A Daily Dose of Mischief

Baby B is two months old already! The other day her big brother T aka #3 was making faces at her to get her to smile. He told #1 what face to make, and when #1 tried it B did not smile. #3 casually said, "It only works when her favorite brother does it."

I've been waiting for weeks to catch this with the camera...

I have been collecting papercrafts on the computer for a while. Some of them are quite complicated and I may never get around to making them, but its nice to know I have them on file if I need them. If your kids are bored this summer, here are a few of my favorite papercrafting sites. Canon 3D Papercraft has a wide variety of paper models to download for free. You can even build a paper town complete with roads, train tracks, people, vehicles and buildings. PaperToys .com has vehicles, animals, and several famous buildings. One thing I really like about this site is that many of their models can be downloaded in black and white so that you can color them yourself and don't have to use precious printer ink. Making Friends is great for younger kids. There is a huge variety of paper doll patterns to be downloaded with various themes. You can download them in color or color them yourself. There are even cub scout and girl scout paper doll clothes and holiday clothes as well as dif...

In my quest for ways to beat the summertime blues, I went to the website for Family Fun Magazine and looked up some crafts to do with the boys. This project was one of the first ones to catch my eye so I bought the supplies I needed and we made some today. You can follow the link to the project, or you can follow this tutorial. For each beanbag/juggling ball you need the following: A funnel, three balloons, (they say 11" balloons, but I used 12" and they turned out fine. I imagine that 9" balloons would work as well), and the filling of your choice. Their website called for lentils, but I used brown rice, and I have heard of people using birdseed or just dry beans as well. Rice is what I had, and it worked fine. Take the first balloon and blow it up about halfway. Hold it closed like that for about 30 seconds and then let the air out. Using the funnel, fill the balloon with your filling. I found it helpful to squeeze the balloon to compact the filling inside so that I ...

#5 aka C just turned five. His teacher at church gives each kid in class a paper wrist band after each lesson in order to help the young kids in his class talk to their parents about what they learn on Sunday. Every night at dinner D asks the boys about what they learned or did that day. When it came to #5's turn we asked him if he had a different teacher today. He said "Sammy's Mom taught, but she didn't give me a wrist band, so I don't remember what I learned about today."