The Spiderman/No Girls/No Shoes Fort

Since Christmas Yip has made good use of his five rolls of duct tape.  I don't keep track but I wouldn't be surprised if he has already used up three of them already! Yip thought he needed a much bigger box than he was able to find in our house or at the recycling garage down the street so he decided to talk to the owner of the hardware store (down the other street), who also happens to sell appliances. 

And a very happy little boy came down the street shortly after hauling a large dryer box! (ahem, I have neglected to mention to him that the hardware store would probably be willing to give him many more such boxes if he would ask.) 

Yip and Yap pretty much have the run of the basement of our house. A lot of times they will disappear into what we affectionately describe as their "cave" for hours at a time. 

Yip and Yap, mostly Yip, has been working on this "house" for about the past week. (And arguing with their little sister to stay out of it! Oh, the yelling that's come from the basement!!) I hadn't really taken a good look at it lately but as I was cleaning their wreck of a basement this morning I noticed some of the details. 

First, a no shoe sign. I guess he really takes pride in the cleanliness of his house. I wish he'd take that much pride in mine! :)

And a window curtain from a t-shirt. He's made a duct tape curtain rod that runs through the sleeves of the shirt then it can slide from side to side. 

This was kind of hard to take a photo of but this is the ceiling of the inside of his house. The black cardboard is a trap door...

....to his attic. It was really hard for me to get in and take a picture of this but sometimes he stores toys and his rolls of duct tape up there. 

This was the newest addition to his house. The spider man mural!! How cool! I knew he was working on this drawing all Sunday afternoon but I just love that he put it in his house and that he built the orange spider web...AWESOME!! 

I'm softening up to the idea of an addition to his house.

Maybe I'll surprise him with a new box today when he gets home from school! 

Merry Christmas Morning!!

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas morning! 

We were cold here with a bit of snow and a LOT of wind and Christmas morning here was quite entertaining, but I think any house with kids probably had an entertaining Christmas morning. 

(Quick cute story....on Christmas Eve DR and I were tucking Yahoo into bed. After reading with her and tucking her under the covers and the required number of kisses and hugs she looked at us both quite seriousl and said, "Now QUICK run to your bed and go to sleep!" As if Mom and Dad going to sleep would make Christmas come sooner! )

Yip has been wearing these slippers non-stop since Christmas, seriously I can't see how he can actually walk in them. He was easy to shop for this year; bear slippers and duct tape was pretty much all he wanted. 

Check out the look on that boy's face when he opened up a roll of 5 bright new duct tapes!!! 

Funny!! 

Miss Yahoo too was easy to shop for as well, anything pink and Princess! I searched Amazon until I found a reasonably priced metal tiara, one that wouldn't snap the first day of wearing and playing. I'm so happy I did because she has already bent it much farther without breaking than a plastic tiara would have survived. 

Now I am a tomboy and though I did wear dresses as a little girl I was never much for pink, glittery, frilly things. Yahoo is MUCH different than I am. I try to avoid surrounding her with over the top girlyness. 

My sisters, however, seem to think their only job is to help make Yahoo as girly as possible! 

Oh. My. Goodness.

I don't know what my sister did to that tule skirt but I had glitter all over my ankles! 

One of the coolest and most creative gifts the boys received this year was from my sister who sent them an entire box of PVC pipes and connectors. It's like a giant building set. Very cool! 

We actually had two Christmases on Christmas day. Since this was the first time we weren't traveling to spend time with family I've been receiving boxes for the last couple weeks from them. My brother Mountain Man was able to come over later that afternoon when we opened the second half of Christmas presents. Whew! I'm glad that's over. I felt like my living room exploded twice! I didn't take nearly as many photos of the day as I would have liked, I was too busy enjoying my family. 

Santa and Papa Doug were especially good to Yip and Yap this year with gifts of air pistol and rifle and pocket knives! My house has also been covered in wood shavings since Tuesday, HA! More on that tomorrow! 

Art Nights, NO TV!

We have instituted a new rule in our house this school year which is "No TV on School Days". That means no television before school or after school or in the evenings. I must admit I was a bit worried how this would work. Last year I'd regularly allow tv watching while I was making dinner but it never failed to turn into a big fight. "Just one more Mom!" or "It's ALMOST over!". Every school night was full of arguments. I was imagining there would be a lot fights over tv once school started but those only lasted about a week. 

