Positivity!!!

With the new year upon us one of the biggest changes that I want around here is more focus on the positivity and less on the negative.  So recently while I was looking around at pinterest (like so many of us do now,LOL)  I came across this quote by Audrey Hepburn that I felt was something my family needed to see everyday.  It said "NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE THE WORD ITSELF SAYS I'M POSSIBLE"  I mean how great is that right.  As a homeschooling momma I hear alot during the lessons that it is to hard, that it is impossible.  Not anymore, I made a painting of it and hung it up where everyone could see it. 

What do you think?  We love it!  Now if anyone starts to get negative, I can simply point at the painting and say nothing is impossible.  What are some of your positive sayings, I would love to hear them.  Also if you have not signed up for the mathblaster review yet make sure you do. 

Puzzle time with Dad!

Recently the boys recieved a new puzzle.  It was a 3D Breakthrough of Lightning McQueen and Mater.  A puzzle is the perfect thing for them to do with their dad, He loves puzzles.  With time constrants and limited space he unfortunetly does not get a whole lot of time to do them. 

The puzzle took them a couple of nights to do.  On the first night the put in all of the regular pieces of the puzzle. Then when the boys went to bed Rob glued the puzzle together. 

I love this picture of the boys working together.  That is always a nice moment.  :0)

The next night they started assembling the 3D portions of the puzzle.

Dad and Gabe worked on assembling Lightning McQueen.  He was the bigger of the pieces.

Sam worked away on the logo and Mater.  He had a little trouble with Maters tire but he fixed that in the morning. 

Here is a front and side view of the completed puzzle.  It looks really neat.  The boy actually want to theme their room to the Cars 2 movie so this will look perfect hanging up in there.  We just need to get a frame for it.

The boys posing with the completed puzzle.  They are very proud as you can see.  If you want to get one of these puzzles youself check out the site here at 3D Breakthrough. 

Also If you have not signed up for the mathblaster giveaway make sure that you do.

Mathblaster Review

Just before Christmas I was approached to do a review of Mathblaster.com.  Mathblaster is made by Knowledge Adventure, the same people who put out jumpstart.com.  It is a game based around math for 6 to 12 year old.  They can create their own avatars called blasters.  Once they have created the Blaster they go through training (math games). 

This is a shot of what it looks like when the game starts.  In this area it has the sections that leads off to the different worlds.  It has a bar along the bottom of the screen.  On this bar the kids have access to their friends and can even change their Blasters looks whenever they want. 

The boys absolute favorite part of the game is that you can get a pet.  You can name them, or choose the randomizer to help them name them.  The pets do go through an incubation period.  Even though the boys do love this feature Sam has found one down side to it that he does not care for.  Sometimes you cannot get into certain games with out having the pet with you. 

This is obviously a game meant for the kids and it is a lot of fun for them.  However I have not had such a good time with it.  As fun as it is for kids there is a lot of stimulation going on for me.  So my husband was a sweetheart and played the game for me so that you could have a little better view of the game.  The picture below is the blaster that he created.  What a good looking man I have.  LOL.

I found it to be entertaining.  You get to play all sorts of math type of games. Some games teach math functions such as fractions and other games teach logic and eye-hand coordination.  I only played for about 20 minutes.  In that time I created the above character (isn't he cute!).  I also found a pet and brought him to incubation.  The incubation takes about 12 hours.  I am not sure it is 12 hours of playing time or 12 hours real time.  While the pet is incubating you collect different "powers" (lack of a better word) that the pet needs to grow in incubation.  So the game also teaches the child how to care for his/her pet. 

Now for the fun part.  Mathblaster is allowing me to giveaway a 3 month membership to one of my readers.  With the membership it also comes with a bonus membership to jumpstart.com.  To win this all you have to do is leave me a note here by Friday, January 13th.  I will draw the winner and annouce on Saturday the 14th.

“Disclosure: I was provided with a membership good for Math Blaster and JumpStart at no cost by Knowledge Adventure in order to test the products’ abilities and give my own personal opinions on it. The opinions I have given are mine and may differ from others but were not influenced by the company or the free product provided.”

Muffins and Frogs

So one of my goals for the new year was to blog more.  I was trying to blog each day but last night I could not get my head to function at all.  Which is to bad because I was trying to set up a giveaway, make sure to check back tomorrow for that. 

Last night my husband was kind enough to make some muffins so that we could have them for breakfast this morning.   He was very excited to show me one muffin because it looked just like a frog to him.  He is very funny.  I do have to say though seeing the actual muffin it did resemble a frog.  I mean it was not green and slimy or anything like that.  I posted some pictures of it so that you could see it. 

