Sibling rivalry...

OMGoodness. It has gotten so terribly bad at my house. They are not even nice when they talk to each other and they are not wanting to be mean. Their tones are driving me crazy! But then, after about half a day of listening to the bickering I find myself yelling things like "BE NICE TO EACH OTHER!!!" or "STOP YELLING!" So stupid. But man... after 4 days of this, I am so sick and tired of it!

I need some ideas. Does anyone have any besides "just don't kill them". lol... (My husband is full of great advice.) I have already taken away the tv time (always a factor in bad attitudes) and cut back on the sugar (usually the same, but not always). I just need some tools. Even if they don't work, something to work with to get me to stop pulling my hair out would be nice.

It doesn't help that Logan has had his first two monster fits in the last two days, and he has started yelling back at us "YES I CAN" when we say no.

Sigh... I am worn out.

High stepping at the fair

Monday the band spent 10 plus hours at Valley Fair. They received rounds of applause and had several park goers up and moving to the beat. After we marched the kids enjoyed the rides and water park. It was a little cool but the kids had a great time and we put on many miles walking around the park. Can you believe June is gone? The summer is going so fast and we only have 3 weeks of baseball left.

MTM ~ Independence Day!

Today over at Muffin Tin Monday Michelle's theme of the week was 4th of July!

Two days ago, while looking around on the internet for fun kid food options with a 4th of July theme I came up with very little that was healthy. So I set out to make a menu that wouldn't be completely loaded with junk, but also not devoid of fun. Armed with a few goodies from market yesterday, I set it my mission to make a healthy lunch that was loaded with red, white, and blue.

Top: This cup was filled with raspberry lemonade with frozen blueberries in it (it looked really good, but they got a hold of it), and then large pretzel rods, and a star shaped sandwich.

Bottom: Orgnaic strawberries and blueberries from the market seperated by homemade whipping cream. Cream cheese to dip the pretzels in and sprinkles to decorate them with. They LOVED that:

Red, white, and blue sprinkles = $2

Pretzel rods = $3

Independence to play with your food = Priceless.

Sunday Night Football

Passing league was suppose to end tonight but we found out we have a play off game on Sunday the 12Th of July. The boyz did a great job tonight and the weather was perfect! Tanner caught a nice pass but I missed it on the camera. Uugg! I was too busy given high-fives instead of taking the photo. Tabor showed great hustle tonight on the field and is one of the best O-line men we have as per the coach not the bias mother. He is going to have to build up some endurance if is going to play both ends of the ball this fall. Dalton and Tamara are going to be putting on some walking shoes tomorrow as the band plays at Valley Fair. Tamara is one of the chaperone's that will go with from 9am to 9:30pm. The band will preform a couple of times then take in the rides at the park.

Nicollet Days Parade

We had a great day on Sunday putting a close on Nicollet Friendship Days for 2009. We served at a Waffle feed and enjoyed carnival rides, Demo Derby and had a very large fireworks show. Today's final celebration was a parade with 90 floats, Dalton did a great job keeping the beat on his base drum. We get a short rest then its on to the final night of passing league football at MSU. And we said our goodbyes to Roldofo who left for Paraguay today.

We have a mouser! And the circle of life...

Samson brought in a rat today, still alive, to show us that he could. He just turned 3 months old. WOW! What a mouser! He brought it to us, and then growled when we tried to get it... and that was when I noticed that the poor thing in his mouth was still very much alive... and also very broken. So I shooed the cat outside, followed him around (while he growled at me), and when he put the rat down and it tried to feebly hobble away on it's two remaining working legs, I hit it on the back of the head with a stick, killing it quickly and more humanely than my hunter cat would have.

And then I noticed the STUNNED and broken face of my daughter in the sliding glass door.... Sigh. She has such a good heart, but she really doesn't understand the circle of life yet, nor does she understand putting something out of it's misery. It was a long conversation.

Awwww... gotta love cool summer days.

Today it was about 65* all day long. It has bouts of warm sunshine, and bouts of cool breezes that made the wind chimes in front of the house ting with a nice rhythm. The kids have been outside all day long. We have been having fun with sidewalk chalk and crafts. Who knew that recycled cereal boxes, and $5 worth of sidewalk chalk could make up such an afternoon.

