Some Presidents' Day Fun!

Being Presidents' Day, I wanted to be able to teach the kiddos what today is all about. I tried printing off some mini books from Scholastic last Friday, thinking they were free, but turns out there was a fee. I ended up just reading about Washington and Lincoln to the kids from the computer. BUT, this afternoon, Brimful Curiosities posted a few links to some printable books and activities that related to Presidents' Day and I ecstatically printed several of them off and we had fun doing them this afternoon.

These little books were nice and short with some simple facts for the kiddos to remember. They are catered more to the preschool age than the mini books I read from Scholastic. (Morgan seemed to get bored and Blake went off and played while I read the Scholastic ones.) Some facts, like Lincoln liking to read by the fire and Washington chopping down a cherry tree, really seemed to catch the kids' attention.

Two of these books printed per page, which was perfect for Morgan and Blake, since in the end they had a little activity to do....

...they could draw a picture of themselves! (I helped Blake, but Morgan did hers all on her own....apparently she thinks she has short hair-lol!) :-)

Then there was a link were you could print a coloring page for just about every President, so Morgan and Blake colored the ones they learned about today.....

Blake's are the ones with all the orange....pretty sure it's his favorite color ;-)

The kiddos also learned what currency the Washington and Lincoln's faces were on and we played heads or tails. Then we did a little experiment to see how many times we flipped heads or tails....looks like tails won! We had a BLAST with this laughing about my wild coin flipping skills...even managed to get it up my sleeve once :-)

BIG THANK YOU to Brimful Curiosities for posting these and helping us learn a little more about our Presidents on Presidents' Day! :-)

CSN Stores $45 Giveaway!! **CLOSED**

Congratulations to Mami2jcn, comment #2!!


I have really enjoyed working with CSN Stores doing reviews of their products and hosting giveaways. I've been fortunate to be contacted again and this time I chose to host another awesome giveaway!!

If you haven't heard of, or have never stopped by, CSN Stores you don't know what you're missing out on! They have everything from flat panel tv stands to kids shoes and thousands of other awesome products in their 200+ online stores. (I've been eyeing up one of their end tables!!) Their site is set up so it's easy to navigate and narrowing down the search results is quick and easy. I could spend hours shopping on there and I'm sure you could too!

Now time for the giveaway!!


WIN!:
To enter the giveaway for the $45 gift code to CSN Stores, please take a look around their 200+ stores (by clicking on the above link) and tell me what you'd like to get if you were the lucky winner. Be sure to leave your e-mail address in your comment, so I can contact you if you win.


Giveaway will end on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 at 10:00 p.m. EST. Winner will be chosen that night by random.org and contacted via e-mail. The winner will have 48 hours to respond otherwise I will have to choose a new winner.

*U.S. and Canadian residents only. Does not cover shipping costs, although many products include free shipping.

**Disclosure: I was given this opportunity to host a giveaway or do a review. I was not compensated in any other way and any opinions expressed are my own.

Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day!

We had a couple things happen yesterday that caused this post to be delayed, but I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day...full of love! :-)

Our Valentine's Day activities started almost a month early with preparations:

Cutting a paper for a paper chain.

Hanging the chain and hanging some hearts from it :-)

Adding a Valentine's Day sign and some heart snowflakes.

Making picture Valentines for the Uncles...one is in Afghanistan while the other is a 12 hour drive away at college.

Making Valentines for Morgan's classmates. They were suppose to be heart-shaped, but we don't have a heart-shaped muffin pan....still should be fun 'Crazy Crayons'!

Love Bugs for Morgan's teachers (left) and some for our wall (right).

Our attempt at making baked Valentines...I didn't have anything to decorate them with though....

'Fingerprint' heart wrapping paper (suppose to be thumbprints, but I forgot that detail).

Tried using up some frosting from Christmas by making (and eating) this. Also made some yummy sugar cookies for Morgan's class.

And for Valentine's Day!!

Rich's breakfast (biscuits and sausage gravy).

The kids' breakfast (for lunch)-pink heart-shaped pancakes.

Played a heart matching game.

Put together a Valentine puzzle that is probably over 30 years old!! (My mom sent it for the kids.)

'Love' books we read.

The kids' Valentines. The large ones are from Rich's parents and the rest are from Morgan's classmates. (Her class is not suppose to celebrate, but some of us parents can't help ourselves!) The kiddos also got some Little Debbie heart cakes from my parents-yum! :-)

One of Rich's gifts from me. They're chocolate-covered frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls....to make up for all the times I don't let him steal the cookie dough while I'm baking ;-)

Morgan and Blake with their gifts from Rich and I. (I made actual thumbprint hearts to make the paper and they turned out much better than the fingerprint hearts!)

