Fun with paint

My 3 year old daughter has discovered the joys of painting on the computer.

A lot less messy, but she still enjoys painting on paper as well. :)

New ideas new items

I've had these foam beads for quite sometime now. I finally decided they might just make some super cute bracelets. I was right! They are also very soft on your wrists.



Here is the other idea I've been playing with.

I've also had these animal beads lying around. I wanted to make a necklace that had a message. Something that a person could wear and show off their love for the animal. I finally went out and bought some heart buttons to use as beads and this is what I made.

Crafting with the wee-ones

I was making some bracelets and things the other day and the kids decided to help.

My daughter decided to make her own bracelet.

She picked out the beads herself


and started stringing them on.


I decided to hold the end of the string for her.


Here she is modeling her creation.

I was also wrapping up some metal wire to make some coils.
(sorry about the blurry pic)

My son decided he wanted to try.

Look at that concentration.


He ended up making about 10 of them.

Local Shout Out world record holder

I found this video while checking out the local entertainment magazine VolumeOne. This guy is a world record holding whipcracker. Check out the video.

Fishie Fishie

I thought I would post an update about our baby fish. I'm pretty sure there are still two babies in there. It is hard to tell because I never see them at the same time. There is one baby that has about doubled in size and another that isn't quite as big. Here is a picture of the big one.

Biking for bread.

The kids and I took a walk today through the cemetery. We like to walk there because it has little traffic and you can just loop all around. It's quiet and peaceful. I find it interesting in a way. Looking at the grave dates and such. Seeing which graves have flowers and which do not. In a way it amazes me that graves from the 50's and 60's still get flowers from their loved ones. Then you see some from 5 years ago and they have nothing. Kinda sad. Of course it could just be someones job to put flowers on random graves to make the cemetery look better. Then you see the graves of people who are not dead yet. I guess they like to plan ahead. Sometimes I'll calculate how old the person was when they died. You start to notice that a lot of people in the 1800's didn't live much past 35. Which I guess we kinda already knew. You'll see a lot of gravestones that have someone dying in the 1980's but their spouse is still alive. Sad. I probably sound like a loon but I guess I'm more interested in the person's history than the fact that they are all dead.

So as were taking this walk that we usually go on once or twice a week, some guy on a bike comes up and starts biking right towards the kids and I. (I've seen this guy before but he's never stopped me or even tried to talk to me) So I was a little creeped out by this and started to walk around him. He says, " Bet you are wondering how far I have biked" I said.. "uuhh.. yea sure" He starts to figure it all out by getting a paper out of his pocket. I stand by the kids and part of me was thinking good god is this guy going to knife me to death. He finds his info and says, "986miles"(I can't rememer the exact number) I said.. "how long did that take?" "since April" I said.. Of this year? He says, " yeah, I do it for feed my people" (which is a food bank) He said he was about to reach 1000 miles. I said.. "well great job, good luck with that" and we went on our way.

I get home tonight and I look up the food bank online. I go to the programs section and what do I see at the bottom?

"Biking for Bread is done by Larry Everson with support from St. John’s Lutheran Church in Eau Claire. Larry collects pledges for the food bank while biking thousands of miles each April through October."

I wondered why I always see that guy.