Puppy Blog

Once upon a time, this blog might have been considered a typical "mommy-blog", then it was a "TTC" blog... now? It's a puppy blog. Give in to the cuteness!!!

The first picture is of the three we like the most. In order of preference: The chocolate, then the black, then the cream. The second picture is a close up of the black puppy. We love his cute little white chin. He also has a splash of white on his belly. Decisions! Decisions! Truthfully though, they're all WAY TOO CUTE. When we meet them later this month, we'll be able to see what kind of personalities they have. That will really be the deciding factor.

Puppies

Ok, enough bad stuff... I can't just leave you with my last post up. I have to post something good. We decided to get a labradoodle puppy. The litter was born on Jan 20th. We still have to meet him to be sure (going to meet him in February - and they'll be ready to come home at the end of March) but we're strongly leaning towards this guy: It's going to be a hard decision though - ALL of those puppies from that litter are just ADORABLE.

Maya’s Dress Up (for the iPhone and iPad)

MMaya's Dress Up. In this game you can select from a number of different dolls to dress up: Maya herself, or one of her friends. You can change their hair style and color. There are hundreds of different clothing, shoes and accessories. You can change an item's color or how they're "layered" on your doll. You also have a number of different backgrounds to choose from. The selection is massive, really. And the publisher has plans to continually add new items. You can save your favorite designs and send them to your friends. Here's a video so you can see how the game works. Or learn more about this game on the publishers website. We've downloaded a few other free dress up games but none had the kind of selection this one does. Maya's Dress Up iPhone App: $2.99* Maya's Dress up HD iPad App: $4.99* *Price at time of this writing. I received a copy of this app for review purposes.

Doing the impossible: Teaching Art Appreciation to a 5-year old and a 10-year old

I know it sounds impossible - but I actually pulled this off. You know how half the time, well ok for me it feels like most of the time, I feel like I strike out more often than I hit a home run. I hear myself saying more often than I care to admit "Well, that didn't go as well as planned." But this time? This time I hit it out of the park. It began when my mother told me about an exhibit going on in San Francisco: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and beyond at the de Young Museum. I rushed right over to my computer and bought tickets for Sam, the kids, my parents, and me before I even thought twice about it. Then of course it dawned on me that spending the afternoon in a crowded museum, looking at old pictures on the wall probably wasn't going to be the most fun the kids ever had. So I came up with a plan. I would make it into a game. As luck would have it, my parents had plans to go to this exhibit two weeks before. So I asked her, as she went through, to make notes of a few of the paintings in each room, so we could later develop a "scavenger hunt" - age appropriate for a 5 year old and another for a 10 year old. (Ok, yeah, my mom did a good part of the hard work here - I still think this was a huge success). The day of our tickets to see the exhibit, we came armed with two clipboards and two pencils. For Zach, the questions were basic enough: Find a painting with a golden vase. Find a painting of a cow. etc. It was challenging enough and he really enjoyed it. The only difficulty we had was really thanks to the crowd. (On a side note: I'm a bit frustrated and annoyed with the museum. They're very clear that they don't want people bringing sketchpads, because to have people standing there sketching the pictures would "slow the flow of traffic throughout the exhibit" - and yet, they push the purchase of these audio tours that has everyone walking around the rooms like drones at a snails pace (or rather standing there FOREVER listening to the audio tour) rather than actually moving on through. I really would have preferred a time when NO ONE was using an audio tour - I think it would have gotten people moving more so I could have actually gotten within a few feet of a painting, instead of standing on my tip toes trying to get a peek from behind twenty people.) Anyway, thankfully the kids were small, and my goal had shifted from wanting to see the paintings to wanting my kids to enjoy the experience. So I stood way in the back and sent Zach down underneath to sneak up to the front (all grownups who could easily see over him) so he could get a close look at the painting. Can I tell you how proud I was to see him go up to the painting - point at it excitedly and tell me he found the painting of =whatever we were looking for=. People looked amazed that this little kid was actually excited to be there. Excited to be looking at the paintings. (Between you and me, so was I! LOL!) Scattered within the scavenger hunt were a few "Which is your favorite painting in the room? Why is this your favorite?" or "How does this painting make you feel?" Rachel's was a little harder "Find a painting that shows 6 smoke stacks? Who painted it?" "Who painted a picture of a circus in this room" "Name 3 paintings by Henri Seurat (in this room)" Rachel, who thought the whole scavenger hunt thing was beneath her before we started, really got into it once we were there. I came to find out that she had very specific and sometimes surprising opinions about the paintings. Now here's the best part. Aside from the fact that we got through the entire exhibit without a single meltdown - I considered it enough of a win. But then something happened tonight that just totally sealed the deal. My mother had bought a coloring book that had paintings from the museum in it for you to color. Zachary was playing with it after dinner - found one of the paintings and said "I remember this one! This one was on my checklist!... This one too! This is the one of the man fishing!" It's out of the park! 😀

First Night

Tonight we finally get to spend the night in the new house. We are buried in boxes. I know we'll get through it eventually, but it's hard to get anything done. Just walking down the hallway, I'll pass a box and feel compelled to open it and start putting stuff away - even though I was on task to do something completely different. It is pretty cool to finally be HOME. The challenge with this house will be storage - the house itself is quite a bit smaller than our last and there's just less storage space overall. It's going to take some creativity to solve the problem. Especially since we're minus an office ROOM. My new office is now basically a hallway. So no office closet or anything like that. To compensate, I put a book shelf in the hallway with me, and bought some pretty baskets that fit on the shelves to put stuff in. So when you walk down the hallway, instead of seeing a bunch of office supplies hanging out everywhere, you just see the pretty baskets on the shelves. Our kitchen has a lot of available space, but to make the most use of it, we'll have to get some roll out shelves. Wherever I can put a piece of furniture that can hold things, that's what we're doing. And of course, we're continuing to junk as much stuff as possible. But even with all the boxes everywhere... I'm still so glad we're done.

