to Disney World was fun, homemade Disney shirts! There are so many easy options online! I had a hard time picking. I didn't want to have to purchase a lot of supplies for them, but I wanted them to look fabulous! Story of my life I guess...

I ordered blank shirts online. I got a pretty good deal for some good quality shirts. They took a bit longer to arrive than I would have liked, but they were still here with a couple of weeks left before the trip. The site I bought through let me pick the sizes, but not the color of my shirts. I figured it would be fine, and it was. I do wish there were more brightly colored shirts and less greys and blacks. It's okay though... they'll do.

A couple of Father's Days ago the kids and I made t-shirts for the dads in our life with freezer paper and acrylic/fabric paint. I really liked the way they turned out, so I decided to try that method again for the first of our Disney shirts.

The first step was the find a design for the front of each shirt. The absolute best resource for this was on the Disney Family website. They have pumpkin carving templates that work great! They had a ton of Disney Characters to choose from! The kids were thrilled I let them pick the character for their shirt.

Once all the designs had been chosen, I printed them each out in the size that worked best for the shirts. Then, one by one, I taped the design over freezer paper (plastic coating down) on top of a clean cutting board. I made sure the paper was a bit smaller than the freezer paper so when I taped them down both papers were secured. I then did the tedious work of using an exacto knife to cut out the design. This was by far the most time consuming part of the job.

After each design was cut out, I took the freezer paper and placed it on the T-shirt that was already arranged on my ironing board. When I had it exactly where I wanted it, I ironed on the freezer paper. When the freezer paper was firmly attached to the shirt, I used a foam brush and brushed the fabric paint over the design. The only parts exposed are the parts you want painted. The freezer paper is the perfect stencil!

I was happy that I had some glitter fabric paint I had been given years and years ago. I half expected it to be dried out, but thankfully it had been sealed and was still perfectly good! Yay! The sparkles are so much fun on the shirts.


Once the paint was all dry I peeled off the paper to reveal the finished product. Each time I did it I was just as amazed as ever at how beautifully it turned out. It was like magic! Our very first dose of Disney Magic.

You know a project is good when you have trouble picking a favorite one. All the shirts turned out great! I can't wait to wear them! The kids liked them so much that they wanted me to make them more just like these! I was determined to have some variety and didn't want to do the exact same thing twice. Frankly, these are cute enough that there's a part of me that wishes we could each have two! You can never have too many Disney shirts, right?

Getting into Character

The night before we are going to leave on a big trip to Disney, and what do you think I was doing? Well, let me put it this way, What would you have done on International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Well, of course, we went to Krispy Kreme for our free donuts.