April Fools, Left Over Birthday Balloons, and Other Miscellaneous Stuff!

If you know me, you know that I love to have fun!  I love pranks and April Fools.  I really want my kids to be able to laugh at life, and not always take things too seriously, basically "Come what may and love it" like was said in conference a few years ago.  I grew up with a family that loved to laugh, tease, and joke, and I really want that for my kids too.  Some of my earliest memories with my Dad are toilet paper wars with other families in our church.  My Dad had a fire extinguisher filled with water reserved for those who attempted to get us back.

I talked to the kids last night about April Fools and how it is fun to play tricks, as long as they are safe, don't hurt anybody's feelings, and don't wreck people's things.  We planned a few tricks with those guidelines in mind.  The missionaries came over for dinner last night, and we sent them home with a plate full of "goodies" to eat for the next day(April Fools).  Everything on the plate was normal, except we added some special Oreos.  The boys helped me scrape off the cream with a knife(they loved getting to eat the cream), and add toothpaste instead.  The boys were good not to say anything.  Hopefully the missionaries aren't scarred from coming to our house again.  We also planned a few tricks to play on their Dad, like covering up the sensor on his mouse with paper and tape, so it didn't work.  Last night, Dave and I moved the boys after they fell asleep, so they would wake up in a different bed.

I have a ton of googly eyes that I used for a project a long time ago, and used some of them to spice up our fridge for April Fools.  Landon and Easton loved it, and asked how long it took me to glue them all on.  It only took about 20 minutes, but was so fun!  I love doing stuff like this and reasons to celebrate.  It makes my day more fun.  I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it!  The fridge makes me so happy to open now.  If you come to my house and use something out of our fridge it will be looking at you. :)

I also put tissue in their shoes.

Landon and I also made broccoli suckers for his teachers.  He was excited to take them to school.

I also froze their cereal and milk.  They told me that they couldn't get their spoons in it, and I kept saying, "Really, it looks normal to me, are you sure?".  Easton finally resorted to putting his face right in it and licking it to get it out.

They also played a few tricks on me.  The told me all morning a few random times that they heard their Dad coming in the door.  I got excited the first time, and totally fell for it.

In my last post, I blogged about Oaklyn turning 1, and had a couple of pictures of how we filled her crib up with balloons.  Well, the next day there were tons left over for the boys to play with, and Landon and Easton decided they looked like eggs  They pretended to be "BAD GUY" birds, and used the balloons for their "BAD" eggs (Only boys would come up with a way to make playing birds tough).  Anyway, they asked me to help them construct a giant nest for their "BAD" eggs.  Because, after all, this was very serious business, and they needed a nest for their lair.  It started out looking like this:

They put Oaklie in it, and she was their chick for a while.  She was such a cute little chick!  They spent all morning trying to put the eggs back in the nest that she would push out.  She really was a "BAD" little chick.:)  It became a fun little game for them actually, putting the balloons back in the nest as fast as they could each time she knocked them out.  However,  eventually she crawled away to find another toy to play with.  She LOVES the little bike Aunt Anne got her for her birthday!

I made some new chicks to add on to their little game.  I untied a couple of the yellow balloons and we put a couple of pennies inside.  Then I blew them back up, drew a little chickie on each of them and tied a string around each so the boys could drag them around like the little balloon pets you can buy at the store for a ridiculous amount of money.  Ours weren't as cute, but they served the same purpose.

For "BAD GUY" birds, these guys were pretty sweet with their balloon chicks, they took them for stroller rides.

Easton even bathed his.  

They kept adding things to their nest.  I loved listening to their little plans, and their happy play while I cleaned that morning.  Their nest ended up looking like this.  Don't worry, they cleaned it all up!

One of the things I started doing with my kids a couple of years ago, is to schedule into our daily routine one-on-one time with each kid twice a day for 15 minutes.  We call it their "special time".  I usually have 15 minutes with each child in the morning, and 15 with each in the afternoon.  The one in the morning is usually a skill they need to learn.  It is different for each kid because of their ages and what they might need to work on.  It might be an school type skill like counting, or shapes, but I have also used that time to teach them how to clean, cook, or serve others.  The 15 minutes in the afternoon is usually playing with them on the floor.  I have done board games, catch, playing with toys, whatever they want to do.  So a lot of the things I will put up on this blog are things I do during our "special time".  One of the things that was cheap and really fun that we did recently is magnet skating.  Each boy picked an animal to color and colored a skating guy.  We put metal on the bottom of the figures, and they put a magnet UNDER the box to make the figures "skate".  They loved it!

I also did this cup reading game with Landon.  

The red cup has two letters with a space in between.  And then Landon and I would take turns being the teacher, and choosing a middle sound for our word with the clear cups.  Then he would sound it out.  Some of the words were nonsense words, and some were real words.  He is really loving to read!  I hope it keeps up, and I hope all my kids love reading as much as I do.  If I had a day all to myself, that is what I would do!  Well, that and eat some chocolate, but what is a good book without some chocolate anyway! :)