more catch-up. brady's 9th birthday and becoming a BEAR scout.

still going way out of order here...

this year on february 5th, brady turned 9, can you believe it?!

he requested birthday cake pancakes and a sleepover with some of his buddies.  he has so many friends that we had to limit him to four friends for the sleepover.  they had a ton of fun staying up {most} of the night!  they started our watching movies with popcorn and orange julius, playing pokemon, and then when bedtime hit they talked and bounced around for hours!

pancake breakfast-

friends ethan and cameron

friends ethan, daeson and cameron opening gifts

a few weeks before (or maybe it was after?!) we had family up and celebrated with a birthday cake from grammie and grandpa graf.  (don't mind the messy hair!)

opening a "traditional" package of "kisses" from auntie chelsae and uncle spencer

from grammie and grandpa graf he got a metal detector, 

which is probably one of the coolest gifts ever!!!

he also received gifts in the mail from auntie nickie, uncle nick and fam, as well as grammie and grandpa morgan, and GG & papa morgan.  i can't remember what we got him....

in february Brady also advanced from a WOLF cubscout to a BEAR cubscout.  he had received all of the badges, as well as extra gold and silver arrow points.  he worked hard to acheive all of the badges he got and also earned 29 extra-curricular belt loops!  we are very proud of him!

for the Blue & Gold Banquet, every scout needs to make a cake ON THEIR OWN.  he chose a campfire cake, and although we had some issues with some thick frosting it came out pretty cute.

cub scouter.

brady's first night as a cub scout happened to be the blue and gold banquet.  he earned his blue & gold segment, his cake segment and emergency preparedness segment.



for the cake segment, each scout needed to help their parent(s) design, prepare and decorate a cake.  brady chose a wolf using german chocolate cake and frosting (because he thought the frosting would look like the fur!)  we thought i came out pretty cute for not being experts! (and it was very tasty as well!!!) we added whipping cream to the cake mix and poured a little bit over the top before frosting it so it would soak into the cake.  it was very moist!

some of the other very creative cakes!  i was quite impressed!

we are so proud of our growing boy and his desire to participate in good activities!

brady fall art and schoolwork.

*disclaimer: if you missed the previous post i am in the process of updating!  continue scrolling down to see all new posts!*

here are some random drawings and schoolwork that i saved for brady's digital album.

          

self-portrait, by brady.  not sure why he gave himself black hair (other than that he is always telling chris that he hopes he has black hair like him someday...)  or why there is a rainbow colored missile heading right for his head, why he is wearing red and black polka-dot socks (we don't own any of those!) the bear to the left is a teddy bear with a Lagoon sweatshirt that chris won for him a few years ago.

i smiled when i pulled this out of brady's backpack because it made me feel good to know that he is proud of learning how to swim and that i was able to teach him that with lots of hard work together.

               

              

some good old-fashioned discipline.....

and a random cute little snake.

halloween 2012. vampires and mummies and ghosts. oh my!

we've been feeling a little spooky around these parts.  

brady begged me to decorate their bedroom with spookiness.  he likes all of that creepy, crazy stuff...until it's time for bed and lights out.  he can often be caught swapping scary stories with grandpa graf, and it has resulted in his deciding to share a room instead of having his own.  

i saw that glint in his eye and said okay- as long as it wasn't TOO scary.  nothing gross.  nothing bloody.  no zombies or decapitations.  he did manage to get away with a few vampires before i drew the line there too...

it all started with the door.  he and liv began coloring halloween-themed pictures and doing activities at school.  mind you, it wasn't even october yet.

                 

in case you can't read this.  it's actually quite funny. apparently, brady really didn't want anyone who wasn't invited to come into their room!

do not enter

or zombies will attack

or spiders

or mummies

or bats

or aliens

or vampires

or werewolves

or ghosts

or goblins

so do not enter. and if you do, you will not believe it.

once the door was covered it creeped into the bedroom, wound it's bony fingers around their bunk bed and exploded, lasting until a few days after the actual All Hallow'd Eve, when i finally reclaimed their bedroom to normalcy.  

i am sure zach is grateful.  i wonder what he thought peering into the darkness every night.

and olivia- she promised that she LOVED it.  but every night she sneakily crawled into bed with me and wrapped her monkey arms and legs tight to my back.

of course once we decorated their room their cowboy pillowcases just looked plain silly.  mommy was also plain silly when she suggested to brady and olivia that we could go to the fabric store and pick out halloween fabric to make special pillow cases.  this was especially silly because mommy had a million other things she was supposed to be doing.

the look on two kiddos faces when they woke up the next morning to these on the couch was worth it though...

