Crazy children and Art projects!

What a day! Remember those loony toons cartoons where at the end one of the cartoon characters ran away as fast and far as they could and disappeared into the distance?

That's exactly what I wanted to do today! It was one of the summer days that I was dreading. Hot. Humid. No car. Stuck inside. Crazy children.

Need I say more?

We started out the morning with the Thomas Jr band. Waaaayyy too early for keyboards (at full volume when Z plays!), drums, harmonica's and singing. Oy.

Then I tried to talk to one of my friends for a few minutes on the phone and this happened. It ended in screaming, yelling, injury and me sprouting a few gray hairs. The boys weren't able to stay outside for too long because it was pretty hot so they ended up inside building a "submarine" on the floor. Then one thing led to another (cagey child + cagey child = disaster waiting to happen...) and the boys were kicking each other and yelling and Z ended up with a bruised cheek, Samuel got banished to his room and Eliana was in tears over how awful they were acting.

I almost lost it right then and there. Enter deep breaths and prayers.

He may be cute and sweet but he is also a bit of a troublemaker when it comes to his brother! The boys were sentenced to basement time during Eliana's nap so I could recuperate some of my sanity and their noise could be contained somewhat. At lunch time, I pulled on of my slips out of my activity jar that I put together right before school ended and we decided to do an art project after naptime.

Whew! The afternoon was saved with only one tiny piece of paper...

The nice thing about art is you can use anything around your house! I did a quick pinterest search for ideas and grabbed some paper plates and paint and away we went!

The boys stripped their shirts off once they started getting paint on them. Thank goodness for washable paint!

I love that they still love to do projects even though they are getting so "Old." haha;)

We made little fish tanks! First they painted their paper plate plates a bluish-green color for the water. Then they glued cheerios onto the bottom for the rocks. Some green tissue paper strips became the seaweed and they decorated their cardboard fish with tissue paper, too. Pretty cute! This is Eliana's masterpiece. She LOVES to do art!

I said they could eat any cheerios they didn't use:)

This is Samuel's fish. He preferred the "minimalist" approach:)

And this is Mr Z's, with the big blobs of glue! He prefers the "maximalist" approach:)

It really helped our afternoon calm down (which was very good for my sanity!) and I had three happy kiddos on my hands. Then while I made dinner, they had "band practice" and did some crazy dancing to keyboard music.

I hope tomorrow is a little calmer....

Crafty Kids!

I have to admit, perhaps sheepishly, how amazed I am that the summer is going so smoothly. I was kind of, maybe....just sort of dreading having all 3 kiddos underfoot ALL day long. I know, shame on me. But as much of a joy as they are to have around, it also means more fights to break up, more messes to clean, more whining, more everything. It's just busy!

But aside for all of the "extras" that come from us all being around each other 24/7, there's been a lot of fun times! I get so many extra hugs throughout the day, and extra "thank you's" and "you're the best mommy EVER" comments:) We are also getting time to see new things, go new places and do simple things like art projects, which go by the wayside during the busy school season. They do enough projects at school!

We got a package in the mail that had lots of styrofoam peanuts and instead of tossing them, I decided to save them for a rainy (or boring) day!

Last week just such a day arrived. The day it was 167 degrees outside and we were cooped up. The second the words "craft" came out of my mouth, the boys dropped what they were doing and were in their chairs in 2.4 seconds!

I think we made a record:) I may have to try that more often....

I pulled out paper, glue, paint and styrofoam peanuts to make pictures with! Zakkai had a blast just painting as many peanuts as he could, while Samuel made a picture out of the styrofoam and then painted it.

Love that they do things their own ways!

And while I wasn't quite ready to hand Missy paint and styrofoam, I figured paper and crayons worked just as well! She is definitely getting into coloring lately. I have cleaned crayon off the floor, the side of the cabinet and my little "kitchen island" all in the past few days. I'm not sure how these stray crayons find their way into that chubby little hand but she sure knows how to wield some damage!

Probably learned it from her big brother, I'm guessing. I'm remembering a certain big brother of hers that colored all over our wall with permanent marker not too many years ago....

Not that I'll mention any names. Ahem.

Looks like we'll be spending a little more time indoors since the weather is holding pretty steady around 100. Send me all your best craft/art ideas!!!