Category Archives: Just Life

Posts about the good normal everyday life stuff: eating out, family outings, coloring, just living life and loving it.

Arts and crafts

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Carson and I have been pretty into arts and crafts lately. (All these pictures are before the baby came, by the way.) Carson likes coloring with crayons.

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But not as much as he likes painting. I bought some washable Crayola paints that have been fantastic, and we’ve had a lot of fun.

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We turned those paintings into some eggs to celebrate Easter. I think the activity and seeing the eggs on the wall prompted Carson to learn his latest favorite word: “Egg!” (especially since Easter and finding so many candy-filled ones)

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Another time we painted toilet paper rolls (an excellent free art supply item when you’re on a tight budget) with Q-tips. Carson especially liked using the Q-tips. I love how focused he gets when he’s really into something like this:

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Of course things always get messier as they go on. :)

We (okay, I) turned the above paintings into these little peacock crafts:

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I totally tried to get Carson to help me, but he wasn’t into the gluing as much. He did, however, like watching the videos of peacocks on Youtube – which I had to consult after my first try (far left) resulted in what Josh called an “Indian penguin” more than a peacock. The second two were much better. :) (Okay, so I’m kind of a dork in that I had way too much fun doing this, but how cool is it that when you’re a mom you get to do fun projects like this? I loved arts and crafts as a kid! Now I get to enjoy them all over again.)

Then Josh helped me put up this clothesline above our kitchen table where I display all of our artwork.

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(The wrinkled one is a picture of a bear that Carson loved so much – he loves bears – he wanted to carry it around. I’m surprised he didn’t tear it!)

I got the idea from my mom, who, when we were growing up, had a whole room that was our art room, with a big long table that could get messy, and all around the walls had clotheslines like this – lots of them – to display all our artwork. My mom was so amazing about encouraging our talents and creativity. I think she and that art room are a big part of why I like to draw so much today. I’ve wanted to have an art room like that since I became a mom, and maybe one day I will, but for now this clothesline will have to do. :)

Visit to the Forney Museum of Transportation

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The Smithsonian magazine recently had a museum day one Saturday, where you could get free admission to a bunch of different museums across the country. Josh’s co-worker, who has a wife and a little girl a little older than Carson, invited us and some other friends to the Forney Museum of Transportation in Denver – a kind of cool museum that we probably would never have found otherwise, but we’re glad we did. There were mostly lots and lots of cool old cars, bikes, trains, and all sorts of modes of transportation on display. It was kind of a quirky museum; you weren’t allowed to touch ANYTHING – I guess that’s normal for a museum, but hard with a big open floor of awesome cars to look at when you have kids under two. So though Carson was a little fed up with all the walking and only looking by the end, we had a lot of fun. And they did have one room with toys where the kids got to play, and, randomly, one old jeep that you could actually climb inside! Definitely the highlight for Carson (and where all the pictures were taken). The highlight for Josh (and, okay, Paige too) was a room kind of hidden in the back where a bunch of old men build amazingly huge and intricate hobby train tracks. Carson liked that, too, because they had working trains that he and Josh followed around and around… All in all, a really fun day.

Dad’s little helper

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Carson has this toy phone that he loves, but one day a while ago he dropped it on the floor and it hasn’t made noise since. :( (Sorry, Mom! It was a great birthday gift, and still is – Carson loves it even without the music.) One night Josh tried to fix it, sadly unsuccessfully, but I did get these adorable pictures of Carson being dad’s little helper. Carson loves tools and wants to use them, especially any time he sees Josh with a screwdriver. Josh was so nice to let Carson help:

First snow of the season

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We got our first snow of the season a little bit ago! Since then we’ve had more, but there’s something special about that first coating of white outside. Carson was pretty fascinated with it (he’s technically experienced snow before last winter, but I’m sure he doesn’t remember it). We couldn’t resist heading outside to play for a bit.

He actually didn’t really like walking around in the snow/grass like this. And he really didn’t like when he fell and ended up sitting in it:

He did like touching the snow on the porch, where he didn’t have to walk through it, and holding the little snowballs I made him. We’ll have to get some real snow play in soon!