Hello winter?

I am a great goal setter.  Achieving those goals is another story.  

Susan came up with a great idea to inspire the family to eat healthy and exercise and so we came up with a little friendly competition.  You get points for things like drinking 48 oz of water a day, eating 5 servings of fruits and veggies, no sugar, correct portion sizes and exercise.  Its been so good for me!  I've found it's so easy to not give the kids sugar if I know it will add 2 points to our tally, and it's a great incentive to drink water and include fruits and veggies through out the day.  Turns out I have a sweet tooth though, and mid afternoon I'd give anything for a treat.  So I've turned to honey.  Honey on toast, honey in peanut butter, honey on apples.  I figure once I can get in the habit of No Sugar, I can try to kick my honey habit.

For once we got snow on a day other than Sunday, and although it threatened to melt before the day was over, we still got a snowman in. The first of the season.

 Alex thought it was fantastic, Heidi had a love/hate relationship with the cold snow and her hands.

 Alex is so creative, she "accessorized" the snowman all by herself.

 After this one was done she insisted on making a girl, only there wasn't much snow left.

 Heidi loves my camera, and taking pictures of herself.

 I joined Pinterest and swore I would actually do half the things I pinned.  So Today we made finger paint and it was fabulous!

It was super easy to whip up and I was amazed at how well the colors came through with so little food coloring.

The texture was like pudding, and it was made from kitchen ingredients so I didn't have to worry about them licking their fingers or staining anything.

I love colors.

 After the finger paint we made a "sand" box out of old rice.  The kids "cooked" for a good 45 minutes and got along wonderfully the whole time.  That is until I left the room for 5 minute and found Heidi had filled the oven drawer with rice.

While we were cooking lunch a box of tongue depressors I'd ordered showed up and I was amazed when Alex called me over to see this.  What a little smartee!

Birthday month is upon us and I'm all geared up.  I fell hard into the work of dollhouses and after far too much research decided that dollhouse furniture is a racket and the figures themselves arn't much better.  There is hardly any selection at all, and what selection exists is all on Amazon.  I was finally able to pull myself out of the seductive grasp of all things miniature and instead bought some tongue depressors to glue together into beds and such.  Alex is a creative kid, she will have much more fun making her own stuff than opening and closing that adorable miniature $14 fridge anyway.
   Interestingly enough all the birthdays this month fall on the weekend (I'm including Friday in that) so for the next 4 weeks I should have something fun to post about, that is if I don't become obsessed with making miniature furniture.
   All my sister in laws share birthdays (quite convenient for me) We already celebrated Kara and Kate, and so now I'm preparing for the Danielle and Natalie fun in a couple weeks.  Natalie lives in Tennessee at the moment, but Danielle's birthday will involve jumping and icecream.