My newest fun craft project:

Boxes and lids made from old cereal boxes:

Craft-a-long coming soon. :)

Cyan and our neighbor friend Page decorated this one with little wooden hearts I had stashed in my craft stuff. They considered them a huge find for today. :)

Then, this afternoon, something magical happened...... well magical in the land of two-year-olds anyhow: A fire truck stopped right in front of our house!! (Our neighbor across the street is a firefighter. ;) )

Logan even got a badge sticker and got to go into the fire truck AND turn the lights on!

He was in seventh heaven and he waved until they were out of sight.

Mini Vacation is over

For the past couple of days I have been with out all of the boyz! The football coaches wives got together for a amazing meal at a Italian restaurant. Then the next night I met my parents for a great meal as well. I also enjoyed putting my feet up and having control of the remote! I watched all the DIY and Food Network I wanted. We finished up summer school yesterday. The last hour I have a group of 1st grade boys who all think the ELLIOTT Boyz walk on water. The boys each were drawing a picture of the Elliott boyz playing sports with them. Dalton was in charge of the playground, Tanner was wrestling and Tabor was playing football. And then the Fourth boy was drawing a picture of a garden and Tabor. Naturally I thought it was Mrs.Elliott in the garden, NOPE he said its Taboard. ( yes, he called him Taboard each of the youngsters I work with have some speech issues, plus he is so damn cute when he says it!) My mom said we don't have to plant pumpkins cuz Taboard plants them for us. So that makes me chuckle a bit then he tells me what he plants in his garden. I have a whole row of onion rings planted, hmmm I say do you mean onions? NOPE he says we plant onion rings you know the ones mom cooks and you dip in ranch. At this point I couldn't hold back the tears of laughter! Kids do say the darnest things. Dalton and Rodolfo come home this morning at 9 am YEAH!

Photo Friday

Book pick of the week ~ Chickens Aren't the Only Ones

This was one of my very favorite books when I was little. I remember asking my mom to read it nearly everyday for a while there. It was the reason that when we came across this at the beach, I knew what it was! Anything that leaves a 20 year long good impression has to get a moment of recognition.

So this weeks book pick is Chicken's Aren't the Only Ones, by Ruth Heller. Packed full with information on the worlds egg layers in a quick and poetic tone, this book is sure to fascinate even the youngest book lovers.

This page says "The Ostrich lays the largest egg, and the hummingbird the smallest."

The beautiful artistry doesn't hurt it's fame in my mind either. Looking at all these eggs on this page compared to one another always fascinated me. I would always try to guess which egg was the robins egg, and where in the world the chicken fit in to this picture with all their colorful eggs and all chickens ever laid was brown, brown, brown. (We had our own hens and I don't think I had ever had white eggs at the time. Or cows milk, come to think of it.)

I loved the part about the ocean egg layers as well... Alex recently used the egg sack laid by a shark as a clue in our Animal, Animal, or Animal game we play in the car.

This page says "The mother seahorse lays her eggs inside the fathers pouch. He keeps them there until they hatch and then he's through. I think that's nice of him, don't you?"

Such a beautiful book, and worth checking out!

Off to Football Camp!

Tabor was busy packing for football camp today, they leave at 12 noon for Duluth. Dalton,Tanner and Rodolfo left on Monday for wrestling camp in Morris. Tabor will ride the bus while Darin and another coach will travel to Morris to get the football players from wrestling camp. Darin will get to watch the boys in a take down competition tonight @ 6 then head for Duluth. Football camp goes until Saturday afternoon and they stay in the dorms at the U. Then upon return we have a busy weekend with our Nicollet Friendship Days celebration. The boyz have the waffle feed and march in the parade on Sunday. Any guesses what Tamara will be doing while the boys are at camp?

Finger print art

I pulled out the art supplies the other day. There was much jumping and excited gasps as I pulled out this finger print art book from Ed Emberley.

The boys drifted away rather quickly, but my art deprived daughter stuck it out for over an hour, making everything she could think of out of her fingerprints and showing me all of them.

This picture she made for grandma Shari:

What do you do in the summertime?

Oh what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is HOT
Do you tube at the Lake, or almost step on a snake
spend every morning at basketball camp??
Is that what you do...so do I

Oh what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is HOT
do you hike to the stream, or bury kids til they scream
volunteer at the pool every day!!!
Is that what you do...so does Shay

Oh what do you do in the summertime, when all the world it HOT
point your toes in synchro, practice for the breast stroke
learn new games at the cabin to play
Is that what you do...so do they(Kev,Kins,Shay,Derek)



After visiting Gramps, Shay practices her "skills" with Kins as her model:)

Kev's first cub scout day camp....Steve got to be a volunteer...lots of fun

Cousins burying Kinsey....at the Hidden Meadow cabin...