This school year of no television has been so stress free, it's unbelievable! The boys don't even ask to watch television during the week. They do REALLY look forward to Friday nights though when they know they get movie night. Of course the lack of arguments might also have something to do with another change we've made in our school week routine; ART NIGHT.  After dinner on Wednesday nights the kids and I started meeting around the dinner table to do some kind of art. Some nights we would have a theme. For example, in October we did some creepy, scary art. Another week the boys wanted to do something with clay but most nights it's an art free for all. They can do any kind of artwork, painting drawing, building, Legos, as long as it's art. 

Lately though art night has kind of branched out into whatever night they want to do stuff. Which is GREAT! The kids know that television is off limits during the school week but the art supplies aren't. We go through a LOT of paper and a LOT of tape and we make LOTS of messes but I'm really okay with that. 

Yip even had a night where he came up with costumes for his thumb! These were outfits for his thumb "wrestler"! LOL!! 

I've been so happy with how the boys creativity and imagination, problem solving and analytical skills have seemed to blossom this year and I think it has a lot to do with limiting tv and never running dry on art supplies. 

Aren't making messes great?! 

Let's be BRAVE and shoot some arrows!

When I first heard about the movie Brave, over a year ago, I was sooo excited! A Scottish princess, heroine without a prince! Finally! I was psyched and I drug the whole family to see the movie over the summer, whether they wanted to or not....luckily they wanted to. Yahoo especially liked it of course! What little girl wouldn't want to ride off on a giant horse into the wilderness shooting arrows? Sounds like a blast!  

(I just love this picture of Yap. I'm not sure if he's hollering or if he's channeling Michael Jordan with that tongue!) 

Do you know how many crappy toy bow and arrows my boys have gone through in their short 8 years? Too many to count. Finally I had to put my foot down and wouldn't let them buy any toy bow and arrows because I knew they'd be broken by the end of the day.  

A while ago I found this great tutorial on how to make bows and arrows out of PVC pipe. Awesome! One lazy weekend during harvest, when DR wasn't home, we marched down to the hardware store a block away (I'm so spoiled) and bought the supplies which weren't expensive at all, maybe $20 in all? I think we had three bows and six arrows built and shooting within an hour! They are a bit tough for Yahoo to play with but she still enjoys being out playing with the boys while they shoot the arrows. 

We built these over a month ago and the kids still play with them! Talk about durable! Well, the only part that has taken a beating is the foam arrow heads...they've gotten shredded between my kids and the neighbor kids playing with them but the dowel rod arrows are still in one piece and those shoot just fine! 

How do you like my daughter's fashion sense? She's wearing a skirt, well as a skirt and then another skirt as a shirt. I should just be thankful she's covered! 

The ONLY problem we've had with this toy is my boys tend to shoot toward the big pine tree in our front yard and the arrows get stuck a lot. 

The boys and I have had a lot of practice throwing the football up in the tree trying to get the arrows down! 

The PVC Bow and Arrow is one of the best homemade toys I've ever made! Check out the instructions at Skip to My Lou. She has great step by step photos!

What's the best Do It Yourself toy you've ever made? 

My Artistic Recycler

If I had my way the summer would have been filled with art projects that my boys and I did together. 

It wasn't. 

Instead this is where Yip spent most of his time.

He was constantly found on my laundry room floor he was constantly spreading out the recyclables, cutting and taping and in some cases coloring. 

A motorboat...from a beer box.

And here he's posing with his cardboard pogo stick (left) that he was inspired to sculpt after we stumbled on some images of cardboard sculptures by Christ Gilmour. After Yip built it he emphasized how it was just a "sculpture" and it really couldn't be played on. He was quite serious, as though I couldn't figure that out. 

And then there's the machine gun. See the cardboard that has round indentations? Those are his bullets and he pulls them through the hole just like they'd go through a real machine gun. 

But then....then there are his Wolverine claws. 

I think he's tried making 4 or 5 different versions of these over the summer but THESE were by far the most successful design. He has since learned the meaning of the phrase, "Trial and Error". 

The art teacher in me would have loved to spend the summer in art museums on art drawing walks or doing fabulous huge projects with them....but I'm glad I didn't push it. Because watching his creativity and problem solving grow over the summer has been a real joy and I know it will serve him much better than any art project I could have forced on them! 

Besides he's made buying Christmas gifts really easy for him this year....

DUCT TAPE!!