Tag Archives: Lena

Personal Creations (and KidKraft Train Set)!

November 1, 2013 Molly 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, a representative from Personal Creations emailed me and asked if they could send our family a gift of my choosing. Thank you to the Personal Creations team member who suggested us!

We gladly accepted! I picked the KidKraft Ride Around Town Train Set & Table. I thought it would be a good toy that my kids could share and play with together.

She told me it would take a few weeks for personalization and shipping, but just over two weeks and the mailman carried it into my living room today. Yay! That seems very fast for customization and shipping!

I had a half hour before the kids were home with the babysitter, so I decided to see how quickly I could put it together.

Ambitious! It’s not a hard thing to put together, particularly the actual table. I assembled the table in around an hour and that was with several interruptions. However, the actual train track and other pieces took me a bit longer and I was glad to Aaron’s help figuring it out when he got home.

Then, we called the kids downstairs to take a look. I had kept it a secret until that point.

There was much excitement and everyone dug right in and started playing!

(My much-taller-than-me husband had to help me with that photo.)

They played for over an hour, until it was dinner time. It is like an entire town– a mountain, a hospital, an airport, a lake, a farm, a crane. So much to explore!

And the personalization is fabulous.

Thanks, Personal Creations!

They can’t wait to get up and play with it again tomorrow.

ETA: Because the train table is near selling out, please check out some other great wood toys from Personal Creations.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

Capturing October: Dressed Up

October 31, 2013 Molly 1 Comment

Happy Halloween!

This isn’t my favorite holiday. I’m just not a fan of spending a ton of money on costumes for just one day and I don’t have a lot of time to invest in making them right now. I asked the kids what they wanted to be and Reed said “Batman”. He hasn’t expressed any interest in Batman before, so I asked what superhero was his favorite, and if maybe he wanted to go as Spiderman again. Bingo! Easy enough. And Lena wanted to be “Spider girl”, a costume she got for Christmas last year. And, I bought a cheap hoodie off of ebay so Gus could be a cow.

Before we went to get Reed and Lena at school, Gus was super grumpy and I told Aaron we might have to change his costume to Mad Cow Disease.

Then, after the school parade was done, Lena came over to Gus and said, “you a cow!”

And he happily giggled and played along after that.

He adores his sister.

Vampire teeth.

More Vampire teeth.

I love this one. I just love the look on Gus’s face.

Today is the last day of my photo challenge! Yes! Congrats to my friend Jennifer, who instagrammed her photos. And thank you to those of you who played along as you could.

I have decided to turn it in to a 365, a photo every day for a year, since I already have more than 1/12th done. However, I won’t be making prompts. Instead I will come up with a general list of about 5 things I want to capture each month and a few goals or things that I want to capture throughout the year. My goals is to shoot as much as I can with my DSLR, but I am going to allow myself to use my phone as needed, like I did this month when I was sick.

This list is a great starting place.

My goals for the year are:

Practice composition, particularly in candid shots
Focus on getting images right SOOC (straight out of camera)

My November Must-Capture List is:

More beautiful fall leaves
Thanksgiving
Autumn weather

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

Capturing October: Natural Light

October 30, 2013 Molly 1 Comment

I ended up picking the rainiest day of October for this one! Ooops!

I was still determined to get a bit more creative after yesterday’s BORING photo.

Autumn leaves and rain.

Isn’t the water wild on that last one?

We had a brief break in the rain after school got out, so we headed to the playground for a bit.

I really wish I had gotten the sleeves of her shirt in this photo. They were matching red and white polka dots. And the sides of the sunglasses are blue.

The park we went to is right next to where Aaron and I had our super laid back rehearsal dinner.

My best buddies.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

Capturing October: Treat (and the Louisburg Cider Mill)

October 27, 2013 Molly 2 Comments

Some friends told us about the Louisburg Cider Mill last year and I have been wanting to go ever since.

There’s so much fun there for kids.

Lena took 2 trips down. The first she slide off the side and the second time, she slide in to this little girl! Oops! The kids tended to go off the side of this slide. Gus, on the other hand, figured out how to manipulate his weight by leaning to stay on it! I was pretty impressed.

His first hay ride. Do you think he liked it?

Leading us through a corn maze! I think all corn mazes should be renamed maize mazes.

Wild leaps off a pile of straw.

We had the wonderful company of my aunt and uncle. They live very close and we always have a great time with them.

Lena LOVES her Aunt Jenean.

Giant jumping pillow!

And today’s picture for treat. We planned to get some yummy cider treats, but the place was packed! Instead we got Sonic. Reed got to finish Uncle Bob’s Root Beer Float.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

Capturing October: Cozy

October 27, 2013 Molly 1 Comment

We finally kicked Gus out of our bedroom. He is not a good sleeper. He wakes up often. Not totally awake, but just enough that he moves around or talks and wakes us up. I couldn’t do it any more.

He’s now in our guest room. It will be easy enough to set up the pack and play in our room when we have company, and we will get better sleep the rest of the time! On top of that, our guest room is more out of the way in our house, so he’s less likely to wake up from other people moving around in our house. Yay!

We went to Oregon Trail Nature Park today. Aaron and I have been here a couple of times, but we’ve never taken the kids before.

There’s a long hike up, up, up.

And then you get this “lovely” view.

Welcome to Kansas, y’all. We have beautiful sites. Overlooks for our energy plants.

There’s a bench, where you can sit on your brother’s lap.

Then, we went to a little lake to wait for it to get dark enough to capture the stars. Aaron found this area, which is supposed to be one of the best places to see the stars. We planned to camp here for my birthday a few weeks ago but the weather never cooperated.