Hangin out with a few elk in the mornings.....BEAUTIFUL

Enjoying the babies, as always.....Stevadore

Moutianeers Beach Tour with the Jr Naturalists

This Saturday we spent at the beach in Seattle. This little bit of coastline is an amazing place for seeing wildlife, and the perfect spot to join a group of explorers and take tons of pictures.

Do you see the bird in the first picture?

Muffin Tin Monday ~ Copy cat

With all my copy cat posts lately, I was surprised to find that the theme over at Muffin Tin Monday was Copy Cat. LOL! We have been copying so many other blogs in the last week that I didn't feel the pressure to copy any one muffin tin perfectly... but I did find a general theme that I had wanted to try for a while; Breakfast!

Today I woke up early and made my kiddos this:

Top: cherry and vanilla granola, strawberry keifer, fresh WW raspberry mini pancakes

Bottom: Maple syrup for dipping, fresh raspberries, scrambled eggs

They were pretty darned excited. I haven't 'made' breakfast in I don't know how long because of the moves, and house hunting and such. We have pretty much survived on organic instant oatmeal, granola and yogurt, and Cheerios. Not that any of these are bad... I added these things to my shopping list for this time in our lives on purpose... but it just doesn't have the personal touches that a good warm breakfast has.

Cyan discovering that she had raspberry pieces in her pancakes.

Logan enjoyed his meal most of all I think... everything got dipped in the maple syrup. lol! Even the granola and the eggs.

Hot week of baseball

This past week the heat and humidity made for some HOT baseball games for the boyz! The boyz are starting to hit the ball a lot more. Dalton did some pitching too its getting a little hot to catch all 7 innings. Tabor had to eject a coach from Mankato the night he umped the 10 year old team in Nicollet. He's not sure if $35.00 a game is enough. Tabor had "BIG MAN" camp today at the U of M. He learned some new lifting drills and worked out with other big o-line kids from Canada, South Dakota & Wisconsin. Tanner is all jacked up to leave Monday morning for wrestling camp.

Copy Cat ~ Cardboard castle!

Part of the joy of moving with kids is letting them cut up cardboard right???

Ever since I saw Made By K's cardboard castle, I have wanted to build one with the kiddos. We have SO much cardboard running around this place that it was amazing we hadn't thought of it before. So a couple boxes and a set of toddler crayons later, we had this beauty to call our own in our livingroom.

Logan loved the idea of being able to color on the castle. He happily ran around drawing where everyone else was... which made my little girl not so happy.


After I explained to her that it didn't have to be perfect, then both the older kids seemed ok with letting Logan in on the fun.


He sure was proud of himself. :)

Right now the kids are laying in the castle listening to a story on CD. Doesn't get much better than that.

Early Ed ~ Something New

In the newly remodeled homeschool room, I left this little shelf open for Logan's early ed stuff. At first, we had Logan's button sorting, and he played with that for a few days. Then last night, I was walking through Target and I saw this wooden tray. Made of rubberwood, it is sustainable (as much as anything made new can be) and beautiful! I thought it would be the perfect Montessori activity tray. So today, I went to Goodwill to see if I could find him some little dishes and I came home with two lotus dishes in green and two smaller ones in brown. PERFECT for his transfer activities! All in all, the set (and another small plastic tray with dishes to match) cost me $22 and I have two trays (lg wood, and small plastic) and 5 pairs of small bowls in varrying sizes.

This is how it was set up, and he couldn't wait to move it to his table and try it. I actually had to go find peas so he could do this because he was sitting there, waiting at the table for me to finish this activity for him.

First he transfered with the spoon which is said to help a lot with writing skills later on. Then he started picking up the bowls and dumping the peas (very carefully) into the other dish. I know that isn't really how it is supposed to be set up... but I figure, he sees me do that in cooking a lot... so I think the first is a 'pre-writing skill', and the second is a 'life skill'. :)

He enjoyed it so much that he did this for over 10 minutes before he stopped... but not before he cleaned it up and carried it (with me as a spotter) back to the shelf