Ah, the fun never ends

We were so close. Every night I close my eyes and pretend I'm sleeping in our new house. In our new room. I picture Rachel in her room. Zach in his room. BOTH in their own SEPARATE rooms down the hall from us - as opposed to sharing the same room like they have been the last two months. (I use the term "sharing" very loosely here. I'm not sure constant yelling at each other constitutes as "sharing") The new house is within walking distance of town, so I picture us waking up Sunday morning, throwing on some clothes and walking to the pancake restaurant that's around the corner from us. Most especially, I had really wanted to spend Christmas there. I was so sure things would be reasonably settled that I even planned on hosting a New Year's Eve party. (Family members only - since they would understand/tolerate the fact we'd still be mostly in boxes) It was so close I could taste it. And now it's gotten just a little bit further. Today was the first day we could go in the house, despite the fact that the sellers have been out of the place for a few days. We were told they wanted to hang onto it an extra few days to "clean." Riiiight. When we moved out of our old house, I hired professional cleaners to come in and clean everything. They scrubbed the kitchen, bathroom, vacuumed every room and closet. Dusted. The place was probably cleaner than it ever was when we lived there. But in our case, despite telling us they were "cleaning" the place, I did not get the same treatment on our new house. Hair all over the showers and tubs. Garbage on the floor in the closets and in some of the drawers. Paint we didn't want, left in the garage. Dust piles on the baseboards. Dust and dirt throughout the floors. Hair even on the dirty counters in the kitchen. Toilets that haden't been cleaned in at least a few weeks (they had that tell-tale mold ring where the water meets the bowl). But as grossed out as I was - that wasn't even the worst of it. The worse was the strange pile of something that looked like sandy dirt in the corner of the master bedroom. Termites. We still have to get someone in there, inspect and officially confirm, but based on the pictures I've seen online, what we saw is EXACTLY the same as the examples of evidence of dry-wood termites. The house was inspected for termites and had "section 1 clearance" - which means that the inspector said there were no termites. I don't understand how we can go from that assessment, to OBVIOUS evidence in such a short amount of time, and on the first day we can get the house. I have no idea what recourse we'll have, and who will have to pay (we're already strapped for cash - so I'm just afraid what this means for us) On top of that, the painters came in today, but didn't get as far on the job as we would have liked. Our movers are, at this very moment, making their way here and will be here on Thursday, but I have no guarantee that the painters will be done. (In fact, I'm 99% sure they WON'T be done and will still have paint and tarps everywhere) As well, I don't know what we'll do with our stuff if we have to have the place fumigated. Oh, and the New Years Eve party? I can pretty much forget about that - as well as having Christmas there. Until the place is cleaned and termites dealt with, I'm not staying there and we can't unpack. So... you can probably guess I'm just a WEE bit disappointed. And freaked out. And grossed out. And SERIOUSLY pissed off. After this whole experience, I NEVER want to move again. Ever.

Old El Paso Giveaway

During the week I just don't have enough time to make several trips to the grocery store, so I try to plan our meals for the week, and make just one trip to the store on the weekend. The only problem with this plan is that I tend to use a few meals each week, which means we get sick of them pretty quickly. Some meals can withstand the test of repeated time - others, after having it every week for a month or two, I never want to eat it again. My new plan is to now plan *two* weeks in advance and to only double up on ONE meal I know we could stand to have each week. I'll still go shopping each week - as some food won't last the two week wait in the fridge, but planning out 14 different meals, I'm hoping we won't get sick of them quite so often. One meal that will surely be going up on the list of meals is taco night! Tacos are fun and easy to make and everyone in the family loves them. (Except Zach - he's a helpless carboholic. He eats bread and cheese. That's pretty much it. But that eating-issue is for another post). A few months ago MyBlogSpark sent me an Old El Paso family taco night prize pack complete with a packet of Old El Paso Taco Seasoning, a Cactus Chip & Dip Serving dish, a set of 3 Fiesta Chili Pepper serving dishes and a $10 gift card to purchase taco fixings. If you'd like to try and change the usual sibling bickering during dinner, you could also try a game during dinner time: El Tacodor™, a family taco night game. Challenge each other with trivia, wordplan and pantomime. To play visit www.ElTacodor.com today to download instructions, a score card, and a challenge sheet for even more fun on family taco night! Interested in trying some different kinds of tacos? Check out Old El Paso's website for tips and recipes.

GIVEAWAY

If you'd like to win your own Old El Paso family taco night prize pack like mine, simply leave a comment on this post and tell me what your favorite taco topping or side-dish is. For additional entries (up to 1 additional entry awarded per day) just tweet the following (and leave a comment on this post for each tweet) GIVEAWAY: Win an Old El Paso family taco night prize pack! http://bit.ly/dRp4EZ Contest ends December 30th, 2010 at 10pm PST. There is no purchase necessary to enter the contest. I will be using random.org to choose the winner. I’ll contact the winner via email, and he/she will have 48 hours to respond. After 48 hours, if I don’t receive a response, another winner will be chosen. Disclosure: Old El Paso provided me with the products, information, and giveaway through MyBlogSpark.