Christmas in July 2013

Merry Christmas in July! As a teacher I tend to find myself always trying to plan the day and make sure it has some type of lesson in it. For this day I wanted to start a new tradition that would be a fun day filled with some fun, activities, friends, but most of all I wanted it to be a day that we took some time to think of others. I think this day was a success and the pictures and captions should explain our day.

I love my boys and they are starting to get better with me always trying to take pictures.

 What Snow in July?!?

 This photo shows how much my boys love each other and enjoy each others company.

We started the morning decorating our felt tree, because it just doesn't feel like Christmas without a tree. Snakey even helped put on the ornaments.

 Next up was making Rice Krispies, Tynan picked the color.

 I was busy helping Easton and didn't realize that the sprinkles came out so fast, notice the ones on the right - All Tynan! I think he also ate more of the decorations than ended up on the treats.

Snow Flake Chasing
 For this activity I added food coloring to bubbles and gave Tynan plates to try and pop them. When the bubbles popped it left the color on the plate in a swirly circle. (Warning - If you do this activity be prepared for a mess. Bubbles popped all over the place leaving behind red and green marks. You can see some of the evidence on the below pictures of Tynan, but did wipe off pretty easily.) After the plates dried we made a snow flake out of it.

 Snowball Fight!

Well maybe a bit melted snowball fight. We played with white filled water balloons. Not so fun to have a snowball fight with just mom, so we invited the neighbors over to help with the festivities. They enjoyed it as much as Tynan did, but thought it was weird to have a snowball fight in July.

Enjoying one of our treats from earlier while waiting for the water table to be ready.

 Science Fun

After filling the water table I added red and green snowman ice cubes, so we could see what happens to the ice and the colors. I added way too much green color and not enough red. Again the neighbors joined in.

 The Gift of Giving

The stocking above is filled with some of Tynan's toys. He was told that the stocking needed to be filled with some of the toys he didn't want anymore, so that another boy or girl could have some to play with. This was a very hard thing for a 2 year old who thinks everything is his. After some tears he did fill the stocking. Again I explained to him that he has lots of toys and some kids have none, and that Santa would be proud of him for thinking of others. After about 10 minutes he came up to me and said, "Mom, I'm ho ho." (which is what he calls santa) I asked him why he said that and his reply was that he was giving away his toys like santa. Melted my heart. I am so proud of him and just floored that a newly turned 2 year old figured that out.

 MMM Hot Chocolate!

This is Tynan's first taste of hot chocolate. He loved it, of course he is his mothers son.

I would call today a huge success, the main point was to teach about giving to others and Tynan responded great. We also had a blast of a day. Easton was involved too, I just couldn't get pictures since I was holding him, but he scooted to me while we were decorating cookies because he wanted to be involved. He also played with the water and supervised.

Merry July Christmas, may it find you all well, happy and healthy!

Oh "Two"dles - Tynan's 2nd Bday Party

Saturday April 20th we celebrated Tynan's 2nd birthday party with a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse fashion party. All had a great time and Tynan definitely slept well that night.

Balloons

Mickey Clock

Decorations

   

 Toodles with Tynan's favorite tools - Milk, School bus, Coloring, and M&M's

Greeting at the door.

You have to have your Mouseketools!

Pinterest idea - tortilla Mickey Mouse pizza, all the kids got to make one of these .

Tynan gearing up for his party with a Super Mickey shirt on.

Getting in some flying time with Daddy.

All the kids had to solve the Birthday mystery, using Toddles when they needed a tool.

Solving the first mystery a little science experiment - Milk was the tool needed, they then added a drop of each food coloring into the milk. Last they added some soap to a q-tip and placed the q-tip in the middle of the milk and watched what happened.

The second challenge the kids had to call on toodles for the school bus "kleenex" for this challenge they each got a box of kleenex and had 1 minute to pull all of the tissues out of the box using only one hand.

Tynan caught on right away and did a great job, even finishing in one minute with only one hand.

The 3rd challenge kids had to call on toodles for "colored" cotton balls. In this challenge kids had to put vasoline on their nose then using only there noses transport a cotton ball from one bowl to the other.

This was a very funny activity to watch. Here is cousin Tim with the cotton ball stuck to his nose.

Again I was surprise with how Tynan was catching on to the activities, even though he ended up cheating and carried the cotton ball to the other bowl.

Cousin Peyton's mad skills.

Cousin Tim making a clean transfer.

Cousin Gavin adding some style to his cotton ball transfer.

The arrival of Toodles for the final challenge, Tynan was very excited.

For the final challenge the kids had to call toodles for the mystery mouseketool, which was M&M's. In this challenge the kids had to transfer the M&M's from one plate to another using a straw and had to make a smiley face. Here is Gavin with some good M&M transfers.

Peyton making a great face.

Tynan watching cousin Tim, trying to figure out how he is going to do this.

After solving all of the challenges the kids got rock candy and a mickey bouncey ball.

Opening presents

With some cousin help.

It was a mickey mouse party, but Tynan also loves Choo Choo trains so we had to add in a little bit of trains too, the train does not have a trade mark issue either, like mickey mouse does.

Tynan blowing out his candles

Two more pinterest ideas - on the left scooping out ice cream ahead of time and putting them in muffin liners, this really was a fabulous idea saved time and way cleaner. On the right cookie bowls for the ice cream, these were made on an upside down muffin pan. 

Maya joining Tynan on the couch for Mater tale time.