Olivia's: 

Brady's:

the backs:

and who can have a spooky room, and spooky pillowcases but not a spooky outfit?

thank you Pinterest, for giving me the idea of how i could do a mummy.  i didn't particularly like the one that i saw online so instead of gauze i used some scrap white felt and scrap green fabric.  i already had the googly eyes and a leftover "boo" from liv's pillowcase.  i decided to make the whole body of the mummy, and not just the face like what was online.  we used one of brady's play shirts turned inside out.

olivia's shirt came out SO cute.  I had bought her some striped tights and a black tu-tu imagining that i was going to make her such a shirt as this.  i will toot my own horn, in that this was entirely my own creation- made with scraps of felt and pillowcase fabric!

zach's outfit was a lucky find at my favorite thrift store for the kids- Once Upon a Child.  it was EXACTLY what i had been wanting to make, so imagine my thrill when i saw it just waiting for me on a rack and for only $3!!!  It matched Olivia's tights perfectly and saved me a LOT of time!

we got LOTS of use out of these outfits.  i made them the 2nd week of the month so Brady wore his shirt about two times each week to school.  he said other kids thought it was "the coolest." {yes, i am still a cool mom who can make cool things!!!}  Olivia wore her tu-tu and striped tights every chance she got.  and when she did i coordinated zach with her as well.  so whether or not he liked his, he sported it often as well.  

some more art work:

(thanks to my friend, Charlotte for giving me the idea to upload and do digi scrapbooks of the kids artwork!  No more binders and bins full of crumpled papers!  instead they get to feel so special seeing their artwork on the computer and later on i'll surprise them with their very own books full of their best works of art!

Brady's-

 


               

Olivia's-

olivia did some of the scary faces above in brady's section, but i'm not sure which ones.  she also did most of the papers on their door...

pumpkins-

we didn't get a picture of the pumpkins that they carved but they were adorable.  chris carved with the kids while i was at a young women's activity and i got to come home to a surprise waiting for me on the doorstep! they had lit the candles inside of their jack-o-lanterns and had them waiting for me!

these silly pumpkins were also inside waiting on the counter! they gave me quite a laugh!  brady's is on the left and olivia's is on the right.

projects.

the kids have been up to lots of crafts.  they had earned some things from the general conference store, if you recall.  they spent hours for days making these melty bead animals.  it was great having them consumed with creativity.

i taught brady how to use the iron, which was also a useful thing to learn

brady created a marble run/ habitat for his imprisoned {i mean, pet} praying mantis, who sadly died {starved to death} after brady couldn't catch enough flies to feed it.  we later learned, while doing a little research that praying mantis never eat dead insects.  oops.  next time we'll remember that and let them remain free on our lawn.

he was very proud of his creation, and now we have a petrified praying mantis.  

grammie morgan brought these projects with her when she came to visit in June and we proudly displayed them for several months until we began packing.

brady brings home these large pieces of paper from school and we like to try and do projects with them.  grammie had also brought these holographic sparkly space stickers with her so i divided them among the two kids and let them go to town creating their own galaxies!

brady's:

brady's was complete with earthlings in a rainstorm

olivia's:

i was quite impressed with her drawings.  she did have a little help from brady from time to time...(alien)

the rocket and  rapunzel towel were entirely her creations

and at the end we found a worthy place to hang them!  it brightened up their closet, and they were able to continue drawing and coloring them from time to time when the whim hit!

i had bought olivia a really cute snow white book at goodwill in montana last year.  we kept it in the car for road trips and over the course of a few trips she managed to tear several pages out and rip them to bits when she was mad about something.  not wanting to just throw the book away, we tore out the rest of the pages and went to town cutting out different objects to create a special house for snow white to live in.  olivia wanted lots of help with this part, but when it came time to create and glue she wanted to be all by herself.  she was quite proud of what she came up with and even though we ended up tossing more than half of our little bits it was still a cute little way to use her book instead of just throwing it away!