And just so you know it was yummy but did not taste like chicken.  LOL!

Holiday Crafts...

I thought that I would share some of the crafts that we put together for Christmas Gifts.  I was really pleased with how much we made this year.  These are photos of the gifts that we shipped out, unfortunetly I did not complete all in time.  I am still going to get it done so I will share pictures after completing them.  I promise kids, I know that you are reading this, I am working hard on them.  I promise they will ship soon.  Now on to the gift that I managed to get done.  Well that would be with help from all of my guys.

First up my husband made a couple of mermaid dolls for the little one year olds in our life.  He got the pattern for them from the Wee Wonderfuls book.  Of course he did a great job on them. 

For one of our other little cousins we built a barn and supplies for.  I assembled the barn and Rob made all of the inside supplies.  The roof comes off and can be used as a yard for the the barn.  Rob hand painted the farmer and his wife.  A very cute job on them.  When she is all done playing with it she can put it all back inside and put the roof on for easy storage.

For our niece we bought her the book "The Best Mouse Cookie"  and  made a playset to go along with it.  It was complete with all of the supplies for her to act out the story on her own. 

For our nephew we wanted to carry on with the theme that we did for his birthday.  For his birthday we put together the fort building kit.  So for Christmas we decided to make him some gear that he could pretend he was camping in his fort with.  I got the pattern for the fire and lantern from here.

For some of the adults in our family we put together what we call "Cold Weather Baskets".  Really we were trying to be funny since they all live in the New England area and we live in South Florida. We put in the  baskets home made cocoa, chocolate covered marshmallows, cookies, and some mugs.  For a touch from the kids we saw this idea for coasters.  The kids hand painted all of them and then Rob covered the top with resin and put felt on the bottom to keep from slipping or scratching surfaces.

Have a great night everyone.  See you tomorrow.

Our Christmas...

Before it gets to far away I wanted to share a few of our Christmas photos with you.  Our Christmas was really wonderful, Simple and at home, just the way that I like it.

The boys going through their stockings first thing that morning.  Lots of fun goodies right in there.

Gabe showing off what Santa gave him.  A new imaginext set for Cars 2.  On a side note I have to mention his pajama pants.  They are the first pair he ever made on his own.  He is so proud of them, and me I can only smile when I look at him in them.

Ok now for Sam's Santa Gift.  I had to share a sequence of these photos because I do not know who was more excited about the gift Sam or Gabe.  As you can see in this first one Gabe is very curious about what he got.

This has to be my favorite one from the day.  Look how excited Gabe is and the present is not even for him actually (Sam said he would share with the whole family, Gabe did know that at the time though).

Finally Sam's impression of his Santa Gift.  I think that he was pretty pleased.  He has been wanting new pots and pans for so long and they are in his favorite color too, orange.

Finally the favorite toy that was recieved.  Affectionaly known as "Avenger Mansion" around here.  It was a basic unfinshed Doll house that I picked up at Micheals and painted for him.  Then we filled it with Avenger toys for him.  He loves this thing.  As you can see it is really large and he drags it back and forth between his room and the living room daily.  I will be back soon to show some of our crafting projects that we did for the holidays.

A New Year....

I hope that everyone has been having a wonderful holiday season.  Ours has been good, very busy though.  Between the illness spreading around here since Thanksgiving and trying to get all our projects done, there really has not been much time to breathe let alone blog.  That makes me sad because I really do enjoy blogging.  Well there is still alot going on around here but we are starting to feel better.  Now it is time to try and get caught up on things.  So to start off with last night I asked all of my boys (Rob included, LOL)  on what they wanted for goals this year.  I thought that I would share them here.  This way they are out there and we are more responsible to do them.  Up first the youngest of course.

Gabe's Goals
1.) Learn more Jazz moves. (He really loves his dance classes, Jazz is his favorite right now)
2.) More cooking time.  (He really loves to cook and wants to improve his skill alot.  It is really nice to see the pride in his face when he does a good job.)

