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christmas song fun ...

I thought it would be fun to do a post today to see if you can figure out the first lines of these famous Christmas songs.

Each letter shown is the first letter of a word in the first line of a Christmas song.  For example, DTHWBOHFLLLLL would be D (deck) T (the) H (halls) W (with) B (boughs) O (of) H (holly) F (fa) L (la ... la ... la ...la).

See if you can figure out the rest.  Leave me a comment letting me know which ones you got, or which ones stumped you.

1. ICUAMC
2. GRYMGLNYD
3. TFNTADS
4. YBWOYBNC
5. RTRNRHAVSN
6. ISMKSCUTMLN
7. GGROBAR
8. OHNTSABS
9. DTTSIAOHOS
10. OTFDOCMTLGTM

Can't wait to see if you can figure these out!

And I'll leave you today with a photo of the kids getting ready to camp out in the room with Nanny and Poppy during their visit.  Actually, Nicholas was the only one to camp out in the room, but Rebecca wanted to do a little snuggling with Nicholas before it was time for bed.

Enjoy the rest of the day!

playing with trains ...

Nicholas decided to take out the train puzzle we have last night and play with the colorful trains with Rebecca.  She is starting to learn colors (somewhat).  She can say red, blue, and yellow (kind of).  They had fun taking the trains off the board and then putting them back on.  During this time, Rebecca kept on calling ALL the trains red.

 
 
 
I just love when they play nicely together.

Since last week's color from Project 64: Out of the Box was Timberwolf:

 
I thought it would be appropriate to take a picture of the train board with one of the trains.

 
For more entries, go here.

 

Thanks for stopping by!  Enjoy your day.

w is for words with friends ...

You can say that I have a slight addiction to playing Words With Friends on my iPhone.  At any given time, I can have ten or more games going on at once, and I love the new feature listing your FB friends who use WWF.  It is very easy to find a friend to play the game with now.

If you play, my user name is mom2nick, so send me an invite if you want to play.  By the way ... don't feel intimidated, it seems that I lose more games than I win.

 
For more A to Z challenge posts for the letter "W," click the link to the right.

That is all for today folks ... short and sweet.  I'll be back tomorrow.

Enjoy your day!

n is for (by the) numbers ...

I was reading Katrina's blog the other day and she did a neat post about "by the" numbers.  I thought it would be fun to do my own, and it's a perfect idea for a post for the A to Z challenge for letter "N."  These were some of my numbers from yesterday.

Yesterday Nicholas attended his friend's birthday party, so quite a few of the numbers below are from the time at the party at Giggleberry Fair.

# of diapers changed ...6

# of times Nicholas rode the carousel ... 3

# of tickets Nicholas won to get prizes ... 181

# of photos taken at the party ... 10

# of states we were in yesterday ... 2

# of pizza slices that Nicholas consumed ... 4

# of times my umbrella blew inside out because of the wind/rain ... 2

# of missing binkies before bed time ... 4 (I don't know how Becca loses all her binkies)

# of hugs from my kids ... countless

Nicholas had a fun day with his friends, I had a fun day hanging out with the other parents, and Rob and Rebecca had a good day hanging out together.

Enjoy today everyone!

j is for jigsaw puzzles ...

Ever since I can remember, I have loved to put puzzles together.  I think the love comes from my father's side of the family because I remember when growing up there used to be so many finished puzzles hanging on the walls in the basement of my great-grandparents house (now my grandmother's house).  My father loves to do puzzles too.

I'm actually working on a puzzle right now for Rob's sportsman's room.  All the pieces are scattered on the dining room table with just the frame of the puzzle completed.  I like to complete the frame first, and then fill in the inside pieces.

For more "J" posts in the A to Z challenge, click on the button to the right.

And, since I rarely do a post without a picture, I thought I'd post a recent favorite of mine.  Excuse the mess in the living room ... this is what happens when your house doesn't have a room dedicated as a playroom.

 
I love to see my kids reading together.  Rebecca was even jibber-jabbering while turning the pages.  Oh, and I know, Rebecca REALLY needs to get her haircut.

Enjoy your day everyone!

have you heard of sporcle ...

After surfing through some iPod Phone/Touch apps, I came across a game called Sporcle.  For those that don't have an iPod Phone/Touch/Pad, you can go to their site directly ... http://www.sporcle.com/.

If you love trivia, you will love this site (or app).  It's basically online trivia quizzes about geography, movies, tv, sports, etc.  When you click on "start" the time clock will start counting down.  The clock time is set differently for each quiz ... it all depends on how many questions and the difficulty level of the game. 

Some of the games listed are:

• Popular names that were both popular in both 1909 and 2009
• Greatest TV Catchphrases
• Best Supporting Actor Movies
• Figure out the lyrics (Disney)
• Opening Day Lineups (Cardinals)
• Largest Countries A-Z
• Famous Sidekicks
• Signs of the Zodiac

... and the list goes on and on

So, what are you waiting for ... go try it out!

 

 

 

 

 

layouts and a puzzle ...

I've been trying to work on Becca's first scrapbook album.  Participating in layout challenges helps me tremendously.  Here are two layouts inspired by sketches from Scraphappy.  You need to be a member of Scraphappy to join in on the challenges and the other goodies that the site offers.

Here is Becca's three-month picture (very simple layout).  I really need to schedule an appointment to get her next set of portraits taken since she is seven months already. 

 

And this layout is about a few things I adore about Rebecca ... again, very simple.

 

Now for the puzzle ...

