Today I am thankful for the gorgeous weather we are having.  This weekend promises to be beautiful too!

We move two weeks from tomorrow!  I hope to get lots of organizing and packing done this weekend.

I made one of my favorite soups overnight in the slow cooker using black beans I made the day before along with chicken broth I made last weekend. My slow cooker has been working overtime!

Yesterday I took our coin jar to exchange all of our coins using a Coinstar machine.  I was hoping to have at least $40 so I could get the extra $10 in free Amazon money and was surprised that I had just over $90 in change! Yay! Christmas present money! I signed up for a free trial of Amazon prime so I will also get free two day shipping.

Hope you have a great weekend! I’ll be knee deep in boxes and packing tape but will be sure to make some time to get out enjoy the fresh air and sunshine!

Anne, the Small Town Mommy has been blogging Random Tuesday Thoughts for some time now and I thought I’d participate.  What?  I can just throw some random things out there and not have to be coherent?  Awesome.

1) First things first.  Today, I am thankful that I went to get my teeth cleaned and checked out and I didn’t have any cavities.  Last time I had one cavity and some repair work that needed to be done which included a titanium post in one of my teeth.  Yes.  I’ve got titanium in there!  Anyways, it was a relief to walk out of there and pay $5.00 instead of several hundred.

2) It has been raining all day. I don’t mind the rain but it just makes me wish I could stay home all day in my pajamas.  Who am I kidding, I want to stay home every day in my pajamas rain-or-shine!

3) I had a nice pretend meal at T’s restaurant this evening.  Hamburgers and french fries cost $1.00 each but a pickle will set you back $5.00. I should start saving up for business school.

4) We move in less than three weeks.  I’m outwardly calm but freaking out a little on the inside.  It will all get done, right?  It will be so worth it.  I am SO excited about the new place.  We’ll have our own real master bathroom again!  Right now, our master bathroom is so tiny that we can’t leave the toilet paper roll attached.  If we do, we have to sit sideways on the toilet or it will bump our legs. A new bathroom with extra legroom.  I can’t wait…

I saw as someone’s facebook status update that they would post daily about what they are thankful for since this is month of Thanksgiving and all.  I’ve decided to start my blog posts this month with things I am thankful for.  Today’s thankfulness is also sort of a PSA:

I am thankful that hairspray will remove black permanent marker from linoleum.

The permanent marker incident did not involve either of the kids (surprise)!  I used the marker for like TEN SECONDS to label a freezer bag.  I promptly put the cap back on after using it and put it back in the mug that I use to hold pens and pencils.  Somehow ink got on the heel of my foot and I had tracked about a dozen black dots around the kitchen floor.  I do not know how that happened.  The pen was nowhere near my foot and I checked the pen for leaks or drips – none! 

I am in the midst of doing lots of packing (moving in three weeks!) and am paranoid each time I pick up the marker to label a box, and check the soles of my feet each time after I use it.  I guess maybe I too, should only be allowed to use the kids’ washable markers…

I think this Halloween was the most enjoyable yet! T seems to “get” and enjoy trick or treating more and more each year. This year he was really chatting up the people as we went house to house. Also, we went with friends and I think it was more fun going with a buddy. Q only trick or treated at a few houses before she was looking worn out and we put her in the stroller.

Out of all the candies and toys he got, the biggest hit was the Mini Ice Cream Cone Shooter. I think my favorite toy he got was the “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” yo-yo. I’m strangely curious about the reasoning behind giving those out. Did they have an excess of Christmas toys they needed to unload? Were they trying to spread The Word? I guess I’ll never know!

Anyways, we had so much fun! In case you want to see last year’s costumes, you can check them out here. What a difference a year makes! I’m already thinking forward to next Halloween! Here are a few more pictures of my Mario and Luigi:

Oh, and for the crafty peeps, I found the tutorial for their hats here.  T already had the green shirt.  I found the overalls and red shirt at a consignment sale in August SUPAH-CHEAP.  I decorated tote bags with mushroom/Toad using adhesive backed felt.  Easy!

Have a safe, fun and HAPPY HALLOWEEN from Mario and Luigi!

       
Photos courtesy of Stylized Portraiture.

I was disappointed with the picture I posted of the soaps I made and after some investigation (yay for the internet), I decided to make my own lightbox.  There’s a  tutorial here.  I had most of the supplies on hand except some daylight bulbs and I also bought a worklamp.  My pictures were yellowish until I figured out to change a setting on the camera to “incandescent.”  Also, no fancy SLR camera needed.  These were taken with my point and shoot:

These toys happened to be in reach. Can you tell I have a boy? I’m still playing around and need to practice and experiment but I was happy with how these turned out for a first try. Here is what the set up looks like in case you are interested:

A friend got me thinking about soaps again.  Here are some spooky soaps embedded with toy finger puppets.  They are T – approved!  He was excited to use his new soap and very anxious to get to the toy.  It will be a lesson in patience.  I tried to explain that it will take a while before the toy will “come out.”  It will be a good motivator for hand washing during this crazy flu season.

By the way, I used a muffin pan for the molds.

This weekend our city sponsored free a “Touch a Truck” event where they had lots of big trucks set up for kids to explore.  They had a fire truck, police command station, police motorcycle, a bomb squad robot, city bus, tractors, just to name a few.  Is it a sign that my kids spent the most time in the department of corrections van used to transport inmates?

He wanted to wear his goggles!

Special delivery!

On Thursday we attended a book fair at T’s school.  They had pizza, a jumpy house, and face painting (he chose to have a purple ghost painted).  It was also pajama day so most of the kids were running around in their pj’s.  He was SO excited to wear his Spiderman pajamas.  There was a day last month when it was pajama day and I totally forgot about it.  Ever since then he’s been asking (a lot) when he can wear his pajamas to school and each time I would twinge with guilt remembering how I didn’t remember last time.   I was thrilled to hear about this new pajama day and felt like a superhero when I actually remembered to let him wear his pajamas to school.

The school had the books on display for a week now and I don’t know if they gave kids time to peruse the books but T already knew what books he wanted before we got there.  He got to pick two books and they were: Purplicious and Pirates Don’t Change Diapers.

T (and Q) had lots of fun but I think the most fun for us was seeing him interacting with his friends and classmates.  It’s really interesting and entertaining listening to 4 year olds converse.

I’m looking forward to the weekend.  We have some fun activities planned!

For a while I was going on evening walks/jogs after I put Q to bed.  Now that it’s getting darker I can’t do that anymore.  My neighborhood is not well lit enough to be walking about after dark.  Some days we’ll walk as a family after dinner.  (I love that the weather is so much cooler and we can take an after dinner walk without dripping sweat).  There is usually some combination of stroller, bicycle, or scooter going on.  Sometimes it will be just me and T, like Monday.  He didn’t ask about riding his bike or scooter and I didn’t ask (mostly fearing he’d want me to push or carry it half way home).  So, we got our shoes on and he said, “Okay, Linh, let’s go!” 

We ventured out and when we got to the end of our street I asked him if he wanted to go left or right.  “Right,” he replied.

I asked, quizzing him, “Which way is right?”  He pointed to the right. 

Then he said, “Mommy?  How come you don’t know which way is right?”

I guess I need to stop quizzing him on certain things or he will start to think I am just really dumb.