Family Home Evening

For our family home evening activity tonight, we wanted to be outside, to enjoy the warm weather that has finally come. We had some cute visitors the last 3 days help us decide what to do.

Since hangin with the ducks was so fun, we thought we should make some bird treats to entice them to stay. We had a lot of fun cooking our peanut butter/bird seed/random nuts from the pantry concoction, and Munchkin was thrilled to hang them up!


Buddy Boy thought the "bird cakes" looked pretty good, and helped himself to one. He wasn't too happy with me for taking them away and forcing him to spit out the seeds...

Afterwards, Munchkin and I mowed the lawn while Buddy Boy and Dad relaxed on the trampoline. Once the mowing was done we started watering the lawn. We have this little hole in our hose and so it of course sprays water on the sidewalk. Buddy Boy loved standing in the little mist, and did so until he was completely soaked. Meanwhile, Munchkin had taken the crumbs from Buddy Boy's bird cake and "shared" them with the ants. One grateful little ant climbed on her finger, much to Munchkin's delight!

Happy Earth Week

This week of course, we celebrated Earth Day. As most of our friends and family know, our family is kinda into "green" living, and environmentally friendly activity. We've taken small (but significant) steps to reduce our negative environmental impact...you know, we've been using CFLs for over 6 years, our love of LED Christmas lights, recycling when it's convenient, using natural cleaners (except dishwasher detergent), etc etc.

Well, in honor of Earth Day, I thought I'd copy NBC and make it an Earth Week. We've had a good time as a family learning about the earth and the things we can do to help it. So here's what we did this week:

-Bought 5 reusable mesh bags from Reams. We already had some, but they were teeny and didn't hold much. I can now easily do all my shopping for the week and fit it into 3 or 4 bags, so I'm using them more.

-We already had our computer stuff on a power strip, but not the TV stuff. This week we put it all on and of course, turn the strip off when not in use.

-I used to keep our home heated to 68 degrees during the day and at 66 at night. For the last few weeks we've kept it at 66 during the day and 62 at night (frankly, the heater shouldn't be being used AT ALL this late into spring, but that's a whole 'nother story)

-We've set up recycle bins (really they're garbage cans) in all rooms of the house, so it's very convenient to recycle no matter what room we're cleaning. Our poor recycle bin is always stuffed to the max come trash day, and there's always more waiting in our smaller bins to put it as soon as it's empty. Our garbage can, on the other hand, is almost empty most weeks.

-We've composted our scraps. We've been doing this off and on for years, but decided to do a better job of it, again by finding a way to make it more convenient. (yep, I'm lazy, and I'm proud)

-We donated $$$ to the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 6 trees. Four are in "honor" of each family member, and the other two are to offset the emissions from our upcoming trip. Those planes are terrible!!! (there are really cool calculators online to help you figure out how you can offset vacation emissions!!)

-We bought earth friendly dish washer detergent. It works better than the other stuff anyway! We bought ours from Shaklee, but you can also buy natural household cleaners from Seventh Generation.

-And of course, we've been talking to the kids about the earth. I got the Planet Earth DVDs from the library and Munchkin and I watched them as often as we could. It was a great chance to show her and teach her of the beauty of this earth, and why it's so important we treat it well.

Anywho, that's been our week. It's been a fun and educational one for us.

Counting down the days

Munchkin has been counting down the days until we go to California. She will let you know the # any given day (16 today). The weather has been a little warmer, so we have had some fun outside. Munchkin and Buddy Boy both love talking walks. It is a good thing, because that is what we will be doing a lot of in California. ~Dad



In the meantime, we're doing a lot of cleaning and decluttering before we go. Saturdy we cleaned the car (see how helpful Munchkin was?) and all throughout the week we've had lists of "which part of the house to declutter" San Diego had better be warmer than it is here!

Kids having fun

On my day off last week I told Munchkin we would get out the remote control truck. We were at a fund-raiser for a girl in our neighbor hood and we won this pretty cool remote control. We haven't played with it for a while because it has been too cold. So that morning I charged the batteries. The batteries are supposed to be charged for 13 hours, but it was still pretty cold outside so I figured we wouldn't be playing it for very long. Munchkin kept asking it if was charged enough. Finally after a couple hours, she convinced me to try it out. We took it outside and after 5 minutes she asked to play with Amy (neighbor across the street). I asked her to wait and play with the remote control first, but she just kept on persisting that she play with Amy. Maybe Buddy Boy will like the remote control truck.




Buddy Boy loves opening and closing things. We love the outfit Nate and Mae gave him. ~Dad