In each row below, seven letters are "in" and seven are "out."  Determine the unusual common characteristic of the letters in the "in" group that is not shared by those in its respective "out" group.

1. in:  A E F H K L T ...... out:  B C D G J O U
2. in:  B C D G P T V ..... out:  A F H J L R W
3. in:  C E H I K O X ..... out:  F G J M P Q Z

Let me know if you have any guesses.  I'll post the answers in a few days.

Enjoy your evening everyone!

had to share the outfit with you ...

Did I mention to you that I LOVE little girl clothes!  I can't go into a store without going to the baby department and looking through the girlie things.  I usually don't leave a store without purchasing something new for Becca to wear.  She gets some really cute outfits from family/friends too.

Here is Becca in one of the outfits she has that I LOVE.

 

 

Due to all the rolls in her legs/arms, this may have been the last time to put Becca in this outfit.  She is a roley-poley.

Oh, and to let you know, I'm participating in the "Clickin Moms" 2010 Scavenger Hunt.  There is a list of over 100 items to photograph within the month of July.  When I take a picture, I'll need to post to their site.  Bonus ... they are giving away some great prizes to the people who take the most photos.  I'm going to try my hardest to take a photo of as many things as possible.  I will keep you updated on what photos I take.  The only thing that may be a bit hard to do is have a sign that says "Clickin Moms 2010" in every picture that is taken.  We'll see how it goes.

Enjoy your day! 

field day and graduation ...

Well, it's official ... Nicholas has graduated Kindergarten.  We are so proud of him.  He got his report card in his folder today and it was all good ... a note on it indicated that he can continue on to First Grade.  Next year will be big for him ... in school ALL DAY, which will include eating lunch in the cafe and having recess.  Congrats Nicholas!

Nicholas' field day was held on Wednesday, and boy was it hot and humid.  We were all happy that it didn't rain, but boy could we have used some nice strong breezes blowing in to keep us a little cooler.  Thank goodness for some of the trees on the school grounds ... at least that gave us some shade.

There are 39 kids in his class, so all the kids were broken up into teams.  I was in charge of the white team (my team had to wear white shirts).  Surprisingly, even with three boys on my team, they all managed to keep their shirts white.

 
There were seven different teams in seven different colors.  Each team took turns going to a different "station" for an activity/game. 

This was the grocery cart race ...

 

The potato on a spoon race (instead of an egg on a spoon).

 
There was also a bean bag toss, a crab race, a fill-the-bucket-with-water using a sponge race, musical chairs, but using hula-hoops instead, and a table set up for the kids to get tattoos.  At the end, all the kids got a medal.

  
Here are two more pictures ... one of Nicholas and his teacher, and the other of him and his "girl" friend.

 

 

Oh to be young again ...

Enjoy your weekend everyone! 

a puzzle and a picture...

For all my puzzle loving friends ... the puzzle on my calendar from a few days back was fun to do, so I thought I'd share it with you in case you want to play along.

Rules:  Create a word chain starting with FOOTBALL in which the next word in the chain has a strong association with the word that precedes it.  For example, FOOTBALL leads to TOUCHDOWN which leads to LANDING which leads to ... The chain will come full circle back to FOOTBALL.

The Words:  Airplane - Beach - Bird - Butter - Cereal - Field - Flamingo - Florida - Football - Landing - Milk - Movie - Popcorn - Rain - The Wizard of Oz - Tornado - Touchdown - Umbrella - Wheat - Wind

If you play along, let me know how you do ... especially you Christine!

And today, I'll share with you a picture that I took of one of the flowers that bloomed from the seeds that Rob planted a few weeks ago.  I'm not sure if it is a Gerber Daisy, but whatever it is, it's so pretty, and now there are more popping up.

  Enjoy your evening everyone!

a puzzle for you today ...

I have such a love for puzzles ... crosswords, word searches, suduko, jigsaw puzzles, puzzles that really make you think, etc.  My page-a-day calendar on my desk in the office is the Mensa puzzle calendar, so each day I'm faced with a new challenge.  Some of them are really hard (and I usually give up on trying to figure them out), but then there are the ones (the fun ones) that I try my hardest to complete.

I thought I'd let you try out one of the puzzles from a few days back ... leave me a comment with your answers and I'll let you know your answers are right. 

Each answer below is a two-word phrase in which the only vowel is I (capital i).

1. Tall Sesame Street character
2. Start of a ballgame (can be one of two answers)
3. No-fat dairy drink
4. Skimpy swimsuit
5. South Bend team's nickname, with "the"
6. Temperature "factor" that makes the air feel nippier

Good luck ... I may have more of these for you in the next few days.

And for my LOAD (layout a day) for Day #4, I scraplifted a layout created by my friend Beth ... except her layout is 10 x better than mine.

 

The past two Everyday Adventure challenges have been fun ... I just need to download my photos and then create two layouts.  Maybe I'll post them tomorrow ... if I get them created.

Enjoy the rest of your day everyone!

a little sunshine ...

You know the class I was talking about yesterday ... well, last night I received a "Sunshine Award" from the instructor ... Tami Morrison ... how exciting is that!

  
So, I'm going to play along. 

The rules are as follows:

1. Put the logo in your post or within your blog.
2. Pass the award onto 12 fellow bloggers (or as many as you'd like).
3. Link the nominees within your post.
4. Let the nominees know they have received this award by leaving a comment on their blogs.
5. Share the love and link to the person who gave you the award.

I'm going to pass the award on to a few of my friends (but not 12) ...

Traci

Jill

Tina

Beth

Laura

Enjoy your day everyone ... hope you're getting some "sunshine" today.