The Boys' New Toy

We have one of those crazy little gravel patio areas that townhouse builders euphemistically call a "pocket yard." And our builder, thought he would be so clever as to add a little deck in this area. Let me tell you, he wasn't very clever at all. What he ended up doing, was making our only real outdoor space completely unusable. The deck was too small to use for anything, and worse, it took up so much space out there, that we couldn't even use the area around it. Thankfully, we are a handy lot, and were able to turn that deck into a step, and free up almost the entire area for the boys. 

But once that horrible deck was gone, I began to focus on our hodge-podge sandbox. Back when we had a giant yard, we thought it would be a great idea to use two of those blue rigid kiddie pools to make a sandbox, and it worked famously until this year's snow cracked the top pool. So now rain went in, but couldn't drain out and the boys found they had a pretty nasty little mud puddle. 

Awhile ago, I found this sandbox on Pinterest, and I fell in love. But much to my chagrin, it is made in the UK. Turns out, it wasn't too hard for myself and D to put together for the boys. We were even able to recreate the top and how it turns into two benches for the kiddos to sit on.  The best part was that we were able to reuse the boards from the deck to make the main body of the box. We used some boards from an old bookshelf for the top, and discovered we only spent maybe $20 for the hardware. We left large gaps in the bottom of the box to allow all that Pacific Northwest rain to just drain on through. And used some landscaping fabric as a liner to keep the sand in the box. We'll see how durable that turns out to be. I'm very happy we made this, and the boys love it!

Rainbow Pancakes with a side of Soapbox

Photo Credit: iambaker.net

Over the past week, my kids have been eating whatever I could scrounge out of our freezer since busy Mama forgot to buy their Cheerios on the last grocery store run. Noah asked if maybe we could have pancakes on Saturday, and to make up for my less than stellar meal planning, and because we generally do have pancakes on the weekend, I agreed.

I've gotten pretty bored with the same old plain pancakes, and for weeks have been trolling Pinterest for some new ideas. I've seen this pancake photo over and over, but didn't make them for a variety of reasons. Late last night, I decided to take a closer look at them and possibly surprise my family with Rainbow Pancakes for breakfast.

Photo Credit: seechristinerun.blogspot.com

While I was checking out that post, I noticed she'd linked to another one of her posts regarding how she deals with people she calls Rainbow Pancake Haters. Because I was curious, I clicked on the link. Turns out, she's had some people leaving nasty comments on her blog about her not only feeding her children pancakes ('worthless nonfood') but berating her for putting so much food coloring in the pancakes that they look like 'melted plastic'. Some of those nasty posters went so far as to tell her she was a horrible mother. What?!! She's a horrible mother because she wanted to make a fun home-cooked meal for her children? Where do those people get off? Anyway, I decided then and there to make these pancakes for my boys this morning, just to spite those posters and to support Amanda over at iambaker.net. Here is our version, fed to my little men just a few hours ago, served with greek yogurt 'clouds'.

I've been gone a lot lately, and the kiddos are starting to feel it. Between Weight Watchers, preschool meetings, and work, there have been more dinners made by Daddy and eaten without Mommy, than there have been meals with her. So when I got home last night, D was working hard at the kitchen table on a project. Turns out Noah, our eldest, has been asking every night for D to make him a card and to draw his own picture in it so Noah could, "Know Daddy loves him and see what he looks like." 

A few months ago, when we instituted a policy that Noah had to stay in his room until his alarm clock went of rather than running around the house in the wee hours of the morning (I am SO not a morning person), he started getting really upset. Turned out he wanted to be sure that he could say goodbye to Daddy when he left for work. Our compromise was that D would write him a note every day, and Noah would stay in his room. But months have gone by without him needing it, so I thought we were beyond that. I guess maybe my being gone so much in the last few weeks may have brought back some of that old insecurity. But it also brought out D's inner artist, so it wasn't all bad. 

By the way, he's not really cross-eyed in real life. =-)