Morgan's felt cookie dough and decorating set that she got.

Don't they look yummy!?

Blake's felt animal crackers. I made a second set like the one Morgan got, but figured we didn't need 2, so the other is going to Morgan's best friend and I had to rush to make these for the little guy! :-)

That was about it for our Valentine's Day activities this year. We did enjoy some beef stroganoff for dinner last night...it happens to be the first dinner I made for Rich while we were dating, so it's kinda romantic for us. And I also got a beautiful rose and a box of chocolates to top off the day. It was truly a wonderful Valentine's Day! :-)

******Many of the craft ideas that we did came from the Frugal Family Fun blog. (The felt cookie dough and decorating set, the Love Bugs, the Thumbprint hearts and the Crazy Crayons.) If you're looking for fun inexpensive things to do with your kiddos, you definitely need to stop by this blog! :-) The baked heart Valentines were from Go Graham Go! and the frozen cookie dough was from allrecipes. I don't remember where I saw the other ideas, but if you're interested, let me know and I'll search them out! ;-)

Family Fun Night

Morgan's preschool class, along with another class, put on a Family Fun Night at their school last week. Everyone in the family was invited to come, so all 4 of us made sure to go...a little late due to the car getting stuck at the end of the driveway in a snow drift....but we made it! :-)

They provided us with pizza, chips, cookies and drinks and then everyone could make their way to the gym to do several activities. There was a table for writing your name and putting stickers around it. Another bin that Blake enjoyed fishing for the alphabet. Plus a table to make and decorate bookmarks.

There was also a clown that did magic tricks that Morgan thoroughly enjoyed.

And the clown painted smiley faces too!

Before we left, each family could pick up a gift bag that had even more activities to do at home and a book "The Butterfly House". It ended up being a really nice night. I thought it was a great to have a chance to meet other parents and just have time for the kids outside of the day-to-day classroom activities. Rich also enjoyed it more than he expected. Turns out there are a lot of people he knows that have kids our kids' ages that he spent most of the night talking to. We're living in the school district that he grew up in, so he was bound to know a few people! :-)

Little One Book's Contest

I love reading to my kids and am always looking for good fun books. When I saw a giveaway at Little One Books I knew I had to enter. They are giving away a $50 gift certificate to their site and there are several ways to obtain entries! CLICK HERE to go to the entry page. Hurry, because the contest ends February 15th! :-)

Snow Days

Today is Morgan's second snow day due to the blizzard that came through. She still doesn't quite understand how the snow keeps her from going to school, but we've been making the most of our days here at home, so she doesn't miss school quite so much ;-) Here's a little list of the things we've been up to:

*Slept in...okay, so I'm the only one who slept in....the kids were still up and running and 6:00 am.

*Stayed in pajamas ALL day...I wasn't going anywhere and no one was stopping by.... ;-)

*Worked on workbooks

*Played games

*Read books

*Kids did my hair

*Did each other's nails (NOT Blake's though!)

*Watched movies and ate popcorn....for lunch!

*Danced around the living room to fun music

*Watched the truck that got stuck across the road get pulled out

*Made funny poses and took pictures of them

Now Rich wasn't home for any of this. Turns out that he learned in a meeting at work Tuesday that the guys from engineering (which is Rich) could be plowing snow during the storm (Rich works for the road commission for the county south of us.) Let me tell you that before learning of the possibility of being able to plow snow, Rich wasn't sure he was going to make it into work, but when he found out he could be plowing snow he MADE SURE he could make it into work....wasn't sure if he could make it home, but he was going to work!! For those of you who don't know road commission hours during storms....they're LONG! Rich worked from 8 am until 10 pm (regular laborers worked 7 am until 11 pm on that shift) then didn't even know if he could make it home after that. I thought for sure he was going to have to stay with someone in town, but about the time I was hoping he'd be coming, I saw a reflection of headlights in the TV and it was him! (The only headlights I'd seen all day besides those of the stuck truck and the snowmobiles.) He said there were times he didn't know the truck would get through, but it did-YAY! (He's back at work again today too....plowing snow again.)

Earlier on in the evening yesterday, since I didn't know if Rich would be home, I got to go out in the weather and do chores. (I did put jeans on to go out, but got right back in pj's when I got back in.) While out there, I saw some sights that I haven't seen here before (these pictures don't do the drifts justice):

This looks like a big hill, but it's a drift that's probably up to my head! (The outhouse and the play set are on the other side...you can barely see the top of the slide.)

Today, we're doing a lot of the same we did yesterday, plus some actual work and some baking. We're making a gingerbread man. The kids loved sifting the flour....they said it looks like it's snowing. :-)