Sam's Goals
1.) To learn to knit.
2.)  Learn more about architecture.  (He actually started working on this today.  He is rearranging his room, so he measured everything and made a lay out of how he wanted things set up.  I will try and share that later)
3.) Make more sculptures.  (This kid loves art and building things)
4.) More ballet moves.  (He is in love with all of his dance classes, but ballet is his number one right now.  That might be because he is the only boy in the class :0))

Dad's (Rob) Goals
1.) Get Healthy!  (Love this one, doing it together)
2.) Balance our budget better.
3.) Go back to school.  (I am very much supporting on this.  I think he will be amazing)
4.) Learn a new style of art.  (He is not sure what yet, but he will figure out something.  He just wants learn something new)

Mom's (Mine) Goals
1.) Get Healthy!  (See it is one my list too)
2.) Get Sabe Creations stocked and running consistently. 
3.) Stay ahead on Birthday/holiday crafts.  (I really love making alot of the gifts.  I just get behind and get really overwhelmed on everything.)
4.) More me time.  (O.k. every stay at home parent is probably putting this one on their list)
5.) Improve on my knitting ( I know very basic knitting skills, Sam wants to learn so I am going to help him and hopefully improve my own skills at the same time)
6.)  More photography time.  (I really wamt to work on my skills more)
7.) Blog more (See already working on that one :0))
8.) Read more.  ( I LOVE a good book)

As a family goal we want to learn the piano.  Living in a small apartment there really is no room for a piano.  A great alternative came our way during Christmas.  Rob recieved a new iPad as a christmas bonus (very cool).  Then the boys recieved a piano to go with it.  So we figured that this is a good starting point for us.  Then when we have a bigger place we will look into upgrading.

That is our family goals for this new and wonderful year.  I am so excited for it.  I hope you keep reading this year and see how we are making it through our goals.  What are your goals for the new year,  I would love to know. 

In closing tonight, since it has been so long since I posted I thought I would share a picture of two of my favorite guys. 

All the best wishes for a wonderful and amazing new year.  May all of your goals be met succesfully!

Pocahontas

The boys are doing a study on Colonial America.  One of the lessons recently was to write a dialogue pretending that they were a colonist needing help from the Native Americans.  They had to thank Pochantos for the help that she gave to them.  The video is a copy of what they came up with.  Sam Designed the costumes too.  Sam plays the colonist and Gabe is Pocahontas.  It is a really short video but super cute.  Hope you enjoy it!

Morikami

Yesterday was the last day that my father in law was here.  We decided to take him to the Morikami Museum and Gardens.  It is so beautiful there.  It was a great way to end his trip.  It was such a beautiful day to walk around the Gardens.  I thought that I would share some of the pictures from our day.  Keep in mind this is a heavy photo entry (but it is not all of my photos from the day).  On with the pictures.

These two shots are from the entry way.  We had not even got inside yet.  You can just tell this place is going to be stunning.  (Sam heard me saying the word stunning while we were there.  He was like "I love that word.  Hehe sometimes it is so easy to make a kid happy.  Alright enough of my sidetrack back to the pictures)

This was one of the first bridges that we came to and the boys posed with Grandpa on it.

Very cool statue there.  Rob asked if anyone wanted to play basketball.  Sam knew right away what he ment and told him that was the mayans that played basketball that way.  That is our little encyclopedia boy  (That is what Gabe calls him, LOL)

A really cool tree that the boys thought looked like a bunch of dinner plates.

All of the guys in front of the lake, (Three Generations)

A really cool spot out in the lake.  I could picture relaxing up under those trees and reading a good book.  What a wonderful way to spend a day don't you think?

This was a photo that Sam took of the museum on the other side of the lake.  He loves taking photos in black and white.  I think that he did such a wonderful job on this picture.

Another one of the many cool bridges around. 

My cutie pies.  Love them so much.

LOL  this kid never fails to please.  I asked him if he would do a silly pose under the gate so that I could take a picture.  He certianly did deliver on that. 

Posing by one of the rock gardens. 

Rob took this photo.  I love the purple of the flowers.  I also think that he did a great job on the photo too.

Another rock garden.

I just love this bridge shot.  It looks like it could be a postcard. 

There was turtles all over the place, Sunning themselves on the rocks.

I love waterfalls.  This little area was filled with some of the biggest Koi fish that I have ever seen.

When we made it around to the other side of the lake the kids went into the museum.  It was a very cute little children's musuem.  This is a replica of how some seats looked on the bullet train.  Gabe says that the seats are very comfy!

Then they got to experience what it was like to sit in  a Japanese classroom.  LOL Sam is always happy to have a chance to learn. 

Checking out what it would be like to sit at a Japanese table.

Exploring the cupboards in the kitchen with Grandpa.

Standing outside the museum.  The museum itself was set up like an actual Japense home.

Another stunning bridge. This time I was not the only one that thought so.  Look who else did.

Sam did.  He wanted me to take his picture on it.  I definetly did because unfortunaly he is getting to the point in life that he really does not want his picture taken.  I jump at all the chances that he does ask for them. 

It was a really great time.  The kids got a new book at the gift shop called All About Japan.  They were so excited to read on the way home.  It really is an excellent book.  If you are ever looking for a good one about Japan I recommend it.  I hope that you enjoyed all of the photos.  Until next time have a great one.