Shorty

At 16 months old, she's caught on to the fact that she's not extremely tall. But she hasn't let that get her down. She's just come up with a solution. Pushing furniture to the location she wants it to be and climbing on top of it. This gives her full and complete access to countertops, sinks, cupboards, you name it. I'm not kidding when I say that she's been caught swinging from a chandelier. Babyproofing has literally risen to higher levels. For now, if you put something on top of the fridge, it should be safe...but anywhere else is a gamble. She has a few trusty stepping stones. Kitchen chairs with felt on the bottom of the legs are pretty easy to move on wood floors. Her sisters folding chairs can go just about anywhere. And my personal favorite: a very old makeup case. When she gets this going, you better get out of the way because she'll take your leg off with it.
Babyproofing. I guess we'll have to try harder. She'd love a challenge.

Family night Puppy Adoption

After our week of being sick, we were all getting pretty bored being cooped up in the house. I had read about an idea for a little boys birthday party that involved doing a puppy adoption and thought it would be a lot of fun for a family night. So we set up a "Pet Shop" with little toy puppies that Grandma H sent for a birthday surprise. We each picked a puppy to adopt.(Don't worry, the extra puppies had families coming just a few minutes later, so no puppies got left out.) Then, we put a collar and a dog tag on our puppy.(we made them out of felt.) And we signed very official adoption documents. We even had them notarized with a valentine stamp. Then we had a picture taken with our new puppies and were off to the supply shop for puppy supplies.
At the supply shop, we used the very handy shopping cart and basket to shop for puppy chow (cereal in a plastic bag and canned food with the wrapper peeled off.) a puppy blanket, scooby snacks and a puppy dish. The supply shop was very expensive and the totals amounted to about 800.00 for everything but luckily we had membership credit cards from Costa Vida and a lot of pennies.
Next, we were off to the vet for the puppies to have a check up and shots. Kinley was very distressed that her puppy was going to have to have shots. She almost cried but then she became a very helpful veterinary assistant and gave all the other puppies their shots. The puppies also had their temperature taken and their ears cleaned with Qtips at the vet. The vet then gave each puppy a little container of puppy vitamins that looked suspiciously like conversation hearts. (Thanks Jj and Valeena!)
Off to the groomer next to get all scrubbed and brushed and combed. These puppies have already been very loved and so they did get a very real Lysol wipe down before they got to leave with their owners. They also were blow dried and had their nails clipped which they were all very nice for.
Last but not least, we made puppy homes out of boxes by putting the puppy blankets and dog dishes inside. After working so hard loving the little puppies, hot dogs for dinner were a must.

Play More! When was the last time you ate snow?

I have been slow to post because my little family has been sick. All. Week. Long. During this sick week, we stayed inside, had several soup nights including a homemade chicken noodle soup night, and on one of the days there was a big storm that brought a ton of snow. We all wanted to go out and play in it, but instead, I was reminded of the snow cone kits I gave to my neighbors this year for Christmas. We had a lot of fun making these kits and they were very budget friendly too. We began by making the snow cone syrup. We followed this very easy recipe:

Snow Cone Syrup:
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 packet of unsweetened Kool-aid mix

Mix all ingredients together in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Pour into a water bottle or snow cone dispenser bottle.Pour over fresh packed snow for snowcones. (only use fresh, clean snow.)

While the snow cone syrup was cooling, we decorated our snow cone cups. These were just clear plastic cups that we decorated with scrapbook paper. We also clipped colored straws to fit better into the cups. Then we sent Daddy out to make perfectly rounded packed snow cones from the snow outside. We poured the topping on (And drizzled some cream on top to mimic snowasis snowcones.) and we all felt magically better for the rest of the day.