Toy Clearance and Scrapbooks

I wanted to blog about some non-photo of the day related things.  I thought I'd still share our photo from yesterday.  The boys were doing water colors using Kool Aid.  It smelled great.

 Today we took advantage of some Target Toy Clearance.  Generally every January and July Target will mark toys up to 70 percent off.  It's a great way to get cheap toys.  I like to buy them when I can and save them for birthdays, Christmas, and gifts.  Here's a picture of what we picked up this year.  We did get a couple of Lego sets for 30% which I am told (by Stephen) that's really good for Legos.  We also have a Red card with Target and they take off 5% of your total so the items that were 70% off ended up being more like 71% off.  Happy day.  Everything pictured below is either 70 or 50% off.  Yay.

Here is what I got:  Super Grover, STart Wars Transformer Darth Vadar, Spin 'n Spiral Doodle, Hexbug Nano set (which can go along with the Hexburg set they already own), Mater Laptop, Mario Galaxy Figure, Star Wars Trouble, Pigeon Puzzle set, Hot Wheel Trio Car, Hexbug Set, Solar System Tag Reader pack, Mario Cart Wii Cars, ABC Wooden puzzles (giving this to my nephew for his first birthday), Safari Animal Puzzle, and a Mario Galaxy Mini Figure set. Who wants to know how much I spent and how much I saved?  At the normal price all of this would have cost $324.86 and I paid $118.33. That's a savings of $206.53.  And now a good chunk of birthday/Christmas shopping has been taken care of.  I think Stephen spoke for the Mario Kart wii remote controlled cars.  :)

Shutterfly has had some great promos on photo books lately that I have taken advantage of.  I have switched to digital scrap booking, which is a lot of fun, but I haven't had the chance to make anything into a book yet. Well, Shutterfly had two different promos going where I was able to get two photo books 50% off and get free shipping too.  Yay!  That is the only way I plan to get my pages into a book is with that kind of deal.

I thought I'd share a picture from each.  I got a book of Vance's first year done.  Most of those pages I did before I took any digital scrapbooking classes so I am a little embarrassed by my skills, but I am glad to see that my skills have improved.  Anyway, here is a page from Vance's book.

 The other book I ordered was Tanner's first year of life.  Here is a page from his book.

Zoo, Parties, and a Haircut too

Stephen fell asleep on the couch one day and so Porter was kind enough to give him his Mario to snuggle with and "bumblebee" which is the car below Mario.  Stephen wasn't actually asleep when I took the picture, but he had his eyes closed and looked so peaceful.

 Here is Porter with a little crayon/water coloring project we did.  He loves to be involved with the older boys in everything they do.

 One of our activities was doing volcanoes in a cup.  It was a huge hit and real easy just vinegar, baking soda, and food coloring.  We did it several times.

 Tanner pulled this face and told me it was his dragon face.  So there you go, Tanner's dragon face.

 We took the boys to the zoo on Saturday.  Stephen had some Dr. Pepper cans that you could turn in and get free children's admissions with an adult ticket so we ended up only having to pay for Stephen and I's tickets.  We had a great time.

 Porter still loves electronics.  You can see him showing a little lego guy how to play Angry Birds.

 Our nephew had his 5th birthday party yesterday.  Super hero themed.  Really cute.  My mother-in-law made the cute capes and they had masks too.  My boys had a blast.  Here is a picture of all the cousins on Stephen's side of the family.

 I have been so sick of my hair lately.  It's been driving me nuts for lots of different reasons so I finally decided to get it cut short again.  I did it shorter than have had it in a while.  I was even able to donate the hair I cut off to locks of love.  I think I will enjoy the change.

Summer activities and stuff

I am still going strong doing a photo every day this year so far.  I think I'll actually accomplish it now, since it's mid-July and it has become a habit.  

Here is a picture of the boys filling a balloon with beads.  We filled balloons with different things and noticed how each one felt different based on what we filled it with.

 I took the boys outside and let them throw sponge balls at each other.  They had a good time.  It was sure hot though.  Porter just enjoyed playing with the sponges not throwing or getting them thrown at him.

 Apparently I don't have enough pictures of my kids playing video games so here is another one...

 You can't tell, but the boys were looking out the window watching a little rain storm on Saturday.

 Vance tripped over a stool in my room yesterday morning and hit the side of his head on my cedar chest.  I don't think you can even tell in the picture, but he had a big goose egg on the right side of his head a little above his glasses.  Poor kid.

 I got a collage print done of each of the boys from the pictures Rose took for us last June.  I haven't gotten them actually put up on the wall yet though, Porter was admiring himself earlier today.

4th of July and More

 We had a good 4th of July.  We took the boys to the local city parade which was within walking distance to our house.  Then we had lunch with Stephen's family, minus his sister who lives in another state.  I enjoyed the fireworks from my backyard, but I let the kids sleep through them.

 Muddy Buddies.  One of my favorite goodies.  My kids enjoy them too!

 The boys and I had fun playing Trouble on Friday.  

 Saturday we had an eventful morning.  We have been walking to the library every Saturday as I have mentioned before.  I realized when we got up in the morning that I had left the stroller in the van that Stephen had driven to work.  Instead of breaking the kid's hearts I decided to pull out our double stroller even though it's huge.  We were walking along about a quarter of the way to the library when one of the front wheels on the stroller broke.  I managed to get to where I could slowly and carefully walk back home.  Of course, the boys still wanted to go to the park so we braved it with Porter walking/being carried by me.  We got about to the same spot the wheel broke and Tanner fell and skinned his knees.  We were able to make it to the park and library eventually, but it was sure an eventful morning.  Tanner shows off his knees in the picture below.

 Don't you love it when your shoe comes apart in the middle of church?  I know I do, but I have had these shoes and worn them pretty faithfully since Vance was a baby so I have no room to complain.

 Yesterday we enjoyed a free day at the Natural History Museum of Utah.  It was packed, but we had a good time.  Here's a picture of the boys outside of the museum.

Porter was having a cute little conversation with Stephen this morning so I snapped a picture of them. 

Summer Activities

Most of my photos of the day come from the Summer activities I have been doing with the boys.  I have also been blogging about them on my other blog.

 We did a water and sponge activity.  Porter even got in on the action.

 Vance and Tanner wrote their own versions to "Don't Let the Pigeon"  books.  Vance did his entirely by himself.  It was called, "Don't Let the Pigeon Eat a Spider"  Tanner's was called, "Don't Let the Pigeon Play Skylanders"

 The boys had fun playing under this tree at the park on Saturday.

 This is a real cool tessellation that Stephen made recently.

 Porter enjoying a Chocolate-dipped Banana.  We found the recipe out of the Friend Magazine and the boys begged me to help them make it so of course, I did.

We tried to do a wind mill activity today.  Mostly, it was a fail.  We could get them to actually work.  We did make some big ones though that I hung on the wall since they looked festive for the 4th of July.