Author: Stephanie Adams

  • Advent:6

    No pictures tonight! We had a family dance party to Christmas music. There was lots of spinning, some slow dancing, and even a little break dancing.

  • Advent:5

    Tonight we made cinnamon applesauce ornaments. Easy project and smells so good! The fabulous Sandi gave me this recipe while I was still waiting to know my boys. I’m so happy to finally get to use it.

    1 cup cinnamon
    1/4 cup glue
    3/4 cup applesauce

    Roll out and cut out

    3-5 days drying time

  • Advent:3

    Today’s advent activity was finding the perfect tree and decorating it. We had a lot of fun. It was even rainy and cold! Made it feel like winter around here.

  • Advent:2

    Today’s activity was something I’ve wanted to learn to do for a loooong time – string popcorn and cranberries! I knew this would be slightly above the boys’ crafty level, but knew they would still like it (anything involving popcorn is awesome!).

    The boys really liked it. They worked on it for about 20 minutes (long time for them). I left their supplies out the rest of the morning and Ezra came back a few times to do more. I think he liked it. 🙂 I found it nice and relaxing. We did a couple of ornaments and I’m working on a strand. I doubt I’ll do enough to cover the whole tree, but so glad we learned how to do this.

    I watched this video to learn how.

  • Advent:1

    Our advent calendar this year is activity based. Our days will involve acts of service/charity, holiday traditions, family time, Christmas crafts, and Christmas music. We had a lot of fun planning it and will post each day what our activity was.

    Today we packed up our food boxes for Chances for Children.

  • Swim Lessons

    The boys started taking swim lessons this month. It is at a nice indoor pool, separated by a giant glass wall. I can easily watch and relax while they learn to swim. It is a group class of up to four kids, but the last few times it has been just the boys. The first lesson they screamed the entire time, the second lesson we split them up which went fine, but then I decided to start going on a weekday instead of Saturday. The pool is nice and quiet during the week and Noah is doing so much better without all the noise. I know eventually he’ll have to get use to a noisy pool, but for now this is the best environment for him.

    You can just click on the first photo to scroll through, see the images larger, and read the captions.

  • Small Business Saturday

    Today is small business saturday and I know of a few wonderful small business having sales today in honor of it. I also have a few links in the sidebar to some of my favorite etsy.com shops. If you are a small business and are having a sale today, please post a link in the comment section.

    A Stitch of Mine is offering 20% off today with the coupon code HOMEMADE. Her products are wonderfully made.

    2 Chicks Cakery is offering 20% off all orders placed this weekend. My sister-in-law Michelle is following her passion and baking yummy cupcakes!

    Stop Traffic[k] is having a three day sale on their t-shirts. They are determined to help abolish slavery.

  • Wordless Wednesday – 11.23.2011 *Edited to add words

    This first video is of the boys playing an ipad game called Fruit Ninja. You really just need to watch the last 15-20 seconds, so feel free to skip ahead.

    ipad fun and games from matt adams on Vimeo.

    I showed the boys they could see rainbows in the sprinklers at the park, very exciting discovery. 🙂

  • Then and Now – Stroller

    I don’t know why but the transition to three has been a little hard on me.  Going from the baby/toddler phase to the pre-school phase is tough.  I love it, but it has also made me very nostalgic.  I keep finding myself looking at old videos and photos.

    It had been a while since we used the stroller and today when the boys got in I just couldn’t believe how big they looked.

  • Halloween 2011

    This was the first Halloween that the boys understood what was going on and it was really a lot of fun. We explained trick or treating on Saturday and Ezra was ready to go! When it came to actually doing it they were so shy and quiet. Which really shocked me because they talk to everyone when we go out.

    We carved pumpkins on Sunday with my family. Went trick or treating and then went Gamma and Papa’s to show off our costumes, the boys helped hand out candy (I think they liked this the best), and then home to check out our candy.

    The last couple of photos are some snacks I made for play school on Friday and some balloons we decorated with on Monday. We really had a lot of fun this year. Here are the glow balloons we used for decoration. The swamp juice recipe and the eyeballs (the fingers are just cheese and almonds, you can use a food safe marker or other decorating gel for the knuckles.)

  • While parts of the country are playing in the snow…

    We are playing in the sprinklers.

    (yes the grass looks horrible, they just scalped the summer grass and put down winter seed. I’m sure they appreciate us playing on it.)

  • Pumpkins and Butterflies

    Last Friday we took a little field trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens. We visited the pumpkin patch and saw the Monarch Butterflies. Gamma, Papa, and Abby joined out. It was a lot of fun!

    You can see a few more pics here.

  • Big Financial Goal Conquered

    Warning this post discusses our personal finances. We usually do not discuss our personal finances, but we wanted to do a post on this subject for two reasons:

    1. A record for ourselves. Something for us to look back on and remember, we learned a lot in the last two years and would just like a record for ourselves.
    2. Encouragement/inspiration for others trying to work on their financial goals. We’ve read a lot of financial success stories over the years and they have always kept us going. It is a nice reminder to know you can do it!

    We use our blog to primarily keep friends and family updated on the boys, but it is also a record of our life as a family and this step was important to us. If you do not want to read about our personal finances please stop reading now. 🙂

    (more…)

  • Century

    Matt completed his first century, 100 mile bike ride, this past weekend! Seriously impressive if you ask me. I would not want to sit on a bike seat that long. The ride took place in beautiful San Luis Obispo. He rode up and down hills (pretty flat here so that was exciting), through fog, and along the coast line. Gorgeous ride!

    I am so proud of you!

    He was raising money for Fireproof ministries and you can still donate if you would like.